Dan C
06-19-2002, 07:24 AM
Here's a story from AP about the sad state of modern radio and the 'alternative' to it.
Dan C
CEDAR GROVE, N.J. (AP) - When 13-year-old Dana Marino
flips on her boom box, she wants to hear her favorite
songs. And she often does - over and over and over
again.
``FM stations overplay popular songs, to the point
that no one likes them anymore,'' the eighth-grader
complained after enduring a recent audio overdose of
J.Lo and Ja Rule.
Ed Cronin, 42, rarely flips his radio on. He longs
for the free-form format of his teen years, when you
could hear anything from Elvis Presley to Elvis
Costello, the Supremes to the Sex Pistols.
``You were exposed to all sorts of other stuff -
not only the hip and new, but older stuff,'' said the
resident of West Roxbury, Mass. ``You can't hear that
now.''
Finally, a place where no generation gap exists.
When it comes to commercial radio, it appears
everybody has a gripe - except the corporations atop
the multibillion-dollar industry. Their stations, they
say, are just following the advice of the Kinks' Ray
Davies: Give the people what they want.
``We play what people want to hear,'' said John
Hogan, president and chief operating officer of Clear
Channel Radio and its 1,200 stations. ``And if we play
too little of what people want to hear, they're going
to go somewhere else.''
They already are - although it's not necessarily to
other radio stations.
Radio listeners are listening less. In 1993, they
spent an average of 23 hours per week with the radio
on; last year, it was down to 20* hours, according to
Arbitron numbers.
Those most likely to turn off the radio:
teen-agers, long among the medium's mainstays. Among
girls age 12-17, the radio is on just 16 hours a week.
For boys, it's just 12* hours. That's bad news for the
country's 11,047 commercial radio stations.
Why the turn-off?
Some, like musicians Prince and Little Steven Van
Zandt, blame playlists so strict they make the old Top
40 format seem extravagant.
Others blame a 1996 law that opened the door for
corporate ownership of hundreds of radio stations,
replacing often-eccentric local owners with a legion
of sound-alike voices and formats.
``FM is creatively tired,'' said Lee Abrams, a
veteran radio consultant now employed by the satellite
radio company XM. ``The attitude is, `We're making
money. Why change it?'
``They make their money, they pay the bank,
everybody is happy,'' Abrams continued. ``And music is
very low on the totem pole.''
To listeners, music ranks higher - and they're
willing to look a little harder for it. Untold numbers
download music off the Internet, and about 25 million
people dial up Internet radio daily, a recent study
found. XM predicts its satellite audience will
quadruple to 350,000 by the end of the year.
Such abandonment once seemed impossible, when radio
was king and its DJs ruled the musical landscape.
^---=
When Richard Neer debuted on New York radio in
1971, the broadcast world was a different place. Right
into the '80s, the airwaves - from WNEW-FM in New York
to KFOG-FM in San Francisco - enjoyed a golden era.
``It was a time of artistic freedom. And we thought
that would last forever,'' said Neer, a former 'NEW
jock and author of the book ``FM: The Rise and Fall of
Rock Radio.''
Competition was cutthroat, with stations waging war
for a single tenth of a point in the Arbitron ratings
(and its corresponding bump in ad rates).
It was business, sure. But it was personal, too,
and the DJs were the ``personalities.'' Many were
larger than life, nearly as large as their egos.
In the '60s, ``Murray The K'' Kaufman quit in the
middle of his shift when handed a playlist. In the
'70s, the legendary Frankie Crocker rode into Studio
54 atop a white stallion. In the '80s, WNEW's Scott
Muni opened every show with a Beatles tune in memory
of John Lennon.
By the '90s, the power had shifted. ``Research
started taking over,'' Abrams recalled. ``People
wouldn't go to the bathroom without going to a focus
group.''
The result, according to critics: appealing to the
lowest common denominator with a slimmed down
playlist, and ignoring the fringes.
``The philosophy was superserve your core audience,
rather than hit a broad demographic,'' said Neer.
``Anybody over (age) 50 was discounted, thrown
aside.''
Artists were marginalized along with audiences.
Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Stevie Wonder was
suddenly MIA on the FM dial. AM radio had become the
bastion of talk radio.
Phenomenons like the recent soundtrack to ``O
Brother, Where Art Thou?'' - No. 1 on the charts, 5
million copies sold, Grammy album of the year -
remained invisible to most programmers.
