Larger City Radio

If you live in a so-called "Major Market", does your "rock radio" suck as bad as 93X in the Twin Cities? All they play is Linkin Park/Awolnation/Royal Blood/shit all day long. I got 1.5 hours outside the metro and they are playing the newest Megadeth [not my thing, but still!], old
Loudness/Accept, Black Sabbath etc! Yes - I have spoken to the program manager on numerous occasions and he tells me that he hears that all the time. But the radio becomes more and more unlistenable every day. Is it the same in Philly, San Fran, Dallas, etc? BRING BACK Z-ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!

Radio in the New York metro area has sucked for decades. Unless you wanna hear what's in the top 40 or something in Spanish, don't even bother turning the radio on.

I don't know that I consider St. Louis a major city but we still have KSHE.  The few times I listen to the radio and it's not tuned to the Cardinals game, it's usually this station.  Here's a sample of their recently played tunes:

http://www.kshe95.com/broadcasthistory


As you can see they occasionally throw in a more recent band like Foo Fighters, Breaking Benjamin or Fuel but their playlist is mostly entrenched in "classic rock" and I'm OK with that.

Pittsburgh radio is horrible. The top station is WDVE.It plays classic rock,a format I really don't like. Same amount of bands,same songs from said bands over and over.The only metal played is AC/DC,Metallica (certain songs from the Black album) Ozzy (you know which ones) and the occasional Queensryche (2 songs from Empire-guess which ones).I no longer listen to the radio and haven't in years. This is their recent playlist : http://www.dve.com/music/playlist/

100.3 The Sound in Los Angeles is a tolerable classic rock station. They play the usual suspects but occasionally vary it up with some more obscure tunes, non-single tracks, etc.

The only time I ever listen to the radio is if I'm out doing a delivery for work. So, maybe 1 hour per month.

007 wrote:

Pittsburgh radio is horrible. The top station is WDVE.It plays classic rock,a format I really don't like. Same amount of bands,same songs from said bands over and over.The only metal played is AC/DC,Metallica (certain songs from the Black album) Ozzy (you know which ones) and the occasional Queensryche (2 songs from Empire-guess which ones).I no longer listen to the radio and haven't in years. This is their recent playlist : http://www.dve.com/music/playlist/

That looks basically the same as KSHE's playlist.  But at least you get The Clarks, I like that band.  Most people around here would go "Who?"

The Clarks are very popular around here (local band in case you didn't know). I saw them in concert a few years back after the Pirates home finale in PNC Park and they were excellent.

I find this to be the case with radio and classic rock stations in general- the same bands and same few "hits" from those bands or artists. It's like they pretend Deep purple never got back together and their last album was Perfect Strangers or the Stones stopped recording in 1981! The only time you hear any post 1977 Cooper is during "Hair In Your Lunch" or some absurd derivation of and they play "Hey Stoopid" or "Poison."

I have gotten into the habit recently of putting on the Music Choice classic rock station while I make and have breakfast in the morning. My wife leaves for work about 30 minutes before me so I get to crank some deep cuts from Aerosmith and Grand Funk. I could listen to the local crap station til the sun burns out and never hear "Adams Apple" or "Shinin' On

I never listen to the radio. There's probably rock/metal stations in Finland, but I always have CDs with me in the car. I prefer my own collection. I don't have time for radio.

I guess I'm lucky I'm not forced to listen to radio at work either.

If I do put the radio on, I listen to talk radio, or if it has to be music, it's classical music.

Most major market radio stations are owned by large conglomerates and they basically play the same 200 songs over and over and over and over.

I barely listen to the radio anymore. I have my clock radio tuned to a classic rock station and thats about it, while in the car i rely on satellite radio. I also use the live365 app on my ipad as a radio too, since that has lots of stations that play all types of music, even ones ignored by mainstream radio.

S.D. wrote:

Most major market radio stations are owned by large conglomerates and they basically play the same 200 songs over and over and over and over.

That is exactly the way the stations around here operate, though 200 songs might be a bit much for the local Classic Rock stations. It seems like more around 50 tops that are in constant rotation - we do get a decent Seattle Classic Rock station though that sometimes plays more obscure tracks.

Not sure now, but in the 1990s, "Corus" (sp?) owned many FM radio stations all across Canada.
When I traveled western Canada , their stations sounded almost identical to Toronto's Q107, but their playlists stunk.

I will guess S.D.'s assessment of the U.S. market is still the same for up here.

Gave up on commercial rock radio back then.
The odd time I tune in, I get commercials more than music;
It is nothing like the 1970s or 1980s, when even the commercials were still cool to keep you listening.

S.D. wrote:

Most major market radio stations are owned by large conglomerates and they basically play the same 200 songs over and over and over and over.

