Z100 as an Alternative Station

[NewsStud]

I remember hearing Crash Test Dummies followed by Janet Jackson’s “Again,” for example. One of my points is that Z100 (and KC-101, for that matter) was an outlier. I don’t remember many other stations in 1993-1994 that were Alternative-leaning CHRs. I’m also wondering how successful Z100 was in that era.

I remember things like Stone Tempe Pilots "Plush" followed by White Town's "Your Woman, " into Sophie B Hawkins "As I Lay Me Down" followed by Ini Kamoze's "Here Comes The Hot Stepper" and then Tracy Bonham's "Mother Mother" into "Informer" by Snow. There was also the Denis Leary novelty song, "I'm an A$$hole!" which I think was from his MTV Unplugged appearance. I remember Z100 playing a number of "unplugged" cuts subbing for the regular single of their rotation songs.

And the imaging was very 1990's Alternative ("Tune in your head!"). It matched many of their spots running for things like Lugz Boots, Jon Stewart's MTV talk show, etc. which all the same feeling.

 

[TheBigA]

Denis Leary novelty song, "I'm an A$$hole!" which I think was from his MTV Unplugged appearance. I remember Z100 playing a number of "unplugged" cuts subbing for the regular single of their rotation songs.

Good point and I think we can't minimize the influence that MTV had on music and on radio at that time. The Unplugged thing was an example, but there were many other things. It was huge in every way. Artists stepped up their game in making videos in order to get on MTV, and radio people used a lot of techniques that they saw on MTV. It was the TikTok of that era.

 

[ScottBurns]

I remember things like Stone Tempe Pilots "Plush" followed by White Town's "Your Woman, " into Sophie B Hawkins "As I Lay Me Down" followed by Ini Kamoze's "Here Comes The Hot Stepper" and then Tracy Bonham's "Mother Mother" into "Informer" by Snow. There was also the Denis Leary novelty song, "I'm an A$$hole!" which I think was from his MTV Unplugged appearance. I remember Z100 playing a number of "unplugged" cuts subbing for the regular single of their rotation songs.

And the imaging was very 1990's Alternative ("Tune in your head!"). It matched many of their spots running for things like Lugz Boots, Jon Stewart's MTV talk show, etc. which all the same feeling.

That was CHR as I loved it. A big variety and you didn’t know what was coming next! Those days are forever gone.

 

[TheBigA]

That was CHR as I loved it. A big variety and you didn’t know what was coming next! Those days are forever gone.

Maybe. The variety was a function of the music and the label promotion staffs who took the songs to radio stations for airplay.

If you go to the R&R link I posted earlier and scan all of those playlists, you'll see a lot of the same songs and artists getting airplay on just about every one of the stations. I'd see one and think, well maybe this is unique to this market, and then I'd scan a little further and there's the same song on a different station. Radio stations had a lot to pick from, and there were a lot more record labels 30 years ago. Now there are really only 3 major record labels. You wonder where the variety went? Maybe it's because there are fewer record labels.

 

[NewsStud]

As I said, K-Rock went full blown alternative in 1996. But the main attraction at K-Rock was Howard Stern. The genre peaked in 1994, the year Kurt Cobain died. Around that time, critics were saying "Alterative doesn't seem so alternative anymore." A few years later, the Lollapalooza festival shut down because they couldn't attract big crowds anymore. So Z100 was simply following the trend, and the trend was over by 96.

Not to belabor this further, but: By late 1997, the record labels were pumping out more mainstream stuff again. Big acts like Backstreet Boys and Brittney Spears would come soon after

 

[macattack]

Alternative always had it's hits that would crossover. Coldplay, Blink 182, Finger Eleven, Linkin Park, The Killers, All-American Rejects, Panic! At The Disco, Neon Trees, Imagine Dragons, Kings Of Leon, Twenty One Pilots, Billie Eilish, Foster The People, Paramore, The Lumineers, Lorde, are among some of the artists that got their start on Alternative but crossed over to CHR. But they stopped in the last decade, moreso the last few years. CHR really hit a low point around 2018. Both formats are struggling and not sharing as many artists. A lot of big name artists are on the Alternative chart but are not getting airplay on CHR right now. A pretty big Alternative hit, Sweater Weather by The Neighbourhood is getting played on some CHR stations because of it's popularity on TikTok. It's not a new song. Both CHR and Alternative are not in great shape right now. You can thank changing habits and what the labels are pushing. Not very many programmers are allowed to go find their own hits. They have to stick with corporate. Sometimes programmers that find their own hits have success with them. This is usually in small markets.

Beach Weather's "Sex, Drugs. Etc." and Rosa Linn's "SNAP" are Alternative's two primary offerings to CHR right now, and both are arguably being underplayed on the format. There is also "World's Smallest Violin" by AJR which is being worked exclusively to pop.

