Not gonna argue with you there that radio lost some of that local touch. The idea is to touch on the local sound, but not to overrely on it. Z-100, as John pointed out, is such a standout CHR b/c it's managed to retain that balanced sound, and yet take a chance on a lot of records other CHRs don't play.
Believe it or not Q-102 Philly was never too regional sounding, when compared to Hot 97 NYC and other Dance stations. Q-102, like Energy 108 Toronto, played a plaethora of great Dance tracks from a pretty broad spectrum, and also played some good Rhythmic and Pop hits. Same deal for B-96 Chicago, which Q-102 was largely modeled after.
Alright, time to go off a bit on a tangence here.
Power 106 and Hot 97 both started out with a lot of Freestyle (1987), and at that time KMEL San Francisco also played a good dose of it. A couple of years later Freestyle was nowhere nearly as big on Power 106 (which at the time was number one in the ratings), KMEL had evolved into one of the first successful major market Urban leaning CHRs (good for second place in the San Fran ratings), and Hot 97 remained a bastion of Freestyle, but its ratings were not as big as that of the top ranked station in NYC - Z-100 (which cherrypicked and played 3-4 Freestyle anthems at a time). X-100 San Francisco debuted on the scene with supposedly a Mainstream CHR but decided to lean on way too much Freestyle, in part b/c of San Jose's new Hot 97-7. Within a year X-100 evolved into an Adult CHR and all the Freestyle disappeared.
So what happened? While Freestyle peaked in 89-90 on the national pop charts, and with acceptance on CHR radio, its power was slipping on the stations that supported it the most (with the exception of Power 96 Miami). Both Hot 97 and Power 106 later made mistakes by jumping too quickly on the "Techno" bandwagon around 91-92, even though a lot of the audience wasn't ready to embrace it to the extent the clubs did. These stations relied too much on a new sound coming from the underground. They weren't focused on simply paying the best records for their stations.
It should be noted though that MANY CHR/Pop stations at the time also failed to realize that times were changing, and simply playing the 40 biggest hits on Billboard's Hot 100 wasn't gonna work anymore. I believe half of all the CHRs in America flipped formats between 1990-93, many of them to Country.
As for Hot 97 and Power 106, by late 92 it was clear they were both evolving into Hip Hop stations.
B-96 Chicago on the other hand stayed the course for a good number of years afterwards. Even though it was a Chicago station, it never relied on House, never relied on records from the emerging Rave scene, never relied on the big Euro-Dance records it was playing off import months before other stations, and never relied on Freestyle. It managed to play all of the above and more, and helped turn Chicago from a Rock town to a Rhythmic town.
So yeah, play some regional stuff, don't ignore it, but try to play the best sounding records overall from everywhere.
Believe it or not Q-102 Philly was never too regional sounding, when compared to Hot 97 NYC and other Dance stations. Q-102, like Energy 108 Toronto, played a plaethora of great Dance tracks from a pretty broad spectrum, and also played some good Rhythmic and Pop hits. Same deal for B-96 Chicago, which Q-102 was largely modeled after.
Alright, time to go off a bit on a tangence here.
Power 106 and Hot 97 both started out with a lot of Freestyle (1987), and at that time KMEL San Francisco also played a good dose of it. A couple of years later Freestyle was nowhere nearly as big on Power 106 (which at the time was number one in the ratings), KMEL had evolved into one of the first successful major market Urban leaning CHRs (good for second place in the San Fran ratings), and Hot 97 remained a bastion of Freestyle, but its ratings were not as big as that of the top ranked station in NYC - Z-100 (which cherrypicked and played 3-4 Freestyle anthems at a time). X-100 San Francisco debuted on the scene with supposedly a Mainstream CHR but decided to lean on way too much Freestyle, in part b/c of San Jose's new Hot 97-7. Within a year X-100 evolved into an Adult CHR and all the Freestyle disappeared.
So what happened? While Freestyle peaked in 89-90 on the national pop charts, and with acceptance on CHR radio, its power was slipping on the stations that supported it the most (with the exception of Power 96 Miami). Both Hot 97 and Power 106 later made mistakes by jumping too quickly on the "Techno" bandwagon around 91-92, even though a lot of the audience wasn't ready to embrace it to the extent the clubs did. These stations relied too much on a new sound coming from the underground. They weren't focused on simply paying the best records for their stations.
It should be noted though that MANY CHR/Pop stations at the time also failed to realize that times were changing, and simply playing the 40 biggest hits on Billboard's Hot 100 wasn't gonna work anymore. I believe half of all the CHRs in America flipped formats between 1990-93, many of them to Country.
As for Hot 97 and Power 106, by late 92 it was clear they were both evolving into Hip Hop stations.
B-96 Chicago on the other hand stayed the course for a good number of years afterwards. Even though it was a Chicago station, it never relied on House, never relied on records from the emerging Rave scene, never relied on the big Euro-Dance records it was playing off import months before other stations, and never relied on Freestyle. It managed to play all of the above and more, and helped turn Chicago from a Rock town to a Rhythmic town.
So yeah, play some regional stuff, don't ignore it, but try to play the best sounding records overall from everywhere.