New Rock commercial radio is dead-4-28-05 NY Times article

Stone Temple Pilots are "meaningful". Ha Ha. I wonder why women rock listeners don't realize that. Ha ha

Whoa. This is quite clearly the root of the problem.

1) You're talking about 50+% of your potential audience.

2) Everyone knows that if girls are into something (and it's not TOO wussy), guys will come along for the ride.

I wouldn't leave anything fuckin' Calderone says alone.

fj - OTM there. There is so much music going around these days, what with EVERYONE being able to turn out at least a passable demo and get an opening gig somewhere. Its very cool to see so many people getting into it. And just b/c there aren't any Peter Framptons or Van Halens doesn't mean that there isn't great music or fans that want to hear it...it just means that the record companies have not figured out a way in which to bottleneck and control people's access to the music. I don't want to sound overly optomistic, but there doesn't seem to be much of a way for them to exert the kind of control that they have in the past, especially over informed fans. The pablam-sucking idiots are always going to fall for whatever Clearchannel puts on.

But come on...what the hell is wrong with a little red state rock?

Potential poster-ad campaign for the subways.

He was denied his inalienable right to corn!

Nothing... unless you're a cool kid!

Why not Queens of the Stone Age and the Hold Steady and Sleater Kinney and Audioslave and Kelly Clarkson on the same station. . .

Part of what is going on here is that radio is chasing an older demographic, and the lack of stars matters to them much more than to kids. You can get kids to listen without stars, but you have a lot more trouble getting 25-30 year-olds to listen without stars. Also, I suspect that it's women more than men who turn artists into stars. Abandoning women was just an unforgivable mistake for rock radio.

Re: QOTSA & Kelly Clarkson, etc. There is a station like that here, but too often it winds up being the worst of all worlds rather than the best. It's playlist consists of the 5-8 most popular songs from each of 3 or 4 categories. A few years ago, that tended to mean Creed, Linkin Park, Puddle of Mudd, Britney, Christina, etc. wall to wall. It just wasn't worth listening to.

By "stars" do you mean the stars that they grew up with or new stars? Cause AAA radio really isn't all that star-driven.

-- steve-k (ritmik...), April 28th, 2005.

I have what's supposed to be a great college station -- WPRB Princeton, but my batting average with it isn't much better than my batting average with KROQ type stations.

This would explain why the modern rock top 5 is Green Day, Audioslave, Nine Inch Nails, Beck and Weezer this week.

As if the world needed more scientific proof that 1994 was the BEST YEAR EVER

Salsa: got to like it after taking salsa lessons. Very little radio exposure until lately.

Arabic music: to make a long story short, got interested after hearing it in a restaurant. Found place that sold cheap cassettes.

(Granted, I'm strange, and radio was my main source of finding out about music into at least my early 20s.)

as if that's a BAD thing.

p.s.: i have it on good word that WMMR plays an awful lot of "alternative-rock" these days too.

I'm glad these stations are going down. here in chicago, i am so fucking sick of those q101 ads with women's torsos (no faces, please, they are just objects, afterall) with ripped abs in cut off band shirts backed up against a wall or a chainlink fence. not that q101 is even "new rock" anymore. (geez, i remember when that station started, it was specifically geared towards women. and you could hear kate bush and salsbury hill like twice an hour each!)

is this move towards hard-rock driven by advertising though? aren't 18-35 year old guys a coveted demographic? so much so that a station will risk its entire audience to get to them. then they drive away everyone else and their numbers get pummelled? just speculating...

Damn shame too only because that would've been so - fucking - clever.

fuck that shit. two call letters for you: WKDU & WPRB. always have been, always will.

Hurting - AAA radio isn't really all that star-driven? Say what? The AAA radio around here (WXPN Philadelphia) is COMPLETELY star-driven. They do a good job of it; they do a good job of making new stars, too. But it's very much a star-making machine, and that works in terms of creating a strong listener base in their 30s-40s.

Other Phila. radio - WPRB is so precious and self-consciously quirky and collegy that even my kids (who are demographically indistinguishable from Princeton students) can't listen to it without giggling and then turning it off. Really, there is no value-added filter there whatsoever, unless its a filter for finding things that are absolutely unlistenable. WKDU's signal barely makes it to Center City, much less anywhere more than two miles from Drexel. Last time I heard it, it was all hard-core. Yes, WMMR seems to be playing new Weezer and Beck. Big deal. They played old Weezer and Beck before. It's still overwhelmingly an exercise in nostalgia.

