by Chris Gray
It’s
taken a while, but the
three favorite words in Austin radio are no longer “Stevie Ray Vaughan.” Now
it’s “New Rock Revolution,” and every couple of years or
so, Austin gets another one. First, it was
K-NACK four years ago, and
because radio was only beginning to suffer from acute hair-band withdrawal, the
upstart station was dismissed as a bunch of freaks who had just moved from the
far left of the dial to the far right. Then a little band called Nirvana came
along and left radio programmers scratching their heads, thinking there might
just be something to this “alternative” thing after all.
It would take another station’s coming to Austin, and a serious overhaul of
one of its most entrenched stations, to make this point clear. The ABC-owned
Z-Rock, its harder-than-you playlist shot through with flannel-garbed hitmakers
Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden, went
on the air in the summer of 1993. Z-Rock immediately won its target
demographic, 18-to-34-year-olds, and jolted longtime Austin rock giant KLBJ-FM
out of the Album Oriented Rock (AOR) complacency of Boston, the Eagles, and
Rush, and into the maelstrom known alternately as “current rock,” “alternative
rock,” and, yes, “the new rock revolution.” But still, that was only the
beginning.
When Kurt Cobain pulled the trigger in April 1994, the sound that echoed
wasn’t the bang of a shotgun, but the ching of a cash register. With its first
full-fledged martyr on board, alternative rock broke through once and for all
into the mainstream and became a true pop culture phenomenon. Punk, dead to the
world five years before but suddenly fueled by the staggering record sales of
Green Day and the Offspring, stepped up to claim its slice of the pie.
Suddenly, and finally, radio programmers had a bona fide format on their hands:
a little AOR from Seattle, a little Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR) from
California, and a lot of money from corporate America. And on June 9, 1995, it
came to Austin. But why?
“We thought there was a niche,” says Sara Trexler, 101X (KROX-FM) program
director, before correcting herself. “Not a niche, but there was a hole in the
market in terms of having alternative music that was not mixed with either
classic rock or heavy, heavy urban dance kind of stuff, and was specifically
for this sort of generation format.
“And no one else was doing that,” continues Trexler. “You have KLBJ, which
plays some new rock, there’s no doubt about it, but they also play a lot of
classic rock. Then you have KHFI, which may play Hootie and Blues Traveler and
that kind of jangly guitar end, maybe some Green Day, but they’re not going to
play Juliana Hatfield, they’re not going to play Filter, and they’re not going
to play Supersuckers. Those were the two stations with the two big sticks that
were saying, `Hello, we see you young people out there, but we’re really not
that interested in you; we don’t really care.”
To try to cover that perceived gap between KLBJ and KHFI, the new kid in town,
KROX, or 101X as it has come to call itself, drew from just about every
available avenue in the Austin radio spectrum, as well as a couple of new ones.
Jocks Ray Seggern and Rachel Marisay, and 101X’s basic playlist, came from
K-NACK; morning drive jock Ernie Mills drove south from Dallas’ Edge, a
nationally recognized pioneer of the new rock format; Production Director Jane
Shasserre jumped ship from
Z-Rock, hence most of 101X’s commercials retain
some of that in-your-face quality; the station made instant local connections
by using sister station KGSR’s sales staff to handle advertising; the on-air
delivery and general attitude is pure Top 40/CHR; and KROX’s aggressive
attitude toward club tie-ins and remotes is closest to KLBJ’s. Throw in a
Butthole Surfer and a unique “rock & roll talk show” on Thursday nights,
and you’ve got a radio station – one that wants, and needs, to make money
hand over fist.
“People hate to hear this,” says Trexler, “but the number one
reason radio exists is to make money. If the station doesn’t make money, it
doesn’t exist anymore. It doesn’t matter if it’s KLBJ or K-NACK. That’s the
bottom line; it’s gotta make money. At 100,000 watts, we obviously have to make
money, we have to have ratings. So we have to be mass appeal, we have to be
popular.”
But having to be popular doesn’t necessarily translate into being
popular, and some of the most heated debate about 101X’s arrival centers around
just how many people will tune into a format that’s being done to death across
the dial. In other words, is it a niche or is it bigger? “We’re not a niche
format,” explains Trexler. “We’re not trying to carve out a niche. We want to
be accessible to a lot of people. I don’t want to be selfish with my listeners.
I want it to be something that a lot of people can listen to, that a lot of
people can like. It’s a mass appeal format now.”
