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Z100 as an Alternative Station

S

ScottBurns

Good morning, everyone. I have a Z100 history question. Thanks in advance for answering it.

When I was growing up, my family would visit NYC perhaps once a year (or every other year). I remember being in New York in 1993. I wouldn't describe Z100 as an Alternative station, but perhaps an Alternative-leaning CHR. Is that an accurate way to describe it during those days? I remember hearing plenty of Alternative staples, such as Pearl Jam and the Offspring, but also some regular CHR fare. The presentation was also very CHR-like, and I remember Elvis Duran and Chio the Hit Man being two of their jocks at the time.

I remember other stations having a similar format. I remember driving through Connecticut during the Summer of 1994 and KC-101 having a similar format. In fact, they sometimes called themselves "New Haven's Alternative with the Best Variety." That was also the era in which Glenn Beck was the PD.

Specifically, at Z100, how long did the Alternative-lean last? How did it do ratings-wise?
 
You have to put it in the context of the time. Through all of the early 90s, WHTZ continued to consider itself CHR, and it reported to the CHR music charts. It's just that at the time, a lot of rock and alternative music was in the pop chart. Aerosmith, Rod Stewart, and Pearl Jam were having pop hits. My favorite example was the Crash Test Dummies, an alternative band who had a big pop hit with the song "MMM-MMM-MMM." It peaked at #4 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1994. Imagine hearing that next to Janet Jackson.
 
TheBigA said:
You have to put it in the context of the time. Through all of the early 90s, WHTZ continued to consider itself CHR, and it reported to the CHR music charts. It's just that at the time, a lot of rock and alternative music was in the pop chart. Aerosmith, Rod Stewart, and Pearl Jam were having pop hits. My favorite example was the Crash Test Dummies, an alternative band who had a big pop hit with the song "MMM-MMM-MMM." It peaked at #4 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1994. Imagine hearing that next to Janet Jackson.
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I remember hearing Crash Test Dummies followed by Janet Jackson’s “Again,” for example. One of my points is that Z100 (and KC-101, for that matter) was an outlier. I don’t remember many other stations in 1993-1994 that were Alternative-leaning CHRs. I’m also wondering how successful Z100 was in that era.
 
There is a section in Elvis Duran's book about how (maybe circa 1994?) they went on the air overnight and went all-Alternative one night, and eventually morphed into a very Alt-Leaning CHR for a while, but then when WKTU relaunched on 103.5 in 1996 and took a huge bite out of Z's ratings with a fresh, rhythmic lean, then Z started leaning back that way too.

I remember in the 90s WPST in Trenton also leaned into Alternative... but not quite as hard as Z100 did. Here's a PST playlist from late 1996: PST PlayList
 
the station I remember and loved when going up to the Apple around 75/76 with a good Alternative format and a delightful English lass DJ afternoons was DA BUZZ 105, great station before the corps blew it up, sad, Anyone remember them and why did they have such a short shelf life. Is power really that much better in ratings and revenue, wasn't Danny Bonaduce a jock when it was the buzz...thanks..
 
atthestars said:
There is a section in Elvis Duran's book about how (maybe circa 1994?) they went on the air overnight and went all-Alternative one night, and eventually morphed into a very Alt-Leaning CHR for a while, but then when WKTU relaunched on 103.5 in 1996 and took a huge bite out of Z's ratings with a fresh, rhythmic lean, then Z started leaning back that way too.
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Correct. Music was in a state of flux. The CHR format in the 90s was very broad. A big chunk of it was Urban, and that music was also getting played on Kiss in the early 90s, and helped Kiss go to #1. Z100 probably could have gone more towards urban/hip-hop, but instead went more alternative, primarily because it was very popular, charting as CHR, and wasn't getting much airplay on WNEW. There was kind of a hole for it. Around the same time that WKTU debuted at 103.5, K-Rock went full blown alternative, and Z100 went back to straight CHR. But all of these changes with Z100 were simply chasing after whatever big audience trend they could latch on. If WYNY wasn't already playing country, they might have gone in that direction, since country was also huge in the early 90s.
 
JeremyAndrews said:
Late 1993, maybe Fall 1993 until 1996, although they did play a lot of Alternative well into 1996 and beyond. The lean peaked in 1994 and 1995
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As I said, K-Rock went full blown alternative in 1996. But the main attraction at K-Rock was Howard Stern. The genre peaked in 1994, the year Kurt Cobain died. Around that time, critics were saying "Alterative doesn't seem so alternative anymore." A few years later, the Lollapalooza festival shut down because they couldn't attract big crowds anymore. So Z100 was simply following the trend, and the trend was over by 96.
 
NY was basically without a CHR from 1993 - 1996. It was in a way similar to the early 1980s after WABC and WNBC were no longer top-40 and before WPLJ switched to CHR.

Z100 tanked as an "alt"/chr station tanked once WKTU came on. NY is more rhythmic, I'm surprised there was a void for so long in the CHR format in the #1 market.
 
CentralFL said:
NY was basically without a CHR from 1993 - 1996. Z100 tanked as an "alt"/chr station tanked once WKTU came on. NY is more rhythmic,
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It depends what you consider CHR. As I said, Z-100 continued to report as a CHR station during those years. If you look at the CHR chart, it was very diverse. Here is a link to an R&R from 1995 in the midst of this period. If you go to page 32, you'll see the Z-100 playlist. There are some alternative songs mixed in with some pop songs and some rock songs. Pearl Jam, Offspring, Stone Temple Pilots, and Collective Soul. But if you look at some of the other CHR reporters, such as Y100 in Philly, you'll see a lot of the same songs. So this wasn't only a NY thing:


However, KIIS was very different, probably because of KROQ.
 
