What's left of the FM dial?
One former college M.D. ponders the future of a format with nothing and everything to lose.
By Douglas Wolk

Programmers, DJs, et al.,
You're going to get a lot of valedictory addresses over the next couple of years, mostly from people who want to send you into the rest of the world with some good advice. This one's a little different. It's coming from someone who's gradually drifting out of your current orbit. But what I want to do is give you some perspective on where you are right now -- while you're at a college radio station -- and what to do about it.

College radio has the shortest memory span of just about any medium. Within any four-year period, there's a near-complete turnover of everyone who participates in it; there's almost no documentation of the way it used to be, unless you listen to old airchecks or pore over decaying playlists. Individual radio stations may change (music directors, facilities, formats), but it's easy to assume that college radio in general has always been the same.

It has and it hasn't. For a certain generation of college music directors (including me and a lot of the senior editorial staff at CMJ), the pivotal moment in the culture of college radio was the explosion of Nirvana's Nevermind from the left-of-the-dial ghetto into the consciousness of the world. But a lot of current music directors were 10 or 11 years old when Nevermind came out. It is to them -- to you, that is -- what, say, the Clash's London Calling is to us: an inescapable but not hugely relevant part of the past. We're wondering -- what's going to change your world? "Part of the college radio philosophy is that everybody should get outmoded," says Franz Kunst, who's been at WXYC (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) since 1990. "When people aren't keeping up more than I am, then it's a problem, because I should be an old fart by now."

We're not feeling outmoded yet, and we're getting worried about it. Let's look at how you got where you are. Before the '80s, college radio was little more than a training ground for commercial radio DJs. Then it became a petri dish for the sound of the musical underground; then, briefly, the overfished pond where the Next Big Thing was lurking. To paraphrase Martin Mull, "Remember the great alt-rock scare of the '90s? That shit almost caught on."

So now college radio is casting about for an identity again. And this time it's got competition from Internet radio (which can narrowcast to specific tastes) and file-trading services (which can give college students with fast Net connections the songs they already know they want to hear.)

A large but shrinking number of college stations concentrate on the records that are big hits of commercial-alternative radio. Rich Stannard, of Michigan State University's WDBM, says that 10 of his station's current top 30 fall into that category, though they're playing different tracks. Others make it a policy to do exactly the opposite. "If anything is on MTV or Top 40 radio in the Hudson Valley, we can't play it -- it's in our constitution," reports Tal Levin of Vassar College's WVKR in Poughkeepsie, New York.

While both are slightly perverse responses, WVKR's is probably smarter. What makes sense -- especially now that a Napster client is running in almost every dorm room in America -- is to give listeners music they don't already know they want to hear. Commercial- alternative stations cover commercial-alternative music way better (that's why they have the big budgets), and college listeners can download those songs on demand anyway. But college radio has what they don't: the power of surprise.

Fortunately, you've been catching on to that. One big change that's happened over the last decade is the rise of independent labels on college playlists. A quick analysis of CMJ's radio chart from Nov. 1, 1993 shows that 60 of the top 75 records were on major labels. The highest-charting indie that wasn't a co-release with a major was the Connells' Ring (TVT), at No. 17. Of the top 75 positions on the Nov. 1, 2000 Radio 200 chart, only 24 are major-label releases -- and three of the top five are indies. (Present on both charts: Björk, Idaho, Morphine, and Don Caballero. Some things never change.) That makes sense: Major labels are now concentrating more on potential hit releases, and less on the arty fringes that never did produce much in the way of sales.

But DJs -- or music directors, or listeners -- have also developed a shorter attention span for new releases. The top 75 records on the Nov. 1, 1993 chart had spent an average of 6.8 weeks charting; on the Nov. 1, 2000 chart, that average is down to just over 4.9. Ten albums had been charting for at least a quarter of a year in the 1993 issue's top 75; in the 2000 issues, none had.

That might have something to do with how uninspiring the standard-issue alt-rock of the moment is in general. We're obviously getting into dangerously subjective territory here, but just compare the upper reaches of the charts. Nov. 1, 1993's chart is led by In Utero, Last Splash, Siamese Dream, Big Red Letter Day and Vs.; further down, it includes Houdini, Painful, Cure For Pain, Gentlemen, Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements, Debut, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?, and Yes I Am. The fact that you probably recognize most of those titles without their artists suggests how significant they all are to music history. What's likely to be equally important, seven years from now, from the November 2000 chart? Kid A and maybe Hour Of The Bewilderbeast I'll give you, but anything else? Lift Your Skinny Arms...? Anyone want to make a case for the Gomez B-sides comp? Do I hear a New Found Glory, anybody? (And no, Nick Drake doesn't count.)

