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chas smith R.I.P.


From:
Encino, CA, USA
Post  Posted 27 Apr 2005 6:23 pm    
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Fade-Out: New Rock Is Passé on Radio
By JEFF LEEDS

Published: April 28, 2005

Major radio companies are abandoning rock music so quickly lately that sometimes their own employees don't know it.

Troy Hanson, the program director of WZTA in Miami, said that he first learned that his station's owner, Clear Channel Communications, had ditched the rock format - and his staff - when he tuned to the station one morning in February and heard talk-radio. His rock domain, known as Zeta, had vanished. "We didn't even get to play 'It's the End of the World as We Know It,' " the R.E.M. anthem, as a sign off, he said.
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In the last four months, radio executives have switched the formats of four modern-rock, or alternative, stations in big media markets, including WHFS in Washington-Baltimore area, WPLY in Philadelphia and the year-old KRQI in Seattle. Earlier this month WXRK in New York discarded most newer songs in favor of a playlist laden with rock stars from the 80's and 90's.

Music executives say the lack of true stars today is partly the reason. Since rap-rock acts like Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit retreated from the scene, none of the heralded bands from recent rock movements, be it garage-rock (the Strokes, the Vines) or emo (Dashboard Confessional, Thursday), connected with radio listeners or CD buyers the way their predecessors did.

This sudden exit of so many marquee stations has not only renewed the perennial debate about the relative health of rock as a musical genre, but it also indicates that the alternative format, once the darling of radio a decade ago, is now taking perhaps the heaviest fire in the radio industry's battle to retain listeners in the face of Internet and satellite radio competition. Many rock stations may be in for another blow when the shock jock Howard Stern departs for Sirius Satellite Radio next year.

There are still signs that a fervent alternative scene survives. This weekend, for instance, 50,000 people a day are expected to visit Indio, Calif., for the sixth-annual Coachella Valley Music Festival, the biggest rock event of its kind in the United States, to cheer bands like the Arcade Fire and the Secret Machines. Moreover, while alternative programmers are searching for a solution, for the moment they have the benefit of new music by a clutch of reliable stars from the genre's heyday: Nine Inch Nails, Weezer and Beck are releasing their first albums in two years or more, and songs by each rocketed to the top of Billboard magazine's modern-rock airplay chart.

But many musicians in the newer bands on the alternative playlists "could be your waiter tomorrow night and you wouldn't know the difference," griped a radio promotion executive at one major label, who requested anonymity for fear of offending bands on his label.

Ratings for rock radio stations have been languishing for years. The share of the 18-to-34 age group that is tuning in to alternative stations has shrunk by more than 20 percent in the last five years, according to Arbitron, while stations playing rap and R&B or Spanish-language formats have enjoyed an expanding audience.

As a result, many rock programmers aren't sure what to play.

"The format in the last couple of years has gone through an identity crisis," said Kevin Weatherly, program director of KROQ, a closely watched alternative powerhouse in Los Angeles. "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 rock, red-state rock that the cool kids just flat out aren't into."

Such scrambling to strike a balance has cost many alternative programmers large chunks of audience. Some radio executives said that they made a fateful choice in the last few years to jettison the pop-rock side of their genre to concentrate on heavier-sounding bands, and now are afraid to turn back. As part of that shift, many stations also decided to eliminate women from their audience research. These stations decided to aim at men almost exclusively because of the heavier sound. "You got yourself into a corner that you can't get out of," said Tom Calderone, senior vice president for music and talent at MTV, and a former radio programmer and consultant. "When you listen to alternative stations do their 90's flashback weekends, you can hear something as meaningful as Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgarden to something as silly and quirky as Harvey Danger and Presidents of the United States of America. When you become 65-75 percent guys, you're leaving a huge audience on the table."

At WZTA in Miami, the decision in 2003 to remove women from the equation "was definitely when we started to see Zeta's attrition," Mr. Hanson said. Days after Clear Channel took Zeta off the air, a rival company, Cox Radio, flipped the format of one of its Miami-area stations to rock.

Mr. Hanson also suggested that land-based radio had been too slow to respond to satellite radio, which offers access to dozens of commercial-free music channels for a monthly subscription fee and to digital music players, like Apple Computer's iPod. He said that he balked when a supervisor suggested running an on-air contest to give away an iPod loaded with 949 songs. (Zeta's frequency was 94.9-FM.) "I was like, 'Then they don't need to listen to Zeta anymore.' " Mr. Hanson wound up forgoing the contest.

