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FLAGPOLE JANUARY 20, 1999
1. THE NAIVE QUERY
"Nirvana’s music... reflects a time, my time. And my time
has its own history, its own leaders, its own rules. It's not
merely that I’d rather hear good music on the radio than bad
— it's that I think people liking good music is indicative of
better things.... Nirvana's being on the radio means my own
values are winning: I'm no longer in the opposition. "
— Gina Arnold, Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana
I don't know who Gina Arnold is, but I'm embarrassed to admit
I may have felt the way she did for a fleeting moment. I am dri
ving toward the offices of Southern Broadcasting Companies, Inc.,
the parent firm of WPUP Rock 103.7 in Oconee County; the station
is broadcasting the oscillated opening guitar notes of "Come As
You Are," and I'm thinking back to 1991 when radio was forced to
pick up Nirvana, when it seemed like the oppressive conservatism
of classic rock radio and Rolling Stone and Reagan/Bush and Casey
Kasem was about to be turned over for good.
It never really did turn over. A large chunk of the American
economy is based, in part, on a formula that involves the co-opta
tion of the rebellious fringe, the ironing out of edges, and the
declaration of a red tag sale. So after 1991, America got Stone
Temple Pilots and Bill Clinton. Kurt Cobain blew his brains out and
the industry went about its business more or less as usual.
As I slow down and turn onto Vend Drive, passing a couple of
squat office park-style complexes. WPUP cues up Sammy Hagar's
1984 hair metal hit, "I Can't Drive 55." I pull up into the radio
station parking lot and cut the motor.
The dominant story of Athens. Ga., for the last 20 years is
more or less a story about rock and roll music, the kind that, like
Cobain's, challenged a stultifying status quo. It's still happening
here, maybe now more than ever. In New York and Germany and
Japan and all over the Internet, the mainstream press is heaping
praise on cunent Athens rock and roll artists tike Vic Chesnutt,
Neutral Milk Hotel and Macha. WPUP is the Athens area's only
commercial rock and roll station, and they don't put any of it in
rotation — despite the fact that the majority of Athens music, no
matter how inventive, is. for lack of a better term, classic rock,
with verses and choruses, guitars basses and drums. I know there's
probably an obvious one-word answer as to why the station
doesn't bother, I tell myself in the parking lot. but I figure III
play ignorant and ask anyway.
The basso voice that says ROCK ROCK
ROCK 103.7 - THE ROCK STATION belongs to
Jeff Bell, a resident of Milwaukee, Wis. Bell
also says ROCK ROCK ROCK for a dozen or so
other stations around the country. Excerpts
from a phone interview:
How did you get started in radio?
When I graduated nom high school my
parents moved me to Fuckville, Arkansas.
There was no work of any kind. I was helping
out this appliance repairman when I found
an ad looking for DJs at a country station,
KHAM in Horseshoe Bend. I've been all
around since then. In Chicago, i was the
fucking love songs guy at night. We used to
call me Johnny the Love Wad.
Did it sap you of your idealism?
I’m basically a frustrated musician who
couldn't find work. If I'd have had my way I'd
have been Bon Jovi. And tragically, if I would
have made it, I would have been Bon Jovi. I
had the hau and I had the Spandex, but it
didn't work out.
Why are all radio stations the same?
It's a money game now. There used to be idealism. But now
there's a formula. If it works in Poughkeepsie they'll try it in
Boneville and they'll try it in Athens.
3. THE BIRTH & REBIRTH OF THE ROCK STATION
Benji Kurtz is 22, but he has nine years of professional radio
experience. At age 13, he talked himself into a part-time job
reading noon news for an Athens AM station. Now he oversees
programming for three Southern Broadcasting stations: Rock
103.7, Magic 102.1 and News Radio 960 WRFC AM.
He's also program director of the rock station. As program
director, he chooses all of the music (with the help of an
assistant), and uses a computer program to help lock in
the sequencing of songs. The disc jockeys at WPUP,
like many DJs around the nation, have almost
nothing to do with the music.
Southern Broadcasting, Kurtz says, bought
WPUP in March 1997. Before the purchase, the sta
tion had been known as "The Bulldog." The
Bulldog was an "alternative rock" station whose
playlists, though rather tame, did ensure one song
by a local artist each hour. With the Southern
acquisition, WPUP became one of 13 stations in
the relatively small chain and moved to a classic
rock format. Local music is now a thing of the
past, with the exception of a three-
hour Sunday
show called
"Local
Noise."
