When second-year computer science student Angie Yen was looking
up the lineup to WHFS’s annual music festival, she was
startled to learn the station no longer existed. A Spanish language
station had succeeded the Washington/Baltimore rock station’s
frequency on the FM dial. But WHFS still has a presence on the
airwaves of an FM talk radio station, Live105, as the
station’s weekend programming. “I found a random
article on the Internet when I was looking up the HFStival, which
they’re still having even though there’s no
station,” Yen said. “I saw that it got taken over by a
Spanish (language) station, which makes sense in California, but
not in D.C.” Yen won’t be the only student returning
home after finals to discover that an alternative rock station she
grew up with no longer has a radio signal. Rock, which has long
been a staple ingredient on the FM dial, is in a much more
precarious position than people may realize. WXRK in New York, WPLY
in Philadelphia, WZTA in Miami and the short-lived KRQI in Seattle
have all ditched playing current rock tunes in the past four
months, while talk radio, urban and ethnic, particularly Spanish
language, stations continue to spring up on the FM tuner. FM radio
is clearly getting a makeover. And as companies look for ways to
free themselves from playlists laden with new rock, the change has
sparked debate over whether this trend reflects the state of rock
music today ““ if it is a struggling genre or simply has
evolved beyond the alternative label ““ or if it signals the
demise of radio in a population that was not only raised on a music
diet of MTV and VH1, but now listens to iPods, not the radio, in
its cars. Paul Kopelke, general manager of the Baltimore radio
station WNST, attributes the reformatting that is occurring with FM
radio frequencies in part to his belief that people in the
18-to-24-year-old age group simply do not listen to the radio and
have not even been an ideal audience in prior decades. “Radio
has simply never been the best place to reach young people,
period,” Kopelke said. “If someone came to you with a
product to reach young people and gave you $10 million and you had
20 mediums of choice, would you spend a nickel of it on FM radio? I
don’t think so. It’s a lost cause for
18-to-24-year-olds.” The rise in the number of radio
stations, similar to that advent of digital cable, has created more
specialization in station programming, as they look to market
toward increasingly marginalized audiences. In past decades, young
people listened to the same stations as their parents simply
because there was no other alternative. And as the FM frequency
becomes more populated, station managers and marketers have not
figured out how to cater to the 18-to-24-year-old audience.
“Twenty years ago, markets like Los Angeles had 20 stations,
so young people were a part of the mix, but we’ve gotten more
and more niched. The guy who picked (the) 18-to-24 age group is in
more and more trouble every five years,” Kopelke said. The
fact that WXRK in New York took out current alternative rock music
from its playlist reflects its attempt to attract the older
25-to-40-year-old demographic by abandoning the tunes that could
potentially attract a dwindling college-aged audience.
Unfortunately, the programming switch has left the many new wave
rock bands coming out of New York without a radio station in their
home city. “We’ve gotten mixed reviews (about making
the switch),” said Bianca Sotl, a WXRK programming assistant.
“There were a lot of factors that went into it. There’s
really no current rock station in New York now. I hope someone will
pick up the slack.” It seems that even if alternative rock
stations continue to fall off the airwaves, students would discover
the news in a similar fashion to Yen, rather than by flipping to
the station and hearing an unexpected format in the station’s
place. Indeed, few college-aged students say that the radio is the
first medium they go to when they are looking for new music.
Instead, they prefer other options like TV and magazines ““ or
even just talking to their friends. “Radio is not the most
successful (medium for reaching 18-to-24-year-olds),”
third-year history student Hilary Lucas agreed. “MTV and
other music television (formats) are better mediums. For new music,
I’d turn on MTV before I’d turn on the radio.”
The predictability of major radio companies’ limited
alternative rock playlists has been a motivating factor in
students’ decisions to look for other mediums to discover
up-and-coming artists. “They’ll play a few new songs
they know work and then they’ll play old Weezer and
Nirvana,” second-year communication studies student Jim
Brandon said. “Rarely am I exposed to something new. A lot of
times a band has to become popular before they’ll play it on
the radio, and that’s too bad because radio can be a great
medium to get groups out there.” Brandon isn’t the only
person disillusioned by the overproduced sound coming from many
groups in the current rock scene. “With the early ’90s
there was more diversity in rock music. Now, it seems like bands
are writing music with a formula that will get them played on radio
stations, so everything sounds the same, and it’s
mediocre,” third-year American literature and culture student
Paul Meyers said. Yet the monotony of music being played on the
radio is largely the result of the changing nature of the music
industry in terms of producing and marketing artists.
“It’s not what’s being produced, it’s what
radio stations will play,” Kopelke said. “It used to be
that stations would scour the country for local artists. Kelly
Clarkson, Avril Lavigne ““ they were created in studios. The
producer came to them and said, “˜You have the
look.'” While new rock may be falling off FM radio, a
new format that is making waves in the radio arena is Jack-FM,
which after its success in Canada has staked out a frequency in
over a dozen U.S. cities, including Los Angeles in March. The
format has a playlist of approximately 1,200 songs taken primarily
from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s and plays them at
random. It has no DJs ““ hence, it takes no requests and
appropriately operates under the slogan, “We play what we
want.” But while Jack-FM claims on its Web site to be an
innovative format for the 21st century, comparable to the iPod
Shuffle, many are cynical or skeptical about it. “They have
taken the project of cutting expenses and cutting out employees and
turned it into a cutting-edge format. They named it Jack after a
person, even though there are no people. It’s trying to
compete for young people, but it’s playing music aimed at me.
So with any luck it will fall on its head,” Kopelke said.
“They just wanted a reason to fire everyone.”
