The Indie 103.1 Model

[Saladressing]

It is an utter abomination that there is not one single commercial alternative station in the country that is like Indie. Sure in the past there were innovative stations such as The Spy/Oklahoma City and REV105/Minneapolis, but those days have long since passed, leaving us with just one station in the entire nation that dares to be very different and plays a mix of music that would be frowned upon by all consultants who encourage formulaic, dull, predicatable radio.

 

[p_herring]

It is an utter abomination that there is not one single commercial alternative station in the country that is like Indie. Sure in the past there were innovative stations such as The Spy/Oklahoma City and REV105/Minneapolis, but those days have long since passed, leaving us with just one station in the entire nation that dares to be very different and plays a mix of music that would be frowned upon by all consultants who encourage formulaic, dull, predicatable radio.

This "too-cool-for-school" argument and attitude is tired and dull. The reason that Indie 103 works is because it's IN LOS ANGELES (you know, the city where people will pay whatever it costs to stay cool and relevant). Most of the artists that cycle through Indie's playlist only stay "cool" for the 6-8 months that they are hyped by whatever British publication. Remember The Vines? The Von Blondies? Moony Suzooki? Yeah, exactly.

So, it's not an "abomination" that there are no stations like this. A healthy balance of mainstream acts as well as left-of-center acts are what works. Don't be afraid to play Green Day next to Arcade Fire, Nine Inch Nails next to Interpol, etc. Some of these "Indie" acts (Wilco, The Hold Steady, etc.) are really niche bands and won't work well on all formats. You need to know your audience. What jives in L.A. probably ain't gonna go over as well in Toledo, OH.

 

[Hunter]

The reason that Indie 103 works is because it's IN LOS ANGELES (you know, the city where people will pay whatever it costs to stay cool and relevant).

Who said that Indie "works"? After 3 years in format, their best book has been .8 (12+) and their latest is .5. Although the signal has never generated ratings, it covers the westside of OC and LA counties (the valley excluded) and given the coverage area, rock should do as good or better than any other format. I don't believe the station owners, Entravision, are happy with how the station "works" either, as they brought in a new PD in April.

As corporate as it now is, the once "cool & relevant", no ratings or billings KROQ, is now ratings dominant and was the top billing station in the country in '05 and #2 last year. Not bad for a station who also has one of the worst signals...covering LA's huge geography with only 5.6KW.

I'm sure Entravision has their fingers crossed that the PPM's will help their little (college sounding) station...which should happen. Otherwise, I'm sure they'll try spanish or something different. 103.1 has never kept a format long. Please don't get me wrong, I like the station a lot, but I don't think it is a money maker...not enough advertisers buy "cool & relevant"...even in LA. They want ratings.

 

[chadd]

Entering with ignorance,

What's your favorite strategy when these never-heard-of's go public? I remember playing White Stripes' Red Blood Cells album and getting near-death threats for how "bad" it was... now alt peeps can't get enough of their music. On the vice versa, they were probably the darlings of indie rock (dunno fer sure). Remember when Green Day was punk? Nirvana?

Does an indie station have to dump the fav's when they make it to Rolling Stone?

 

[p_herring]

Entering with ignorance,

What's your favorite strategy when these never-heard-of's go public? I remember playing White Stripes' Red Blood Cells album and getting near-death threats for how "bad" it was... now alt peeps can't get enough of their music. On the vice versa, they were probably the darlings of indie rock (dunno fer sure). Remember when Green Day was punk? Nirvana?

Does an indie station have to dump the fav's when they make it to Rolling Stone?

That's the biggest problem with the Alternative format. We surrender our artists way too easily. Sure there are some acts that broke on alternative that were basically Hot AC/AOR acts (Matchbox 20, Nickelback, Sugar Ray, etc.) but there's no reason to disown bands like Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, The Killers or My Chemical Romance just because they receive a lot of mainstream attention. The reason way stations like Indie 103 will never do well is because they seem to have a condescending playlist. You can't have a sucessful station when it's only the same 12 record store clerks listening.

