More on the shutter of Los Angeles freeishform radio station Indie 103.1, which had its format go online-only earlier today: The semi-bewildering goodbye notice running on the terrestrial station, which bemoans their having to “play the corporate radio game,” is apparently at least somewhat rooted in the radio-ratings company Arbitron replacing the old “diary system” of recording listeners’ radio habits with devices known as Portable People Meters (PPMs), which track said habits electronically. These devices have caught some heat for underrepresenting minorities and younger listeners; the sample size in the Los Angeles area was about 2,750 people around the time of launch. It may not surprise you to learn that the switch proved to be disastrous for the station’s numbers (”LITERALLY a 0.0,” according to owenmeany), and a former specialty-show DJ wrote about it on the Los Angeles Times‘ music blog:
In what amounted to a bleakly amusing mea culpa on the part of chain owner Entravision, it admitted that the station had been forced “to play the corporate radio game,” and that the retooled station of recent months — shorn of several specialty shows (including mine) and pumped up with KROQ-style ’90s hits — was little more than a “version of Indie 103.1 [that] we are now removing from the broadcast airwaves.” …
For most of its existence, Indie 103.1 advanced a style of radio in its specialty programming that hadn’t been seen in a major radio market for eons. What was heard on the air was a reflection of the individual jocks’ tastes and passions. The amount of liberty I enjoyed was unbelievable. It was a throwback to the free-form style I grew up with, which held sway briefly in pre-“album oriented” radio in the ’70s; the maverick early KROQ flashed the same gunslinging approach.
And, until desperation set in during the late going, the station’s regular rotation sported some provocative tracks and off-the-wall features that Indie’s crosstown rivals wouldn’t touch. (The choice of “My Way” as a farewell track recalled the era of Indie’s “Furious Frank at Five” — a daily afternoon dose of Sinatra.) But, as station management learned the hard way, cool programming alone can’t trump 30 years of listener loyalty, marketing money and a strong signal.
Meanwhile, our own Ned Raggett has figured out a pattern of sorts for the life cycle of Indie 103.1-type stations:
* General sense among just enough people complaining ‘what about the music *we* like,’ matched with research into a sliding demographic scale that says ‘hey there seem to be a reasonable number of well-off ex-rocker/ex-college radio/ex-goth/ex-indie/ex-whatever people around that will pay for the products advertised on a putative station.’
* Station launches in blaze of glory, rapidly develops cachet among vocal subset of folks and/or gets a ‘well it’s better than anything *else* on the radio’ reaction, has enough random sessions and characters on it to thrive for a while.
* The demographic identified at the time and place proves to be not as interested in paying for the products advertised on the station for any number of reasons while the station never entirely develops its own identity. Attempts to ‘refocus’ result in the sharper edges disappearing or isolated, turning off younger listeners who go back to college radio (or these days college radio streams or last.fm streams or…)
* Station dies and its frequency goes to a station aiming at actually pulling in enough listeners to make it viable, leading to the shattering discovery among a lot of people out here who should know better that Spanish language radio is in general far more viable than English language radio (exceptions being the news/sports blowhard hell).
* Cultural amnesia sets again and the cycle begins anew.
Will history repeat? (And is this cycle restricted to LA?)
Ex-Indie 103.1 host Chris Morris on the end of the station [Pop & Hiss]
Earlier: Well, This Sorta Sucks: R.I.P. Indie 103.1
It’s a shame. I’m not sure if he was there still, but the PD at the station I used to work at was their PD. Good guy. I know another guy out there as well and i’m waiting for his take on it.
No one believes me, but I still say New York’s short-lived version of Jack-FM went through this cycle when it launched in 2005: interesting for NY radio when it launched, descended into hot-AC hell, got pulled. It’s starting to happen WRXP now, too — the classic-rock quotient is increasing every month.
So, the same new ratings system that Rolling Stone championed earlier as “bringing rock radio back” is the same system responsible for flipping Indie back to a Spanish language format?
Can we just be real and admit that Spanish-speakers just listen to a lot more radio than English-speaking rock fans?
I hate it when this happens. It’s been something like eight years and I *still* get all sadface thinking about my local indie station that disappeared.
How about Spanish language freeformish radio?
@Chris Molanphy: Both RXP and K-Rock have expanded their classic rock libraries here in NYC. Why? Who knows. It’s not like your meat-and-potatoes classic rock listeners would appreciate the steady stream of Stones, Hendrix, Zeppelin, etc. to be interrupted by Kid Rock and/or Death Cab For Cutie (K-Rock’s former, RXP’s latter).
I’d definitely noticed the “pumped-up with KROQ-style ’90s hits” move lately, and was not liking it at all. I was wondering why playlists were packed with Nirvana, STP, and the Foo Fighters instead of more current, cool indie like Deerhunter, No Age, and Animal Collective. I wonder if that completely opposite move would’ve helped or hurt.
