perfidy

Having worked at a college radio station my tolerance for commercial radio is nil. I just want the stupid DJ to shut up and play music (and kill the stupid station promos too).
I like Howard Stern as much as the next person - but do we need local clones of him? No.
There is no hope for them though, they are commercial and most stations in the US are owned by one of several corporations, with the same little computer turning out the programmed tracks. You know why top 40 radio is called that (and this applies to every commercial station) - because you will only hear around 40 songs a day on that station, cycled through over and over at the same time each day.

On the other hand I did find one station I can put up with in Boston (other than college radio). But that took me several years and I'd rather just listen to my Outkast CD.

I agree that college stations are probably the best alternative (did everyone else shudder reading that word?) to commercial stations. But college stations are no guarantee of being better- they may just suck differently.

How long can any of us tolerate the hipster, cooler-than-thou, CMJ-flavor-of-the-month college jock before he needs a heavy glass ashtray busted across his nose?

From the $$ side, doesn't it make sense- if you have a gigantor, conglomo, uber-rund-funk empire of radio stations- to play good, interesting music, and thereby get as many people as possible to hear the ads you sell? Then you can nefariously twist your mustache, fatter and richer than ever before.

Is there really any excuse for the level of suck in commercial radio?

Actually, I would say it is only in their best interest to play the songs that they get paid to play and market to the demographic that spends the most money.
That forumula does not require good music.

GL,

In response to your question, stations have EVERY reason to suck, and no good business reasons not to. Bridget is 100% on the money.

Radio sucks for the same reason that politics sucks these days. Every radio station that is serious about making money-- and they all BETTER be serious about making money-- employ very expensive consultants who canvass, poll, and dissect the tastes of the community. These consultants have no interest in the quality of music, but only care about increasing the station's ratings in the market and therefore increase the station's ad revenues. Ad revenues are everything. Hence, stations narrowly focus their playlists to specific demographics and never stray from the revenue-maximizing formula.

What this means is, since 90 percent of the rock-listening population only want to hear Steve Miller Band, Sabbath, Zeppelin, "Whipping Post" and "Walk This Way" plus a liberal frosting of Foreigner, Supertramp, and Metallica, that's what you get. Most people have no interest in new music, since they use the radio as sonic wallpaper. This leaves actual music fans feeling like you do.

In fact, studies have shown that this Lowest Common Denominator is actively hostile to new sounds on the radio; hence, a station who employs a consultant like I've described will avoid truly new stuff like the plague. Even if they play "new" rock, they will stick to MOR, major label fare like Three Doors Down or Nickelback. Moreover, artists like these are promoted by only a few big-name independent promoters-- Bill McGathy for the rock, Michele Clark for women, Jeff McClusky for pop. Since it's major-label artists being promoted by million-dollar promo guys, nothing adventurous or small-label gets through without a LOT of pressure.

Furthermore, if the station is owned by ClearChannel or one of the other bigs, the playlist is programmed from HQ anyway, all the way down to the "hits from the vault." You can drive from Boston to Richmond, listening to rock radio all the way, and hear, for example, Aerosmith's "Last Child" ten or twelve times because some computer said that this song is the Lost Classic of the weekend.

Worse yet, some stations are programmed and broadcast centrally. You can find stations like "The Alice" or "The Zone" in almost any urban market. These stations don't even employ local dj's a lot of the time, piping a signal in from some single master station that handles all the music. Only certain front-and-back bumpers and some of the ads are locally oriented. "The Alice" in Boston and in Baltimore will probably be playing the same song at the same instant.

What Brdgt said about cloning is right on. Howard Stern gets ratings, so every market needs a Howard clone except the clone must be a little more outrageous in order to stand out.

The general upshot is that radio is a high-cost, high-profit business that has been subject to incredible centralization over the last decade (thank Clinton, if you like). The cost of entry to the market is prohibitive, and made worse by the FCC's actively rigging the permit system. Consequently, only big players play, and they don't give two shits about your preference for Bowie and Slayer over Three Dog Night and the Doobies.

"From the $$ side, doesn't it make sense- if you have a gigantor, conglomo, uber-rund-funk empire of radio stations- to play good, interesting music, and thereby get as many people as possible to hear the ads you sell?"

Let me boil down my long post to the short version:

98% of people don't give a SHIT for "good, interesting" music. And you don't build an uber-conglomerate catering to us. Remember, we're poor as hell.

"Why can they only play about 2 approved songs off each of those records?"

Let me tell you why. Because the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING a station can do is to get dial-flippers to stick.

Most people listen to radio in the car. At the first sign of something they don't like, boom! gone! And study after study has shown that the #1 thing that people don't like is a song they don't know. It's true, more people would rather listen to "Logical Song", or anything by Supertramp for that matter, than listen even ONCE to something they've never heard.

Consequently, if a station is going to play something by Van Morrison, it's going to be "Moondance," not "Cannonball", "Linden Arden Stole The Highlights" or God forbid the 7-minute "Tupelo Honey." They need to get ears to stick, and album tracks are like poison to that strategy.

