The Executive Suite Killed the Radio Star and the Radio Station

 

The local classic rock radio station in my hometown — in radio broadcasting jargon — expunged their previous “positioning” from broadcasting as a rock-oriented “classic rock” outlet to a more pop-rock friendly “greatest hits,” aka “classic hits,” outlet (but retained their call letters). That resulting musical shift of the format change means “programming adjustments” where some of our favorite songs (well, more than some) will be dropped from the station’s song library.

Notice I did not say, “album library,” as the radio stations of today no longer stockpile, store, and file records albums (like those in the crate, above) as did the stations of our analog yesteryear: Today’s conglomerated, consolidated and homogenized radio outlets are long since over the use of CDs (compact discs) and only interested in individual songs from those once analog and compact disc albums. Those songs are since converted to digital files stored on a file server: those files, in turn, are provided over a TCP/IP network by a programming service offering an array of pre-packaged formats. So, no more pesky albums to cue or CDs need be loaded by pesky humans, aka disc jockeys, because, well: there’s nothing to “jockey,” anymore.

Depending on the format and how much “variety” the station’s program director (well, the corporation’s national “programming consultant”) wants to provide to listeners: A classic rock station can have as much as 1,500 to 1,000 digitized songs in the file-served library, which are rotated through a playlist comprised of 500 to 300 songs that air during a week of broadcast — over and over and over, again. On the other hand: A classic hits station’s library is even tighter: a library of 300 to 500 song titles to program a 100-plus song playlists; some may have a bit deeper song library — dependent upon the mix of old “album rock” classic rock songs vs. “Top 40” pop songs (“Take On Me “ from A-ha segues to Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” ugh) — allowing for a wider playlist with as much as 300 songs vs. 100 songs. Then there’s the slightly wider classic hits-format variant/branding known as “greatest hits” that pushes the library beyond 500 and no more than a thousand-song library, that’s even more ear-itating in its “variety”of Miami Sound Machine to Men Without Hats to Guns N’ Roses to Huey Lewis to Tom Jones to Led Zeppelin.

In either scenario: The songs we love (April Wine’s “Sign of the Gypsy Queen” for me) simply vanish from the radio; songs you hate (anything by Huey Lewis and the News, for me) returns; however, in our digital today: we can search Spotify or You Tube for our lost favorites.

In the golden days of my ’80s youth: The market’s (city’s) local “AOR” (Album-Oriented Rock) station — in the wake of the arrival of Van Halen in 1977 fighting back against K.C and the Sunshine Band-spearheaded disco to return Marshall-stacked rock ’n’ roll to airwaves — expunged all of their old, late ’60s and early ’70s “progressive rock” from their album library: a library where the disc jockeys didn’t just play the hit-singles from albums, but fan-favorite deep cuts, as well. Sometimes, even a no-longer-aired song you remembered would spin once again, by your request, because: station’s maintained libraries that crossed decades.

Bumper sticker and hat photography by Over the Edge Radio from their collectible archives for WCKO "K-102," Ft. Lauderdale.

“Hey, mama, I’m going away
I’m gonna hit the big time
Gonna be a big star someday.”
— “Shooting Star” by Bad Company

To assuage those more-mature listeners — ones who dismissed the new, young bucks of the Van Halen-inspired set — who missed their Amboy Dukes, the Animals, Frijid Pink, the Small Faces, and Strawberry Alarm Clock, as well as the more pop-oriented, “Top 40” psychedelic-cum-garage rock sounds of the Box Tops, the Beau Brummels, the Lemon Pipers, the Standells, the Syndicate of Sound, and the Turtles (those latter bands also cross-formatting on oldies stations that mixed the ’60s flower-power with the ’50s doo-wop and rockabilly), the station created two, specialty-program block shows: The Electric Lunch and Psychedelic Sunday.

 

WSHE 103.5, Ft. Lauderdale. Courtesy of Discogs.

Now, at lunchtime: Those still stuck in the past got four hits from the bygone flower-power era. On Sundays at 11 AM: You’d get an hour-long recreation-taste of the sound of progressive-rock radio of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Oh, but wait: Even then that flower-power programming came from, you guessed it: a programming consultant and stations across the country had the same program; localized, yes: but the same program. So much for uniqueness. Years later: As I work at vintage vinyl outlet, aka used record store, a customer trades-in a box of albums: multiple episodes of “The Metal Shop,” the show I used to listen to on K-102. It wasn’t even local or live: it was pre-recorded, pressed, and distributed on vinyl LPs to affiliate stations.

