I'd like to ask if there's anyone out there interested in applying for one
of these, when they become available. Just wondering what the possibilities
are for forming a network of these stations that would feature nothing but
the good stuff. "This is the P2 Radio Network."
Jim, smilin'
>From today's NYTimes:
February 9, 1999
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
Fracturing the Formula: A Hope for the Offbeat on Small FM
By JON PARELES
Commercial radio stations weren't happy when the Federal
Communications Commission
announced recently that it might allow low-power radio stations
-- up to 1,000 watts, reaching
an area up to 18 miles in diameter -- to share the FM band. The
final decision will be made this
summer or fall, and if the proposed rules are approved, the
corporate radio chains of generic Lite
FM's and Q92's and Hit 105's will share the dial with very local
stations dispensing anything from
avant-rock to city council meetings. The broadcasters warn that
more stations sharing the band
could lead to more interference. But what they would interfere
with most is the numbing predictability
of professional radio.
The great divide comes at 92 on the FM dial, with noncommercial
public and college radio stations
below 92 and the big-time commercial outlets above. Commercial
radio has never seemed more
organized and less invigorating. Down below 92, there are still
strange sounds and surprises, mostly
thanks to college students who see radio as a calling rather than
a routine. But drive across the
United States punching the "seek" button on the car radio, and
you'll hear the same hits, the same
selected oldies, even the same slogans: "More music, less talk"
or "10 in a row."
Since 1996, when the Federal Communications Commission removed
limits on the number of
stations a single corporation could own, the regimentation has
increased. Broadcasting chains spend
huge sums to buy new stations, incurring hefty debts, then press
program directors to deliver ratings
and advertising dollars immediately, before the next quarterly
reckoning. (Squeezing more stations
onto the band could also lower the scarcity, and thus the value,
of major broadcasters' licenses the
next time they're sold.)
There's a strong incentive to go for the trite and true, to aim
for a niche of the market -- like
18-to-25-year-old men -- and program only sure-fire material to
reach them. The idea is not to play
something they might be thrilled to discover; it's to play what
they won't dislike, so they won't tune
out.
Nearly without exception, commercial radio stations are formatted
radio stations, aiming to dispense
a consistent sound day and night. They may play classical music,
rhythm-and-blues, jazz or so-called
alternative rock, but they play it nonstop. Although there are
commercial stations offering anything
from Arabic programming to gospel, the greatest number -- more
than 1500 in each category -- play
rock, country or "adult contemporary" (also known as "lite")
music.
They announce what they're selling -- "Young country!" "No rap,
no metal!" "All the hits!" -- and
they hire consultants and commission research to make sure
listeners get it. Gut reactions to music
from disk jockeys have been all but replaced by chart analyses
and surveys.
There's some business logic behind such decisions. Most people
don't want to pay attention to the
radio; they want a station to be dependable. The block
programming used by some public and
collage stations -- four hours of classical music, say, followed
by a political discussion, followed by
four hours of jazz -- does reach people who are willing to think
about the schedule. But it baffles
casual listeners who have grown used to thinking of call letters
as brand names, who expect the Top
40 on WHTZ (Z-100, at 100.3 in New York City) and Latin pop on
WSKQ (La Mega, at 97.9).
Commercial stations pound home their identities with their
endlessly repeated slogans, partly in the
hope that when a ratings representative calls a listener, the
listener will parrot the slogan. The higher
the rating, the more advertising revenue comes in.
On commercial radio, the days of the trusted disk jockey -- the
Symphony Sid or Wolfman Jack,
the one whose enthusiasm made listeners pay attention to
something they hadn't heard before -- are
just about over. New York City has Vin Scelsa, still chasing down
smart singer-songwriters in his
format-free refuge on WNEW (102.7); there are also the disk
jockeys, like Stretch Armstrong and
D.J. Enuff, who take over the turntables for hip-hop mix shows on
weekend nights on Hot 97
WQHT (97.1). Most current disk jockeys don't expect to choose
music; their job is to disguise the
mechanical nature of the format. As they play a preordained list
of hits, they try to add some
personality to the 100th spin this week of a song in heavy
rotation.
