Another one bites the dust
Just this year Y100 disappeared into the radio netherworld. Today 94 WYSP made that same journey, never to return.
I don’t normally listen to commercial radio these days except in the morning, but when I got in my car to go home for lunch, 93.3 WMMR was on and Pierre Robert was talking with two other station employees about the demise of WYSP. I was stunned. As it turns out, WYSP will be changing to a talk format (which they practically were anyway).
I don’t know what the other radio markets are like, but more and more Philly seems like a cauldron bubbling over. I just find it incredible that in a market as big as Philly, there is only one alternative/modern rock station left. That’s not to say another rock station won’t myseriously pop up someday, but until I see that happen, I’m left to ask … is rock a dying breed?
Obviously the motivating factor for anything commercial is money, so if WYSP is gone that means someone thought they could make more money advertising on a talk station rather than a rock station — or another urban station in the case of Y100. But if that’s true, does that mean others like me have been abandoning commercial rock radio in droves in favor of their iPods? Are we finally seeing the end result of the FCC’s deregulation of media markets (and tacit decision to encourage media monopolies) leaving a sour taste in the mouths of listeners? Has the almighty dollar taken the rock out of the roll?
It’s no secret that many people are disenfranchised by popular music today. Now radio stations are dying because no one wants to listen to what they offer anymore. That means less exposure for artists, and less exposure means less new people will get into rock. Already there are plenty of young people who have no idea who the Beatles are.
I’m just glad Elvis isn’t alive to see this.
October 25th, 2005 at 10:44 pm
Holy shit, I had no idea. That’s just craziness.
October 26th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
Two words: XM, Sirius.
That’s where it’s at. XM has a number of really good rock stations, including “Ethel,” an alternative station.
I don’t think rock is dead, I just think radio is on the verge to being extinct. Payola has resulted in a product that no one wants to listen to, advertising revenue goes with it. That’s the ironic thing–by taking the payola, the radio stations have ultimately undermined their own success. Radio was always about DJs, and real people making choices. You cannot make those choices by focus groups. It doesn’t work. It’s a “Tipping Point” kind of thing–music is always tipped, and rarely does conventional marketing succeed. By taking out all the people who make the “tipping” happen, they’ve created a system that cannot do anything.
You’re right, the deregulation hasn’t helped, but I think it’s just exaggerated the problem. Corporations suck at a number of things, and music is very much one of them.
Philly is unfortunately going the way of most other metro markets. DC has the suckiest radio on the planet. We now have NO alternative rock station, and the only rock station comes out of Baltimore. We have a top 40 station and that’s about it. Everything else is either easy listening, straight rap, or the sole “classic rock” station that is more “older stuff of all vaguely rockish types” than what I think of as classic rock. And I think that station also comes out of Baltimore. Easy listening is the big winner–at work music to torture people in doctor’s offices.
Music today is in a weird place. I think there is a lot of good music out there, but the fraction of that boiling up to the mainstream is very very small. I think satellite radio will hep. I thought the internet would, but the RIAA wishes to put itself *completely* out of business, and has instituted rules which basically make it impossible to set up a podcast or to play a podcast, which would be the best internet option for creating a “radio-like” place where you could here new artists and then go buy them on iTunes. Maybe Apple will figure out a way to create such a thing, but with the RIAA demanding that Apple double their prices on iTunes so that they can make EVEN more money (for two weeks before iTunes completely fails…).
Artists will find a way to break–not going to a major label, not joing in with the crazy people, and self-releasing themselves on the internet, finding their way into alternative podcasts, and in general just going around the big mess that is the music industry. The technology isn’t quite there yet to support this, but it is on the near horizon… It’s waiting for someone to tip it–that DJ who starts a podcast of non-RIAA songs that don’t suck, and that spreads through the zietgeist until we are all getting our music in a new way.