I agree. I thought knrk sounded good as well before the changes. Lazlo or someone like him (or a her) could steer the stations in a positive direction I believe.
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Entercom's alternative experiment not a success?
- Thread starter tall_guy1
- Start date
Keep in mind that Portland has a couple other stations that do this format, including iHeart's KKRZ-HD2, that actually shows up in the ratings. So that leaves the young-alt format wide open for KNRK.
Mark Hamilton did an excellent job with 94/7. Another victim of the "adjustments."
The adjustments were made because Mike Kaplan believes rock is dead (and those are on the record statements) and Alternative could only survive by going pop. Naturally pop-punk experienced a revival in popularity months after he said that. Audacy is playing many of the big tracks from that scene and they made the pop-punk viral hit "Cloud 9" their Pick of the Week this week.
Despite this, it's easy to fathom an alternate universe where the pop punk revival did not happen and the only currents on Audacy Alternatives would be pop songs. It was going that direction, and I think "Skin & Bones" by Cage The Elephant was probably intended to be Audacy's final rock current.
Rock really dodged a bullet - though anything rock that isn't pop-punk is still having a difficult time cracking the top 10 due to the lack of airplay Audacy is giving those types of songs under Kaplan's direction. Audacy was criminally slow to pick up "Follow You" by Imagine Dragons too - so this is affecting staple acts out of the recognizably rock area as well.
I'm not saying Kaplan can't do what he feels is best - he can run the stations however he wants. I do think he has too much direct control over the stations and what they're allowed to play, though, and cutting rock out completely is frankly stupid.
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Meanwhile, iHeart sees a window and is counterprogramming. In LA, where the #1 song at KROQ is The Kid Laroi, the song is getting zero spins at KYSR.
And in 18+, KROQ had a 1.3 in March, while KYSR had a 4.2.
When you look nationally, the iHeart alt stations seem to be doing better than the Audacy stations. Most of the iHeart stations start their day with The Woody Show, and play a traditional mix of alternative music.
You are correct. It helps that iHeart jumped onto the pop-punk revival train too but without sacrificing staples and indie. The only reason why Kings of Leon, Weezer, and Foo Fighters are in the top 10 despite Audacy's shunning is because iHeart still backs them.
It has caused a real schism in the format though. Spin counts have been lower than usual because wildly different agendas are at play. Part of the reason why "Monsters" held on at #1 for so long was because it was the only consensus track at Alternative for a long time; it was frequently 300-400 spins in front of #2. One would figure "Follow You" and the Twenty One Pilots song that released today - "Shy Away" - would be consensus picks too but there's no guarantee.
That reflects the splintering of the format, and why these stations are all having trouble finding consensus music to play that isn't 30 years old.
Yeah - and Audacy/Entercom going their own direction worsened the divide further.
But this divide seems to develop every 10 years - the first divide birthed the "Roq of the 80's" that became the alternative format - and every subsequent divide has birthed a different status quo for the format to follow. We'll get another one soon enough.
Exactly, and that's why I say let's check back in the fall after people start going to concerts again.
Yeah, but if Kaplan ran the ship ten years ago the way he does, we would have all heard Emblem3, 3oh!3, The Ready Set, Tinnie Tempa, Kid Cudi, ect. on the stations in a hypothetical situation, and leave other alternative stations like iHeart to actually break alternative music of the '10s.
Kaplan running the ship the way he does was a big role in "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster The People blowing up in the summer of 2011, which kickstarted the indie pop trend and led to the expulsion of most punk, post-grunge, and alternative metal music from the format by June 2012. His tenure at KYSR mainstreamed the idea of pop music on Alternative as he was a big backer of artists like Lorde and Bishop Briggs. He was also a factor in why heavy rock bands didn't have more #1s on Alternative than they did in the 2000's - he was at KNDD and KRBZ (among others) in the 2000's and those stations were known bulwarks against the heavy rock invasion.
It would not shock me if he was a reason why late-90's Hot AC cuts like "Steal My Sunshine" and Big Beat songs like "Praise You" hit the top 10 on Alternative too. He was programming stations back then, he could have easily been a reason for those kinds of songs becoming hits on Alt - including "Tubthumping" pulling off a #1.
He has always run the ship this way - this is just the logical conclusion.
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Yeah, but there was still rock on the format. I'm sure he would have loved to play those artists on the stations and I just bet they were his guilty pleasures!
There's no way to truly know unless the man tells you himself. He does have a Twitter account but 99.9% of it is boilerplate Republican-bashing, for a music guy he almost never discusses music (he doesn't even identify himself as WNYL and KROQ's programmer in his bio).
On a purely speculative note, it is quite possible that he felt his tastes and Gen Z's tastes were aligning so it was time to go all-in. I wonder what he thinks about the irony in that pop-punk, a genre he helped to kill on Alternative, came roaring back and he's now stuck programming pop-punk currents into his playlists.
Programming radio stations is a job. He's not programming his personal playlist. The music is to attract an audience that can be sold to advertisers. If his approach isn't delivering that audience, he will be gone.
You misunderstand. My speculation was that Gen Z's tastes were aligning with his, so it was time to go all-in because he thinks he knows what Gen Z likes.
Though on that note how many times has Mike been shuffled around because he hasn't delivered the audience advertisers want?
They keep hiring him back, right? It's not like they can't check his resume. The fact is that programming older music might deliver good 6+ numbers, but the age of that audience is in their 40s and 50s. It's not that Gen Z is aligned with him personally, but that he needs to deliver a younger audience than he was previously getting. It may be a smaller audience, but more in line with what the GM wants.
I'm not a Kaplan defender but I seriously doubt he's forcing his own musical tastes on the stations. I'm sure Entercom had some research or justification for their strategy, I'm just dubious that it's working compared to what Hamilton, Lazlo, etc. were achieving in prior years.
Which may explain why Lazlo is still there. He knows at some point, it's going to change again. He's been on this train before.
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