To choose those songs, focus groups sit in rooms or listeners
answer phone polls to rate current hits
and potential new ones. Usually they don't hear the whole song;
they're responding to the 10-second
"call-out hook" that recording companies have conveniently begun
adding to promotional singles. No
one has to take a chance on making an esthetic decision; the
numbers do it for them. And while
research can gauge people's reaction to the familiar, it won't
ever tell a programmer to take a
chance.
The human attention span being what it is, radio stations have to
provide a certain amount of variety
and a certain amount of novelty. And since formats allow only a
few songs to reach the airwaves,
those songs that do get played are soon played to death. That's
O.K.: when research reveals that
one song is burned out, there are always more.
In their symbiotic relationship, recording companies and radio
stations reinforce each others' search
for one-hit wonders, each new song working minute variations on
the formula for last week's hit.
Formats are about shutting out possibilities; listen to any
commercial station long enough and music
starts to seem constricted and stale. Perhaps it's a law of
nature that niches keep growing narrower.
And then here come those upstart low-power stations, no longer
staying in their place on the bottom
end of the FM band but scattered across it like shanties among
the skyscrapers. The necessary
investment is modest: hundreds of dollars (or a few thousand)
rather than millions. And thus the need
to draw a mass listenership disappears; a radio station could be
a hobby or a subscription business
or a public service.
The FM band in New York City is so crowded that low-power
stations may not get much of a
chance here, but imagine the possibilities of neighborhood radio
from all the city's ethnic and cultural
clusters. There could be a record-collectors' station playing
rarities all day long; talk radio in Haitian
Creole or Korean; a classical-guitar station and one broadcasting
Chinese operas; a station devoted
to free improvisation or an open-mike station for
singer-songwriters and comedians, 24 hours a day.
Big broadcasters, with some justification, see their exclusive
territory turning into something like
cable television, which has caused network television ratings to
slide. It's not that any single cable
channel has drawn the mass television audience away; it's that
all the possibilities splinter an audience
that once had less than a dozen choices. Radio stations are
already facing the beginnings of new
competition from Internet broadcasters, which range from
out-of-town radio stations to Internet
services that allow people to choose their own formats.
But more people have radios than Internet hookups. With low-power
stations on the FM band,
people casually twirling a knob might happen onto some 20-watt
outlet playing vintage
rhythm-and-blues tunes and forget about the pop Top 40; they
might be able to find traffic and
weather information that's not riddled with commercials. They
might be seduced by a Brazilian pop
song; they might tune in a ranting conspiracy theorist instead of
syndicated news. It would be a
triumph of public access -- closer, at best, to the Internet,
with all its wacky and diverse and
unfiltered content, than to the limited zone of public-access
cable.
Simply allowing low-power stations to broadcast is the easy part
of the choice for the Federal
Communications Commission. The hard part will be making sure that
low-power stations don't turn
into smaller copies of their high-powered neighbors.
When licenses become available, organized broadcast interests
will probably try to snap up as many
as possible, both to provide programming and to shut out the
competition. Having seen the results of
concentration of ownership of big radio stations since 1996, the
commission would do well to find
ways to keep low-power station licenses out of corporate hands
and out of the mass-audience
sweepstakes.
Instead, it should keep low-power stations as down-home and
diverse as possible, close to the
grass roots. That might mean assigning the frequencies by
examining programming ideas rather than
simply auctioning off licenses; it might also mean leasing the
frequencies for a few years and making
the leases nonrenewable.
The commission could stipulate that license owners be local
residents, or set a ceiling on the revenue
a low-power station can bring in. It might require low-power
stations to create their own programs
instead of relaying others'; a similar requirement, after all,
spurred the development of FM radio in
the 1960's. The commission could also make competing applicants
share a low-power frequency,
since none would have to raise a huge financial stake.
And instead of seeing low-power stations as a threat, big
broadcasters could learn to treat them the
way major recording companies treat independent labels. As the
major labels have been
consolidated into ever larger corporate monoliths -- lately
through the merger of Polygram and
Universal -- the indies have become laboratories for new ideas,
scouts for new talent and outlets for
specialized material that's not profitable for bigger companies.
If the big broadcasters are really
giving the people what they want, they have nothing to fear. And
if they're not -- well, let a thousand
transmitters boom.