``There's nobody in the mainstream with the freedom
to turn audiences on to great old or new stuff,'' said
Springsteen's guitarist, Nils Lofgren, an old FM
favorite. ``It's about corporate money, not great
music.''
Some blamed the Telecommunications Act of 1996,
when Congress deregulated station ownership.
Previously, ownership was capped at 40 stations
nationally and four in any market - two AM and two FM.
Suddenly there was no national ceiling, and local
ownership was doubled to eight stations.
Out-of-towners snapped up local stations.
Combatants like morning hosts Howard Stern and Don
Imus became co-workers. Ex-competitors did
cross-promotions.
Today, Infinity Broadcasting - home to Stern and
Imus - owns 180 radio stations in 22 states. Emmis
Communications' three New York stations control 14
percent of the revenue in the nation's No. 1 market;
in other markets, that number can quadruple.
But the big daddy of the business is San
Antonio-based Clear Channel Communications, which owns
1,200 stations in all 50 states and the District of
Columbia. Clear Channel estimates that each day, it
reaches 54 percent of people age 18-49 in the United
States.
It owns eight channels in Washington, seven in
Dallas. Its ascension to the nation's No. 1 radio
operation has raised many questions; the latest
controversy involves ``voicetracking,'' a new system
that replaces on-air talent with pre-recorded
material.
Clear Channel's Hogan defended his company as good
for both audience and advertisers. He says Clear
Channel has become radio's boogeyman, taking the blame
for any radio wrong.
``We're a big target, and I don't think anybody's
bashful about taking a shot at us,'' Hogan said. ``A
part of me wishes we were as powerful as people
think.''
Those who condemn 21st century radio, including
XM's Abrams, don't understand that times and
technology have evolved, Hogan said.
``They're like old ballplayers,'' he said.
``They'll tell you that the game has changed, and the
new players aren't as good. Part of that is just human
nature.''
Meanwhile, record companies and recording artists
are supporting a proposed bill, sponsored by U.S. Sen.
Russell Feingold, D-Wisc., that might restore the cap
on station ownership.
Despite the complaints, independent studies have
shown that deregulation has increased choices on the
dial. Hogan explained how that was possible.
Pre-1996, four companies might run classic rock
stations in a single market. Multiple ownership now
allows multiple formats - although, he acknowledged,
some of those formats could mean repeating the same 10
songs ad infinitum.
``It's just fundamental that what you put on the
air is a reflection of what the listeners want,''
Hogan said.
But Neer remembered the fall of WNEW, when an
out-of-town company took over what was once among the
nation's leading rock stations.
``They came in and stripped away what made the
station unique,'' he said. ``At WNEW, they came in
from Detroit and decided to program like it was
Detroit.
``It never worked.''
^---=
At XM Radio, the problems of ``terrestrial'' radio
are reason for optimism. XM, billed as ``part rock,
part rocket science,'' provides a growing number of
subscribers with 100 digital channels beamed via
satellite.
Fortune magazine hailed XM as the No. 1 product of
2001. Its wide-ranging, round-the-clock station
options include acoustic rock on ``The Loft,''
old-school R&B on ``The Groove,'' Latin Jazz on
``Luna.''
Abrams, the XM head of programming, hopes his
operation can take off the way FM did 30 years ago.
``Programming is a battle of art and science,'' he
says. ``It's just become too scientific, and the art
went away.''
Hogan laughed at this assessment: ``If you call Lee
Abrams up and ask for help, I'll bet you a dinner the
first thing he does is conduct a market survey.''
Can XM replace the current AM/FM formats? Clear
Channel hedged its bets by investing in the new
technology, making one of its investors the sort of
conglomerate ripped by Abrams.
In San Francisco, Clear Channel owns seven
stations. Tony Mastrogiorgio, a transplanted New
Yorker now on the West Coast, doesn't listen to any of
them.
He'll occasionally flip on the local college
station, KUSF-FM, which just marked its 25th
anniversary. He finds their playlist lacking, too.
Mostly, he'll put in a CD - something old by The
Clash, or something new by The Hives - and wonder what
happened to radio.
``How tragic it is that we live in a world where
the `alternative' radio station plays Dave Matthews,''
said Mastrogiorgio, referring to the multi-platinum
alt-rock band.