Well, yeah, actually I guess 90.7 in New York plays its fair share of stars of the boomer generation. But it also plays a lot of mid-list artists that don't seem like they'll ever be huge.

no, what happened is that WXPN broke so many FCC regulations [false advertisements, being drunk / stoned / etc on air, etc] that they spent years in the courts trying to get their license back and when they did, it was with the stipulation that its format and organizational structure had to change drastically.

I'm confused about the license issue as well. If they didn't have a license, why were they able to continue to broadcast? Is that how the laws work? (Is it something where you can continue to broadcast as long as you are appealing.)

The year 1973 also witnessed the beginning of an escalating series of troubles for WXPN.

During a soccer broadcast late that year, a station engineer accidentally aired a prank advertisement promoting (in explicit detail) a fake drug for sexual enhancement.

Several listeners complained to the University administration about the phony commercial, considering it obscene.

Around the same time, a group of students active in WXPN accused other staff members of using alcohol, marijuana, and other illegal substances at the station headquarters.

Then in December 1973, the station's business manager was impeached and removed from office for mismanagement of station funds.

In 1974, the University received additional complaints about "obscene" broadcasts from WXPN, such as readings from "erotic" literature, and the FCC began to investigate several allegations of misconduct by the station.

Amid this controversy, in December 1974, a pre-dawn fire of mysterious origins scorched the inside of 3905 Spruce.

Police suspected that it was a case of arson, and WXPN was forced to suspend broadcasts for a few weeks while the building was restored.
The controversy came to a head when WXPN returned to the air in January 1975.

Two broadcasts of an early-evening talk show called "The Vegetable Report" (on which profanity and sexual talk were commonplace) aroused scores of listeners to complain to the University and the FCC.
Within days, the FCC was looking into the matter.

The University finally took action in March 1975 as President Martin Meyerson transferred control of the station to Jerry Condon, Director of Student Affairs, and ordered that a new station constitution be drafted by an ad hoc committee.

To make matters worse, when WXPN's license to broadcast expired in July, the FCC declined to renew it until its own investigations were complete.

In December 1975, the FCC fined the Trustees of the University (who held the station's license) $2,000 for obscenity and other violations at WXPN.

The Trustees paid the fine but vowed to fight for the renewal of the station's license.

After months of investigation, on April 4, 1977, an administrative judge for the FCC ordered WXPN off the air in fifty days because of the University's apparent lack of control.

This marked the first time that the FCC had revoked a non-commercial broadcast license due to obscenity, and the case was soon considered a landmark in broadcasting law.

Penn's Trustees appealed the decision immediately, claiming that more effective management had been set in place, and many listeners wrote to the University and the FCC in support of the station.

One local musician asserted that WXPN's programming was "uniformly excellent, even if not in the mainstream of popular taste" and called the station "the only medium in the area that is truly committed to supporting local artists."

Others argued that the FCC was unfairly penalizing the students currently operating the station for the poor conduct of their predecessors.

During the drawn-out court battle between the Trustees and the FCC, WXPN continued broadcasting without a license through a series of temporary permits.

Finally, in 1980, more than five years after the controversy started, the FCC approved a new license for the station.

Meanwhile, during the years when its license was in limbo, WXPN underwent great internal change.

In January 1976, the Trustees of the University determined that a professional station manager should guide the station. For this task, they hired Jim Campbell, the former general manager of a college station in New York, in July 1976.

A few months earlier, in March, a Board for Policy and Standards had initiated a series of meetings to examine the development of WXPN's operations from the station's inception to that time, so that it might recommend future improvements to the station.

To the dismay of those working at the station, there were no student representatives on the Board, whose eight members were selected from the University faculty and the communications field at large.

Several persons who served on the Board had worked at WXPN while undergraduates at Penn.

In December 1976, the University's Student Activities Council (SAC) approved a new constitution for the station which declared that only persons affiliated with the University could vote on WXPN's board but set no restrictions on who could work for the FM station. (The AM station, however, continued to be run exclusively by students at Penn.) As a result, many former students continued to work at WXPN after their graduation from the University, and an increasing number of community volunteers became involved in the station. By 1980, undergraduates comprised less than one-third of WXPN-FM's operating staff. Once "student-run," the station had become "student-participatory."

As student-involvement at WXPN decreased, the SAC, which distributed University money for student activities, began threatening to cut its level of funding for the station.

Of WXPN's $116,000 budget in 1980, $17,000 (or about 15%) came from the SAC. In April 1981, however, the SAC allotted only $1,000 for the station. Although it continued to stress its commitment to the student body at Penn, WXPN was forced to rely less on funding from the University and to find alternate sources of support.

