SD - Kicking NYC & San Fran's radio ass?

SF has KALX, KUSF, KFJC and KZSU are collectively very strong and I strongly doubt SD has anything to compete with these stations.

There seems to be an impressively fierce loyalty btwn SD promoters and local stations, while in NY and SF there is not.

there are also two tijuana stations (spanish-language) and a SD station that play a mixed format of US hiphop and US pop and also some pop punk and alternative rock, the tijuana stations rule over the "local" station for that format.

we do have a surprisingly awesome old school station that plays mostly early 80s electric soul and funk (everything from egyptian lover to cheryl lynn to zapp and roger to madonna to early 90s new jack swing and the occasional rap track). i think it might be because san diego has an aging black/latino population??

this got about a page worth of bitching in our main (shitty) alternative weekly, which wasn't a big deal really because there's a page worth of bitching about local radio in every week's issue. so yeah, situation sucks here but i think it always has.

on another positive note our jazz station is pretty good. it's run out of san diego state university and i listen to it even though i can get cal state long beach's jazz station which is one of the best in the country (i listened to it when i was in berkeley). still, one good public station (not counting our NPR affiliate) is no match for the (at least) four or five you can get in the bay area.

also compounding the shittiness: UCSD radio gets no reception anywhere.

"What are San Diego versions of LA's KXLU, Indie 103.1 and KCRW??"

the equivlanet to KXLU is probably the UCSD station but you can't get it anywhere. we don't have an equivalent to KCRW.

the equivalent to indie 103.1 looks like 94.9. but i haven't actually heard 94.9 because it's gone through lots of changes over the years but it's mostly been oldies and quiet storm, i think. before that it was smooth jazz for a really long time (am i remembering right??)

there's also a "pirate" radio station (i think it really is unlicensed, but i forget the call number and sign) that plays mostly old punk and hardcore and oi! ripoff bands, stuff like the descendents and social d and minor threat and blah blah blah. apparently lots of people think this is a good thing / big deal but to me it's just another sign of how reactionary and backwards the white kids around here can be (san diego: rockabilly capital of the universe!!)

there are also lots and lots of modern AOR stations, that play everything from dave matthews to paul simon, stopping to take in bonnie raitt, sheryl crow, bruce springsteen, pearl jam, edie brickell, etc etc.

I totally support local stations presenting good shows, but if they don't play the bands I can't figure out why they don't want us involved. It helps sell tickets, for example.

where is this???? I live in berkeley and don't know it!

(sorry thea, for derailing your thread)

Thea, contact Lou's Records in Encinitas, CA and they may be able to give you some direction.

i feel odd giving recommendations though. mexican food = one of the few things in the world better than the physical act of love, though similar in that i feel that you can't really tell someone what the "best way" or the "right way" is. you have to experiment and find the mexican food that satifies YOU, adam.

...so I wondered whether bands I want to present get more play in SD than NY and SF

Sir, you are a genius -- this describes the joy of this food better than anyone else I have yet read.

are you talking-up your radio show, brother?

They're one of the booking agents that I check frequently. It beats relying on Pitchfork's inaccurate news or individual band / club sites that are often hard to navigate.

I believe the main alterna-nu-metal commercial rock station actually has an operating transmitter in Tijuana and saves a lot of money this way, and it's called 91X? It is not really your typical frequency for a commercial station, and it's transmitter location in Mexico is why. The only restriction, programming wise, is that this English speaking American commercial rock station must broadcast a poorly sounding national broadcast from Mexico on Sunday evenings for an hour, which is a requirement for all radio in Mexico, I believe. It also has a really alluring female-voiced station identification (hence the caption of this message.)

Anyway, this present problems, because this makes the potential for college radio in the U.S. close to the border weaker. From my experience, there really isn't a true well known San Diego FM college/public-service radio station. There are certainly several cable or pirate stations, however.

I'm actually curious if the same thing applies in Canada. Does anyone who lives in either Detroit of Buffalo, for example, know if college radio is adversely affected by being to close to that other border?

It's been doing that since 1980 or whenever the station started.

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/5515/xtra.html

For pleasure, I would guess you'd say. I like to go to shows, but hating reading the LA Weekly. ;p

94.9 gets all the shows, which is fine if they play the stuff. sometimes 91x.

If anyone in SD knows Tim Mays, please give him a hug for me. And one day when he has an innocent question or two, I promise to return his phone calls.

OH ZINGER! That was somewhat clever. Watch your back, Thea. There's going to be a dirty little pickup truck full of LA Weeklys following you around.

We don't might not having full control of our "presents" shows. The promoters, venues, etc are very good about handling our involvement and we trust them to do their job. I do get complaints sometimes from our members who go to shows and don't have a good time. This almost never happens, but I try to assuage their ire in various ways, including contacting the promoter and venue re: specific problems.

