Maybe what I meant about the format aging out was that those who were the driving force behind its initial success are aging out. That would be Mr. Weatherly. While he did a lot of great things, for some reason everything seems to grind to a halt. All the creativity disappeared , and the station just recycled the old formula. I get it. A time comes in everyone's life when they want to relax and coast for a while. But you can't do that in radio. So the format as we knew it (to quote the Rolling Stone article) is over.
As for the people there now, they seem to be taking the deconstructionalist approach. They're stripping the station back to the essentials. That doesn't mean they have a plan, because I don't think they do. In my view, they need to find a role for radio in the lives of their listeners. They don't know what that is yet. It's obviously not air personalities, since they seem to be removing them from their alternative stations. They also don't seem to have any answers from within, so they're bringing in people from iHeart such as Elliott. Maybe that's the start of something. But it's going to take a long time. If music is the core of the alternative format, perhaps its time to hire a musician. Get someone in house who doesn't care about advertising or imaging or anything the radio people care about. Hire someone who only cares about music. That's why I said the future for innovation is in non-commercial radio.
