What’s wrong with KROQ 106.7 FM, and what can be done to fix it

[macattack]

This is a discussion of Los Angeles radio stations.



As long as the audience is interested in that variety rather than specific groups. Other formats, such as CHR or country, the audience primarily listens for the format. In that way, they're open to new songs or artists that the format presents. In the case of alternative, the audience is primarily interested in its own core groups or artists, and gets their new music from their friends or social media. So each individual listener comes to radio with a different, narrower cultural experience. That makes it hard for a mass medium to reach them.

We're seeing the same thing with rock stations that try to meld two types of rock on one station. In pop music, it works because people are open to the broader range of music. In rock, it doesn't, and those stations are getting very low ratings. There was a time 30 years ago when alternative was a concise format with a clearly defined audience and life group. Not any more. Alternative stations can still get good ratings trying to program to that core group of people, but that's not what Audacy is aiming at right now.

I'm just saying that to me, you come off as disingenuous when you comment on Alternative as a format or on stations - you downplay the successes the format has while focusing more on the flaws. To me, you come off as expecting the format to fail or even wanting it to. It makes it difficult for me to take anything you say about the format at face value because I expect a heavy amount of bias in your commentary.

I know I am biased myself, but I try to be upfront about it. I don't get that same impression from you.

I know that KPNT comes up time and time again, but they fuse Alternative and Active together and are doing incredibly well - so much so that a few other Alternatives are starting to adapt the same strategy to varying extents, like WKZQ, KFRR, WBTZ, and KROX. I think that there is a case to be made for bringing some Active Rock back into Alternative right now - not necessarily your Five Finger Death Punch or Dirty Honey-style bands, but more along the lines of Ayron Jones, Spiritbox, The Pretty Reckless, Chevelle, Bring Me The Horizon, Dead Poet Society, etc. Basically dirty rock and alternative metal.

It may not work everywhere, in my opinion the fusion probably would work best in the Midwest and South and not so much the coasts. But Gen Z seems quite interested in heavier bands right now, and perhaps crossing a few of them over might help Alternative keep their footing in the new decade.

Even back in the 1990's, which was when the format was at its most universal, there was a wide variety of music to listen to. Punk/pop-punk, indie rock, grunge, industrial rock, pop crossovers, even Seal scored a surprise Alt hit in 1994 with "Prayer For The Dying". Alternative, in a weird way, has always been a bizarro top 40 with its mix of genres, artists, and sounds. Trying to homogenize Alternative is a fool's errand, I think, because variety has always been a key point of the format. Sometimes we don't like the mix and other times we do, but eventually things will change once again.

 

[TheBigA]

I'm just saying that to me, you come off as disingenuous when you comment on Alternative as a format or on stations - you downplay the successes the format has while focusing more on the flaws.

Because as I said, the success came when the format focused on a core group of artists and songs. Audacy is trying to do that now, but it will take a while to build that new core audience, and the core they're building is different from the legacy core. When KROQ tried to mix Billie Eilish with older bands, it didn't work. So they dropped the older stuff. Probably a bad decision, but at some point, a radio station has to build an audience who will listen to the station because of the STATION, and not because they play one or two of someone's favorite artists. That's what they're trying to do at KROQ and why the old guard hates it, as evidenced by the article in the OP.

I know that KPNT comes up time and time again, but they fuse Alternative and Active together and are doing incredibly well - so much so that a few other Alternatives are starting to adapt the same strategy to varying extents,

KROQ is focusing on a sub-genre of alternative that doesn't blend well with active rock. They would have to blow it up completely and start over.

 

[mnradiofan]

Reading through this thread while listening to Alt 98.7 (with a heavy reliance on Voice Tracking and a national morning show) and it seems like they are having no issue mixing old and new, although Green Day into Cage the Elephant felt a bit....off to me. Our local (Minneapolis, MN) Alt formats both failed (we had a local and an iHeartMedia translator) and they both tried to blend old (and even some heavier, although staying away from the REALLY heavy stuff in the 90s like Korn, Marilyn Manson, White Zombie, etc).