CHR is hurting and usually when that happens they start raiding Alternative for quick fixes. That surprisingly hasn't happened yet despite Alternative currently running some promising or even popular songs like "This is Why" by Paramore, "Run Away To Mars" by TALK, and "Sleepwalking" by All Time Low. I realize that this is also the fault of the record labels, but Concord did give a sincere effort to push "Mary On A Cross" by Ghost to pop at the peak of its popularity and CHR for the most part refused to budge outside of independent CHRs that choose their own playlists.

 

[JeremyAndrews]

iHeart works on a corporate playlist for the most part. They're not going to do anything out of the ordinary except in places where the PDs might have a little more ability to bend the rules. I noticed 103.5 KISS FM in Chicago has been occasionally playing the Beach Weather track and they jumped on World's Smallest Violin almost immediately it seemed. It's also a slightly older song. I heard it on there a few times maybe in August.

Alpha is in a similar situation. The PDs seem to have some power, but have to keep to a corporate playlist as far as I can tell. Whenever I listen to their Hot AC stations, some of which seem to lean CHR and repeat like a CHR. They all seem to play the same songs. I'm in range of two of them, and have streamed a few. When one station added "We Don't Talk About Bruno" the rest of them started playing it.

Others I don't believe want to take chances. It's more of a risk.

The late Duke Wright's Midwest Communications programs their flagship CHR very different. It's very adult leaning usually (It always leaned heavy on rock) They play songs by known artists. They've been known to add Canadian Content. Their sister stations all have different variations depending on where they are. WZOX in Kalamazoo leaned Alternative for awhile. Now it seems Modern AC. WIFC in Wausau is Mainstream CHR, but they will break smaller name artists and play them. Sometimes they'll have concerts with them. They have a Wisconsin-based band The Astronomers that they play a lot.

All of them have something in common and that is more golds than before. I hear songs from the 90s and Early 2000s. A few years ago that would be like playing songs from the 80s.

I started getting an impression that some of these stations are not trying to reach the younger end of the 18-34 demo as much anymore. If they are it's the upper end of 25-34. Millennials that are growing out of pop but still might want to know what's new, might like a DJ, might have grown up with the station.

 

[TheBigA]

iHeart works on a corporate playlist for the most part. They're not going to do anything out of the ordinary except in places where the PDs might have a little more ability to bend the rules.

When you study the actual playlists as they're posted on Mediabase, there's more variety than one might see at the website or a "last played" site. Z100 is still playing their heavies less frequently than other CHRs. You see the songs ranked in order of most spins. I see several stations playing "Beach Weather," including KISS in Dallas. It's actually higher in their playlist than Chicago. There are no centralized playlists at any of these reporting stations. The thing the corporate PDs do is make recommendations for adds, as far as music testing. Typically the testing for iHeart is done at the corporate level, so they have that information and share it with the stations. There's usually a company conference call once a week where the MDs share experiences with songs. Then they look at the trades and see what everyone else is doing. In today's world, no one in radio is living in an isolation chamber.

 

[JeremyAndrews]

The last line is a big issue. Just seeing what everybody else is doing. Nothing unique anymore. Less room for new songs to find footing somewhere. A lot of hits kind of began in smaller markets without any help from the charts.

 

[TheBigA]

The last line is a big issue. Just seeing what everybody else is doing. Nothing unique anymore. Less room for new songs to find footing somewhere. A lot of hits kind of began in smaller markets without any help from the charts.

That was true before the internet. The music industry now works on a national platform. That's just a fact. That wasn't the case 30 years ago. If a PD in a small market at an indie station plays the absolute crap out of an unknown new song, nobody will know unless they also live in that small town. If that same unknown song gets played on Sirius or pushed into various algorithms in Spotify or YouTube, it will become viral. If you can't deliver a big number to a song, you aren't moving the meters. Radio needs to be able to make music go viral if it wants to have impact, and unfortunately it can't be done in smaller markets unless that PD finds a way to convince other PDs to join him. A 14 year old girl making a home video and posting it on TikTok can have more impact that the PD of a small market radio station.

Having said all that, there are still PDs at small stations who take chances on new songs and new artists every day. I've posted some of those stories on this message board to prove its still done. Yes there are a lot of PDs who are like pack journalists in The Boys On The Bus who just follow the trends. There have been people like that in radio for years. It's not new. But there are also Don Quixotes who want to move the meters from their small platforms. It's just a lot more difficult now.

 

[JeremyAndrews]

That's true.

 

[JoeyBagODonuts]

I remember when they dropped the Alternative music and went back to more Pop-CHR, Elvis and Elliot basically apologized for the music they had previously been playing and were so happy to have this type of music back.

 

[dcowboy7]

^^
Rightfully so.