Looks like it’s KCRW or nothing in L.A. now.
@JZ13: Not just that, but some of the trademark shows that had been around for a while either went away (Camp Freddy) or were severely reduced (Passport Approved down to one hour on Sunday morning?). It seemed like something was up for a while. Damn shame.
@2ironic4u: It’s because of the music testing the stations do…Those songs test well when they do research, so the Death Cab songs are what the station originally wants to play, then for the PPMs they play songs that have been played a million times
My main concern is how stations like KXLU (West L.A.), KUCI (Orange County) (disclosure: former KUCI DJ here), and KSPC (San Gabriel Valley) are doing. I feel these stations would bear the brunt of being passed over given how easy it is to discover underground music on the internet today.
The main concern is if/when colleges decide to just cut off underground college stations. This has been an issue during the 90s, and it was talked about all the time in the 90s, but no one talks about it anymore. hmm
@KikoJones: Animal Collective was played on Indie last Friday during Jonesy’s show.
As for why you are hearing more Classic Rock tracks sneaking into playlists….it is because in the early audience testing for PPM, it was determined that stations that played classic rock were testing higher than they were with the Arbitron diary method. So people started tweeking their playlists to better fit the testing patterns. There are still a LOT of kinks to be worked out with PPM for sure. There have been cases where data have been omitted before published. Other times, the sample is not the right size or not diverse enough.
However, not all can be blamed on PPM as Indie did not have a strong share under the old rating system, either.
I will miss indie, mostly for Jonesy.
But who wrote that farewell message? Forced to play “Britney and Puffy?” Puffy???? And then they claimed they were going to play “new grunge.”
When is the last time “Puffy” put out a record- or called himself Puffy? The thing sounded like it was written by the kind of out-of-touch old white guy who works at well, KROQ. And the vaguely racist overtones of “that damn hiphop is killing our rock music” should stay with the mouth-breathing Kevin and Bean listeners where it belongs.
Also, I had noticed new songs being rather flagrantly payola-ed into indie’s playlist four or five times a day as early as 2004.
It was a great station when they gave people like Jonesy and the Bosstones guy the airwaves and let them do what they wanted. But 18 hours a day it wasn’t that different from all the others.
@drjimmy11: to answer your question:
“They are running an ad on the air saying we couldn’t play the corporate radio game anymore and that we didn’t want to change our format to be more mainstream and that we decided to play music on the web. But the guy making the announcement is the head of sales! God love him, he’s a good guy, but the staff of Indie had no control in the decision to shut down the station. I guess they had some success with the web and want to keep it going. But I don’t want the listeners to be confused.”
Mark Sovel
@drjimmy11: PS: And thanks for mentioning the completely unnecessary racist attitudes of Kevin & Bean. One morning they were making such sweeping generalizations about “the blacks” I expected them to play a ‘rock-block’ of Skrewdriver. Disgusting.
@Maura Johnston: THANK YOU!
We were having this discussion last night. “Terrestrial” radio is extremely important, especially in a city like L.A. where everyone drives (including lots of folks that have to travel great distances to work). Being able to tune into a decent radio station is VERY important (particularly if you don’t have the money/inclination to purchase satellite).
And I’m sorry, but KCRW just doesn’t cut it in those respects. Call me pedestrian, but I want to be able to hear the latest from the Killers, M.I.A., etc right next to emerging stuff like Amazing Baby–and Indie delivered.
@T’Challa: Agreed. I love listening to the radio. Not only to hear new stuff — really digging that Amazing Baby song, they have a free EP available on their website — but its always cool to hear great stuff I already own. I really do enjoy unexpectedly hearing a Pixies song coming through my radio, even though I have their entire catalog in my iPod and with me at all times. There’s just something great about the seredipity of hearing a fantasic song out of nowhere.
And like you say, radio really important in LA with the cars and the commuting. (2 hours a day on the 405 myself.)
Oh, and KCRW is fine, but doesn’t really cut it for me musically either. Not as my primary station anyway.
@Jay-C: Yes, but I’m assuming it tests “well” with people who probably would never want to hear a Death Cab song. Point being, in a nation of niches, the “Jack-FM” style Rock station is never going to work.
@JZ13: Deerhunter and No Age aren’t cool. Someone just tricked you.
@DocStrange: I am envious that you get FNX and BRU. Don’t knock AAF though. Sure, they might not service the alternative listening mind type but if you’re an Active Rock fan, it gets the job done pretty well.
BCN is pretty much a “tried-and-true” rock station. Not as dismal as also-CBS-owned K-Rock in NYC, but still pretty terrible.
