G(oodbye) Rock Radio

You were probably as surprised as I was - not to mention, I suspect, as the actual air staff - that G Rock Radio 106.3/106.5 here in central New Jersey called it quits this afternoon at roughly noon, give or take. (It being a holiday, I didn't notice until I wound up on a family excursion at about 5pm.) In its place, you can hear the Hits Now satellite format, bringing you a steady diet of all the songs you would have heard on this past Sunday's American Top 40, while trying its darndest to sound as though it's a local station and, of course, failing miserably.

Before descending into schadenfreude and snark, however, congratulations are in order for the departing airstaff and leadership. While I may have disagreed with some (perhaps even the majority) of their choices in new music, they had finally succeeded in putting together a listenable alternative rock station that took occasional chances, and had really rediscovered the roots of the format. They may, in fact, have been the second best commercial alternative rock station in the country, after Indie 103.1 which, interestingly enough, also called it quits this past week.

These are likely not isolated circumstances. The contraction of the economy was bound to have repercussions in commercial broadcasting, whose actual listener reach is never as demonstrably large as it claims to be, and whose ratings are generally determined, especially in smaller markets, as much by luck as by actual listenership. Alternative rock is a tough sell in good times; in times like these, it's much, much worse; ad buys in a market generally contract down to only the top few stations, and if that's not you, you lose, no matter what format you're running.

It remains to be seen whether "satellite hits" can pay the bills any better, though at the very least there'll be no concern with making payroll; there's no longer anyone to pay. Lower ratings may still ensure survival for the owner, but that's a moot point right now - as an alternative radio listener, they're no longer interested in me, nor I in them. They can't fire me, I quit.

Of course, given that I started my own web radio station, I quit a long time ago.

So, where can you go now? I humbly offer my own take on modern rock radio here at altrokradio.com, of course, but as you probably know, I'm not the only game in town. There's 90.5 The Night (which I run for two hours a week on Friday nights, but whose range of rock offerings at all other hours is unparalleled on the local level, and quite possibly on the national level.) There's 101.9 WRXP, trying to make that wide range work on commercial radio, and featuring fellow WHTG alumni Matt Pinfield and Brian Phillips. And on the web, there's WOXY.com, still managing to survive even after it's second near-death experience...KEXP out of the Pacific northwest...and XFM still plugging away in London after shuttering its Manchester and Glasgow outlets, not to mention BBC Radio 1 after 7PM (GMT on the web, Eastern on XM) and BBC 6 Music.

Every single one of these outlets is struggling (though current events certainly have removed my previously debilitating concerns over Altrok Radio becoming irrelevant. That's the funny thing about running your own radio station; disillusionment is probably more of a threat than a lack of income.) The commercial outlets are competing for a slice of a shrinking advertising pie, the non-commercial ones need to convince their contributors that they remain indispensable, and the quasi-public ones (I'm looking at you, BBC) need to continue to remember the reason they were created in the first place.

So, ultimately, it's just not a good time to be a radio station - or any form of media, for that matter - in general. In particular, the bubble of the early 2000s that caused station prices to inflate hysterically has resulted in debt service that will either be served, or be defaulted upon. And when the latter starts happening, there'll be a lot of signals going for pretty cheap prices...possibly within the reach of the next set of visionaries who can not only run a radio station, but who are personally invested in what it's playing.

(Though not necessarily on your radio. For instance, very soon you'll see me and my ilk, the webcasters, available on the portable Internet device of your choice; watch for an announcement regarding hearing us on your iPhone or iPod Touch soon. No wonder terrestrial radio is drying up, because a perfect storm may be on the way...)