 

[MVB13]

I remember when they dropped the Alternative music and went back to more Pop-CHR, Elvis and Elliot basically apologized for the music they had previously been playing and were so happy to have this type of music back.

I was about 5 or 6 at this time. I used to listen to WYNY when I was younger. I just started listening to Pop music at this time. I wondered the other day why I liked Dave Matthew's Band, the Cranberries, Alanis Morissette, and Seal at that age this may explain why lol. Z100 was leaning Alternative.

 

[DOB]

Looking back you can see that CHR was clueless and thus the Country music of the time was horrid, yet more fun than the mess on chr.

Most of the music that was popular wasn't being played. That rhythmic music needed to mainstream it's sound a bit so that these programmers felt more comfortable getting those songs on their playlists.

What memories though. I tried as a teen as an intern back then... what a lesson learned.... his ego was more important than the radio station adopting a winning formula.

It was funny when the girls loved the 80s at the hot ac so much more than the non hits that CHR was trying to force feed them.
1997 was when chr started to figure it out somewhat. Still, it took 6 months to add a one listen hit. Then again a couple years ago it took chr 18 months to get Heatwaves, a one listen hit if ever there was one.

 

[TheBigA]

Most of the music that was popular wasn't being played. That rhythmic music needed to mainstream it's sound a bit so that these programmers felt more comfortable getting those songs on their playlists.

I think you should look at my link again and look first of all at the CHR chart on the last page of R&R. At the time, Rhythmic CHR became its own thing and got its own chart, driven by Mary J Blige, TLC, Dr. Dre, and others. Earlier, those same artists were in the CHR chart. This is my link to the 1995 chart:

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Archive-RandR/1990s/1995/RR-1995-05-05.pdf

But I disagree with the view that "the music that was popular wasn't being played." By that time, music sales was being tracked by bar-coding, so we had actual sales data. That is how we knew for a fact that Garth Brooks was selling as much as he was. Garth was actually outselling a lot of pop acts. Same thing with certain alternative acts. So that information shifted some thinking on what radio should play, especially once we had real data about what was selling.

 

[TheBigA]

The last line is a big issue. Just seeing what everybody else is doing. Nothing unique anymore. Less room for new songs to find footing somewhere. A lot of hits kind of began in smaller markets without any help from the charts.

I mentioned earlier that I occasionally post articles from trade sites that report on stations that add new songs before they're released. Here's an article that highlights three stations, including two owned by iHeart, that are playing a new single before anyone else.

Outliers: More Stations Test Cole Swindell’s ‘How Is She.’

Cole Swindell’s “How Is She” has ranked at or near the top of Country Insider’s Outliers chart for weeks, but its average spins per station drop from 43 to 12

www.countryinsider.com

 

[CTListener]

I mentioned earlier that I occasionally post articles from trade sites that report on stations that add new songs before they're released. Here's an article that highlights three stations, including two owned by iHeart, that are playing a new single before anyone else.

Outliers: More Stations Test Cole Swindell’s ‘How Is She.’

Cole Swindell’s “How Is She” has ranked at or near the top of Country Insider’s Outliers chart for weeks, but its average spins per station drop from 43 to 12

www.countryinsider.com

I think just about everyone at radio is ready to move on from "She Had Me at Heads Carolina," which is still getting a lot of spins as a recurrent. I certainly was, as a listener. The remix featuring Jo Dee Messina, even though radio never played it much, unnecessarily delayed the follow-up single, IMO.

 

[TheBigA]

I think just about everyone at radio is ready to move on from "She Had Me at Heads Carolina," which is still getting a lot of spins as a recurrent. I certainly was, as a listener. The remix featuring Jo Dee Messina, even though radio never played it much, unnecessarily delayed the follow-up single, IMO.

This gets back to something we see all the time in streaming charts. That just as a small group of people are getting tired of a song, the vast majority are discovering it, and they want to hear it over and over again. So radio gets pelted with people wanting to hear a song that's already peaked, and it's getting lots of on-demand spins on Spotify and Apple, so it's hard to ignore. What should radio do? Ignore the continued demand for a big hit in order to move on to the next single? Meanwhile some complain about repetition on the radio. So this is where we are now. The repetition isn't coming from people in radio. It's coming from the streaming charts. It also explains why the charts have slowed down, because they have to catch up with people who are just discovering these songs.

 

[JeremyAndrews]

This is somewhat unrelated, but I don’t know if anybody ever listens to Air1. But their current format basically matches the Christian Chart on Apple Music. Even though K-LOVE is the bigger network, and CCM is the more popular format, the vast majority of the streaming chart is the music you would hear on Air1. I just noticed that when I was looking at the streaming charts on Apple Music several months back.

This kind of showcases the difference between what people are streaming and what they are listening to on the radio. I think they’re trying to reach both in this case.