Then, one day: My beloved station spinning The Electric Lunch and Psychedelic Sunday changed formats and those block programs — giving a respite to those unwanted bands and the listeners that loved them — were gone. Forever. Well, at least until the naughts-arrival of You Tube allowed fans to rip and upload every album and song — no matter how obscure — since the beginning of modern recorded music, to the web.

Today, radio stations are nationally programmed by consultants that churn out “cookie cutter” formats that air and air and re-air on station after station after station, remote voice-tracked by non-local national air talents over and over . . . and over, again. During most dayparts (ugh, more radio jargon) the broadcast day is jockless (especially in the evenings, overnights, and weekends) since a computer program fed by a file server rid the corporations of that pesky, cash-draining human element.

Yesterday, during the rise of the then new breed of progressive rock radio stations in the late 1960s and early 1970s, radio stations were locally programmed by a program director and their music director from a human-curated vinyl album library, with a “programming assistant” doing the dirty work of cataloging and filing the albums. Back then, each station had its own individual “sound” that didn’t follow the national trends set forth by any industry charts. Young upstart musicians — both solo and band — stood a chance to receive airplay in a given, geographical region. Some of those artists were fortunate enough to go national as result of the local-to-regional airplay exposure.

This is why radio listeners, for example, in the Northeastern U.S states of Illinois, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have such found memories of hearing (a lot) from Duke Jupiter, the Iron City Houserockers, and the Michael Stanley Band on the radio — while the rest of the country had no awareness, sans one, minor “Top 40” chart placing (and even then), who they were. Then, there were bands, such as Pennsylvania’s Dakota (out of ’70s one-hit wonders, the Buoys) and Seattle’s Bighorn (Styx-like prog-rockers), each touring as the opening act to Queen: Queen’s fans didn’t purchase the albums — and radio stations didn’t program them, either. Spider, Holly Knight’s new wave-inflected concern, didn’t fare much better — regardless of tours with the legacy act that was Alice Cooper, and a then hot April Wine and Krokus.

 “I’ve been around the dial so many times
But you’re not there
Somebody tells me that you’ve been taken off the air.”
— “Around the Dial” by the Kinks

On the air? Maybe . . . barely . . . not at all

Signed to Epic Records, the first three albums by the Rockford, Illinois, hard rock band, Cheap Trick, languished in the lower regions of the “Top 200” album charts. In their U.S Midwestern region home base: Cheap Trick were superstars. On the East and West coasts: very few-to-no stations aired the band. Not even spreads in the best-selling pages of Circus and Hit Parader magazines cajoled the radio programming or record buying public.

Meanwhile, overseas: Cheap Trick were the Beatles: So much so that the band recorded an album, Live at Budokan, to chronicle their crazed Japanese concerts. The Japanese-import (1978) of what became the band’s fourth album — originally not intended for the U.S market (1979) — broke the band nationally. The station that aired the import and broke the band, WBCN-FM Boston, did the same for a little band out of Ireland with a debut album Boy on Island Records — that was not yet available on U.S shores and not intended to be released stateside.

Then there’s the case of Neil Merryweather with his two albums released by Mercury Records in 1974 and 1975 for his band, the Space Rangers. As with Cheap Trick: Merryweather gained a loyal fan base responding to the airplay of the albums across the Midwest. Sadly, unlike Cheap Trick: a national breakout wasn’t forth coming.

Y&T, once known as Yesterday & Today (inspired by the studio album of the same name by the Beatles) recorded four, Van Halenesque, hair metal-precursor albums between 1976 and 1982. On the West Coast, especially across California: Y&T achieved an analogous regional success — both in sales, radio airplay, and concerts — to that of Cheap Trick. Nationally, as with Cheap Trick: no one cared. That was, until, the arrival of the MTV cable network: a 24-hour music channel that played rock videos. One of those videos was for the title cut from Y&T’s fifth album, Mean Streak (1983). Hey, when you have a skimpy-clad, sexy jezebel belching forth a tongue-snake out of her mouth: kids are buying the album and requesting it on the radio (or pumping quarters, standing glazed-eyed in the video arcade watching the video play on a video jukebox).

Then, there’s this lot of hopefuls in the below, five panels of albums . . . some “made it,” while most never found a home on the radio or with the record buying public (no, we are not breaking down each album and artist in detail, and not covering all of them: we are gleaning a few to give you a handle on the “AOR” rock scene of the 1970s and 1980s).