In the late 1970s, under the leadership of station manager Peter Cuozzo, WXPN-FM began to take steps toward becoming a public radio station. In 1979, the station first applied for grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), with the avowed intent of becoming an affiliate of National Public Radio (NPR), a prestigious network of non-commercial stations.

Though the CPB turned down these initial grant proposals, it had become clear that WXPN-FM was moving away from a focus on the University and, thus, away from its AM counterpart.

As if to confirm the separate natures of the two signals, in the late 1970s WXPN-AM officially changed its name to WQHS, taking the new call-letters from the portions of Penn's campus that it principally served: the Quads, Hill House, and Superblock.

In March 1982, at the recommendation of the University Council, the composition of eight-member WXPN's governing body was altered to include representatives from Penn's student body and the listening community, as well as from the University's faculty, trustees, and administration.

The Council, furthermore, encouraged the station to increase its level of student involvement.By late 1986, approximately half of the station's staff were students at Penn, and another quarter were former students. The importance of contributions from listeners increased as well, accounting for about two-thirds of WXPN's operating income in 1984. Throughout the 1980s, however, the station struggled with annual financial deficits and other internal problems.

By 1985, WXPN's governing board, after working with a hired consultant, had resolved that the station should work to meet the qualifications for annual funding from the CPB.

With support from University administration, the station undertook improvements to its physical facilities and added one paid staff position to meet the CPB's minimum requirement of five.After these changes, WXPN officially qualified for and began receiving CPB funding in June 1986.

[source: philadelphia FM radio history

I didn't start listening until around 78/79, so those incidents of on-air drunkenness, false adverising, were well before my experiences as a listener.

(This makes me really happy that I sent them money during their fund drives. They probably needed it more than I realized.)

Yes, that was the culprit.

WXPN's programming in the mid-1980s had exhibited great diversity, a juxtaposition of classical music with "punk" rock and folk songs with avant-garde electronic music. Despite stiff opposition from many listeners and volunteer staff members, Mark Fuerst began as general manager to change the station's schedule, seeking to apply some structure and continuity. In addition to new local programming, WXPN began to import programs, ranging from news and analysis to "New Wave" music, from national and international public radio networks.

Kind of sounds like what I was saying. Of course, the idea that the station had no structure before this is ludicrous. Fuerst apparently felt there wasn't enough continuity, but many of us were quite fine with tuning in for particular shows that we wanted to hear. (Note that this doesn't have too much to do with people taking drugs on the air in the early 70s.)

In late December 1987, "Kids America," an acclaimed call-in program for children that WXPN carried in the evenings, was terminated by its station of origination, WNYC in New York, after the CPB discontinued its funding for the program. With a large, temporary commitment from the University (and, later, a three-year grant from the William Penn Foundation), WXPN was able to hire the host of "Kids America," Kathy O'Connell, and create a local version of the program, all in ten days! On January 4, 1988, "Kid's Corner" made its debut on WXPN. The program continues to be one of the most popular on the station. In May 1989, WXPN astonished the public radio community by winning three of the eleven CPB Public Radio Awards, in children's (for "Kid's Corner"), community service, and public affairs programming. Two years later, in March 1991, "Kid's Corner" won a prestigious George Foster Peabody Broadcasting Award, an honor which recognizes excellence in broadcast media, commercial or non-commercial.

WXPN was sudddenly full of sunny "personalities," and that's when it began to suck.

anyway, i dont think WXPN sucks. it just caters to a very different audience. [they also broadcast a program that is taped at my place of employment] i think there's a very good smattering of radio stations that have a lot of different things in the philadelphia area. its just a matter of people paying attention. as a WPRB dj, i am a bit biased of course.

-- Mr. Snrub (mistersnru...), April 29th, 2005. (tracklink)

Oh, come on. First of all, I probably could come up with 100 decent rock songs from 1995-2005. Second (maybe this is a chicken-or-egg thing) market forces play a large role in whether there's any good rock music being *made* or not -- I put made in asterisks because what you really mean by *made* is getting distributed and played on the radio.

Whoa! Archives of shows (or excerpts or something): http://www.heyheyhey.org/sounds.htm

[...]

But those concerns made WRUR look more closely at how the station was run, and it came to their attention that their ratings were very low. "We're tired of being a station no one listens to," Berkowitz said. "We got tired of how inconsistent our product was from year to year." He joked the summer was so badly organized that "we did a bad job of keeping the two or three listeners we had."

