Found an interesting article on Slate, written by a former Chicago Q101 DJ. It’s mostly opinion, but it’s interesting insight from someone in the industry.
I haven’t listened to the radio regularly in years, myself, and I’m not a youngster. I will say I had gravitated toward Q101 since it was new, and have even less reason to try to find a station to listen to since it changed format. When I think about it, I can’t think of another current-music alternative or rock station. I think there might be a “classic” one or two, but not stations that feature new Rock or Alt-rock.
Yeah, I read that too. I think she’s describing a trend more than a fait accompli, but I don’t live in the US any more.
I remember when WHFS went off the air some years ago; it was DC’s alt rock station. Without warning, one day they were EL ZOL, a Spanish-language format. (I think the WHFS call letters are still in use for an all-talk station in nearby Baltimore.) WWDC, the local Classic Rock monstrosity, absorbed HFS’s music catalogue and most of its listeners, but all of this happened at about the same time that the iPod started to appear and music fans became their own station programmers.
I shed a lot of tears about the loss of my favorite station (Cue: “Around the Dial” by the Kinks here). But in its final years, 'HFS was a sad and bloated shadow of its former self, according to its old fans. In fact, they’d been saying that about the station for as long as I’d been aware of it, since 1983 or so.
That article doesn’t talk about current rock, but a particular species of “oldies,” 80s-90s alternative. That’s a pretty small niche, even if the stations she used to work for were successful.
The article - really a opinion piece at best, and more like a blog entry - didn’t impress me. She didn’t seem to know too much about her own business beyond what she experienced herself. Other cities have a variety of options.
She also doesn’t have much of a clue about why her boss might want talk radio now even if its not immediately successful. It will take time to establish talk on FM stations, but the upside is far greater than music that’s easier to find in better quality and quantity elsewhere. If he gets a head start on the competition, he might own talk in Chicago for years. It’s not for her, but that’s why DJs don’t even get to program their own music.
Sure, he could be an idiot. But I’ve lived through 10,000 format changes on local radio in the past 40 years. Another one will happen tomorrow. Radio is for the people who listen regularly to it and since neither the OP nor I are regulars we shouldn’t get to have much say.
When I was in grad school, I wrote a major paper on radio breaking down into microformatting and moving away from music into specialty stations. Doesn’t sound like much today, but that was in 1973 when the shift from AM to FM had just started and Top 40 still ruled. Remember, ratings have nothing to do with how many people listen to a station’s content. They report how many people listen to the commercials. That’s all that counts, and always has.
Agreed. My presets include an alternative rock station, a college rock station, a modern rock station like the article writer worked for (those are better considered an “80s to today station” than “80s/90s oldies” though), an actual oldies station, and two “random radio” stations.
Commentators like to talk about the death of rock radio, but it’s neither a nationwide thing nor is it just Clear Channel’s doing like so many would like to say. My modern rock preset is Clear Channel-owned and they started playing Mumford and Sons before I read anything about them in the alternative music mags.