AAA in NYC

Well, you gotta hand it to Emmis! What was the least likely format to pop up in New York? OK, OK -I know it's country (despite the fact that I believe Country could be a consistent 2.5-3.0 share in NY). Well after country it would be another rock station, a triple A station no less.

Radio-Info had the story this afternoon:

"The New York Rock Experience" - WRXP - may provide the tri-state area with the full-market adult alternative station that it's lacked. Emmis PD Blake Lawrence even promises that the on-air personalities and staff will "play a direct part in choosing the music", from artists like Franz Ferdinand, Springsteen, Nirvana, Coldplay, U2, Pearl Jam, the Who and Radiohead. First song today at 4pm: Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground's Rock and Roll, followed by what Emmis says is the world premiere of a new REM track titled Supernatural Superserious. WRXP replaces smooth jazz WQCD - which had been rumored to be on the market for sale by Emmis. The new website is here.

A few questions come to mind:

• Are there enough sophisticated rock listeners in NY to drive a enough cume to the frequency?
• Will the coalition of new music, classic rock, and alternative form a viable hybrid? (And I truly love hybrids)
• Where is the audio stream? It seems a little behind the curve to launch without it.
  
• With Smooth Jazz gone in NY, does this in effect issue a death sentence for the format nationally?
• How much of WQCD's African-American audience (about 1/3) migrates over to WRKS (98.7) to further bolster its ratings?
• Will WRXP's promise of personalities being involved in music selection:
  
• flash back to the prog rock era of jock programmed shows or simply will they have a vote in the music meetings?
• will this tactic be communicated over the air as a listener benefit?
• will the masses care?

These are not naysayer questions--to the contrary. But anytime a big signal New York station does something outside the lines one has to ask the questions. I am happy to see someone taking a chance and doing something I would have to say is surprising.

We'll all be watching!

My Programming Masters Degree

Very early in my career I was a jock at “AOR” station WBAB on Long Island. Back in the very early 80’s way before Selector and at the tail end of the “prog rock” era we had a very simple programming system—4 categories of currents rotated with index cards and everything else was “on the back wall” with songs rotated by tracking sheets taped to the album jacket. Power currents rotated on a 6(!) hour rotation and non-currents were in 2 categories—blue dots-3 day rotation and no dots-five day rotation. We also had this funky “oops” category which was a one time per show event that carried a big yellow caution flag with it. We didn’t play every song on every album, but it is safe to say we played lots of songs. I don’t know the count but on the low side 1500 titles and on the high side it might have been 3000 titles.

This system sounds pretty loosey-goosey by today’s standards but back at that time it worked and worked very well. PD Bob Buchmann (now PD at Q104.3 NYC) was the vision behind the station—a guy I learned a lot from. We were competing against a few big stations such as WNEW-FM, WPLJ, WLIR, and others. Each station, including WBAB had its own unique sound. WNEW-FM had the rock image and the famous jocks, WPLJ played the rock hits and was hated by the progressives, WLIR was long Islands own progressive station. WPLJ began the decade as the Long Island rock ratings leader, followed by LIR and then NEW if I remember correctly. In 1980 WBAB was barely on the radar—that would quickly change!

Every jock on the station would program their own show—on the fly. Looking back, it was quite exciting. Hmmm, I’m playing Zep’s Black Dog, what would sound good after this. We had to worry about balance, flow, tempo, type, style, hit, album cut, etc all by ourselves. What an education! You might be thinking, there had to be some rules, a clock, something? Not really. It was our responsibility to make the station sound great and the only rule was we had to play a “blue dot” every other song and we had to keep a music log where we wrote down every song we played. In later years, more dot codes were added as the world began to change but this system remained until long after I left in 1985.

What about accountability? We had weekly jock meetings in which we had to review one of our shows in front of the entire programming staff. Everyone had a chance to comment. If you were doing a show on WBAB, not only did you have to know music and have a passion for it, but you had to develop a knack for programming it.

Can you imagine trying this today? Honestly, no. Sure, there are some who have the passion and self control to keep the listener in mind versus a self-indulgent escapade (one of the reasons jock self-programming went away in the first place). Can you imagine a GM signing off on this and having to explain it? Can you imagine a programmer having enough time to really pay attention to what is on the air? I could go on—but you get the point.

I’m not suggesting this is a system that needs to return, but I am thinking out loud how we, jocks and programmers alike, couldn’t avoid the intense interactivity with our radio station, the music it played and everything it did.