You know how our Y100rocks.com website says "are you ready for Philadelphia to be the biggest town in America without an alternative rock station?"? Well, we no longer can claim that cultural distinction. Yesterday New York's WXRK (K-Rock) caught the Ben/Jack disease, and decided to tweak the home of Howard Stern... into "K-Rock: Great Rock. Period." And what that means for listeners is that they've 'Jacked' the format - no longer concentrating on the modern/alternative side of the equation, they have spread their rock wings to include Guns and Roses, Queen, Led Zep, etc., mixed with a dash of Green Day, a nice heaping pile of Pearl Jam, and a side of Aerosmith... (basically, their innovation is what we call WMMR?) so while on the one hand it enables rock fans to hear a wider variety of rock, one thing you can absolutely count on is that there will be no depth on the radio. Nothing but boring same old songs we've been hearing the past 25 yeras. Like our local Ben FM, everything they play will be a well-researched, consultant-approved, moster hit. Which is fine... but ultimately boring. And if you put a rule on your station that you will only play hits, at a certain point, where do you go get new hits? What happens to the entire prospect of new music? Because this will leave K-Rock with a current playlist likely to total about 15 songs, versus the 30-35 they used to play... so likely gone will be the Muse / Killers / Radiohead (except for Creep!) / Garbage side of the musical spectrum, along with the majority of interesting new music.


But WAIT - it gets better! Similar but not at all similar to our plight, the corporate do-gooders at Infinity/Viacom have tossed a bone to the music fans! They will launch KROCK2 online! So if you love new music, sorry, but you can go listen to this website... so not unlike Philly now, in New York, supposedly the cultural capitol of America, there is no one playing new rock music on the radio. Where the difference comes in is that at least Viacom cared enough to give the listeners a website - unlike Radio One here in Philadelphia where the staff has had to build our own from scratch, there perhaps they realized the rash of shit they would hear from music fans, record companies, promoters, listeners - so they pre-empted the anger by tossing a few computers in a back office, and are giving the kids their new rock - on the web. Of course, part of me wishes we at least had some backing - health insurance would be nice.


The sickest thing about all this is that if you pay attention to the radio/music industry trade press, you will constantly hear about how radio is failing to interest and motivate young listeners, and how radio is so completely fearful of losing listeners to satellite and web radio... so I got an idea - let's just SEND them there ourselves? Let's target EVERY station in America away from young people, at least young people that like rock music! That'll work great! Push the most technically savvy listeners onto our longterm competition - satellite and Web radio!!


How short-sighted... ah, but with corporations in Dubya's America, can we expect anything more?


[ UPDATE to POST] Sorry if the last sentence was misinterpreted by any Bush fans. I was not trying to be political. However, I do believe that corporations at the present time are more bold and harmful than at anytime in the nation's history. If it were 1999 I'm sure my comment would have read Clinton's America.


Jim