``That's an alternative the way CBS is an
alternative to NBC.''
Dan C
CEDAR GROVE, N.J. (AP) - When 13-year-old Dana Marino
flips on her boom box, she wants to hear her favorite
songs. And she often does - over and over and over
again.
``FM stations overplay popular songs, to the point
that no one likes them anymore,'' the eighth-grader
complained after enduring a recent audio overdose of
J.Lo and Ja Rule.
Ed Cronin, 42, rarely flips his radio on. He longs
for the free-form format of his teen years, when you
could hear anything from Elvis Presley to Elvis
Costello, the Supremes to the Sex Pistols.
``You were exposed to all sorts of other stuff -
not only the hip and new, but older stuff,'' said the
resident of West Roxbury, Mass. ``You can't hear that
now.''
Finally, a place where no generation gap exists.
When it comes to commercial radio, it appears
everybody has a gripe - except the corporations atop
the multibillion-dollar industry. Their stations, they
say, are just following the advice of the Kinks' Ray
Davies: Give the people what they want.
``We play what people want to hear,'' said John
Hogan, president and chief operating officer of Clear
Channel Radio and its 1,200 stations. ``And if we play
too little of what people want to hear, they're going
to go somewhere else.''
They already are - although it's not necessarily to
other radio stations.
Radio listeners are listening less. In 1993, they
spent an average of 23 hours per week with the radio
on; last year, it was down to 20* hours, according to
Arbitron numbers.
Those most likely to turn off the radio:
teen-agers, long among the medium's mainstays. Among
girls age 12-17, the radio is on just 16 hours a week.
For boys, it's just 12* hours. That's bad news for the
country's 11,047 commercial radio stations.
Why the turn-off?
Some, like musicians Prince and Little Steven Van
Zandt, blame playlists so strict they make the old Top
40 format seem extravagant.
Others blame a 1996 law that opened the door for
corporate ownership of hundreds of radio stations,
replacing often-eccentric local owners with a legion
of sound-alike voices and formats.
``FM is creatively tired,'' said Lee Abrams, a
veteran radio consultant now employed by the satellite
radio company XM. ``The attitude is, `We're making
money. Why change it?'
``They make their money, they pay the bank,
everybody is happy,'' Abrams continued. ``And music is
very low on the totem pole.''
To listeners, music ranks higher - and they're
willing to look a little harder for it. Untold numbers
download music off the Internet, and about 25 million
people dial up Internet radio daily, a recent study
found. XM predicts its satellite audience will
quadruple to 350,000 by the end of the year.
Such abandonment once seemed impossible, when radio
was king and its DJs ruled the musical landscape.
^---=
When Richard Neer debuted on New York radio in
1971, the broadcast world was a different place. Right
into the '80s, the airwaves - from WNEW-FM in New York
to KFOG-FM in San Francisco - enjoyed a golden era.
``It was a time of artistic freedom. And we thought
that would last forever,'' said Neer, a former 'NEW
jock and author of the book ``FM: The Rise and Fall of
Rock Radio.''
Competition was cutthroat, with stations waging war
for a single tenth of a point in the Arbitron ratings
(and its corresponding bump in ad rates).
It was business, sure. But it was personal, too,
and the DJs were the ``personalities.'' Many were
larger than life, nearly as large as their egos.
In the '60s, ``Murray The K'' Kaufman quit in the
middle of his shift when handed a playlist. In the
'70s, the legendary Frankie Crocker rode into Studio
54 atop a white stallion. In the '80s, WNEW's Scott
Muni opened every show with a Beatles tune in memory
of John Lennon.
By the '90s, the power had shifted. ``Research
started taking over,'' Abrams recalled. ``People
wouldn't go to the bathroom without going to a focus
group.''
The result, according to critics: appealing to the
lowest common denominator with a slimmed down
playlist, and ignoring the fringes.
``The philosophy was superserve your core audience,
rather than hit a broad demographic,'' said Neer.
``Anybody over (age) 50 was discounted, thrown
aside.''
Artists were marginalized along with audiences.
Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Stevie Wonder was
suddenly MIA on the FM dial. AM radio had become the
bastion of talk radio.
Phenomenons like the recent soundtrack to ``O
Brother, Where Art Thou?'' - No. 1 on the charts, 5
million copies sold, Grammy album of the year -
remained invisible to most programmers.