On the other side, we have an Active Rock station that is quite successful here, despite not being nearly as "hard" as they used to be that plays pretty much all of the alternative product out there except for the "pop" sounding stuff. I think the people that said they have an identity crisis in the format are spot on. If the market has an Active Rock that is willing to play the rock sounding Alternative stuff, and a strong pop station that is willing to adventure into a little of the Pop-Punk stuff, then where does that leave Alternative as a format?

I was in High School in the mid 90s when Alt was popular, and we had a great Alt station back then, IMO (the one that later flipped to Active Rock and is slowly landing somewhere in the middle today). What made it great is that it was DIFFERENT than anything else you would hear. I discovered a lot of music on that station, thanks mostly to the stations in other markets that could take risks and find the good, new, music that nobody was playing. Even the older music they played was music that I hadn't heard elsewhere. But, back in the 90's, radio was the dominant way people discovered new music, so it was easy to carve out a "niche" and play music that was already proven successful in other markets and taking the occasional "risk". That is no longer the case, and the market for younger listeners has shrunk drastically. So, could it be that there just isn't a place for a station like KROQ today? Could radio appeal, once again, to those wanting to discover new music at a large enough scale to get the ears required to make it financially viable? Do those smaller "risk taking" but not super profitable stations still even exist (stations like WOXY, Lazer 105.9, Rev 105, etc) to really "test" the music?

As for me, I'm a minority today in that I still like to discover new music, but my time to listen to music is limited, so I don't rely on radio to show me that music (that, and my tastes are so varied that radio no longer appeals to me, back in the 90's my local Alt Rocker introduced me to EDM and that now represents a significant amount of the new music I am finding, but would never be a viable radio format in the states because the music is so diverse that even dance music fans would never agree on what a dance station should sound like). Radio, for me, is either for spoken word programming or background noise. There are definitely still some great (again IMO) Alternative and Rock tracks, but it's quicker for me to discover them through streaming so I don't have to sit through all the old stuff I've heard 1000 times.

 

[hotpatrick2004]

Then why are you commenting on a discussion on Alternative radio if you think it's that inherently flawed?

There is nothing wrong with a variety of sounds being on a format. Hell, the concept of CHR is that it's a blend of all kinds of genres (even though it fell away from that a bit in the 2010s).

Really, the core sound of Alternative has been indie rock - with a flanking genre or two that hangs around with it for a few years. The most consistent of these genres has been pop-punk, which has been a fixture with some ebbs and flows since Green Day broke out in 1994 (though other versions of punk, such as punk rock and post-punk, have also had their moments). Indie rock has had its transformations and iterations, but if you go from the early 1980's to today, you'll see indie rock bands as the centerpiece of the format. I feel like as long as indie rock continues to hang around Alternative will always have an identity.

I feel like Audacy trying to cut indie rock out is basically cutting Alternative off from its core identity and that's why their stations, including KROQ, are in crisis and feel directionless, desperately searching for the latest trend to latch onto. Right now, pop-punk revival is a salve, but Audacy has been extremely selective with what's emerging from that scene (genre mainstay The Maine has finally achieved a breakout single, "Sticky", and Audacy has been ignoring it, for example), so despite pop-punk being a fixture of the Alternative format they aren't leaning into it as much as they probably should.

 

[hotpatrick2004]

I hear the song sticky on alt 98.7 which definitely gets better numbers than it's predecessor star 98.7

Does anyone remember back in the mid 90s when Z-100 in NYC tried a Chr/Alt hybrid? I liked it. The numbers weren't great. But they ran these type things where they would have someone recite song lyrics from say a particular band and song. Like a sentence or two and then say poetry by smashing pumpkins on Z-100 and play the song.
It was quite entertaining.

Thats back when you had a great alt station on the jersey shore and they labeled themselves as modern rock at the jersey shore. 106.3

Now it's country

 

[MarkW]

That approach didn't work at KFOG.

