For people who don't live
For people who don't live in NYC, it's hard to describe just how bad the local radio scene actually is. There are so many people in and around the city that there's more than enough support for two or three stations with basically the same format. This -- combined with the overall consilidation, corporatization and homoginization of the radio business in general -- has led to an ugly situation where you just can't find any variety on the dial and there are some formats that just don't exist at all (college radio excluded, but there are so many colleges in this area and so few frequencies available, that the stations that are out there are mostly weakly powered). At least in smaller cities, there's only enough population to truly support one station of each format, so there's more incentive to do something "different".
It's interesting to note this story from the NY Times then: WNEW Cutting Talk Format to Focus on Free-Form Music. I sincerely hope this works. As someone who went to college and majored in Radio Broadcasting before radio became computerized, over-researched and bland as Velveeta on Wonder Bread, the concept of a DJ actually picking their own music was not revolutionary...it was the way it was done. Yes, Virginia, there actually was a time when a DJ could insert their own personality (it may be little known, but this is the origin of the ancient term "On-Air Personality") into their show. Maybe this is a little opening that can bring some of that old radio magic back? I'm not getting my hopes up....