I turned on their internet stream today. Some good stuff including the Beastie Boys, Death Cab and, most surprisingly, Lene Lovich.
Right now they’re playing one of the new Prince songs (”Crimson & Clover”) so I guess I’m keeping this on a while.
For all the iPods, slackers, Pandora streaming on mobile phones, etc., I gotta believe that the universal nature of a live, local radio station really does mean a lot to a city’s music community and culture.
Given the pressures of commercial radio these days, though, it seems like the non-comm model of The Current, KEXP, WFMU, and the like is the way to go. Wish we had one in DC; maybe these tough times will open up some slots on the dial for MPR or someone else to move in.
@indiefolkforever: For all the iPods, slackers, Pandora streaming on mobile phones, etc., I gotta believe that the universal nature of a live, local radio station really does mean a lot to a city’s music community and culture.
Mm, but whose city and whose culture do you mean? Not trying to be flippant, but as I idly noted in my life-cycle post and others have added here and there, seeing this through an Anglocentric lens — especially in LA! — is going to be troublesome. DJs like Piolin and El Cucuy and stations like KLAX and KSCA, that’s what I think of when I think of LA and radio, and a truly ‘universal’ station around here would be one that had deep catalog cuts from Los Tigres del Norte as much as they did Nirvana and Dre, for instance.
There’s another elephant in the room that hasn’t been mentioned yet AFAIK — KCRW, not KROQ. The KROQ cloning wasn’t surprising but KCRW more than any other station is what stations like I described are truly trying to compete against, with that sense of being just close enough to some sort of perceived edge plus the money and resources to make it happen. (Which describes KEXP as I understand it as well — it may be noncommercial but it sure as hell as a lot of money behind it.) Add in KCRW’s own deep catalog well to draw on plus established personalities for better or worse like Nic Harcourt and Jason Bentley and Indie Radio’s position essentially fell between two stools — they wanted to *be* the KROQ/KCRW fusion station, but since there’s always been this relentless impatience in actually giving these kind of stations time to fully develop an identity, it all fizzles out. Indie 103.1 lasted longer than I thought it would do, but it still didn’t last, and we’ll eventually go through something like this all over again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I’m lucky I live in New England which (as i’ve said about nine trillion times) has two stations (Providence’s WBRU and Boston’s WFNX) virtually untouched by the mainstream rock-lean common on alternative stations and gigantic companies that can change format at whim due to them both being owned by orginazations that aren’t Clear Channel/Citadel/other one (WBRU is owned by Brown University, WFNX by the Boston Phoenix). Boston’s other two rock stations have been gutted by the Active Rock format (WAAF - the original home of Opie & Anthony - now plays “everything that rocks” which means “the generic Active Rock/Classic Rock playlist with a few songs by Weezer, Radiohead, Mighty Might Bosstones and Blur’s “Song 2″ randomly dispersed throughout the hour”
and WBCN is now pretty much active rock only, ironic because of its past as one of the first freeform radio stations in America)
@KikoJones: You betcha. I just heard “Brothersport” on WBRU twice in the past week.
Ask yourself seriously - do you care about radio? For those of us interested in new music, it’s completely obsolete.
@Cos: I think you may be right that Spanish speakers listen to more radio than the gringos, but that is not the driving force behind the growth of Spanish language radio in LA and other cities.
If the population is half Spanish speaking and half English, then it makes sense that the radio stations would be split 50/50 - or at least close to that. Right now, LA only has a handful of powerful (signal-wise) Spanish language stations, so that number is sure to grow to match the actual demographics of the city. There is still a lot of catching up to do for Spanish radio in LA.
That is why the Espanol stations KILL the ratings here - there are fewer options for the folks who do want to listen in Spanish, so the 42% of the population that speaks Spanish are packed onto just a few frequencies. Once ratings started to get a more accurate picture of the whole city - the Spanish stations dominated and made big money, prompting less successful station owners to consider programming in Spanish.
Coming to a city near you, by the way.
@30f: Thanks for that, 30f, that’s good information I wasn’t fully aware of and helps illustrate the anecdotal evidence more thoroughly.
@17Vargas17: I do care about radio. I think it’s a very powerful medium, and the decimation of that power over the past two decades — with voice-tracking, nationwide playlisting, and other developments — is a true tragedy.
(I know, I know, it’s not as AWESOME AND FRESH as the Internet. But whatever. Community ties are still an important thing. And not everyone is on “the online,” you know.)
@JZ13: The likes of “Nirvana, STP, and the Foo Fighters” test better with average radio audiences than “current, cool indie like Deerhunter, No Age, and Animal Collective“. Simple as that. (Wait, Animal Collective? On commercial radio? You’re joking, right?)
I’m reminded of a guy I worked with who asked all the folks at work who were under thirty if they would sit and watch music videos for an hour or two if they had the chance. The lack of a “yes” answer confirmed for him that MTV was never going to air music videos again.
