“The All-Request Rock ’n’ Roll Jukebox,” hosted by Mike Saffran, on “99 BBF”/WBBF-FM (98.9), Rochester, N.Y. Originally aired 7 p.m.–Midnight Oct. 17, 1998 (Bonus Clip).
Special note: For the first time since starting as “The Jukebox” host on Jan. 28, 1995 — nearly three years and nine months earlier — Mike Saffran, on Oct. 24, 1998, missed a regularly scheduled, weekly, all-request call-in show so he could attend a cousin’s out-of-town wedding. Then, the following week, Oct. 31, 1998 (Halloween), fellow 99 BBF DJ Tom Noonan hosted a Halloween radio special during the normal time slot for “The Jukebox” (7 p.m.–midnight Saturday).
So, again this week, in place of a usual full-show “rewind,” “The Jukebox: Radio Archive” podcast presents special bonus content — including this clip, from Oct. 17, 1998, in which Mike shares a prescient observation and commentary concerning the future of Rochester’s former Midtown Plaza (which was torn down in 2010): “This coming holiday season, there will be no ‘Magic Mountain’ and there will be no monorail — which means, I think, it’ll be translating to no shoppers at Midtown Plaza and, eventually, no mall at all. Stupidity reigns once again!”
In highlighting “Magic Mountain” and the monorail, Mike was referring to the two long-time holiday traditions that attracted shoppers to the urban mall for holiday shopping (the suggestion being that the mall was being mismanaged, which was also evidenced by the fact that there was no free parking at the mall on Black Friday, traditionally the biggest retail-shopping day of the year).
99 BBF itself (along with its “sister stations”) was located in the Forman Building, a few stories above the B. Forman Co. department store, which was part of Midtown Plaza.