So for the past year, WRUR has been going through changes. It partnered with WXXI 91.5 last year, bringing several hours of National Public Radio to the station to avoid having to run ads. And over the summer those changes reached the rest of the station's programming.

The new rules are not finalized, but the FM station will be more selective. "There will be some changes to what you are allowed to play and how you are allowed to play it," Berkowitz said at a WRUR interest meeting on Sept. 2. "There are a lot of shows that aren't really suitable for FM."

But Berkowitz stressed that they weren't trying to get rid of the edgier shows. "We're looking into the Internet, we're looking into cable broadcast for people who don't fit our higher standards of professionalism." There will be an alternate format for disk jockeys whose shows do not make it onto the FM station.

maria, I'm obviously still bitter about what happened to the station. It's not the same station anymore anyway.

I do tune in frequently for "El Viaje" on WRTI (though David Ortiz is a h0rrible DJ! playing the same IDs, or worse, crappy Latin fusion, over and over again). And I still think WPRB is the best radio station "in" Philadelphia.

senior boards vary from year to year and jon solomon is the glue that keeps things afloat. he's been at the station since he was 15 or 16, so yeah, he's going to know his shit. and thats why i like him. i tune in every wednesday for my history lessons. because jon is who he is, he lets other djs follow their other paths.

and, let me say that i think for a college station, WPRB is programmed very well. classical in the early morning, jazz in late morning - early afternoon, rock format. specialty shows all over the map. there were a few years where it wasnt like that but they're really trying. i give nothing but 100% love and credit to the kids [yes, KIDS. people, remember this!] who run the station.

yes, i think WPRB's quality can very dependent on the DJ and i'm not going to badmouth anyone because everyone at the station is into different things and have varying degrees of experience. i mean, good lord, listening to my earliest shows -- they're dreadful. but thats the beauty of college radio, it allows you to stretch out and grow in a way that could never ever occur on a tradtional rock-format station.

better music taste than (here's a sample of mtv's current rotation) mike jones ... gwen stefani ... ciara ... snoop dogg ... ying yang twins ... etc.???

are they sure? are you sure? what are these hotshots listening to?

Maybe for 'better' read 'shows far more goddamn variety than the organization they work demonstrates'

This is the goddamn equivalent of the United Colors of Benetton ads where the quite wonderful idea that there is more to the world than a bunch of rich bastards is nonetheless put into rigorous overdrive to get more money directed to those rich bastards. Spare me the sociological excuses for major label intersections with mass media. The idea that listening to Top 40/watching MTV *by default* makes or brands one a more tolerant/aware/broadminded person is one of the more obnoxious things I've seen advanced recently and I'm not buying it.

Gwen Stefani has a voice that makes me want to kill people. I'll start with you. ;-)

Suffice to say I think there's a much clearer line to be drawn here between one's listening habits and one's visions of the state of the world than both the original article and other posts are necessarily showing. The subtextual claim that a certain kind of format is, dare I say, better for you on moral/ethical grounds is I think hard to justify with a straight face. The content of MTV may seem to you to reflect more of an ideal/accurate universe than other media streams, and per se I would not disagree, but I'm not about to wave a flag for it or Top 40 or whatever -- as I've seen done now a number of times in an *extremely* clunky fashion in various pieces around -- as something that one listens to not only because one enjoys it (I'm more than perfectly fine with that!) but also because one happens to demonstrate moral superiority by doing so. Because that's a hell of a slippery slope, for reasons I hope I need not spell out (but if it helps, please refer to the black feminist critic thread).

I didn't even know the Arcade Fire was a rock band! (I thought they were more like, I don't know, a bake sale. Or a slumber party with pizza.)

At times it has included shows made up entirely of dog barks or the noises from a Nintendo game. So the WRUR staff is in the process of making many changes. The end goal of these changes is to have a much more popular and professional radio station.

I spent my middle and high school days listening to RUR (and ITK), and I remember no dog barks. That would've been great, tho.

An American one?

(damn, don't you ever sleep??)

There is one factor that the histories quoted above miss, or fail to emphasize enough. In the mid-80s, right before Fuerst was hired, the University of Pennsylvania essentially told the XPN board that they had 5 years to make the station self-supporting without University contribution. Fuerst was hired to do that. When he came, there was 18-24 months of intense experimentation before it settled into its current format. Personally, I liked the old, more varied XPN better, but the level of public and corporate financial support has increased, like, tenfold from those days.