 

[SoulCrusher]

That's the biggest problem with the Alternative format. We surrender our artists way too easily. Sure there are some acts that broke on alternative that were basically Hot AC/AOR acts (Matchbox 20, Nickelback, Sugar Ray, etc.) but there's no reason to disown bands like Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, The Killers or My Chemical Romance just because they receive a lot of mainstream attention. The reason way stations like Indie 103 will never do well is because they seem to have a condescending playlist. You can't have a sucessful station when it's only the same 12 record store clerks listening.

That may be true. But in certain instances, there are pretty good reasons for doing it. Take Fall Out Boy for example. The difference between them and acts like Good Charlotte and Simple Plan are hard to detect, other than FOB's "indie" beginnings (Fueled By Ramen isn't a real indie - it's had major label money coming in from the start and focuses on poppy pseudo-punk rock acts almost exclusively ... besides, aren't they pretty much a subsidiary of Atlantic Records these days?). Their latest album has several songs that find them sounding a lot like Justin Timberlake fronting Maroon 5 (both "This Ain't A Scene..." and "I'm Like A Lawyer..." come to mind). In addition, they're corporate whores (aside from maybe Black Eyed Peas, I can't thing of another recording artist today with more commercial endorsements), they make frequent appearances in teenybopper mags, and their bassist is dating pop tart Ashlee Simpson. If Alternative seems to be abandoning them, that's FOB's fault. And this doesn't help either: http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/fall out boy to be pop men_1048623

Panic! At The Disco is basically just another boy band with guitars, and all their songs pretty much sound the same.

The Killers basically sound like a less creative Duran Duran, who the Alternative format soured on, favoring acts like Depeche Mode and The Cure.

My Chemical Romance? The teen idol status has hurt them in the eyes of some people, as well as their increasingly commercial pop sound. While they're not as bad as the acts they're compared to, The Black Parade is a rather safe album that takes few chances and does make some bids to reach the soccer mom markets. Sounding like Queen is not what I would consider "daring", contrary to what many critics have said.

 

[Saladressing]

On the scale of art (0) and commerce (100), Indie and the old REV 105 perhaps sit in the 20-30 range. A soulless station such as, take your pick, could be argued to be around a 99. KRBZ, WLUM and some of the West Coast alt. stations hover possibly in the 70s or so. While KNRK could be arguably in the low 60s.

With utmost respect to the posters above, it's kind of amazing how a thread about diverse commercial alternative radio became a discussion of boy bands and "alternative" boy bands. I'm as guilty as anyone of the following statement, but I think we all could stand to get our heads out of today's charts that are driven by the major record companies, to listen to some Clash records and to remember the reason this format is here in the first place. If everyone in our world thinks Nickelback into Yellowcard into Godsmack into Killers into Red Jumpsuit Apparatus is really the format being the best it can be, then that's a shock, but I refuse to believe this because over the years it has seemed that there have been many here who have stood for a less corporate approach to the format.

Certainly the need to maximize profitability should be the #1 goal for any radio station unless it is operating as a noncomm, charity or toy station. However, in a time of rampant format flips by stations that are not attaining their desired profitability it would be nice to see at least more than 1 station in the country in a metro area conducive to it to give a go to a more adventurous format that hovers in the 50 range on the scale of art and commerce.

At the very least let's see some more female artists come into the format, and maybe the ratings across the board can get back to within some distance of where they were in the 1990s. In this regard the format still hasn't recovered from the rap rock era of the early 00s.

 

[machinehead]

Salad Dressing,

Well said, and I completely agree.

One noisy man's opinion:

Panic At the Disco, My Chemical Romance, et al are the nadir of whatever "modern rock" may be and are the furthest thing from alternative, whose only connection to actual alternative may be the Minutemen or My Bloody Valentine CDs (or downloads) in the band members' collections (and I'm probably giving these bands too much credit in the Taste Dept.).