It’s the same here. I think people are more willing to listen to the radio than watch TV, but definitely not the target audience of this station. Not when songs can be downloaded directly from pitchfork to your iPod and then played in the car with one of those iPod radio thingies.
These devices have caught some heat for underrepresenting minorities and younger listeners; the sample size in the Los Angeles area was about 2,750 people around the time of launch.
For what it’s worth, the sample size need not be terribly large if the sample is representative. The problem here was probably that this particular sample wasn’t.
@Maura Johnston: The corporatization of the radio-world is certainly bad, but …
The internet does what it always does, which is make smaller and smaller niches out of culture. The ‘net teaches consumers that they don’t HAVE to listen to (or otherwise consume) any media they don’t like.
This really slaughtered MTV. What rock fan wants to sit through R&B videos to get to a rock video he likes? The answer is, he doesn’t - so he goes on line and gets exactly what he wants when he wants it. This same thing spills into radio where even if a station is ‘my’ genre of music, there are bound to be many listeners who don’t like *this* particular song being played right now. The slivers of culture get sliced ever thinner, and the iPod comes out so we can get the specific song we want when we want it.
Of course ‘everyone’ isn’t on the online, but enough audience seems to be slipping away to sink/alter the radio (music television, maybe network television) business model.
@KikoJones: You are aware that Animal Collective’s new album is actually pretty mainstream, no stranger than the latest Deerhunter and No Age albums?
@Ned Raggett:KCRW more than any other station is what stations like I described are truly trying to compete against
I think that you’re analysis of Indie 103.1 vs. KCRW is right on, because the one thing that struck me about Indie is that they were not as agressive about playing new bands / new music as KCRW is*. By the time that Indie got around to playing a band like Black Kids (for example) during drivetime hours, Nic Harcourt had been playing them on Morning Becomes Eclectic for months already. So, by being a follower rather than a leader, Indie was never going to be in a position to steal away a significant number of listeners from KCRW.
*It’s true that there were a few Indie shows that played cutting-edge music, but these weren’t the meat-and-potatoes of Indie’s programming - they were relegated to nights or weekends.
@2ironic4u: Yeah, but AAF is branded as an “alternative” station even though they’re 90% and active rock station. The only way I get FNX in Rhode Island is by messing with an old radio with antenna. It has to be just right and pointing at a window facing Boston to get it.
In fact, let’s look at each station’s Top 10 charts according to Yes:
WBRU:
1. MGMT - Kids
2. Fall Out Boy - I Don’t Care
3. The Killers - Spaceman
4. The Airborne Toxic Event - Sometime Around Midnight
5. Incubus - Love Hurts
6. Anberlin - Feel Good Drag
7. Paramore - Decode
8. Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire
9. Kings of Leon - Use Somebody
10. Third Eye Blind - Non-Dairy Creamer
WFNX:
1. The Ting Tings - That’s Not My Name
2. The Killers - Spaceman
3. Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire
4. MGMT - Kids
5. Franz Ferdinand - Ulysses
6. Incubus - Love Hurts
7. The Airborne Toxic Event - Sometime Around Midnight
8. Scott Weiland - Missing Cleveland
9. Snow Patrol - Crack The Shutters
10. Shiny Toy Guns - Ghost Town
Both of these also spin their fair shares of indie favorites (Glasvegas, Fleet Foxes, A.C. Newman, Blitzen Trapper) and non-singles (Death Cab for Cutie’s “Grapevine Fires”). You can always tell a non-creeped alternative station if they play “Young Folks” and “Such Great Heights” religiously. Another sign is if they play Blur songs other than “Song 2″ (usually its just “Girls & Boys” and, on very rare occasions, “Chemical World”, “Coffee & TV” and “There’s No Other Way”). WBRU also plays hip-hop on Sundays, and a program called “Jazz After Hours” in the wee hours of the mornings on the weekdays (and this program is getting more and more freeform. Occasionally you’ll hear things like Battles and Animal Collective)
It was actually WBCN, not WAAF that I wanted to talk about. WAAF apparently has always been an active rock station. WBCN is Boston’s victim of the active rock creep into alt rock radio.
WBCN:
1. Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire
2. Weezer - Troublemaker
3. The Offspring - You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid
4. Foo Fighters - Summer’s End
5. Incubus - Love Hurts
6. The Killers - Spaceman
7. Staind - All I Want
8. Rise Against - Audience of One
9. Guns ‘n’ Roses - Better
10. Shinedown - Second Chance
There’s a station actually spinning that new Third Eye Blind song?
@MrStarhead: Enough for it to be the 43rd most played song on Alternative radio according to Mediabase [www.americasmusiccharts.com]