One Dial, Two Signals
Closed mid-January 1995 · On stands late January 1995
The Front
Index of January
Snow totals, heating-oil prices, days the markets closed early — and the resale premium a limited-edition shearling coat is already fetching over retail in three ski towns
On the Dial
A short column note on the changing sound of morning drive-time, and on the single now inescapable on it, played four times before ten a.m. on both of one owner's two frequencies
The Essay
The Quiet Season
A house essay on winter as the country's least-photographed season, from factory towns to resort strips gone dark for everyone except the five-star hotels quietly running their best rates of the year for guests who know to ask
The Foreign File
The Franc, Watched
A currency story nobody outside the trading desks will finish
The Feature Well
The Steakhouse Boom
A profile of the new wave of high-ticket steakhouses opening in three cities at once, financed by money that wants a booth reserved every Thursday and doesn't ask the price of the wine list
The City
Subject: Emmis buys WRKS (Kiss FM), forming the market's first FM duopoly under relaxed ownership rules — what one owner holding two frequencies changes about the morning dial
The Back
Books: Review essay on a new radio-industry memoir, paired with a note on a television talk-show host's own competing book · Art: January's quiet regional auction circuit, briefly, with a line on a pop star's early art-collecting habit — the kind of purchase a manager tries, and fails, to talk down · Film: Sundance dispatch, brief, with a paragraph on the year's highest per-theater average