Basically, WXPN is a commercial station, and it is a successful commercial station. Hating on it is essentially hating on success, which means hating on survival. Nothing's perfect, but I think WXPN does an excellent job of balancing going for the bucks with some notion of artistic quality, and in fact has done an incredible job of building an audience that will support unfamiliar and unmarketed artists. When I said that it was star-centered, I didn't mean just Richard Thompson and Sting; I meant Mindy Smith, Erin McKeown, Alexi Murdoch, David Mead . . . 20-somethings that probably owe their ability to have a career to WXPN.

And, what do you know, my daughter and her friends are indie kids who haunt the R5 all-ages shows, and WXPN (not WPRB or WKDU, true college stations that ought to appeal to them) is what they listen to when their iPod batteries run down. Notwithstanding that WXPN is completely identified with their parents in their minds. They have a little music-focused zine, and recently published an open love letter to Matt Reilly, a new (young) WXPN DJ. (It was called "Smash Fascist Radio! Wait . . . Is That The Smiths?")

I don't hate it for its success or its survival, I hate it for what it is, in contrast to what it was. You are making a very slippery, sneaky, move by equating hating a successful station (for whatever reasons) with hating success and survival itself.

And okay okay, it does offer an alternative mix that goes beyond REM and the latest singersongwriters, but its programming doesn't interest me any more.

Well yes. And then I wake up.

Steve-K outlines the nub of it, though I suspect factchecking is seeing it from another angle and both views apply. On the one hand you can be thankful that there's some form of 'variety,' on the other it's so obviously (if perhaps -- I will emphasize 'perhaps' -- unavoidably) compromised and limited that it seems really weird to say "HOORAY!" or some variant.

This will never happen because even during the early AM hours, Real World marathons will pull in 3 or more times as many viewers, and its those shows that give MTV advertisers.

Artist, Song Title, Album Title

April 22, 2005

5:00am
Lyle Lovett - She's No Lady - Pontiac
Crosby Stills & Nash/Crosby Stills Nash & Young/N - Long Time Gone - Crosby Stills And Nash
Jim White/Aimee Mann - Static On The Radio - Drill A Hole In That Substrate And Tell Me What Y
Jack Johnson - Sitting, Waiting, Wishing - In Between Dreams
Ryan Adams & The Cardinals/Ryan Adams - Let It Ride - Cold Roses
Simple Minds - Don't You (Forget About Me) - Glittering Prize
Moxy Fruvous - Half As Much~ - Var-Live @ World Cafe Vol 10
Solomon Burke - I Need Your Love In My Life - Make Do With What You Got
The Dead 60's - Riot Radio - The Dead 60's
Richard Thompson - I'll Tag Along - The Old Kit Bag
The Eagles/Don Henley - James Dean - On The Border
New Radicals - You Get What You Give - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed
Tones On Tail - Go! - O.S.T. Gross Pointe Blank
The Blue Method - Don't They - Xpn Philly Local - Right On Track
Indigo Girls - Uncle John's Band - Var-Deadicated

6:00am
Ronnie Earl & The Broadcasters - Hippology - The Coulour Of Love
Crashtest Dummies - Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm - God Shuffled His Feet
Citizen Cope - Contact - Citizen Cope
Bob Marley & The Wailers - I Shot The Sheriff - Live
Sarah Vaughan/Max Sedgley (Remix) - Peter Gunn - Verve//Remixed 3
Jem - They~ - Live At The World Cafe - New Beginning
Psychedelic Furs - Love My Way - All This And Nothing
Neil Young - Be The Rain - Greendale
Amos Lee - Bottom Of The Barrel - Amos Lee

7:00am
Robert Plant And The Strange Sensation/Led Zeppel - Shine It All Around - The Mighty Re-Arranger
Guster - Amsterdam (Gonna Write You A Letter) - Keep It Together
Beth Orton - Paris Train - Daybreaker
John Prine - Clay Pigeons - Fair & Square
The Iguanas - Oye Isabel - Nuevo Boogaloo
Keane - Your Eyes Open - Hopes And Fears
Joseph Arthur - Even Tho - Our Shadows Will Remain
Lenny Kravitz - Let Love Rule - Greatest Hits
The Subdudes - (You'll Be) Satisfied - Annunciation