I'm confused by this statement of yours, BigA.

KFOG never was a hard rock-leaning alternative station, spent most of its life as a progressive rock or AAA station, and was barely willing to play such material on even a rare basis once it went full-on Alt shortly prior to its demise. Red Hot Chili Peppers and Linkin Park is about as close KFOG ever got to the harder rocking side of the alternative format.

The old 98.5 KOME - when Stern was holding down the fort in mornings - like so many alternative stations of that era - was willing to play some harder rocking artists. That was many, many moons ago. I do remember Live 105 going a little harder with its music following the sale of KOME, but that didn't last long and the station soon began to sound more "poppy" (perhaps in response to 104.9 flipping to alternative as Channel 104-9).

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

In other words: 'They don't play enough artists or titles that I prefer when I'm listening, therefore they're lazy and they suck?'
Have heard that same complaint on this board many times.
Time to sign up for ITunes and build your own playlist.

Or Spotify or any streaming radio app that's on your phone or dashboard in some cases.

 

[boombox4]

Or Spotify or any streaming radio app that's on your phone or dashboard in some cases.

OK, but how do we know he's not part of the core demo for that station?

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

OK, but how do we know he's not part of the core demo for that station?

True but I see this more as how much does Audacy have to allocate to their audio app in terms of the Alternative app vs. local stations airing Alternative music in terms of playlists.

 

[Radio-Bored-Op]

Would Enterc.... err, oddity, Audacity ever sell this station as a high priced stand alone to pay off the high debt load the company carries ?

 

[TheBigA]

Would Enterc.... err, oddity, Audacity ever sell this station as a high priced stand alone to pay off the high debt load the company carries ?

In a word: No.

 

[macattack]

In a word: No.

Unload the station period?

 

[TheBigA]

Unload the station period?

No. Won't happen. Maybe change or evolve the format, but they aren't selling an LA station.

They have lots of other bad stations that are more likely to be sold in weak sales markets.

 

[Sean Cocca]

Here's an update with some reader feedback, as well as some from Kevin and Bean themselves.

 

[p_herring]

I hear the song sticky on alt 98.7 which definitely gets better numbers than it's predecessor star 98.7

Does anyone remember back in the mid 90s when Z-100 in NYC tried a Chr/Alt hybrid? I liked it. The numbers weren't great. But they ran these type things where they would have someone recite song lyrics from say a particular band and song. Like a sentence or two and then say poetry by smashing pumpkins on Z-100 and play the song.
It was quite entertaining.

Thats back when you had a great alt station on the jersey shore and they labeled themselves as modern rock at the jersey shore. 106.3

Now it's country

I don't live in LA but have been a modern rock radio enthusiast for years and, yes, I grew up in Southwestern CT which is an extension of the NYC area and Z100 was essentially the de facto modern rock station for the city. There was a huge hole in the marketplace and, to be honest, NYC radio was it's most interesting in the mid-90's. Z100 was an alternative/pop hybrid which more or less mirrored MTV while Q104.3 was an Active Rock station which played, at the time, riskier acts (Tool, Rollins Band, Korn, etc) than what the proper Active Rock stations were playing (still stuck on Van Halen). We also had the DRE from Long Island and X107, a proper modern rocker, from suburban Westchester. The fun ended when WXRK flipped to the Alternative format and then, essentially, became an Alt-Active Rock hybrid with the most conservative playlist in the format due to wanting to cater to males from the Howard Stern mornings. It was frustrating as a listener to go to other cities and hear a slightly more eclectic playlist like BCN in Boston which was CBS/Infinity owned as well with a Howard Stern morning yet would still have acts like Garbage, Tori Amos and Cornershop in high rotation. On the flipside, Y100 in Philadelphia was more similar to Z100 in the mid-90's as they were pop leaning probably due to having both a Mainstream and Active Rock station in the mix. Ah...the 90's/early 00's.