Not surprisingly, other stations don’t see it quite like that, or if they do,
they’re not quite sure why there’s another station trying to do something they
were already doing. “I don’t really see [101X] as any kind of landmark, because
I thought K-NACK was basically playing this stuff before 101X came along, ”
says KLBJ-FM program director Jeff Carrol. “101X just has a better signal. So,
I don’t see them as anything really new to Austin. They’re just trying to do it
a little bit different and a little bit better.”
“I think [101X] was a good wake-up call for us,” says K-NACK General
Manager/co-owner Richard Rees. “It’s a good exercise in job experience to have
a true competitor again. Before, when we were on the air, it was like `a bunch
of weirdos listening to that new rock stuff down at K-NACK.’ It was tough to
get credibility. Now, it’s like, `Wow. Instant credibility. Maybe what you guys
were doing wasn’t such a bad thing.’ “
“I don’t really consider 101X a direct competitor,” Z-Rock program director
Daryl O’Neal says. “If you look at their playlist, they have about 40 to 50
percent of our titles, and the rest is a pure modern-rock format similar to
KRBE in Houston or the Edge in Dallas. I don’t think there’s a place for them,
to be quite frank. When you’ve got KLBJ, K-NACK, Z-Rock, and, to a large
degree, KHFI, playing a lot of the same music, to come in and open a station
that plays the same music, there’s no hole for it.
“When we came to Austin, there was a hole,” continues O’Neal. “There was a
huge hole. You had KLBJ playing what they had been for forever, Z-102 the
classic rock station, [and] K-NACK being alternative. CHR back then was CHR.
There wasn’t any hard rock, and so when we debuted, we debuted number one with
18-34 adults. That’s a hole in the market; that’s when you go, `I can fill
this.’ Everything new has a curve to it, sure, and certainly I think we’ve
settled in to where we ought to be, but I don’t see that kind of hole [for
101X].”
If there’s not a hole, then judging by the amount of money Sinclair
Communications has sunk into 101X, it’s going to stick around long enough to
create one. So is everybody else. KLBJ is owned by the Johnson family [as in
Lyndon Baines Johnson], Z-Rock by Disney via ABC/Capital Cities, and K-NACK by
Rees and a group of wealthy investors. So, what Austin audiences are in for is
an old-fashioned dogfight among radio stations who all play the same music
– or close enough.
“It’s just gotten so competitive,” Carrol says. “If we all picked our own
niche, everybody would have just a small little piece of the pie. All the radio
stations want to be successful, so they’re all looking for that bigger piece.
Right now, this kind of music is what everybody thinks is going to give them
that bigger piece.”
“Musically, we’re all a little bit different than each other,” says K-NACK’s
Rees. “The differences, though, are probably minor in the big picture. What’s
going to define success or failure is how we keep things different with our
listenership.”
It’s not going to be with the music, that’s for damn sure. An informal survey
of the four stations’ playlists found nine artists -Silverchair, Foo Fighters,
Alanis Morissette, the Toadies, Green Day, Goo Goo Dolls, Bush, Live, and the
Presidents of the United States of America – in heavy rotation on all four
stations, and 12 more – Better Than Ezra, Rusty, Elastica, Gin Blossoms,
Blind Melon, Collective Soul, Catherine Wheel, Dandelion, REM, the Red Hot
Chili Peppers, Lenny Kravitz, and White Zombie -circulated heavily on at least
three out of four.
“Music may not be the only driving factor behind radio, as far as further
defining the choice of your listener,” Rees says. “If they’ve got the same song
on four stations, what’s [the listener’s] motivation for picking you over the
next guy, other than maybe you’ve got cooler call letters or a cooler logo?”
“In some ways, it’s a shame,” Carrol says. “Competition has made radio
stations better, but it also limits what’s being played. As all these stations
start playing the same stuff, does the listener really have five choices now,
or are we just button-pushing, looking for the best song? Who’s providing the
real alternative?”
Nobody. The term “alternative,”
at least in its original sense, is as dead as Kurt Cobain, and probably died
with him. “Nirvana did break through on a lot of levels because they were able
to put out something raw and fresh,” Rees says. “Everything since Nirvana has
been a regurgitation of their sound.”
“Alternative is such a weird term,” Carrol says. “I don’t really think it’s
alternative. Everybody in the industry calls it that, but it’s really become
mainstream. It’s not that everybody’s tastes have become alternative, it’s that
the music that’s being put out now is good enough that the masses like it as
well as the people who used to be into alternative music because it was
different from what was being played on mass-appeal radio stations.”
