College radio isn't this:
Rock Radio Takes Another Hit by Steve Knopper
From Rolling Stone Magazine,
issue 1144, November 24, 2011
Continuing Radio’s shift way from local programming in favor of centralized playlists and nationally syndicated shows, two of America’s biggest radio chains laid off dozens of DJs and programmers at stations from Albuque to Toledo in recent weeks. Clear Channel Communications, which owns 850 stations nationwide, cut hundreds of jobs in late October, and rival radio company Cumulus cut almost 30, including legendary L.A. rock DJ Jim Ladd – the inspiration behind Tom Petty’s scathing 2002 hit “The Last DJ,” which pilloried the homogenization of playlists in the Clear Channel era. “It’s really band news,” says Ladd. “it was people in my profession that fist played Tom Petty, first played the Doors. But the people programming stations [now] are not music people – they’re business people.
“It’s a decrees in expense for the company, but the dirty little secret is it’s going to be less local – it just is,” adds Tony Florentino, who was laid off as program director for two Clear Channel pop stations in Columbus, Ohio in September. “That’s ultimately not good for listeners in those markets.”
For rock stations – which have struggled in recent years – the blow was especially hard. So what will take the place of shows helmed by local DJs? Expect to hear more ubersyndicated personalities like Steve Harvey, and The Big D and Bubba Show. “This is not about DJs, this is about effectiveness, efficiency and giving our listeners what they want,” says Clear Channel spokeswoman Wendy Gouldberg. Adds Skip Bishop, senior VP of promotion for Sony Music Nashville, “They’re just exploiting their most successful talents. I don’t think their purpose is redefining radio, but that’s the end result.”
Two influential modern rock stations, New York’s WRXP and Chicago’s Q101, switched formats over the summer, leaving those markets without a single major outlet to break new rock acts. A Number One rock hit reaches just 13 million listeners, compared to 138 million for a Number One Top 40 hit – a gap that has widened dramatically since 2006, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Even proven hitmakers, from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Coldplay, just don’t get enough spins on the limited number of signature stations left to rely on rock radio to break a single. “A log of the records that get the biggest audience now, it’s through the combination of pop radio and TV exposure,” says Jim McGuinn, program director for the Currant, the Minneapolis public-radio rock station that helped break Mumford & Sons.
In the end, radio’s cutbacks and strategy shifts are just more bad news for a record industry still reeling from tanking sales. And while rock continues to rule the concert business, radio support has always been required to grow a band’s audience from the hardcore fans who go to club shows to the more mainstream masses needed to fill arenas and amphitheaters.
“Some of the biggest rock markets in the country have no rock radio,” says Bob McLynn manager of acts like Gym Class Heroes, Train, Hole and Fall Out Boy. “How are people going to find out about new acts in a lot of these markets?”
Quality music speaks for itself; you know it when you hear it.
“It’s a decrees in expense for the company, but the dirty little secret is it’s going to be less local – it just is,” adds Tony Florentino, who was laid off as program director for two Clear Channel pop stations in Columbus, Ohio in September. “That’s ultimately not good for listeners in those markets.”
For rock stations – which have struggled in recent years – the blow was especially hard. So what will take the place of shows helmed by local DJs? Expect to hear more ubersyndicated personalities like Steve Harvey, and The Big D and Bubba Show. “This is not about DJs, this is about effectiveness, efficiency and giving our listeners what they want,” says Clear Channel spokeswoman Wendy Gouldberg. Adds Skip Bishop, senior VP of promotion for Sony Music Nashville, “They’re just exploiting their most successful talents. I don’t think their purpose is redefining radio, but that’s the end result.”
Two influential modern rock stations, New York’s WRXP and Chicago’s Q101, switched formats over the summer, leaving those markets without a single major outlet to break new rock acts. A Number One rock hit reaches just 13 million listeners, compared to 138 million for a Number One Top 40 hit – a gap that has widened dramatically since 2006, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Even proven hitmakers, from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Coldplay, just don’t get enough spins on the limited number of signature stations left to rely on rock radio to break a single. “A log of the records that get the biggest audience now, it’s through the combination of pop radio and TV exposure,” says Jim McGuinn, program director for the Currant, the Minneapolis public-radio rock station that helped break Mumford & Sons.
In the end, radio’s cutbacks and strategy shifts are just more bad news for a record industry still reeling from tanking sales. And while rock continues to rule the concert business, radio support has always been required to grow a band’s audience from the hardcore fans who go to club shows to the more mainstream masses needed to fill arenas and amphitheaters.
“Some of the biggest rock markets in the country have no rock radio,” says Bob McLynn manager of acts like Gym Class Heroes, Train, Hole and Fall Out Boy. “How are people going to find out about new acts in a lot of these markets?”
Quality music speaks for itself; you know it when you hear it.
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