The April Fool Archive

Pay-Per-Hear    (April Fool's Day - 1992)

Chicago radio station WXRT-FM announced it was turning into a digital, commercial-free "pay-per-hear" station. Its signal would be scrambled and divided into five different program formats that listeners would have to pay to listen to. The five formats would be "'XRT Basic," "'XRT Live," "'XRT Gold," "'XRT Espanol" and "sports-rock." The station announced the format change all day and then switched to a scrambled signal for several minutes. Hundreds of listeners called in to protest the change. One listener even showed up with a picket sign outside the station.

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