“I would say that in terms of being alternative, we are an alternative to
whatever else is out there,” Trexler says. “There’s no doubt about that. Nobody
else has Gibby Haynes on; we’ve got lots of interviews that constantly go on;
we have a flashback lunch that’s a pretty bitchin’ free-for-all nostalgia-fest.
There’s a lot of stuff that we can do that nobody else is doing. Maybe it’s not
always a free-form station, but it’s certainly not as rigid as a lot of
places.”
So, essentially, as far as true alternative programming goes, we’re back to
where we were before all this alternative rock business started – left of
the dial. David Jinright, station manager of the University of Texas at Austin
student radio station KVRX, thinks college radio should push commercial radio
to play better music. “We have the freedom to do things new and different,
because we only have to answer to our listeners,” he says. “College radio
doesn’t care about getting the largest audience. We care that the music gets
somewhere.”
Fortunately, college has something that commercial radio doesn’t; the freedom
to experiment. And sometimes, those experiments turn out something really
great. Commercial stations, on the other hand, just have to make money. In
order to make money, stations have to sell product, both musical and
non-musical and they find out real quick that mass audiences are the ones with
the cash, so it’s their needs that get served first. This usually means a jock
will get call after call requesting Tripping Daisy and Alanis Morissette. This
is not great radio, but it pays the bills. And it has its bright spots, too.
“Sara [Trexler] gives me a lot more leeway than I’ve had anywhere else,” says
101X overnight jock Ray “Dogg” Seggern, who’s worked at seven Austin radio
stations. “But there are limits. I couldn’t do what Gibby does.”
“When K-NACK came on, I started getting to play better music, as far as I was
concerned,” says Johnny Walker, KLBJ nighttime jock. “And when Z-Rock came on,
we had to do the same thing; I started playing better stuff. I get away with a
lot more now with 101X in town, because I can go in to the PD and say, `Hey,
look, man. We need to be playing this stuff.’ And we are.” For the most part,
the jocks would rather just deal with their shifts, even the endless
Silverchair requests, than take part in any protracted inter-station wars. Most
agree that the rock radio market is as tapped as it can be, but welcome the
competition anyway.
“Our listeners have been pretty loyal, they’re pretty faithful,” K-NACK
afternoon drive jock Melody Lee says. “They keep listening and keep calling us
with positive input, so, we’re not really distressed or feel like we’re in any
competition at all with 101X. We want to stress that – we don’t feel like
they’re our competition. Everyone’s competitors in this market. To say that one
station is competition or might take away our listeners is absurd when we’ve
always had competition with the other stations. I think the town is more than
big enough to take the two. There’s been a lot of talk about them trying to run
us out and [that] K-NACK’s gonna fold, but that’s just not true.”
No one will know for sure what kind of impact 101X will have on the market for
at least another month, when the next Arbitron book comes out. It would take a
lot for 101X to dethrone KLBJ, still Austin’s rock ratings king, but Z-Rock
showed two years ago that it can be done. Whether or not 101X is a niche format
or a mass appeal is up to the listener. They’re out to prove everyone else
wrong, and they might do it. Maybe the best thing that’s come out of 101X’s
arrival is that it’s made the other stations stop and think about their own
identities. That’s never bad for the listeners.
“What we’ve always decided is we don’t really care what the competition is
doing,” KLBJ’s Carrol says. “We’re just going to be the best at being KLBJ. If
some other rock station signs on here in the next few weeks, we won’t change to
try and take them on; we’re just going to be the best that we are.”
“On the network, we’re adding titles left and right, trying things
– we’re adding seven, eight new titles a week that several years ago you
never would have heard of,” says
Z-Rock’s O’Neal. “Z-Rock is a totally
different animal now. We don’t want to say, `We’re a modern rock station’ or
`We’re an alternative station. We’re a new rock station. We’re a current rock
station.’ We’re just Z-Rock. That’s our position.”
“K-NACK’s niche will continue to be introducing new music to the listeners in
the market,” K-NACK’s Rees says. “I don’t want to be attracting mainstream
America. I want to be attracting what’s new, what’s different, what’s on the
cutting edge.”
“You can think of it this way,” Trexler says. “We suck less than the other
stations. It’s kind of like if you’re watching Beavis and Butt-head and
they go, `Well, it doesn’t suck that much.'” n
This article appears in September 8 • 1995 and September 8 • 1995 (Cover).