``There's nobody in the mainstream with the freedom
to turn audiences on to great old or new stuff,'' said
Springsteen's guitarist, Nils Lofgren, an old FM
favorite. ``It's about corporate money, not great
music.''
Some blamed the Telecommunications Act of 1996,
when Congress deregulated station ownership.
Previously, ownership was capped at 40 stations
nationally and four in any market - two AM and two FM.
Suddenly there was no national ceiling, and local
ownership was doubled to eight stations.
Out-of-towners snapped up local stations.
Combatants like morning hosts Howard Stern and Don
Imus became co-workers. Ex-competitors did
cross-promotions.
Today, Infinity Broadcasting - home to Stern and
Imus - owns 180 radio stations in 22 states. Emmis
Communications' three New York stations control 14
percent of the revenue in the nation's No. 1 market;
in other markets, that number can quadruple.
But the big daddy of the business is San
Antonio-based Clear Channel Communications, which owns
1,200 stations in all 50 states and the District of
Columbia. Clear Channel estimates that each day, it
reaches 54 percent of people age 18-49 in the United
States.
It owns eight channels in Washington, seven in
Dallas. Its ascension to the nation's No. 1 radio
operation has raised many questions; the latest
controversy involves ``voicetracking,'' a new system
that replaces on-air talent with pre-recorded
material.
Clear Channel's Hogan defended his company as good
for both audience and advertisers. He says Clear
Channel has become radio's boogeyman, taking the blame
for any radio wrong.
``We're a big target, and I don't think anybody's
bashful about taking a shot at us,'' Hogan said. ``A
part of me wishes we were as powerful as people
think.''
Those who condemn 21st century radio, including
XM's Abrams, don't understand that times and
technology have evolved, Hogan said.
``They're like old ballplayers,'' he said.
``They'll tell you that the game has changed, and the
new players aren't as good. Part of that is just human
nature.''
Meanwhile, record companies and recording artists
are supporting a proposed bill, sponsored by U.S. Sen.
Russell Feingold, D-Wisc., that might restore the cap
on station ownership.
Despite the complaints, independent studies have
shown that deregulation has increased choices on the
dial. Hogan explained how that was possible.
Pre-1996, four companies might run classic rock
stations in a single market. Multiple ownership now
allows multiple formats - although, he acknowledged,
some of those formats could mean repeating the same 10
songs ad infinitum.
``It's just fundamental that what you put on the
air is a reflection of what the listeners want,''
Hogan said.
But Neer remembered the fall of WNEW, when an
out-of-town company took over what was once among the
nation's leading rock stations.
``They came in and stripped away what made the
station unique,'' he said. ``At WNEW, they came in
from Detroit and decided to program like it was
Detroit.
``It never worked.''
^---=
At XM Radio, the problems of ``terrestrial'' radio
are reason for optimism. XM, billed as ``part rock,
part rocket science,'' provides a growing number of
subscribers with 100 digital channels beamed via
satellite.
Fortune magazine hailed XM as the No. 1 product of
2001. Its wide-ranging, round-the-clock station
options include acoustic rock on ``The Loft,''
old-school R&B on ``The Groove,'' Latin Jazz on
``Luna.''
Abrams, the XM head of programming, hopes his
operation can take off the way FM did 30 years ago.
``Programming is a battle of art and science,'' he
says. ``It's just become too scientific, and the art
went away.''
Hogan laughed at this assessment: ``If you call Lee
Abrams up and ask for help, I'll bet you a dinner the
first thing he does is conduct a market survey.''
Can XM replace the current AM/FM formats? Clear
Channel hedged its bets by investing in the new
technology, making one of its investors the sort of
conglomerate ripped by Abrams.
In San Francisco, Clear Channel owns seven
stations. Tony Mastrogiorgio, a transplanted New
Yorker now on the West Coast, doesn't listen to any of
them.
He'll occasionally flip on the local college
station, KUSF-FM, which just marked its 25th
anniversary. He finds their playlist lacking, too.
Mostly, he'll put in a CD - something old by The
Clash, or something new by The Hives - and wonder what
happened to radio.
``How tragic it is that we live in a world where
the `alternative' radio station plays Dave Matthews,''
said Mastrogiorgio, referring to the multi-platinum
alt-rock band.
``That's an alternative the way CBS is an
alternative to NBC.''