Kurtz says
the decision to
go to the classic rock format paid off
at first. "The people who control advertising dollars in
this county are pretty much white-collar, well-to-do
men, probably above 30," he says. "It was assumed that
they'd buy ads on a station that played stuff they knew." »
When WPUP first made the switch, Kurtz says, "revenae
skyrocketed, ratings went through the roof. The first
Arbitron rating for that spring, we went to No. 1 in*every
male demographic." *
Kurtz left the station in August to finish college When he
returned, the station was lagging in ratings agaih. So Kurtz
juggled the formula: in September 1998, it was announced that
WPUP would no longer play "classic rock," but "active rock."
*
4. DEFINING ACTIVE ROCK: FOUR PERSPECTIVES
Benji Kurtz: "Active rock targets [male listeners] from age 18 to
49. It's got that gold classic rock stuff in there but also new
rock.... Now, our mix is about 80 percent "90s rock, and 20 per
cent pre-1990."
Matt Srown, active rock editor, Gavin: "To be honest, active rock
is another name for A0R, which is album-oriented rock. I'm sure
people will probably be tike, Ho, dude,' but that's what it really is
— you know what I'm saying?"
Josef Goebbels: "Real broadcasting is true propaganda.
Propaganda means fighting on all battlefields of the spirit, gener
ating, multiplying, destroying, exterminating, building and
undoing. *
Bill Jacobs, radio consultant Jacobs Media: "What we realized
was we could play the grunge with the classic rock — it was kind
of tike mixing chocolate with your peanut butter."
5. THE BLUEPRINT >
Benji Kurtz is a pleasant, candid fellow. As we talk in his
office, he pauses when we hear the station play the cur
rent and fantastically limp cover of "Another Brick in
the Wall" (from the soundtrack to The Faculty). This
is a sghg that personally I don't like, but The
Faaulty is really big with the younger demo," he
fays. "Plus, the song's on the trailer and the TV
\ /ad, so it's got to be on the radio." We listen for
" another moment. "Far be it for me to say
whether it's good or bad," he says. "It's up to
me to find out what has mass appeal."
Kurtz’ process of deciding what to
play leaves no room for adding a local
band like Macha. The members of
Macha live a bike ride away from
WPUP, they're featured in a half-
dozen glossy national magazines
at present, and they're signed to
a pretty big indie label. Jetset.
But for WPUP, they might as well
be from, well, Indonesia. Jetset
probably doesn't spend much
time pitching Macha to the major
rock stations around the country,
and even if the label did, Macha's
songs — tike Pink Floyd's — often
require long attention spans to
make optimum sense. Kurtz reads the
trade magazines to find out what every
body else in the country is doing, then
listens to the top songs around the
country to see if they fit with the sta
tion's mission. He also uses a consul
tant, Jacobs Media in suburban Detroit,
which conducts market research — like
testing 8-10 second “hooks" to random big-market listeners over
the phone — to determine what will work. And then there are the
request tines, Kurtz says, "but the phones will only ring for what
they've already heard."
The formula Kurtz employs works, but it has also seriously
constricted the boundaries of what gets played. Major labels with
cash to burn can force their way on the air at some stations with
a new trend in legal payola called "pay for
play": Last April, according to Time
Magazine, Flip/Interscope paid $5,000 to
KUF0 in Portland in exchange for 50 plays of
a Limp Bizkit single. Under current law, such
arrangements are perfectly legal so long as
listeners know who's paying (songs must be
followed with a tag tine, tike "this song was
brought to you by Interscope Records").
Kurtz doesn't mention pay for play, but
he says there are ways a record can be helped
along at WPUP. "If there are two equal songs
and I can only play one. but with one I can
get 25 free albums to give away on the air.
I'm gonna go with that one over one with no
promotion," Kurtz says. "As much of an art
form as it is to program a station, you also
want to take care of your listeners."
One way rock and roll stations take care
of listeners is by carefully monitoring the
level of black blood in their programming
mix. Bill Jacobs of Jacobs Media says most
active rock stations didn't add The Beastie
Boys' recent single "Intergalactic": even
though the Beasties are one of the country's
biggest white "alternative" acts.
"Intergalactic' was a straight-up rap song.
WPUP didn't play it. "It was just the judg
ment that the Beastie Boys were a tittle too
over the edge," Kurtz says. With the growing
popularity of rap among young white males over the last decade,
"active rock" stations — which try to hold on to the teenage and
over-30 demographic sirrnn ’neously — will probably face tough
choices in maintaining a healthy balance, since older white males
would rather hear Winger than Wu-Tang. Kurtz is testing the
waters by adding "rap-based rock," tike the single "All I Want," by
a band called Dial 7 that's cunent getting WPUP airplay. "It's hard
rock, but there's rap in it," Kurtz explains helpfully. Still he says,
he's got to be careful. As consultant Bill Jacobs says, "If you're
just Mo. 1 among 18 to 24-year-olds in your market, you're still
gonna go broke."
2. INTERLUDE:
THE GUY WHO SAYS
"ROCK ROCK ROCK/'
HOW ROCK RADIO WORKS