Yep. I worked int he industry for almost 20 years. When I started in the late 80's the business was not yet de-regulated. Basically you had probably 10-15 different owners in a market (my first market was Knoxville, TN). Most people owned ONE FM and ONE AM station. That's about it. Sometimes they might have 2 FM's. I forgot the number but they were limited to how many they could own. All DJ's were (for the most part) live on the air 24/7. In the 90's deregulation happened and at the time I thought it was a good thing --- I saw opportunity to work multiple formats and therefore build my resume as a guy who could do country, smooth jazz, top 40 and classic rock. In 1998 I moved to Cape Girardeau, MO and worked for Withers Broadcasting. I think at the time they had 5 FM stations and 2 AM stations from Cape to Sikeston and had some in Paducah and Metropolis. Before working for them I had only worked mom n pop stations and at the most I believe we had 4 stations, 3 FM and one AM. Again, 1998-99 I still thought this was a good thing -- less air shifts were "live" and now being pre-recorded, usually the overnight or the 7p-midnight shift. Not a big deal, it gave me time to do other things during the day. Then I started "voice tracking" for the station in Paducah via DAT. We would record our breaks to tape and then someone would drive over once a week and drop off the DAT tapes... Around the time I left there we started e-mailing mp2's to them of our voice tracks (mp2 was supposed to be better quality than mp3, I don't know if it was or not). Also around this time (late 90's early 2000's your Cheap Channels and Cumulus, Citidel, etc started buying everything up. On a bad note you could no longer leave one station and have 10 choices across town... You now only had 2 or 3... You still might have had 15 stations in town but only 3 owners. So now your job options were limited... Not to mention voice tracking started taking off and now even more day parts were being prerecorded. Most radio station playlists are already pre-determined. Clear Channel has a "classic rock" and even a "classic hits" format pre-made. Everything is picked on a corporate level that is why you hear the same songs and even the same station voice in multiple markets... You know the one that says "Classic Rock 95.9, WRBA Panama City, FL!" in between songs. Because these days they are cookie cutter. Around 2003 or 2004 the cluster of stations I worked for here in Panama City changed owners. It was a new company started by Bob Sherman and Bob Pittman (creators or MTV I think). It was a new company so we weren't bogged down with consultants. I was the programmer of the classic rock station so I had freedom to do what I wanted with it but I also knew the casual listening audience wanted to hear "the hits". To keep things fresh we would throw in an occasional "Lost Classic", something known but something you haven't heard in a while (Traffic - Low Spark Of Highheeled Boys, Styx- Snowblind, Trooper - Raise A Little Hell, etc). We also had features like Block Party Weekends where we would play triple shots all weekend, Floyd Fix on Friday nights at 11p where we even played Echoes. Gettin' The Led Out and my favorite -- "The Midnight Munch" - we played a whole classic album midnights Friday night. You name it we played it all the way thru, even complete fade outs of the songs. I even had a needle drop sound effect I would play between songs. It was a lot of fun. It was also during this time that ALL of the shifts were voice-tracked with the exception of the noon lunch request show and a Saturday specialty show where we "threw the playlist out the window". Oh and we had JB&B in the morning, which is live but not local. Most stations seemed to be moving in the prerecorded direction. We had WPFM a Top 40, Smooth Jazz 105.1, Arrow 95.9 and COuntry 103.5... Budget were cut and heads were cut.... Then it was down to me and 3 others guys running all 4 stations doing ALL of the prerecorded shifts. Sometimes I would be on THREE stations at the same time using an alias on each station. I would get mixed up and use the wrong name sometimes on the air. Management felt that the listeners weren't smart enough to know that I was the same voice on multiple stations. I started looking for another job OUT of the business in the middle of 2004... I was tired of the direction that it was going, tired of the lousy pay (around $30,000 a year on salary is no way to raise a family of 4) and tired of moving to another part of the country just to get a few more dollars a year. So I left in Jan of 05 and permanently "retired" from radio then. I was to the point that I absolutely HATED it and still do to this day. Sometimes I wish I never would've gone into the business, even tho I had some fun times in high school and college while working Top 40. I currently have a good Union job at a factory. Not glamorous by any means but it pays a heck of a lot better.

So, to get back to it, MOST Classic Rock or Rock (or any format for that matter) is going to sound the same nationwide. They are going to stick to the same 200 or so classic hits and play those 95 % of the time unless there is something of local interest.... And not being from Pitsburgh and only visiting there 2 times in my life I am willing to bet that some of the classic rock stations there play 95% of the hits and in the 5% that aren't hits you may hear Gene The Werewolf from time to time considering they are a local band that fits the format.

Personally, I stopped listening to radio in early 2005 when I left the business. Occasionally when I am mowing my yard I listen to WIMZ out of Knoxville on the iPod app, mainly for nostalgia because it is what I listened to when I was growing up. And they do play some 80's hair stuff but after awhile it's the same Lick It Up, Down Boys and Way Cool Jr that they played in 1989.

Thank God for iPods! Now I can listen to what I want!

Hope I didn't bore anyone too much, thanks for listening tune in again tomorrow from 10 to 3!

Excellent post!
Reminds me of that WKRP episode when Johnny or Herb were going to be hired by another radio station that had everything pre-recorded.
It shocked them, but I found it weird, and it became the future.

Interesting story, Mike! I know as soon as de-regulation happened 25 years ago, Jello Biafra prophesied that 99% of all American media would be owned by 3-4 mega-companies, and that has come true. "Free Speech" has been hijacked and thrown in the shitter by the FCC and big money. And that is something we should ALL be concerned about.

In Sacto we have the Rock Station, the Classic Rock Station and Jack FM. I occasionally listen to those, but mostly find myself listening to the college station out of U.C. Davis (KDVS. They have a Progressive Rock program on late Saturday mornings. It's a very eclectic station!), a Cap Radio station(KXJZ. They have the Car Talk guys and Wait Wait Don't Tell me, which is always funny) and a radio station(KXPR) that plays classical during most of the day and jazz at night.

Otherwise, I'm playing cds or mp3 cds in the car.

Here in Vegas we have a few garbage ass stations as you are referring to. I mostly listen to classic rock and light rock on the radio though. I also enjoy talk/news radio.

Modern rock from the 90's on has SUCKED!!!

When Howard Stern left regular radio and went to satellite (around 2004 or so), I made the switch and haven't really listened to the radio since then. A few years ago, I canceled satellite radio as well and haven't looked back.

The little I've heard of commercial radio in the Philly area is the same cookie-cutter, over-played crap everyone else hears in their markets as well. I think there are only 2 "rock" stations on the dial in Philadelphia. I'm not even sure what the rest of the stations offer up anymore. Urban, Top 40, country and talk I guess.