Well, I am pretty sure that old school Metallica, Pantera and Helmet were all played at one time on either K-Rock or WAXQ in their hard rock days. These are all very popular harder rock acts that I'm sure most people that are fans of the genre are familiar with. Call me crazy, but I think if a hard rock station (which is what WAXQ 104.3 did back in roughly '94 before the format gained widespread acceptance) were to exist amongst the current state of New York Radio, it would succeed. Don't forget that not only was such a station extremely rate back then, but it was going up against K-Rock (which had just flipped to Alternative, if I'm not mistaken), WNEW (which did play some new rock), and WHTZ, which was Alternative leaning at the time It was very much an uphill battle. Right now, considering the current climate, K-Rock could give a hard-edged Active Rocker a shot, and it should easily improve upon the current anemic ratings. Let's face it, people are sick of K-Rock because with the exception of the Free-FM period, they have been playing roughly the same 200 songs year after year AFTER YEAR! K-Rock represents chicken rock at its worst. If you want to take a very timid, safe approach to AC (which is what CBS is doing with Fresh), that's fine - that's what you expect. But rock is supposed to be bold and dangerous, and K-Rock is about as edgy as Mickey Mouse. I tried listening to the station last week only to get bombarded with toothless ballads by the likes of Incubus and Green Day that are already in rotation at PLJ, and dinosaur rock like Guns N' Roses and Led Zeppelin that you can hear constantly on Q 104.3. Rather than do something different, K-Rock is content to rehash the same old programming that they have played for years. If they insist on resigning themselves to mediocre programming, the ratings will follow suit.
Back when Q 104.3 tried harder rock, most people thought of Robert Plant, ZZ Top and Sammy Hagar as Active Rock. These days, the format refers to something different - take a look at the charts and you will see acts like Mudvayne, Hurt, Static-X, Nonpoint, Killswitch Engage ... all acts that K-Rock is not playing. The time is right to give this format another whirl since it has more mainstream viability these days. Either that or an Alternative format close to KROQ - almost anything in that realm would be preferable to what they are now.
