FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio - Don't touch that dial: why FM radio sucks - Review

Washington Monthly, Nov, 2001 by Frank Ahrens

FM radio won't ever be what it once was. The $150-million radio stations are simply too valuable to be lab rats for experiment-minded music directors. Furthermore, as rock music continues its death spiral, more and more FM rock stations are turning to the ever-profitable "hot talk" format. Hosts like Howard Stern and Opie and Anthony peddle their horny, quasi-racist, often xenophobic schtick to the young, unsophisticated males who used to be the province of rock radio. The watershed moment of FM came in 1999, when Neer's hallowed WNEW dropped rock for talk. It broke his heart.

There's a case to be made that rock radio developed anemia because the music itself got sick. Today's rock is dominated by whiners and no-talent mooks. For every Green Day, you get a dozen Blink 182s and Limp Bizkits. Geriatrics like Aerosmith crank out monotonous albums, but seem to be servicing an art form that's about as vital as the Latin language.

The New Free-Formers

So let me make a recommendation: When I got tired of punching around the radio dial a few years ago looking for good rock, I started listening to stations I'd always skipped over. It was here that I found the best stuff on FM radio today: the black-hits stations. Post-rap singers like Nelly, DMX, and Destiny's Child produce the catchiest, richest-sounding music being made. Mix-deejays at these stations create new versions of popular songs and craft long music sets with the artistry of the old free-formers. These deejays are also the strongest personalities on radio today because they connect with their audiences, navigating the lexicon and providing a kind of authenticity absent since, well, the days of the old prog-rock FMers. Just look at the numbers: Album sales and concert revenue from these artists dwarf their predominantly white-rock counterparts. And in most large cities, like Washington, the black-hits radio stations are top rated.

For hardcore rockers who believe that someone out there may still find a new way to combine three chords, or for those who just miss the old days, good news is on the horizon: satellite radio. By December, a company called XM will blanket the country with its subscription radio service. For the price of a $400 radio to receive the signal and a $10 per-month fee, XM will beam 100 channels of music, news, and entertainment to your car through a tiny satellite antenna affixed to the roof. Instead of one classic rock station, you'll get four, broken out by decade and genre. You'll get a channel of unsigned bands and others for classic country, '40s Big Band, bluegrass and folk, disco, trance, hard rock, and acoustic. XM and rival Sirius (which debuts next year) ape the hyper-successful business model of cable television, believing that people will pay for "free TV" if it gives them the narrowcasting they desire.

To maintain their listeners, regular radio stations are spending millions to convert their analog signals to digital in hopes of improving sound quality. Their pitch is that AM will sound like FM, and FM like CDs. I've tried this technology on FM stations and the difference is palpable. All of this could, of course, lead to the ultimate irony. If AM ends up sounding as good as FM, it could herald the return of music to the AM bandwidth. After all, lots of today's AMs are just like yesterday's FMs--undervalued, low-budget places where a station owner just may give a creative deejay and program director license to experiment. We can dream, can't we?