I read with a great deal of interest and surprise the Jan. 13 front-page article "WHFS Changes Its Tune to Spanish." During my first stay in the Washington area, from 1985 to 1992, I was a loyal listener, even sporting a WHFS bumper sticker on my car. Back then, it truly was an "alternative" station and I discovered many, many bands and artists thanks to its "maverick" format. When I returned in 1997, I found that WHFS was no longer "the place to go for new music" but that it relied on repetition and what now might be termed "classic alternative." Its deejays made their appeal to twenty-somethings and the bar scene.
The Post article finally acknowledged these changes 15 paragraphs into the story, with an interview of Damian Einstein, who is now at WRNR-FM. But to those of us who had been loyal to HFS back in the '80s and early '90s, the change occurred more than a decade ago. I find it ironic that in 1992, when I moved from Washington to Miami, I could not find an alternative radio station, so I listened mostly to "Zol-95," that area's main Spanish-language station. That HFS is now "El Zol" seems somehow to complete the transformation.
I still believe that there is a market in the D.C. area for true alternative radio, if only there were entrepreneurs out there more dedicated to new music than new profits. In the end, WHFS sold out to profits, a sad reflection on our society.
LAWRENCE BOUDON
Alexandria
•
I began listening to WHFS in 1969 as a high school student.
Programs such as "Spiritus Cheese" and "Hall's Bar and Grill" were unlike anything I had ever heard. The station went off the air at midnight and on weekends hosted shows such as "The French Hour" and "The Hungarian Hour." I first heard Bonnie Raitt, Little Feat and Elton John on WHFS long before they were stars. When I went to college in the early '70s and was living in Upstate New York, I began to appreciate what a gem we had in WHFS -- a commercial station that had a college-radio format.
WHFS was a bit slow to catch up to the new-wave curve in the late '70s, but after WGTB, the Georgetown University station, folded, WHFS picked up the slack and became the only game in town for punk. And nobody did it better. I still have a few randomly recorded tapes that are better than anything I hear on the radio today. WHFS remained that way until the Einstein family sold the station in the early '90s to a radio conglomerate that commercialized the playlist and got rid of most of the old on-air personalities. That, for me, was the death of WHFS.
The new HFS was artificially hip and catered to the MTV generation. When my 12-year-old began listening to the station awhile back I knew I was right. Still, I felt a certain nostalgia and pride that my son was listening to the same station I did all those years ago. So when I read that WHFS had switched formats I felt a twinge of sadness that another milepost of my youth had been swallowed up by corporate America.
STEVE JAEGER
Arlington