Alt 92.3 here in the city (Audacy owned) practically mirrors KROQ nowadays and I'm always surprised at how light and mom-friendly the music is. It's to the point where if an oldie like "Sabotage" by Beastie Boys or "Come Out & Play" by The Offspring comes in it's almost jarring based on how abrasive music nearly 30 years old sounds compared to acts like Ashe, Girl In Red, Bleachers and the Audacy-loved Machine Gun Kelly. I suppose it makes sense for these stations to begin courting younger audiences but I also think a strategy that embraces mid 30's/early 40's people's tastes while also nudging them to check out new music they'd probably be interested in might also work.

 

[Least]

Said in other forums on here, Alt as a format is becoming fragmented. My observation is that modern Alt is more in line with the type of rhythmic sound that Alt was in the 80s. Now, we're coming off an era where Alt Rock was prominent. The thing I give KROQ is that it's trying to build on modern, and isn't heavily relying on 90s Alt (Alt Rock), many stations across the country said Alt and it was prominently the latter. Sink or swim, they are aiming at the present and future and not are claiming to do so while being heavy on the past. Doesn't mean they won't play older hits; just that when I stream it, I hear much current songs.

 

[radiojomo]

Audacy just flipped its alternative station (WLKK/W284AP) in Buffalo to country. Looks like Audacy may not be as patient with the format as some previously believed.

Alt Buffalo Flips To Country 107.7/104.7 The Wolf - RadioInsight

Audacy flipped Alternative “Alt 107.7/104.7” WLKK Wethersfield Township/W284AP Buffalo NY to Country “107.7 & 104.7 The Wolf” at 5pm today. Audacy today announced the immediate launch of 107.7FM and 104.7FM The Wolf (WLKK-FM), Buffalo’s new country. Previously known as Alternative Buffalo, the...

radioinsight.com

 

[101tm]

Audacy just flipped its alternative station (WLKK/W284AP) in Buffalo to country. Looks like Audacy may not be as patient with the format as some previously believed.

Alt Buffalo Flips To Country 107.7/104.7 The Wolf - RadioInsight

Audacy flipped Alternative “Alt 107.7/104.7” WLKK Wethersfield Township/W284AP Buffalo NY to Country “107.7 & 104.7 The Wolf” at 5pm today. Audacy today announced the immediate launch of 107.7FM and 104.7FM The Wolf (WLKK-FM), Buffalo’s new country. Previously known as Alternative Buffalo, the...

radioinsight.com

And this station recently rebranded as “Alt.” Maybe Field/Audacy are seeing that no matter how hard they try they can’t make something work because they like it. I don’t see them giving up on KROQ or WNYL but something is going to have to give in markets like Dallas and Detroit.

 

[TheBigA]

And this station recently rebranded as “Alt.” Maybe Field/Audacy are seeing that no matter how hard they try they can’t make something work because they like it.

Maybe "rebranded," but this station has been alternative since 2013. There seems to be some mythology that CEOs program the radio stations their companies own based on personal taste. That's not really the case. Every decision is based on money. And there are a lot of people involved.

 

[Least]

And this station recently rebranded as “Alt.” Maybe Field/Audacy are seeing that no matter how hard they try they can’t make something work because they like it. I don’t see them giving up on KROQ or WNYL but something is going to have to give in markets like Dallas and Detroit.

They gave Alt a few years to grow. I personally can't wait until the interest in Country goes down, but as a format it currently draws in more than Alternative does. With Buffalo, the station drew a 1.0 in May (Radioinsight.com), and it wasn't performing high before, if I'm correct. So makes sense that if they can make more on Country, that's the way to go. With KROQ, what hole exists in LA that they can fill? I think that's the greater question. I'm personally an alternative listener, but there are major markets with no Alternative stations. Just speaking from here in Boston, we haven't had a commercial alternative station in a couple years. We have internet stations and college stations, but when (then) Entercom flipped our version of Amp, they went with a Jack-like station. In summary, I agree that they aren't all in on alternative.