I gave this sort of thing my best shot back when I began making presentations to those in the business who were willing to hear it, so what I'll do here is provide selected excerpts from that talk:
"The ideas that I am about to put forward are not traditional in nature, they represent rather significant and bold steps forward that in their entirety have never been taken by any commercial radio station in this country, and they are all steps that I strongly believe should be taken, in light of the rapidly changing landscape of radio today.
There is a large group of music fans who have never been taken care of radiowise in this town, and they're what I call the classic alternative crowd, the people who were either into the music back when it was happening or else are fans of that same music from the 1980s now. Oh sure, people have always been able to hear on their radios the best-known alternative songs of the '80s, but unfortunately that's all they ever get as those tunes are sprinkled in every now and then by a lot of stations. You know, the two or three greatest hits by bands like U2, Blondie, the Clash, Talking Heads, and the Police. So I'm here today to propose a station that will in part play not the best-known alternative music of that era but rather the best, and there's a big, big difference between the two.
Back in the '80s here in Columbus, fans of alternative or new wave music, as it was also known, were spoiled. I mean, except for radio, we had it all -- concerts to go to, record shops where you could buy all of the great music, dance clubs where you could hear it and celebrate it, and fan magazines in which you could read about everything that was happening. And I know, because I promoted about fifty of those concerts, and I worked in one of those record shops, and I spun records at one of those dance clubs, and I published over one hundred issues of one of those fanzines. The alternative music scene was huge in Columbus, as anyone who lived here anytime between 1980 and 1989 knows, but if you didn't, hey, don't take my word for it -- ask Scott Steinecker of Promowest what things were like back then. Ask Dan Dougan; he was the owner of Staches during some of those years. You can ask any of the record shops along High Street that carried my zine what it was like. The excitement was real, you could feel it in the air, it helped sustain my involvement in the scene for the ten long and glorious years of that decade, and even though radio didn't seem to want to acknowledge the music at the time, that doesn't mean that wonderful things weren't happening, and they were happening in a very big way.
But now many years have passed since the end of that great era, and has anything really changed with regards to the attitudes of FM radio? CD101, the so-called Alternative Station, does nothing but give the alternative genre a bad name. If a non-mainstream song comes along that's lame or stupid, preferably both, then you can rest assured that they'll find a way to work it into their heavy rotation, while all of the incredible music that came and went before CD101 went on the air in 1990 is what they don't seem to want to know about, or want their listeners to know about. It's as though they're trying to give people the impression that nothing much was happening in this town until they came on the scene. And elsewhere on today's radio dial, "active rock" stations like the Blitz and the Big Wazoo focus a lot of their attention on the headache and the anger of the music that's happening now. All of those positive, upbeat, fun, and vibrant tunes of the '80s? Forget it. And what about the public radio station, WCBE? Well, once you get past all of the hours that it devotes to news and talk, you're left with a music that likewise doesn't go very far into the past, and it's a music that you've got to be a world traveller to appreciate.
Yes, there's thousands, tens of thousands of music fans in central Ohio who are starving for what I have to offer them, and they've been starving for a long time. They're either now listening to their iPods or to satellite radio or to internet radio and pretending to be satisfied, or else they can't afford any of those options, or else they realize that even if they could afford them, none of them would really do the job that they need it to do.
Now let's turn the clock back another twenty years, to the 1960s. There's a lot of people who have an album collection that includes some '60s rock and roll that's very special to them, and there's a lot of great songs on those records that either weren't released as singles or came out on 45 but just didn't get played much on the radio. My belief is that this magnificent music shouldn't be swept under time's rug and forgotten about, but rather those songs should be showcased in some manner so that they can enjoy their own long-overdue shining moments in the sun, so that fans of those groups that recorded them can finally get the refreshing and invigorating and totally unexpected chance to enjoy all of that thrilling, goosebumpy music on their radios.
I don't care what specific years you're talking about, '60s, '70's, '80s, whatever -- hits are hits, and maybe, just maybe, for a station in this market to really make its mark and get itself noticed in a big way, it's got to find some ways to go beyond the hits. I mean, Columbus has had virtually nothing but Hit Radio coming out the ears for the past forty years! So what I am proposing today is going to be primarily Non-Hit Radio. A shocking concept? Perhaps. But equally shocking is what's happening to oldies stations all across the country that do play the hits, indeed, to rock music stations in general that limit themselves to only playing the most familiar music, as they're finding themselves, or at least their formats, coming to rather abrupt ends. The tried-and-true formulas of yesterday are simply not always working in the world of today.