Another good thing, and a hint on how to escape the alt-rock cul-de-sac: The range of music that's heard on college radio these days is broader than ever. Alan Salmaffian, former KSCU music director (Santa Clara University) and a 12-year college radio vet, points out that it was once a big deal for college DJs to play Public Enemy -- and any other hip-hop was nearly unthinkable. Now Black Eyed Peas is in the top 5, Jurassic 5 went to No. 1, and it's just not an issue anymore.

The new waves of electronic music have infiltrated DJs' consciousness and playlists, too. Still, Salmaffian also notes that a dangerous attitude has crept in from the club world: young radio DJs, brought up in club culture, often treat the act of spinning as more important than what's being spun.

The shelves of your record libraries are overstuffed and groaning with all of these catalogs and subgenres -- I know, I know. We sometimes expect you to know all the historical minutiae we cared about, and you've got another decade on top of that to deal with. But it really scares us when you form your affinities -- or backlashes -- by genre rather than by individual artists' work. Young DJs often like New York techno or post-rock or free improv, rather than Joey Beltram or Laika or Derek Bailey. They can't stand emo or digital dub or Krautrock, rather than Braid or Pole or Amon Düül. It's a way of thinking about music that ultimately suggests more of an interest in its social context than in the art itself. It also leads to the Balkanization of programming, and the proliferation of specialty shows -- which can be terrific, but can also be an excuse to keep listeners' (and DJs') ears closed.

Then there's the problem of promotion companies' chokehold on a portion of the airwaves. Nearly every music director I've talked to recently has mentioned that there are legendarily sleazy promoters, labels and music directors, and a certain number of disreputable stations whose playlists bear little resemblance to what they actually air. None were willing to name names on the record. Still, one music director says that "if people are really trying to work well with the records, then we'll help push 'em... I just want to try and make everything easier. I try to be nice to everybody."

This is exactly the wrong attitude. Smaller, non-Core stations are more susceptible to certain kinds of promotion. Nov. 1's Top 200 Nos. 33, 36, 39 and 40 -- Less Than Jake, Palo Alto, Guru's Jazzmatazz and Elysian Fields, all heavily promoted -- appear nowhere on the same week's Core Radio 75. ("We've been playing the new Jazzmatazz, and the guys from Virgin just sent us the entire Gang Starr back catalog as an inducement," says Toby from Knox's College's WVKC in Illinois.) Chris Rohn of WUDM, a radiated cable station in the middle of Detroit, says that he has to work to convince his DJs that "there's more than Limp Bizkit out there," and complains that he can't even get a promotional copy of the new OutKast album. But he says he's often offered tickets, shirts and CD catalogs to report records at No. 1.

Young music directors, here is the secret to dealing with promoters: Blow them off, unless you feel like talking to them. You are under no obligation to make them happy. None. They need you far more than you need them -- the worst they can do is stop sending you CDs. If you play the things they send you, they're never going to stop, no matter how much they threaten. And if you don't play the things they send you, you have no use for them anyway. Most honest promoters know that an add on a picky station means more than an easy-to-please one, no matter how frustrated they may sound.

While you're at it, for God's sake, ask for things that don't automatically come to you in the mail -- it's easier than ever to do. That's one huge change the Internet has brought about that too few music directors take advantage of. Mailing out playlists to every label that might be interested used to require enormous effort to print and address them all, and a cash outlay huge enough to make it hard to do very often. Now all it requires is a "send" button.

It's possible, for the first time, to request interesting releases from labels without running up a gigantic long-distance bill.

There's vastly more music released now than ever before, and a lot of it is amazing. So why are so many college playlists occupied by the same damn stuff from the same damn promoters?

A possible answer: There's just not enough time for any but the most committed music directors to listen to everything they get, let alone hunt down good stuff that may not be served to them on a platter. WVKR's Levin claims that she gets about 50 CDs a day, and relies on "reviews and notes" to get through most of them -- meaning the stickers that promotion companies have taken to gluing to the front of jewel cases. It's hard work, of course -- but that's the M.D.'s job. And the best college radio stations, without exception, are the ones that go the extra mile to find good things to play.

One final note: While your faculty advisors will tell you over and over that college radio is not an excuse for unlimited self-indulgence, it's not just a dry run for a career in broadcasting, either. (And the worst college radio is the kind that sounds like an audition tape for the local commercial station.) Even if you decide to keep going in radio -- or the music business or telecommunications -- beyond graduation, you'll probably never again have the opportunity you've got right now to do something creative, risky and beautiful on the airwaves. Make the most of it.

Now get out there and make us feel outmoded.

Intrigued, inspired or pissed-off by this article? CMJ invites your comments at nmredit@cmj.com and on our bulletin board at www.cmj.com/hottopic/. Select responses and postings will appear in an upcoming issue.