OK, then let me get all Russian on you: What is to be done?

I understand now my initial fallacy: that dollar value should equate to musical quality, or sonic value.

But outside of not listening, how can it be improved? How can I rage, besides bitching to the converted on this blog? Line up investors to start a new station that actually plays Slayer, or promises NEVER to play Zeppelin? How can people be convinced that their stations are lame?

Am I on the fast track to being as disappointed and upset about musics as Johno?

GL,
1) "Line up investors to start a new station that actually plays Slayer, or promises NEVER to play Zeppelin."

Good luck. You'd need investors who don't care about a marginal return, and who are willing to lose everything if the station fails.

Here in Boston, 92.5 "The River" was nonprofit until about 18 months ago, when they were not only out of money but many thousands of dollars in the red. Because of this, not only were their investors ready to bail, but they couldn't pay the FCC to re-up their license fees. More on that later.

What did they do? What I described above, with the consultant and playlist etc. The station that used to lead a 30-minute set with Erin McKeown, Morphine, and Marianne Faithfull now leads with 10,000 Maniacs, "Ironic", and Bryan Adams.

I remain very skeptical that a for-profit station that wants to reach a large audience can survive playing idiosyncratic music. More on that later.

2) How do you convince the FCC that you deserve bandwidth? They don't just give that stuff out, you know. Furthermore, the rates are keyed to the pocketbooks of the big players, because it's ClearChannel and Viacom and Disney who have congressmen in their pockets. You need lots of money and a dick to swing if you want to have a fighting chance.

Don't even THINK of going low-power, because despite legislation passed in 98 and 2000, neighborhood low-wattage stations remain a pipe-dream until the FCC changes their 'scientific' decision that your 50-watt station will siphon business away from the entrenched interests of the 100,000-watt station two points away on the dial.

2) "How can people be convinced that their stations are lame?" I can only say again: almost every person in this country is fine with what's on the radio. They might get bored with it from time to to time, they might get irritated if a song they hate is in heavy rotation for the week, but most people put radio playlist reform just below local bond issues on the list of things they pay attention to.

The result of this is, small stations like 92.5 in Boston or 93.7 in Ann Arbor will find their audience but not grow much. And niche businesses are more susceptible to fluctuations in the market. In a down year when there are few indie hits AND an economic recession drives down ad revenue, many stations go under or sell out. There's no coming back from either of those states.

3) "What is to be done?" Apart from a drastic overhaul of the entire system, from licensing and regulation down to market research, nothing. There is the possibility that radio will collapse under its own weight, and there are signs that that is happening.

A more likely scenario is this: radio will become more and more atomized over time as satellite and internet stations become established. This will result in a comprimise situation where, yes, you will get to hear your Hank Williams and Bad Brains and Built To Spill, but it will be programmed by a computer in Hungary and sent to your PC speakers.

4) Please don't be like me. Don't you ever be like me.

I am disappointed and upset about musics for a set of highly specific, and in some cases, highly personal reasons. Your frustration with the state of radio today is both timeless and universal among a certain sector of music listeners.

Rather then becoming bitter, why not seek out the margins and interstices where the weirdos live? It's not a perfect solution, and it doesn't solve anything, but for what I can see it's better to be mice playing at the feet of a monolith than David facing a Goliath without a weapon to speak of.

GL, you need to figure out why you want to listen to radio for music at all. Is it to hear new music? Is it because it is convenient to just flip on the radio?

I listen to talk on the radio, because it's appropriate for that. I never listen to music; I have a pretty extensive (and growing, damn you RIAA) library of music to choose from...nothing I am interested in is going to be on the radio anyway.

Bottom line is, the very vast majority of people really don't give a shit about what they listen to, as long as it's Springsteen or Supertramp or whatever it is that they grew up with. Assembly-line, Ford-style, any-color-as-long-as-its-black music.

Radio stations are responding to demand.

As for what is to be done? Nothing. You have plenty of ways of finding what you're looking for. A $150 CD player for the car these days does a great job on MP3s.

Hmmm...never thought of it that way. Why DO I listen to the radio?

Well, it's only in my car, for starters. AM commute is Howard, unless I hit his 20-minute commercial block at 7, and I find a lame local knock off for that period. Evening commute is AM talk, Hannity or Carr or NPR if everyone else is in commercial.

Hell, I guess I really don't even listen that much. I don't think I even have a functioning receiver in my house, outside of my clock radio. I think maybe it's less that I listen to it, and more that I know this bloated sucking thing exists and I don't like it. I can ignore it, but that doesn't make it go away.

But at least, if there truly IS no hope, I can stop worrying about it.

GL,

Stop fretting about it. Be happy when you find good local radio, and forget about the rest. Where I live, there's several HOTT college radio stations, and two local low-power radio stations that feature dudes from down the street playing punk, free jazz, polka, and local rock. If I listen to the radio, that's where I go. Except for hip-hop. I love hip-hop radio. But that's another post.