Is There Hope?

We have a promising “new’ radio station in Philadelphia – 104.5, which now has a modern rock/alternative format, finally filling the vacuum that Y-100 created when it switched formats 2+ years ago. I’m excited about this, but in the long run, I know it will fail. How? Let me count the ways.

First, and most importantly, the station is part of Clear Channel, the mega-company that has largely been responsible for the decline of terrestrial radio. They bought up tons of radio stations nationwide in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and basically tried to create vanilla formats that they hoped everyone would listen to. Creativity was for all intensive purposes thrown out the window. We began hearing the same few bands playing the same few songs. Clear Channel ended up hurting itself, as it invested so much money in doing this, that when the backlash happened, the stations were practically worthless. (not to mention the whole Howard Stern debacle). They tried selling a bunch off, and I think they still are.

Another reason this won’t last in Philly is because any radio station that tries something new and makes a niche for themselves, ends up refusing to get creative. Case and point – we had an 80’s station here a few years ago, and it was cool hearing those songs again. However, this station had a very narrow playlist that consisted only of top 10 hits. People got bored with the music. I e-mailed the program director, foreshadowing this, and offering suggestions like having “Freestyle-Fridays,” or “80’s rap night,” or even trying to rediscover forgotten 80’s classics. I received an e-mail back from the program director thanking me for my input, but assuring me that they knew what they were doing … it didn’t take long for them to change formats. I fear the same issue will happen to 104.5 – I’ve already noticed that they repeat songs far too often.

104.5 also seems to be playing far too much emo-music (look it up), relying on bands like AFI, Fallout Boy, My Chemical Romance, and Taking Back Sunday, Breaking Benjamin, and Jimmy Eat World … the sound of these bands is far too overproduced and quite frankly, far to similar to each other. My hope is that they’ll discover other sounds and rely less on emo … and yes, I’ve e-mailed them about this as well.

At least we have modern rock in Philly again. I should stop complaining and enjoy it … while it lasts.