 “If you think it’s easy doin’ one night stands
Try playin’ in a rock roll band
It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock ’n’ roll.”
— “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll)” by AC/DC

 

 1. The B’zz — the new wave outgrowth of the biker-band, the Boyzz — received scant MTV airplay with “Get Up, Get Angry.” The Iron City Houserockers — huge in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, received scant national airplay after their appearance on U.S television’s Solid Gold. Duke Jupiter was another regionally-successfully band that got a little MTV love before they disappeared. Legs Diamond — always a live concert favorite — never took off despite their perpetual appearance in the pages of the U.S rock magazines Circus, Creem, and Hit Parader.

2. Shooting Star did alright on the radio while Detroit’s the Rockets scored the biggest (and only) national hit of their career with their cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well.” Surgical Steel — even after appearing in the (failed) rock flick, Thunder Alley (1985) — didn’t make the charts and yes: REX is a hard rock band fronted by teen-idol actor Rex Smith of the solo ’70s hit love ballad, “You Take My Breath Away” (REX opened one of Ted Nugent’s tours: I kid you not; REX also double-billed with Bill Nelson’s equally lost, Be Bop Deluxe for a failed U.S tour).

 

3. The keyboard-driven, Deep Purple-cum-Uriah Heep inspired “biker rock” (like the Boyzz) of the Godz, like Legs Diamond, were better known for their press than their music. Atlanta, Georgia’s Riggs (also home to Fortnox) — after a national tour with the concert-popular Sammy Hagar (he’d not yet broken out nationally or internationally, himself), as well as having their song “Radar Rider” opening the box-office hit, animated rock film, Heavy Metal (1983) — vanished from view. Canada’s April Wine broke out of their native Canada on the U.S and European charts, while Angel and Riot received a little bit of radio love, but not much in retail hugs before their never-was vanishing.

 

4. Yes, before Billy Squire became a successful solo artist, he slugged it out with two failed albums with the pop-rock concern, Piper. Before Rainbow, Joe Lynn Turner recorded four radio and retail unnoticed albums with Fandango. Before Survivor, Jimi Jamison toured the county with Black Sabbath, Boston, and Kiss for two albums with Memphis, Tennessee’s Target; then he toured with Nazareth and Krokus — and made it to MTV — with the short-lived, one-album Cobra. Black Sheep was the two-album precursor to Lou Gramm joining Foreigner (they opened for all the major bands of the day to no avail), Starz — as with Legs Diamond and the Godz: more popular in the magazines than on the radio or retail fronts (fronted by Rex Smith’s brother Micheal Lee).

 

5. Blackjack was pop star Micheal Bolton’s hard rock concern — with guys that ended up in KISS and the Pat Travers Band. Los Angeles’ Rockicks were respected "stars" in their native California alongside Y&T — that didn’t make it to a second album. Indianapolis, Indiana’s Roadmaster — as with Neil Merryweather — was unable to convey their four-album, Midwest success to a national audience, as did Cheap Trick . . . but their drummer, Stephen Riley, found fame with W.A.S.P.  while Survivor got lucky in that Sly Stallone was a fan . . . or they would have vanished.

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Be sure to surf to your right, under the April through August drop-down lists, for the biographies 20 bands from the bygone days of radio stations and vinyl record stores.

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If you were a rocker in high school . . . and taking art classes . . .
you recreated one of these three album covers with oil pastels on velvet . . .
albums that FM rock stations don't play anymore.

 

Long gone Florida Rock Stations . . .  

103.5 WSHE "She's Only Rock 'n' Roll," Ft. Lauderdale.

WZTA 94.9 "Zeta 4," Miami.

 

WGTR 97.3 "The Rock 'n' Roll Animal," Fort Lauderdale.

WJRR 101.1 "Just Rock & Roll," Orlando.

WTBT "Thunder 103.5 Tampa Bay's Classic Rock."

 

 

 

 

WSHE 103.5 and their Orlando sister station,
WHTQ 96.5 FM "Continuous Rock & Roll."
Both were owned by TK Communications.

The key chain in the middle is when WSHE flipped
from "album rock" to "alternative rock."

WPBZ "103.1 The Buzz" went on the air as a new station
as a "Z-Rock" affliate, then programmed "alternative rock."

93.1 WHDR "93 Rock" was a flip from
classical music to "active rock."

That’s Johnny Depp, on the right of the second photo on the left side,
with the Kids, 2nd place winners of the WCKO-FM "K-102"
Homegrown Rock Festival held in Fort Lauderdale, 1982. Image: Discogs.

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 All album images courtesy of Discogs with graphic panels by Over the Edge Radio. Record crate banner courtesy of Unsplash. Radio station sticker and letterhead scans from personal collection.

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