CBS changed formats. They dropped their Free FM format (adult talk/hot talk format) due to a combination of reasons, including: more stringent FCC regulations, the relative cost of talk hosts vs music programming, demographics shifts, and a steep decline among the number of terrestrial listeners under 35, which was the genre's bread and butter, as the internet and mp3 players supplanted a significant chunk of the average number of entertainment hours spent listening to terrestrial radio per-week.

Maybe O&A did a bad show or something - but I'd go with the former points if I had to write a real analysis on the subject.

more stringent FCC regulations

Which, ironically, O&A were largely responsible for and suffered the most from after the fact. Even after 10+ years it's a testament to how fucking crazy the WNEW days were.

Why do so many other factors have to come into play before placing responsibility on the show itself. The show was lazy and downright terrible. Cat noises and reading the newspaper. You'd hear a spot promoting the show on KROCK back then and it would be a 10 second "Hey this is Opie & Anthony, tomorrow on the show it's cat noise Wednesday!" .. and that was that. They fucking recorded that. You're wondering why THAT show was cancelled?

When you're kicking the shit out of mornings in NYC you don't get the boot.

Why do so many other factors have to come into play before placing responsibility on the show itself.

Because the format doesn't work anymore on terrestrial radio for the previously described reasons. Do you think there was a terrestrial radio program/personality that should have replaced them? CBS didn't.

I didn't even mention the problems with radio advertising that the rise of the internet has caused.

I don't know specifics but here is the aftermath of leaving terrestrial: O&A Fight.

2009 - "This will all be over soon, you go your way, I'll go mine. TRUST me."

2014 - The return of Lady Di.

The show was rough. There were a few bits that were good that came from it. I actually enjoyed the walkover, and the daily dump out when people like louie were in.

I don't understand something - was it actually two separate shows back then or one show with a walkover to the other studio inbetween?

It was one show with a walkover, but only the first half was heard on Free FM. But after awhile they stopped broadcasting the walkover anyway. If you were listening on XM you would just hear them say goodbye to Free FM, go to commercial, then the show would continue as normal but with cursing.

The show sucked. Plain and simple. Not being a "hater", the CBS portion of that entire era was not any good. The XM portion was usually solid but even that suffered as a result. It just wasn't organic, it was shoe-horned onto FM and they didn't really know what kind of show to do. Maybe they could have done something if they were strictly on FM and the XM thing didn't exist, but doing both didn't work.

The show was okay back then, one of the highlights I remember was the "Wake up your spouse" bit. Eventually Bobo ended up getting involved and he was banging pots and pans on the phone.

Really? The portion of the show that they first played the "You are never to blame" song?

The simple truth is that they had bad ratings. They were dropped by the majority if not all of their syndicated stations for bad ratings before 92.3 even flipped formats. After more than 2 years at 92.3 they still hadn't even cracked the top 10 in New York. Despite the constant claims that "The Virus" was spreading, their ratings were actually dropping.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/radio-listen-wltw-leader-pack-article-1.316637

It's interesting that Opie read 92.3's rating and scoffed at it on the show this week, a number he would never mention when they were actually on the air at 92.3, while claiming that they were doing well at the time.

From the article. P.S. WSKQ is a Spanish language station. I commented previously about O&A having their asses kicked by Spanish language stations and was downvoted.

Here are the morning numbers:

1. WINS (6.6), 2. WHTZ (5.1), 3. WOR, WLTW and WRKS (4.7), 6. WCBS-AM (4.4), 7. WABC (4.2), 8. WBLS and WAXQ (4.1), 10. WCBS-FM and WPLJ (3.9).

In the "money demographic" of 25- to 54-year-olds, most coveted by advertisers, the top numbers look like this: 1. WLTW (6.3), 2. WAXQ (6.2), 3. WKTU (6.1), 4. WHTZ (5.5), 5. WRKS (4.9), 6. WSKQ (4.5), 7. WPLJ and WCBS-FM (4.4), 9. WQHT (4.2), 10. WWFS (3.9).

Obviously they were having their asses kicked by English language stations too. But that's because of iPods. The other stations' listeners must not've known about iPods.

The suits ruined it. Look at Jocktober, that's what resulted from people like Mel Karmazin squeezing every dime out of it for the stockholders and executives, and firing anyone with an ounce of talent.

Note: he did the same thing to Sirius.

Sweet. Someone who agrees capitalism ruined the show.

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It was Howard's fault.

Hoo Hoo , uh I invented being facetious on message boards Robin

I'm sure that Hoo Hoo lover /u/OpiesTits can explain for you. DURRR O&A SUCK!

92.3 krock gave into the ipod radio generation. They just gave up, and dumped o and a.

I think they would have done better if they were still doing afternoons to be honest. I love O&A but I'm rarely able to listen live other than during my drive in, because it's a tough show to listen to at work most of the time for fear of offending others. A lack of promotion didn't help them either.

I've been listening to old WNEW shows and they had a lot more interaction with fans, and a much more diverse audience, I think because they were getting people listening who were getting out of work so it was easier to listen live and interact. The callers were a lot better back then too. Not all, but morning callers on average suck more than their afternoon callers did.

The fans will always blame someone else. The truth is that those FM shows were terrible, every day. They couldn't work within the system and Opie's complaining was at an all time high. You signed the contracts, work within the system.

So I imagine the constant complaining turned off a lot of listeners, then you had them basically alienating the people listening on XM with a tame, awful show. Then you had the actual hosts. They just reverted to their worst forms,Anthony was too happy to be there guy, Opie was fake laugh guy. It was just terrible in every aspect.

the world is forever in debt to OP who saved us from corn balls and wiggers.

I remember listening to them during their last terrestrial run as I was too cheap to actually get SiriusXM. I think they were just tired of all the dumping and all the walk-over garbage.

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Any time a funny/energetic conversation was going on, Opie would space out with his eye on a clock and awkwardly put a brick wall in front of the funny bus to take us to commercial 40 times per hour. Unlistenable.

How is it Opie's fault that the FM side had scheduled breaks?

The way he did it was infuriating, and the fact they were scheduled didn't make them any less annoying and detrimental to the show. So many times a great segment came to an end by Opie awkwardly going "Uhh yeah great really funny, we'll be back after this". Horrid.

They were fired.

Go listen to Wigward Stern