94.3 fm is a middle-aged/baby boom mom

Sometime in the last few weeks (or months, I don’t know, I don’t really listen to the radio anymore), the Winnipeg radio station 94.3 FM switched from “Curve” to “Fab,” reinventing itself like a night club under new management.

When the change in playlisting came to my attention, I began to think about the history of 94.3, coming to the realization that the station is somebody’s middle-aged/baby boom mom.

As far back as I care to remember, it was Q-94 FM, a station played in housewives’ kitchens, mid-sized, economy model cars and hair salons throughout Winnipeg, championing such half-committed feminist/Lilith Fair artists as Sarah McLachlan, Sinead O’Connor and Alanis Morisette. “You broke up with me, I’m gonna get you back in song”-type music. The kind of music that stuck it to the man (or more accurately, stuck it to men) but in a safe, unlike-Kathleen-Hanna kind of way.

Some time within the last couple of years, it became Curve 94.3. No longer did 94.3 sob over bum-relationships, but instead, began piggybacking off 92.9 FM, Red River College’s independent/local rock format, with a reasonable mix of Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers to pull in some of the mainstream crowd.

Then the mom got hip. The Black Eyed Peas and Kanye West did arrive. Curve 94.3 wasn’t like a regular mom, Curve 94.3 was a cool mom.

In the last few weeks something happened. 94.3 finally went through menopause.

It stopped trying to be hip like the kids, and did what it should have done all along—be “fab.” Try to tell me that fab isn’t a word used by one of your friends’ moms, if not your mom. If you say I’m wrong, you’re either too young/old for this blog post, or you don’t have many friends.

Maybe both. Hopefully neither.

More to the point, now Fab 94.3 hosts the “Super Hits Of The 60’s + 70’s,” as its website boasts. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Doors, CCR, The Byrds, etc.

Unlike Q, Fab is no longer disillusioned with the patriarchy, while still working within it. Unlike Curve, it’s not trying so desperately to be hip anymore. It took 94.3 this growing up process, but finally, it is playing the music that sounds good, instead of bandwagoning some sort of lifestyle or mindset that may or may not be desirable to middle-aged/baby boom women.

Finally, Fab 94.3 is a MILF. Call me.