CentralFL said:
NY was basically without a CHR from 1993 - 1996. It was in a way similar to the early 1980s after WABC and WNBC were no longer top-40 and before WPLJ switched to CHR.

Z100 tanked as an "alt"/chr station tanked once WKTU came on. NY is more rhythmic, I'm surprised there was a void for so long in the CHR format in the #1 market.
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If memory serves - and I visited NYC maybe twice in that period - from 1992-1994, both Hot 97 and WBLS were CHR/Rhythmic. I have a tape of Broadway Bill Lee on Hot 97 in 1991 and it sounds like a CHR station with a dance lean. I remember hearing Baltazar on Hot 97, in 1992, playing Madonna.
 
A lot of CHR stations leaned in one way or the other in the 90s. Some leaned heavy on Alternative and Rock, some leaned near Hot AC. Others leaned very Rhythmic.

B96 in Chicago leaned very Rhythmic. Chicago had an Alternative station. They had the Dance thing going on locally. But they would still mix in bigger Rock hits. A few of these stations would report to R&R as a Rhythmic but would “Contribute” to the CHR chart overall because of this.

B96 was in route back to a more Mainstream sound as the late 90s began and the Dance thing faded. They were starting to mix in more Aerosmith, Goo Goo Dolls, Eagle-Eye Cherry, etc. But then Big City Radio jumped in and went CHR with their 92 KISS FM trimulcast in late 1998. At that point B96 abandoned the Rock-Pop they were adding in and went full blown Rhythmic. They attempted going Mainstream again in 2002, and for good about a decade ago.

WSNX in Muskegon (Grand Rapids) was a smaller market CHR. They began leaning Rhythmic in the late 90s because advertisers wouldn’t support an Urban station even though the audience was there. It worked well for them. This continued until Clear Channel became the owner of both them and their adult leaning competition (WVTI) in 1999. WVTI went Hot AC, WSNX shifted back to CHR Mainstream although it would lean slightly more Rhythmic at times as the 2000s went on. WVTI filled the void by leaning more Modern AC.

I think a lot of it depended on market conditions. What tested. Whether or not there was an Urban or Rhythmic station or Alternative station. If it was more heritage in a smaller town, they would daypart some of these toward Hot AC during the day. Some of these dayparted Hot AC well into the 2000s, including the 80s golds.


Not until the late 90s Pop boom did the format start to become more similar around the country.
 
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ScottBurns said:
If memory serves - and I visited NYC maybe twice in that period - from 1992-1994, both Hot 97 and WBLS were CHR/Rhythmic. I have a tape of Broadway Bill Lee on Hot 97 in 1991 and it sounds like a CHR station with a dance lean. I remember hearing Baltazar on Hot 97, in 1992, playing Madonna
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ScottBurns said:
If memory serves - and I visited NYC maybe twice in that period - from 1992-1994, both Hot 97 and WBLS were CHR/Rhythmic. I have a tape of Broadway Bill Lee on Hot 97 in 1991 and it sounds like a CHR station with a dance lean. I remember hearing Baltazar on Hot 97, in 1992, playing Madonna.
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WQHT was definitely Top-40 and Dance well into 1992. By 1993 the were mostly hip hop if memory serves.
 
Meanwhile I read all these posts from alternative fans asking why alternative radio stations are not doing as well as they did in the 90s. You can see why. The music. Is the alternative music today as good as it was in the early 90s, when it was played on the pop stations along with Janet Jackson? Based on the charts I've posted here, the answer is no. When you talk about music radio, you have to start with the music. What are the record labels doing to promote their music? Is radio a priority for artists and labels? There are a lot of big differences between now & then.
 
TheBigA said:
Meanwhile I read all these posts from alternative fans asking why alternative radio stations are not doing as well as they did in the 90s. You can see why. The music. Is the alternative music today as good as it was in the early 90s, when it was played on the pop stations along with Janet Jackson? Based on the charts I've posted here, the answer is no. When you talk about music radio, you have to start with the music. What are the record labels doing to promote their music? Is radio a priority for artists and labels? There are a lot of big differences between now & then.
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I would argue that there are still Alternative artists getting airplay on CHR stations. Imagine Dragons, Lewis Capaldi, Glass Animals, and AJR are some examples.
 
Alternative always had it's hits that would crossover. Coldplay, Blink 182, Finger Eleven, Linkin Park, The Killers, All-American Rejects, Panic! At The Disco, Neon Trees, Imagine Dragons, Kings Of Leon, Twenty One Pilots, Billie Eilish, Foster The People, Paramore, The Lumineers, Lorde, are among some of the artists that got their start on Alternative but crossed over to CHR. But they stopped in the last decade, moreso the last few years. CHR really hit a low point around 2018. Both formats are struggling and not sharing as many artists. A lot of big name artists are on the Alternative chart but are not getting airplay on CHR right now. A pretty big Alternative hit, Sweater Weather by The Neighbourhood is getting played on some CHR stations because of it's popularity on TikTok. It's not a new song. Both CHR and Alternative are not in great shape right now. You can thank changing habits and what the labels are pushing. Not very many programmers are allowed to go find their own hits. They have to stick with corporate. Sometimes programmers that find their own hits have success with them. This is usually in small markets.
 
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