"The people that are leading-edge technology consumers are not being embraced by terrestrial radio," said Jim McGuinn, who was program director of WPLY in Philadelphia, known as Y100, before its corporate parent, Radio One, flipped the station to rap and R&B in February. "The outsider image disappeared," Mr. McGuinn said.

Mr. McGuinn and a handful of other former WPLY employees have started an Internet radio station, y100rocks.com, to play music they say the terrestrial version had been missing, including songs by Interpol, Moby and Queens of the Stone Age.

But for now, Philadelphia has no terrestrial alternative-rock station.

Some analysts fear that, when radio stations switch from alternative rock to programming aimed at older listeners, they may be making a sacrifice. "Radio has ceded the younger demographic to other media," said Fred Jacobs, president of Jacobs Media, a radio consulting company in Southfield, Mich., specializing in rock. "I just don't know how we're going to get back people who didn't get into the radio habit in their teens," he said, adding, "It really becomes problematic down the road."
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Ron Whitfield

 

From:
Kaaawa, Hawaii, USA
Post  Posted 27 Apr 2005 7:15 pm    
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Maybe after 30 years listeners are finally getting sick enuf of being screwed by those who control the vertical and horizontal and are finding other ways to be screwed over by 'the man'.

The airwaves are the domain of the public and for their benefit.
Yeah, right.
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Jim Phelps

 

From:
Mexico City, Mexico
Post  Posted 27 Apr 2005 7:26 pm    
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Wow, and these are FM stations too. I thought it would be a while yet before they went the talk-radio route like A.M. I wonder if "country" radio will follow. At least maybe it will break-up the Clear Channel monopoly on who gets their "hit record" (a hit before anyone's even heard of it) played on the radio.

[This message was edited by Jim Phelps on 27 April 2005 at 08:26 PM.]

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David L. Donald


From:
Koh Samui Island, Thailand
Post  Posted 28 Apr 2005 3:27 am    
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It has been more and more clear...
Clear Channel is the spawn of the devil

forget history
for et artistry
forget kids don't like what parents like.
forget everything....

but blind numbers
based in inadequate surveys
and the purchasing power of what ever group
spends the most this month
on some product advrtised on a Clear Channel station
in a Clear Channel market..
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Dustin Rigsby


From:
Parts Unknown, Ohio
Post  Posted 28 Apr 2005 6:56 am    
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......and Saddam called Bush "The Evil Satan"...It's been Clear Channels' Fault All Along.

------------------
D.S. Rigsby
Wilcox SD10 3&5 http://www.touchinglittlelives.org

[This message was edited by Dustin Rigsby on 28 April 2005 at 07:59 AM.]

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Greg Vincent


From:
Folsom, CA USA
Post  Posted 28 Apr 2005 7:08 am    
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Rock is dead, folks. -GV
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Ray Minich

 

From:
Bradford, Pa. Frozen Tundra
Post  Posted 28 Apr 2005 7:21 am    
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Free music (as in FTA or Free To Air) is gonna be dead soon. Monday Nite Football going to ESPN is just the warning shot across the bow as far as DRM is concerned. Digital Rights Management is gonna put the kibosh on "sponsored" entertainment.
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David Doggett


From:
Bawl'mer, MD (formerly of MS, Nawluns, Gnashville, Knocksville, Lost Angeles, Bahsten. and Philly)
Post  Posted 28 Apr 2005 7:33 am    
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Yeah, I've been watching this happen in Philly. Here's what I think is happening. Young rockers are the ones most into free copying off the internet, internet radio, and satelite radio - plus lots of them listen heavily to "urban contemporary," meaning rap and hip/hop. I see this in my four preens and teenagers. All the free copying means that major labels cannot make any money on new rock stars, so they are not grooming and promoting new stars. The indie labels are too fragmented and weak on promotion to create big stars. Without big stars, there are no big hits on the radio. So new rock has no stars or big hits and is just not commercially viable for anyone. We're in a period of shakeup and transition, and no one can tell what it will be like when the dust settles.
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David L. Donald


From:
Koh Samui Island, Thailand
Post  Posted 28 Apr 2005 7:37 am    
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If the dust settles...
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Ron Whitfield

 

From:
Kaaawa, Hawaii, USA
Post  Posted 28 Apr 2005 10:02 am    
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'Rock' may be dead because that banner includes just about anything, and ends up being diluted by so much dreck that it can no longer be called much of anything.

But Rock and Roll will live forever.
It cannot be killed.
If you don't believe or understand that, I feel sorry for you.