Considering that Infinity Broadcasting, Clear Channel and a handful
of other large companies dominate much of the FM radio signals
around the country, it should not come as a surprise that radio has
been stripped not only of its diversity of playlists, but of any
distinguishing local flavor as well. In fact, virtually identical
formats can be found in cities across the country. “If you
put on an oldies format, a mix format, a hits format, you’ll
find the exact same thing from city to city,” Kopelke said.
“There are stations playing 2,000 records a year ““ and
that’s not an uncommon number. Are you surprised their
listeners are wearing out?”
Old formats, new places
When, in 1999, WNEW in New York stopped playing rock music and
started airing talk radio shows, few people would have foreseen it
as the start of a major FM radio trend. But because of the success
of AM talk radio shows, FM radio companies are eager to incorporate
the format into their station programming. Yen, who grew up
listening to National Public Radio in the car with her parents,
said she thinks FM talk radio is likely to pick up a college-aged
audience of people eager to stay informed about current events.
Meyers, on the other hand, has a much more jaded outlook about what
topics college students would be interested in with FM talk radio
shows. “I could (see FM talk radio being successful). Guys
like (radio host) Tom Lycus generally open up the airwaves to
anyone, and the conversation tends to go toward sex. I could see
people being entertained and attracted to that,” Meyers said.
Its neophyte status on the FM frequency means that for the time
being, talk radio is still trying to work out basic technicalities.
“They’re having trouble finding out what to talk about.
It started because of AM talk radio success and the uncertainty
about what music to play (on the radio), but if you listen to some
of these shows, it’s just two guys in a studio laughing
hysterically at each other,” Kopelke said. Yet even with
radio personalities like Howard Stern, it will be hard for the
format to shed the stigma it has developed over the years with AM
hosts like Rush Limbaugh. “When I think of talk radio, I
think of my dad,” Lucas said. “I don’t see the
trend.” Regardless, FM talk shows are succeeding rock music
stations’ airwaves in many signals, and some speculate that
the near future may have AM radio housing local rock stations.
“As FM drifts to talk and gets off music, AM will turn to
local groups. Bands can now record themselves and march their album
down to a local radio station. It will be one of the next AM
formats,” Kopelke said. And for students who are frustrated
at the local identity in station programming, AM radio is a
conceivable way to bring back local rock shows. However, not
everyone sees AM radio as the new haven for rock music. “A
lot of times people don’t give local music a chance and stick
to what Clear Channel tells them to listen to,” Meyers said.
“But unless everyone starts listening to AM rock radio (it
won’t be successful). Music brings people together, and if
you’re the only person listening to it, it’s not going
to work.”
The indie influence
While rock may be dying off the airwaves, urban and ethnic
stations continue to see expanding audiences. One look at the
Billboard charts quickly demonstrates that genres like rap, R&B
and hip-hop dominate album sales and have an enormous presence in
college students’ music libraries. Radio companies believe
they can reach larger audiences by playing urban music rather than
trying to attract the dwindling rock audience. Regarding the recent
format changes at alternative rock stations, Sotl said, “It
probably has to do with advertising toward a new demographic, like
the urban and Spanish-speaking demographic.” And while urban
music has exploded in the country, the rock music scene has become
more polarized. In a New York Times interview, Kevin Weatherly,
programmer at the Los Angeles alternative rock station, KROQ, said,
“You have stations that are too cool, that move too quickly
and are only playing the coolest music, which doesn’t at the
end of the day attract enough of the audience. Or you have the
other extreme, dumb, red-state rock that the cool kids just flat
aren’t into.” However, the station has made the
necessary changes in its playlist to keep its ratings strong.
“Indie music has taken off and is gathering a big
audience,” KROQ programming assistant Corey Irwin said.
“We’ve definitely not shied away from that and have
gotten into playing groups like The Killers and Franz Ferdinand.
… This year alone we’ve broken bands we hadn’t heard
of because we kept having people call up and request them so we
went out and investigated them ““ (groups like) Pepper.”
The indie rock station seems to be today’s alternative rock
station, considering Clear Channel even owns the Los Angeles
Indie103. Brandon professes that when he does turn on the radio, he
will often choose to tune into Indie103. “I’ll listen
to Indie103 when I’m in the car,” Brandon said.
“Even though they play songs that suck sometimes, I feel like
I’m rewarding them for playing things they want to play and
not just top 40s.” While Brandon may still turn to the radio
for entertainment when he’s driving, its hard to deny the
fact that many college-aged students prefer to use either their CD
players or iPods in the car. “Radio is just about access and
whether you have a choice to listen to something else. Most cars
automatically come with CD players, and now you can hook your iPod
up to your car, so you are going to listen to that instead,”
Yen said. Yen’s dismissal of radio in favor of other mediums
is no doubt a concern that has motivated stations to rethink their
programming and look for new formats and demographics. But Kopelke
does not see radio losing a presence in major metropolitan markets
any time in the near future because of the large populations in
those areas. “Rural market radio is in serious trouble. Just
as trains and planes no longer stop in many cities that they used
to stop in, so you will see small towns in rural America losing
local radio stations,” Kopelke said. And while average
college students may prefer to listen to music on their iPods over
other mediums, listening to the radio will still come in handy when
they are deciding what songs to add to their playlists.
“Imagine if they hadn’t invented radio before the
iPods,” Kopelke said. “The iPod came first and everyone
had iPods and then they unveiled this new thing called the radio
““ it had a large playlist and mixed it for you, it was free
and you could pick it up anywhere. “Then wouldn’t we
all be saying how wonderful this new thing called radio
was?”
E-mail Rodgers at jrodgers@media.ucla.edu.