8:00am
Ben Arnold/4 Way Street - Pickin' The Lock - Xpn Philly Local - Right On Track
Jonatha Brooke/The Story - How Deep Is Your Love? - Steady Pull
Dave Matthews Band/Dave Matthews - American Baby - Stand Up
Chuck Prophet - Just To See You Smile - Age Of Miracles
Midnight Oil - Stars Of Warburton - Blue Sky Mining
Coldplay - Speed Of Sound - X & Y
Ben Folds - Landed - Songs For Silverman
Jamie Cullum - High And Dry - Twentysomething
Moby - Beautiful - Hotel
Muddy Waters - Trouble No More - Chess Box Cd 2 Track 6

9:00am
Joan Armatrading - Me Myself I - Me Myself I
The Pretenders - My City Was Gone - Learning To Crawl
Joan Osborne - Right Hand Man - Relish
Amy Ray - Put It Out For Good - Prom
Me'shell Ndegeocello - Who Is He And What Is He To You - Peace Beyond Passion
Linda Waterfall - Love Your Mother Earth - A Little Bit At A Time
Koko Taylor/Kenny Wayne Shepherd - Bring Me Some Water - Royal Blue
Bari Koral - Bonnie & Clyde - Confessions Of An Indiegirl
Tift Merritt - I A M Your Tambourine - Tambourine
Julia Othmer - Mission Control - Xyx
Annie Haslam - Carpet Of The Sun - Various-W.C. #1
Birdie Busch - Secret Hour - The Ways We Try
Birdie Busch - South Philly - Xpn Philly Local - Right On Track

10:00am
Snow Patrol - Run - Final Straw
Natalie Merchant/10,000 Maniacs - Just Can't Last - Mother Land
Van Morrison - The Way Young Lovers Do - Astral Weeks
Stevie Wonder - So Wat The Fuss - A Time To Love
Dar Williams - Alleluia - The Honesty Room
The Band - Stage Fright - Stage Fright
Talking Heads - Cities - Fear Of Music
Tracy Grammer/Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer - Laughlin Boy - Flower Of Avalon
Lone Justice/Maria Mckee - I Found Love - Shelter
Phil Roy - You Were There For Me - Xpn Philly Local - Right On Track
The Decemberists - The Engine Driver - Picaresque
Brothers Johnson - Strawberry Letter 23 - Right On Time
Sarah Maclachlan - Fallen - Afterglow

11:00am
Neil Young/Crosby Stills Nash & Young - Cinnamon Girl - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Lloyd Cole - Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken - Best Of
Bonnie Raitt - Steal Your Heart Away - Longing In Their Hearts
Ray Lamontagne - Forever My Friend - Trouble
The Zombies - She's Not There - Greatest Hits
Billy Bragg - Accident Waiting To Happen - Don't Try This At Home
U2 - All Because Of You - How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
Joss Stone - Don't 'Cha Wanna Ride - Mind, Body & Soul
Tears For Fears - The Working Hour - Songs From The Big Chair
Madeleine Peyroux - Dance Me To The End Of Love - Careless Love
Dire Straits/Mark Knopfler - Skateaway - Making Movies
Medeski Martin & Wood - Reflector - End Of The World Party (Just In Case)

12:00pm
Sting/The Police - Consider Me Gone - The Dream Of The Blue Turtle

1:00pm
Lotus - Spiritualize - Nomad
Shawn Colvin - Sunny Came Home - A Few Small Repairs
The Pretenders - Middle Of The Road - Learning To Crawl
Beck - Girl - Guero
Kim Richey - I Know - Bittersweet
John Prine - Crazy As A Loon - Fair & Square
Rem - The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight - Automatic For The People
Kyle Riabko - What Did I Get Myself Into - Before I Speak
Little Feat - Red Streamliner - Time Loves A Hero
The White Stripes - Blue Orchid - Get Behind Me Satan
Chris Isaak - Wicked Game - Heart Shaped World
It's A Beautiful Day - Hot Summer Day - It's A Beautiful Day

2:00pm - World Café
Bruce Hornsby - The Way It Is
Andrew Bird & The Mysterious - Sovay
Dave Matthews Band - american Baby
Mike Doughty - Looking At The World From Down Below
Sarah Vaughan - Peter Gunn- (Max Sedegley) - Ben Folds - Late
Ben Folds - Common People
Ben Folds - You To Thank
Ben Folds - Gracie
Ben Folds - In Between Days
Tori Amos - The Power Of Organic Knickers
Thievery Corporation - The Heart's A Lonely Hunter

