No Alternative

10/4/1996

The beautiful girl who everyone wanted to dance with at the beginning of the prom has aged perceptibly under the harsh glare of the spotlights.  She finds herself sitting alone wearing the once-fashionable, but now obsolete, Doc Martens.  The style-setting glass slippers that fit so perfectly at the beginning of the dance are now dirty, passé and cutting into her feet, growing tighter with each minute that ticks off the clock towards midnight.

Is the carriage about the turn into a pumpkin, the horses into mice? Is the Alternative format, the belle of the ball in the 90s, about to be relegated once again to sitting in the singles line, dancing mainly with the small but loyal group who likes her because she wears funky clothes, has a tattoo and puts out in the parking lot?

Top 40, the most resilient format in radio, whose death has been predicted at least once each decade since Gordon McClendon invented it in the 1950s, is tuning up the guitars and warming up the crowd for a familiar round of “Another One Bites The Dust.”  A format that tries to be all things to all people survives by doing just that.

In the 60s, it was R&B and the British invasion that split the format; next came Rock; disco ruled for a while, Urban and Alternative has been the darling of the 90s. Now what?  Check out next week’s Editorial.

The fact that Alternative music is losing popularity in the Mainstream isn’t surprising.  What is surprising is that people who should know better are surprised by this turn of events.

Alternative music, by its very definition and nature, is an hors d’oeuvre.  You can eat it as a main course for a while, but in the long run, you’ll want something that draws from all of the food groups, rather than just one.  Like my mama used to say, “Too much of even of good thing is worse than not enough.”

The bloom is off the Alternative rose… which doesn’t mean that Alternative isn’t a viable format, just that it won’t automatically pull the numbers it once did.  And that’s no real surprise either…nor should it be.

Too many radio stations made the Alternative move for all the wrong reasons.  Many GMs saw the success of the format in larger markets and made the switch.  PDs understand that a lot of GMs are as ignorant about programming as the Editors of Hitz.  In smaller markets, the GM is almost always a former sales manager who has a tendency to look at the short term rather than the long.  Let’s face it, most of these people got into radio in the first place because they couldn’t cut it in the used car business.

At a glance, the Alternative format is skewed to the 18-34 year-old male (and often, female demographics) that advertisers love.  The format is also music-driven and cheap to run.  Most promotions center around lifestyle or music and can be underwritten by labels.

Hey, let’s hire a lot of cheap talent, play a bunch of weird music and book three club remotes a night.  For a while, it worked.  But in the long run, it hasn’t.  Why?  Because many aren’t good radio stations.  To weather the storms, you must have a knowledgeable captain at the helm.

Is it the recipe or the cook that is the most important?  Although there are obvious arguments on both sides, let me come down solidly on the side of the cook.  A restaurant with great ambiance, friendly waiters and a super location can get by for a while with mediocre fare.  But to survive the food has to be good.

Kevin Weatherly has been crowned the King of Alternative Radio and rightfully so.  He made KROK the prize against which all other Alternative stations are judged.  But is Kevin an Alternative guru?  Nope.  He’s much smarter and deeper than that.  Before he was an Alternative King, he was a Crossover Prince.  The only reason he wasn’t a Crossover King is that KKLQ was in San Diego and you can’t be King unless you do it in New York or Los Angeles.

Is Brian Phillips an Alternative guru?  (See above.)  He was equally successful in other formats (and will be again, shortly) before taking WNNX to the promised land.

There is no doubt that Alternative music became more popular in the past few years, but I believe that exceptional programming took many of these stations past formatic barriers to the top.  Many gave all the credit to the music and not enough to the director.  Take a closer look.  A lot of bad Alternative stations are playing KROQ’s or WNNX’s list and still losing.

The same is true outside the Alternative genre.  Jay Stevens has made Crossover the #1 format in Washington, D.C. Ditto Robert Scorpio at KBXX in Houston.  Up until a short time ago, Steve Smith had Urban leading the way in New York.  And does anyone want to try and explain Michelle Mercer’s Spanish-driven KPWR in Los Angeles?  What about Steve Rivers, who has taken Top 40 stations to the top in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston?

Steve Kingston, who moved Z100 closer to the edge, and Weatherly got together in New York.  Everyone said WXRK was a slam dunk, but a fool by the name of Frankie Blue comes into hopelessly outmanned WKTU, turns it Dance, for Heaven’s sake, and is #1 in his first book.

So what is the point of this Editorial?  None, really, except that we, as an industry, are guilty once again of being too quick to bury Top 40 and quicker still to coronate the successor.  We too often choose the easiest answer.  It would have made promotion easier if Alternative could have evolved into Mainstream…ditto Disco or Crossover or all of the other hybrid formats. But it won’t happen.  These formats began because they are Alternatives to the Mainstream, not embryos struggling to become Mainstream.

Alternative will live on, but in a more modest neighborhood.  Good Alternative music will sell well. Great Alternative music will rise above the format and become Mainstream hits.  What will change?  The successful Alternative stations will programmed by knowledgeable PDs.  No longer is the music enough to drive the signal to the top of the heap.  Programming will become more focused…the core audience will be catered to more and record promotion will become harder edged.  It’s already happening.

The Alternative for is re-evolving to what it is:  Alternative.