Alternative once was a viable, interesting, eclectic, gutsy format that had the ear of a lot of folks across the board. This doesn't mean you can't play a Foo Fighters or Angels and Airwaves record on your station in order to have cred, nor does it mean you have to dig hysterically into the Pixies catalogue. It just requires programmers who understand the format being allowed to program it with some guts and some brains, who can get an airstaff together who love the music and can actively connect with listeners on that level. If you want to have jokey jocks and potty-humor comedians, that's just going to undo the depth of interest in the music, and believe it or not, there still is a lot of good, potentially profitable new music out there. Some of it is being shucked by major labels, some by indie labels, but to quote Tom Petty, "people may be slow, but they ain't deaf." Find someone who can find the good stuff if you as a programmer can't make the time.

I know it's not 1994 anymore, but no one's talking about living in the past. Alternative can still be viable, interesting, and yes, profitable without having wholly succumb to the teenage girl/babysitter crowd hooked on faddish cute bands. Let's not forget, alternative stations should be hard-wired as rock stations, and shouldn't be sharing audience with the CHR, etc. down the dial. Respect your catalogue, mix up the golds, platoon twice as often as the other guy, be conversational instead of talking at your listeners, and be picky about the new records: Can the band cut it live? Is there more to them than a single?

Thanks.

 

[MarcR]

While KNRK could be arguably in the low 60s.

[/quote]

Speaking of KNRK, they had an interesting spike in their ratings in the Summer book, reaching the top 10 12plus in the Portland market. It's encouraging to see one of the more progressive sounding Alt-Rock stations in the country have a measurable audience as well!

 

[p_herring]

That's the biggest problem with the Alternative format. We surrender our artists way too easily. Sure there are some acts that broke on alternative that were basically Hot AC/AOR acts (Matchbox 20, Nickelback, Sugar Ray, etc.) but there's no reason to disown bands like Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, The Killers or My Chemical Romance just because they receive a lot of mainstream attention. The reason way stations like Indie 103 will never do well is because they seem to have a condescending playlist. You can't have a sucessful station when it's only the same 12 record store clerks listening.

That may be true. But in certain instances, there are pretty good reasons for doing it. Take Fall Out Boy for example. The difference between them and acts like Good Charlotte and Simple Plan are hard to detect, other than FOB's "indie" beginnings (Fueled By Ramen isn't a real indie - it's had major label money coming in from the start and focuses on poppy pseudo-punk rock acts almost exclusively ... besides, aren't they pretty much a subsidiary of Atlantic Records these days?). Their latest album has several songs that find them sounding a lot like Justin Timberlake fronting Maroon 5 (both "This Ain't A Scene..." and "I'm Like A Lawyer..." come to mind). In addition, they're corporate whores (aside from maybe Black Eyed Peas, I can't thing of another recording artist today with more commercial endorsements), they make frequent appearances in teenybopper mags, and their bassist is dating pop tart Ashlee Simpson. If Alternative seems to be abandoning them, that's FOB's fault. And this doesn't help either: http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/fall out boy to be pop men_1048623

Panic! At The Disco is basically just another boy band with guitars, and all their songs pretty much sound the same.

The Killers basically sound like a less creative Duran Duran, who the Alternative format soured on, favoring acts like Depeche Mode and The Cure.

My Chemical Romance? The teen idol status has hurt them in the eyes of some people, as well as their increasingly commercial pop sound. While they're not as bad as the acts they're compared to, The Black Parade is a rather safe album that takes few chances and does make some bids to reach the soccer mom markets. Sounding like Queen is not what I would consider "daring", contrary to what many critics have said.

Fall Out Boy never had an "indie" beginning, Island had the right of first refusal from day one. That being said, the band toured small clubs, halls and built a fanbase around the country before hitting it big. And, yes, there are plenty of cross-over fans from CHR that listen to them but their core fanbase still is in the Alternative audience.

Panic! is hardly a boy band. Their music has enough quirks, twists and theatrics to warrant play.

MCR, while sporting a large arena-rock sound, still has elements of glam, punk, goth (albeit tiny) to keep them from becoming a CHR band.

Bands that have NO place on Alternative playlists: Nickelback, Hinder, Godsmack, 3 Doors Down, etc.

Bands that SHOULD be played but are not: Motion City Soundtrack, Sufjan Stevens, Arctic Monkeys, etc.