Picked this up from Idolator, so you can read that too, but stick with the man if you want the straight dope on this whole "New York's Rock Experience" brouhaha.
Apparently some outfit I've never heard of, Emmis Communications (they apparently own a smattering of FM stations in NYC, L.A., Austin, Indiana, and,uh, Bulgaria) has decided to bless New York City with its third rock radio station, 101.9 RXP, a.k.a. "The New York Rock Experience." According to this here press release, the station will differentiate itself from the competition - Q 104.3 and K-Rock, classic and modern rock stations respectively - by playing "a new adult blend" merging "New Music, Classic Rock, Alternative & Local Rock" a.k.a. "The New York Rock Experience." To wit:
101.9 RXP will feature a variety of rock from artists like Franz Ferdinand, Bruce Springsteen, Nirvana, Coldplay, U2, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews, The Police, Beck, Radiohead, The Who, Oasis, Arcade Fire, Social Distortion and REM ... a playlist not determined by era, but rather by the acoustic quality of each song, as determined directly by on-air personalities and staff.Now, you may ask yourself, is it necessary to have "on-air personalities and staff" "determine" a playlist heavy on Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, REM, and U2? (Oh, right I forgot about the Arcade Fire and...Social Distortion.) Also, what's with this "acoustic quality of each song" nonsense? I'm guessing they mean that their playlist will be determined by either the subjective tastes of their "on-air personalities and staff" or, more likely, the same road-tested melange of Jann Wenner-approved canonical canon-ness that any ol' Clear Channel computer could spit out, neither of which translates as "acoustic quality." Acoustic quality, you see, would relate to the quality of the recording from a technical perspective, as opposed to an assessment of a song's artistic merit; I don't think anybody's gonna be DQing the new Red Hot Chili Peppers product because of digital clipping (if you have ears, you owe it to them to take a gander at Nick Southall's manifesto on the subject, "Imperfect Sound Forever"). Words have meanings, people.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to pour on the Haterade. In fact, I think the appearance of "The New York Rock Experience" is a heartening development. A few years ago rock radio in NYC was on the ropes, with WNEW and K-Rock switching to all talk formats, leaving Q 104.3 as the last remaining game in town (though here in NJ you could still pick up WDHA, WRAT "The Rat" - I had an awesome bumper sticker on a long gone Saturn - and G Rock radio ). Since then, K-Rock has abandoned the asinine "Free FM" format, and now we have a new player making the scene.
Look, I listen to a lot of rock and roll: it's what I like the most, and I can't change it and I won't apologize for it. God made me this way for whatever reason. Certainly, I like to think that I maintain an open ear, and I love a lot of non-rock music, but as for what Lester Bangs referred to as "needle time", rock and rock derivatives are the overwhelming favorites. So I cannot begrudge the tastes of people like me who really want to OD on riffs, even if those riffs belong to The Eagles or RHCP or Oasis. Hell, you wanna talk about junk food, give me AC/DC, The Clash, Led Zepp, Springsteen any day of the week - and I have no doubt that "The New York Rock Experience" will give me them every day of the week.
The real question, in my mind, is whether this thing will sink or swim. Obviously, I know fuck-all about the radio biz, but I've seen stations and formats come and go, and I have memories of a youth wasted to strains of K-Rock. Personality, I think, still matters: hence the demise of sonic nightmare Jack FM - simply a playlist heavy on '80s faves programmed and played by a computer; the very definition of impersonality, your car as waiting room. The bond my friends and I formed with K-Rock was certainly based on the music, but there was also a sense that the station was a hub - we knew its disc jockeys, met them at concerts, collected a ton of bumper stickers and other assorted swag. I think those days of centrality are long gone, a victim of the iPod, or the Internet, or whatever other technological and demographic changes are slowly eradicating interpersonal interactions. But the underlying concept of building a listener base by developing relationships that progress beyond playing the same Tom Petty records still holds some water. Still, a little o' this never hurt no one.