All over the U.S., oldies and greatest hits stations are failing, and even ones with seemingly great 12+ ratings are being flipped anyways because they're extremely strong in the older demographic groups, which advertisers care very little about, and extremely weak in the younger demographic groups, which advertisers care very much about. The format that I am proposing today will have its own unique non-hit brand of oldies programming that younger listeners will be curious about and have a much keener interest in, and here's the key -- this programming will be supplemented by a companion best-of-alternative-'80s non-hit format that will give younger people something to get even more excited about! But it's really a format that's for everybody, a true people's format, as we're going to be giving our listeners of all ages, both the young and the not so young, the best of both worlds. It's going to be early rock and roll seamlessly combined with early alternative -- the Sixties, and the spirit of the Sixties. The spirit of creativity, and the spirit of freedom in being allowed to fully express that creativity. The spirit of the Sixties is the spirit of unity but also of individuality. It's the spirit of fun, and of love, and of peace, and of purpose. The spirit of the Sixties is going to make for revolutionary radio, and like the revolution that sprang up in 1776, the spirit of the Sixties is going to come with an inherent sense of independence. Our image will be that we don't care about how things have been done before; we don't care about the rules that others say that radio must follow. We're going to give people music that they can't get anywhere else on this town's radio dial, music that they've never been able to get anywhere else on this town's radio dial. If we simply copy what other stations are doing, then we're not going to beat any of them and we'll be doomed to failure. But if we go beyond what those stations are doing and enter new realms of commercial radio programming, and in so doing provide a product that is far superior for the listener, one that is truly fresh and new and nothing less than a thrill for people to listen to, then that's the strategy that will guarantee us success in every sense of the word. We're going to very proudly and very confidently offer something totally new and different and exciting, something that won't simply confirm everyone's preconceptions about the conservative nature of FM rock radio programming today, but rather something that will blast those preconceptions completely apart. We're going to become a lot of people's favorite radio station, and we're going to become everyone else's second-most favorite station. We won't be featuring the hits that have been played literally hundreds if not thousands of times, the hits that have helped drive so many in central Ohio to satellite radio and internet radio and mp3 players, but instead we'll be featuring oldies that aren't old, because they haven't been played to death on all of the other stations, and alternative music that was simply a pleasant alternative to all of the disco stuff that surrounded it when it first came out. Nothing to be afraid of, and everything to love.
Including me; I'll be a part of the package as well, for all twenty-four hours of the day, seven days a week. Listeners are going to be enjoying our music so much that they're not going to want to have to wait very long to hear those songs again, and so each weekday we'll provide an exciting four-hour block of music six times in a row. I'll be live from six in the morning until ten, and then we'll replay that show five times, from 10:00 until 2:00, 2:00 until 6:00, 6:00 until 10:00, 10:00 until 2:00, and 2:00 until the 6:00 start of the next day's show. Our more addicted listeners will therefore have the opportunity to maximize their enjoyment of their favorite long-lost tunes, as they'll get to hear them a second, third, and fourth time over the course of the day (and even a fifth and sixth time if they're insomniacs), and our other listeners who aren't able to listen to us for four hours straight won't feel shortchanged, as the bits and pieces that they can catch of each of the six broadcasts during the course of their busy day and night will add up to the full entirety of that day's programming. Also, if they hear something that they know someone else would absolutely love, then they'll be able to contact that person and let him or her know exactly when that song will be rebroadcast, so that that person will be able to catch it, too! We will therefore be featuring a repetition of a brand new batch of fresh music each day that everyone will be happy with, as opposed to the constant repetition day in and day out of the same very limited amount of not-so-fresh music that other stations are slowly but surely destroying themselves with. Obviously, this repeat-broadcast strategy will save a great deal of money, and it will do that without compromising one bit the quality of our programming. For both Saturday and Sunday, I'll assemble a four-hour block that will include the songs that we receive the most positive feedback on during the previous five weekdays. Both days it will still be me, and both days it will still be a four-hour block that will be rebroadcast five times.
There is going to be a lot of love and fun that will flow into the arms, ears, minds, and hearts of our listeners. Everything that is good about music and about us as a people will be heard. Those who tune in will call or e-mail us and thank us for perceiving the need for this unique brand of programming, and for having the courage to present it. And they'll also express their complete and utter SHOCK that they are now finally able to hear all of this great, great music on their radios!"
