They're Not Getting the Message

I opened up the new issue of Rolling Stone to find a story about the recent flips of New York's WRXP and Chicago's Q101 from rock to FM talk. At first, I found it nice of the magazine to get around to something I blogged about a few weeks back, but upon reading the article, I found lots of unsettling details. Chief among them is the fact that the audience for a #1 rock hit is now roughly one-tenth of the audience for the #1 song on a pop station. Little wonder then that you see so few rock songs cross over to the pop format anymore; they start out having smaller audiences, so why try to expose them to the larger audience when the PPM numbers might drop if you play them?

The results are evident in my everyday life. Earlier today, I was at the gym on campus working out, and happened to overhear a conversation between an older gentleman and an undergrad about music. The older guy was telling the college kid about the roots of rock music and how it all goes back to R&B and blues, and the kid basically had knowledge of "Stairway to Heaven", "Kashmir", and little else. He had never heard of Eric Clapton... let that sink in for a moment. So the older guy mentioned Jimi Hendrix, and how he died at age 27, and started bringing up the other members of the 27 Club, which now includes Amy Winehouse, in addition to Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain...

And then the college kid had a blank stare again. HE DIDN'T KNOW WHO KURT COBAIN WAS. 22 years old and he HAD NEVER HEARD OF NIRVANA.

First off, I immediately felt much older than my 32 years on this planet should make me feel. Secondly, I took note of what the kid DID like... hip-hop and rap. Nothing wrong with that at all, except that even the artists themselves pay attention to and borrow from other genres, so one would think fans like this kid might as well. Then again, when you're set in your ways of listening to your genre of music on either a Pandora channel that you set up to only play that type of music, a satellite radio channel that only plays that type of music, or a terrestrial Urban or Rhythmic station that only plays that type of music, why would we expect you to hear anything else? For that matter, when you listen to a pop station that doesn't play any rock, why would we expect you to know anything about rock?

Bringing me back to my original concerns stemming from this Rolling Stone piece. Speaking of PPMs, the RS piece references the fickle nature of PPM numbers that sink whenever a new or unfamiliar song comes on, leading Rock stations to lean on their catalog more and take fewer chances. I might add it also leads them to stick to the same sound (aggro, male-centric, minor chords) and continue to play the same soundalike bands for fear that anything with a different sound will drive listeners away. Of course, that same sound is precisely WHAT is driving a lot of listeners away, because they are just plain SICK of it. Thus it becomes a vicious cycle. Rock stations try so hard to hang onto their precious P1s (the core audience of their station) that they don't care if everyone else stops listening. End result: smaller audience and fewer opportunities for new and different bands to break through. Again, it's the damn computers and consultants.

Worse though are the two quotes that close the article. The first comes from a spokesperson at CBS Radio, who stated that the changes in NYC and Chicago "shouldn't spell the demise of the entire format. Clearly we have several stations thriving in the format." Apparently, CBS didn't think that WKRK in Cleveland (#12 in the overall ratings there with a pretty respectable 3 share) was one of them, because they just blew that Alternative station up and flipped it to Sports Talk. This leaves the people of Cleveland with two rock stations, a classic rock station and heritage rocker WMMS, which being billed as Active Rock leaves me thinking that you likely won't hear any Mumford & Sons or Death Cab for Cutie or Blink-182 on Rock radio in Cleveland any time soon... or any WOMEN, for that matter. The second quote comes from the owner of Glassnote Records, home of Mumford & Sons and Phoenix, who says that if he were CBS Radio, he would launch a hip rock station in New York in a heartbeat. Except CBS HAD an Alt-Rock station in NYC... it was called K-Rock... and they blew it up 2 1/2 years ago.

So what makes a Rock station worth keeping anymore? I'd say great personalities and a real connection with the audience, but K-Rock had Opie & Anthony and WRXP had Matt Pinfield, and that didn't mean a damn thing. For that matter, all the years of great radio from great DJs and goodwill built up with fans couldn't save the mighty KMET in Los Angeles from becoming a corporate casualty all the way back in 1987. So no matter how much the people lament the loss of such stations, it seems that once again, the people in charge care only about the bottom line and the consultant's numbers, rather than their audience.

Not only are the listeners noticing this, so are the people running the new rival services threatening to take away terrestrial radio's audience. The Senior VP of Marketing at Slacker Radio (another web-based radio service, like Pandora) stated that radio has gotten away from what it does best (expert programming and tailoring to an audience) and become "generic hit machines." In confronting terrestrial radio, he pretty much tells the industry that it has two options: go back to caring about your audience, or we'll do it for you and you can kiss your listeners goodbye. One has to wonder if owners of Rock stations are truly getting the message.