Excuse me, but it's time for some Amboy Dukes!
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Mark Metdker

 

From:
North Central Texas, USA
Post  Posted 28 Apr 2005 11:12 am    
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How abouat some Neil Young:

Hey, hey
MY, my
Rock and roll will never die!
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Greg Vincent


From:
Folsom, CA USA
Post  Posted 28 Apr 2005 11:44 am    
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I like rock 'n' roll as much as the next guy. But it is no longer a thriving, growing, evolving form of music and no longer exerts significant cultural influence. The fact that you guys cite aging / extinct acts in its defense is indicative of that.

At this point in time, hip hop is way more culturally and socially vibrant as a genre than rock is. Doesn't mean I like hip hop any better, it's just a fact.

Sorry.

-GV

[This message was edited by Greg Vincent on 28 April 2005 at 12:45 PM.]

[This message was edited by Greg Vincent on 28 April 2005 at 12:47 PM.]

[This message was edited by Greg Vincent on 28 April 2005 at 12:47 PM.]

[This message was edited by Greg Vincent on 28 April 2005 at 12:56 PM.]

[This message was edited by Greg Vincent on 28 April 2005 at 12:59 PM.]

[This message was edited by Greg Vincent on 28 April 2005 at 01:02 PM.]

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chas smith R.I.P.


From:
Encino, CA, USA
Post  Posted 28 Apr 2005 11:59 am    
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I just played on a cut for a (sort of "grundge-like" kindof metal-y) band, signed to the Universal label. Big budget (for the producers, not for the steel player) and their manager was saying how they are trying to make each cut equally good, rather than 1 or 2 cuts and filler, so that people will want to buy the album and not just down-load the cut they liked. In addition to the songs, they plan on having 30 second to 1 minute, short "interludes" between the cuts, to connect everthing. And I recorded a bunch of fragments of floaty stuff and unusual sounds that they were going to work with.

The point being that evidently Universal still thinks there's a market out there for CD's.
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Jim Phelps

 

From:
Mexico City, Mexico
Post  Posted 28 Apr 2005 12:32 pm    
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Thank you, Mr. Vincent, Enlightened One, for letting "us guys" know how aging/extinct we and our tastes in music are. Forgive us, we're just old fools and don't know everything like you young guys.

By the way, my old eyes might be deceiving me, but I could swear that the article repeatedly refers to ALTERNATIVE ROCK, not all rock and even mentions some of the ALT ROCK stations are being replaced by R&B and OLD, AGING/EXTINCT ROCK:

In the last four months, radio executives have switched the formats of four modern-rock, or alternative, stations in big media markets, including WHFS in Washington-Baltimore area, WPLY in Philadelphia and the year-old KRQI in Seattle. Earlier this month WXRK in New York discarded most newer songs in favor of a playlist laden with rock stars from the 80's and 90's.

Looks more like your hip, cool, new alt. rock is what's being DROPPED and it's being replaced by our old, aging/extinct rock!

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Leslie Ehrlich


From:
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Post  Posted 28 Apr 2005 1:04 pm    
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I find that much of the 'alternative' rock that is fed to the masses is not alternative at all. The word 'alternative' is often used as a euphemism for punk/grunge. It's the kind of rock music where there is no lead guitar (or even rhythm guitar for that matter). The guitarists use as much distortion as possible, turn down the midrange control on their amps and simply thrash away at their guitars. I find this style of guitar playing most irritating to listen to and it's been done to death.

I learned a long time ago that too much of one thing is not a good thing, and eventually people will get sick of it. I can think of other sub-genres in popular music that have suffered a similar fate. So if 'new' rock is dying out it's only because it's been overdone.
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Greg Vincent


From:
Folsom, CA USA
Post  Posted 28 Apr 2005 1:04 pm    
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Ha! OK Jim, point well-taken.

However, you misunderstand me (despite all the editing I did on that post to try to make my point clearly). Yeah I'm talking about NEW rock and the fact that it is not relevant today. The genre has pretty much stopped evolving and is, therefore, dead.

I am 40 years old. I don't listen to alt. rock. The point is that neither does the majority of the kids out there, which is why rock is a dead genre as far as any sort of future growth as a popular art form is concerned.

When I feel like listening to rock, I listen to the old extinct rock, Jim. But I also realize that the days when that music was culturally influential are behind us. It is nostalgia now, like big band jazz (which I also love).

I can love a genre while still realizing it is dead.

So you see, we agree!

-GV

[This message was edited by Greg Vincent on 28 April 2005 at 02:21 PM.]

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Jim Phelps

 

From:
Mexico City, Mexico
Post  Posted 28 Apr 2005 1:13 pm    
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OK, Greg! ... and I like your good humor about my sarcastic post, you're A-OK.

[This message was edited by Jim Phelps on 28 April 2005 at 09:08 PM.]

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