The band needs to get regular play on the station. A lot of stations here about a "hot new band" and throw their name on the show to be cool. We never do this, except there are some bands I and our music director know well before they receive lots of airplay here and once they get booked to play live on our morning music program called "Morning Becomes Eclectic" we know the band will benefit from our presenting the show even if their record is quite new or hasn't been released.

If the band isn't coming on "MBE" but gets lots of spins, we set up ticket giveaways and our subscribers are able to call in to win tickets. The dj almost always plays a track from the new record and talks about the band, the date of the show, etc.

We put the show on our calendar and on the "KCRW Presents" web page with links to the venue, which usually has links to the band's website. We require every music programmer to read copy listing all shows coming up in the next week or two, regardless of whether they play the band. This is tricky but our dj's are usually fine with this. I also remind dj's who play the bands to be presented that a show is coming up so they can throw on a track, if they feel like it and chat about the show outside of reading the list.

We have banners and signs at the show, no "costumed mascots" - eek! and our dj's who sometimes do intros are extremely discreet, unlike commercial stations who are obnoxious with some of their on-stage antics. The dj's ask me if they can intro a show because they love the band. For example, my friend Eric J Lawrence, who is a big fan of the Fiery Furnaces, was beside himself with joy when he was approved to do a dj intro, as opposed to some commercial "jock" who's just up there to throw his or her station in the audience's face. Dj's don't get paid to do intros but they do get a pair of tickets, either from the promoter or the label, depending on whether the band is signed, or not.

There's no money changing hands between us and anyone else to present the show, so there is no impetus for the promoter to agree to present for any reasons other than a respect for how we support bands by radio play. KROQ pays a lot to present shows and I think it's sometimes not for the right reasons, as they often only play one obscure track of that band's and not always new tracks that would help promote their new album. It is the same for 103.1, sometimes, though I do appreciate that they play a lot of music that I like and/or that gets little play anywhere else although I feel uncomfortable about the Clearchannel aspect of that station though we inevitably work with Clearchannel, who's gobbled up so many venues in LA and beyond. KXLU, which is a station I love, (most of the time) presents stuff and that is fine though I sometimes feel a little guilty afterward after the show when I hear that they wanted to present but the promoter didn't tell me because they know the show will sell more tickets if we present instead of KXLU.

A lot of people move from LA to New York and say they really miss KCRW. Truthfully, they're probably people who are the less adventurous music lovers of our LA audience who don't listen to college stations. So they listen on-line. I guess they think of KCRW as a music taste-maker, bless their hearts.

Every pledge drive we almost double the number of subscribers who listen to our live or music streams. We always say to the promoter and mgmt, label etc that we definitely do not want to present shows in other cities unless the local stations aren't giving the particular band much play. Every once in a while there's a big show that we present (Bjork, last summer in NY) that might have more to do with our history with that artist, ie playing them first, all those years ago, having them on the air many times, or whatever.

We don't say to the bands: "We're presenting the show, you guys". We only do it if everyone approves. If the band says "No dj intro", we have no problem with that.

We don't have "street teams", just one volunteer who creeps in and hangs a few signs. Sometimes a list where people can sign up to receive membership info, but not usually. It's a nice way of "branding" our name and attracting listeners to music they wouldn't hear any other way, often because they aren't music junkies like the ultra-informed posters on ILM. Sometimes they say they've become music lovers because they've discovered KCRW. Nothing wrong with that, though there are some KCRW fanatics who scare the hell out of me when I run into them.

My god. I haven't written an essay like this since college.

I grew up in Buffalo and both SUNY Buffalo (jazz, NPR affiliate) and Buffalo State's WBNY (various genres according to djs) had college radio stations that extended only a few miles north of the border. I'm not sure where their transmitters were located, but there were no broadcast restrictions on either in terms of content. There are several big commercial radio stations in both Buffalo and Toronto that have strong signals registering across the borders. There has to be a level of cooperation going on, because I have heard local business (and concerts) often advertised from the other city's station. On a similar note: Toronto's CFNY from '86-'92 was probably the best commercial format radio station I have ever heard. It was the city's biggest station, and you'd hear the likes of Joy Division, Killing Joke, The Pixies, Chameleons, Bad Brains, etc. all day every day. In the early 90s, there was a grunge emergence and then a quick post-grunge surge of Canadian rockers ala Bare Naked Ladies, Alanis, etc. that sparked a shift toward nationalism and complete abandon of the UK and US college radio playlists, followed by a loss of understanding, followed by a lame attempt to re-kindle the past by going after nu-punk, nu-ska, and rap-metal.

But...there has been a pirate radio station for a year or so now that is pretty good. You can pick it up in any ten-mile radius or so of downtown. Here's their website:

http://www.pirate969.org/