3:00 pm – World Café
The Kinks - Stop Your Sobbing
Dogs Die In Hot Cars - I Love You 'Cause I Have To
Blue Merle - Burning In The Sun
Kathleen Edwards - In State
Ben Lee - Whatever It Is
Robyn Hitchcock And The - So You Think You're In
Deadman - When The Music's Not For
Emmylou Harris - One Big Love
Tegan & Sara - Walking With A Ghost
Bob Dylan - Like A Rolling Stone
Tim Curry - I Do The Rock
Nils Lofgren - Keith Don't Go
The Smithereens - Behind The Wall Of Sleep
John Hiatt - Slow Turning
Al Green - Here I Am (Come And Take Me) - 14 Greatest Hits

4:00pm
Jackie Greene - Honey I Been Thinking About You - Sweet Somewhere Bound
Widespread Panic - Don't Wanna Lose You - Ball
Bruce Springsteen - Devils & Dust - Devils & Dust
Dave Edmunds - Almost Saturday Night - Twangin'
Garbage - Why Do You Love Me? - Bleed Like Me
Train - Drops Of Jupiter (Tell Me) - Drops Of Jupiter
Old Crow Medicine Show - Wagon Wheel - Old Crow Medicine Show
Mark Knopfler/Dire Straits - What It Is - Sailing To Philadelphia
Doves - Black And White Town - Some Cities
Danielia Cotton - Pride - Danielia Cotton
10cc - The Wall Street Shuffle - Changing Faces: The Best Of 10cc And Godley & Cre
Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion - Holdin' Back - Exploration
Radiohead - No Surprises - Ok Computer

5:00pm
Hall & Oates - She's Gone - Daryl Hall & John Oates: The Atlantic Collection
The Spinners - I'll Be Around - One Of A Kind...Disc 1
War - Me And Baby Brother - Var-Barrio Nuevo
Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove - V/A-Cosmic Funk
Stevie Wonder - So Wat The Fuss - A Time To Love
Timmy Thomas - Why Can't We Live Together - V/A-Blaxploitation
Tower Of Power - What Is Hip - Tower Of Power
George Duke - Au Right - V/A Messin Around Presents Root Down
The Brand New Heavies - People Get Ready - The Brand Newheavies
Isley Brothers - Pop That Thang - The Essential
B.T.Express - Do It (Til You're Satisfied) - V/A-In Yo' Face Vol 2
Medeski Martin & Wood/The Word - Sugar Craft - Combustication
Kinky - Soun Tha Mi Primer Amor - Kinky

6:00pm
John Handy - Hard Work - Soulful Grooves
The Commodores - Brick House - Var - Pure Funk
Lee Dorsey - Yes We Can Can - Var: Saturday Night Fish Fry
Tone-Loc - Funky Cold Medina - Loc-Ed After Dark
The Jb's/James Brown - The Grunt - Var-Roots Of Hip-Hop
The Benevento-Russo Duo - Welcome Red - Best Reason To Buy The Sun
Sly & The Family Stone - In Time - Essential
De La Soul - Say No Go - 3 Feet High & Rising
The Meters - People Say - Anthology - Funkify Your Life Disc 2
Eddie Bo - Check Your Bucket - New Orleans Funk
Fantastic Johnny C - Boogaloo Down Broadway - Boogaloo Down Broadway: The Best Of..
Rufus/Chaka Khan - Somebody's Watching You - Rufusized
Stanley Clarke - The Dancer - School Days

7:00 pm
Weather Report - Birdland - Heavy Weather
War - Galaxy - Galaxy
Neil Young - When You Dance You Can Really Love - After The Gold Rush
Neil Young - Alabama - Harvest
Neil Young - For The Turnstiles - On The Beach
Neil Young - Pardon My Heart - Zuma
Wreckless Eric- Reconez Cherie - Wreckless Eric
The Undertones - Teenage Kicks - The Undertones
Elvis Costello - You Belong To Me - This Year's Model
Hall & Oates - Can't Stop The Music / Is It A Star - War Babies
Guess Who - Heartbroken Bopper - Rockin'
Pat Travers- It Ain't What It Seems - Putting It Straight
Talking Heads - Pulled Up - Talking Heads '77

8:00 pm
Traffic - Glad - John Barleycorn Must Die
Isaac Hayes - Walk On By - Super Hits
Neil Young - Welfare Mothers - Rust Never Sleeps
Neil Young - Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown - Tonight's The Night
Neil Young - Look Out For My Love - Comes A Time
The Stills-Young Band - Midnight On The Bay - Long May You Run
Grand Funk Railroad - Heartbreaker - Collector's Series
George Harrison - Dark Horse - Dark Horse
Peter Gabriel - D.I.Y. - Peter Gabriel
Bruce Springsteen - Adam Raised A Cain - Darkness On The Edge Of Town
The Tubes - What Do You Want From Life? - The Tubes
XTC - Making Plans For Nigel - Drums And Wires

9:00 pm
Tom Waits - Step Right Up - Small Change
John Hartford - Up On The Hill Where They Do The Boogie - Aereo-Plain
Steve Hillage- Hurdy Gurdy Man - L
10cc - Head Room - How Dare You!
Richard & Linda Thompson - Down Where The Drunkards Roll - I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight
Fleetwood Mac - Landslide - Fleetwood Mac
Neil Young - Campaigner - Decade
Neil Young - Albuquerque - Tonight's The Night
Neil Young - Drive Back - Zuma
Neil Young - Powderfinger - Rust Never Sleeps
The Rolling Stones- Far Away Eyes - Some Girls
Joe Walsh - Meadows - The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get
Roberta Flack & Donnie Hathaway - Where Is The Love - A Donny Hathaway Collection

and, that WXPN playlist is great.

Maria - I'm a creepy old man, and sometimes I listen to WPRB, so maybe you're not far off. I always assumed there was some community that listened to it. But if it's turning off 18-year-olds who buy tickets to Of Montreal and Melt Banana, write a music zine, and are going to elitist universities . . . well, that community is just not very broad. In all honesty, part of the problem with the particular 18-year-olds I know is that they hate Princeton intensely and irrationally because of its preppy vibe.

But most of it is that their taste is just not that obscure. They like stuff that's out of the mainstream, but most of what they like COULD be in the mainstream in a not-very-different universe. They like some pretty songs in the mix. They want to understand what the deal is with Neil Young and The Velvet Underground, The Smiths and The Replacements -- cultural touchstones that help them communicate with other people. They appreciate actual musical ability and execution, not just concept.

I suspect that if you did a regression, the single factor that would correlate most highly with my daughter liking someone would be liking The Decemberists (although they are fairly far down the list of artists she likes, and she is a little sheepish about it). WXPN plays The Decemberists; my sense is that everyone at WPRB would turn up their noses at them.

* i agree with pretty much everything maria has said (i'm a wprb dj as well, and one who really likes the decembrists at that).

* mtv2 does have a 120 minutes-esque show -- it's called 'subterranean,' and it airs on sunday nights. it plays 9-10 videos a week, generally skewing toward the duran duran/2 side of the axis, although it does sometimes go outside of the strict indie-rock catechism and it does play videos from bands on larger indies -- stars, the decembrists, the national. (it played, last week, 'galang,' and half the chorus was bleeped out. seriously.) also, the latest arcade fire video and 'evil' by interpol are in semi-regular rotation on mtv2, although given mtv2's increasing trend toward programming (because of the ratings bonanza; fuse is also beginning to skew in this direction), that means that they get played at 3.45 am on thursdays.

* seriously, the wholesale removal of women -- 50% of the potential audience!! -- from these stations' target audiences is the key to their eventual downfall. i can't help but wonder how much of that decision came as a result of the whole 'women who rock'/lilith fair trendlet, which further ghettoized chicks who sang over rock songs and drew a big black dividing line between the genders in music (and allowed 'lite' versions of rock chicks to get marketed to death).

I wonder if it really did a sufficient job communicating its actual financial state to its listeners. I seriously think its listeners were loyal enough that they would have donated more if they fully understood just how much that version of WXPN was in jeopardy of disappearing. I do remember the marathons, but, I dunno, maybe some sort of financial statement/annual report type thing could have been sent to those who did donate.

Of course, I also think Penn. could have picked up the tab if it wanted to, but that version of the station was never going to find much sympathy among university administrators (since it was no longer primarily student-run, had been a pain in the ass when it was, and played a lot of esoteric stuff). But one thing I want to make clear: it never went only for the noisiest, meanest, badest, loudest stuff it could play (which often seemed to be WKDU's mission--though I haven't listened much in recent years, so no comment on what's happening now). They playlist did not shy away from beauty, or quiet, or subtlety or order.

(Also, the rivers ran with sweet wine, and we neither toiled nor suffered.)

Especially in 2005, there's more than enough new rock to work with for a very interesting playlist.

The absence of women rockers on the radio hurts everyone.
Abandoning women was just an unforgivable mistake for rock radio.

Female "rockers" saturated modern rock playlists from '96 until about '98. But I'm curious as to what programmers were supposed to include from the last 5 years. I feel like there hasn't been much.