Rock Radio in Atlanta Is Dead

Things have come full circle.

There is a buzz around Atlanta today regarding the fact that rock and roll radio is dead.  A long time rock station changed formats last night to top 40 pop.  It leaves a gaping hole in rock programming that doesn’t look like it is going to be filled.

When I got to Atlanta in 1990, I was on the cusp of a cultural shift.  In the 80s, pop acts ruled the charts.  The likes of Janet Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Taylor Dane ruled the airwaves.  It all felt manufactured to me: the beautiful people singing cheesy songs they didn’t write to the strains of electronic music arranged by their producers.  It was the superficial veneer of club culture: an expression of style over substance.

Then, in the early 90s, there was a shift in tastes.  Rock bands began taking over the charts again.  Audiences eschewed the glitz and glamour of pop for the grit and grime of rock.  Sequins and glitter where exchanged for jeans and t-shirts.  Keyboards and programmed drums were replaced with live instrumentation: guitarists and drummers.   

There was a station in Atlanta called Power 99 which overnight became 99X.  They replaced top 40s pop with what they called “new rock.”  The claim of management at the time, regarding the switch, was that they were still a pop station, but what was popular had changed.

Rock was popular in the 90s and into the twenty-first century, but over the last decade, the style’s popularity has been in decline.  There are many things you can point to which contributed to this.  Some may blame companies like Clear Channel for homogenizing radio programming.  Others will point to the emergence of online music services, satellite radio, or personal MP3 players for leading audiences away from the radio altogether.  But, if you’re like me, you’d probably blame this on the lack of good, original rock bands over the last decade.

The rock music culture has split into a collection of subgenres, no doubt, splintering the audience into smaller, niche markets instead of a monolithic crowd who will push a single up the charts.  Many of the older rock audience has been seduced by the Siren’s song of indie rock, drawing them into their own insular scenes.  But out of that, the bands that seem to have garnered the most success are retro acts: emulating a style from the past.  How do you move forward if you keep looking back?

There was a period in late Roman history when the culture was in decline.  This decline is reflected in the art of that period.  There was nothing new being created, just copies of older, established styles.  Neither the creativity nor the execution were as sharp or vibrant as works created by past masters.  I can see this paralleled in the rock scene: blues rock bands, garage bands, people who dress in mod styles and spin records from the 60s as if it were their own era.  Who is doing anything new?  New things don’t create themselves.

It will not be a blues rock band or garage band that brings rock back to the forefront.  Neither the Black Keys nor the Black Lips will be rock’s saviors.  It will have to be something new, vibrant, energetic and invigorating to capture people’s imagination.  Kitsch will only get you so far.  I have no idea who will be the standard bearer for a new rock movement, but it will be something we haven’t heard yet.

Replacing rock in the public Zeitgeist has been pop music again.  A profusion of singles-oriented acts all performing songs with programmed drum beats that sound like unch-unch- unch- unch- unch- unch- unch- unch have dominated the charts and the air waves.  It’s become increasingly rare to find a station that plays rock.

Last night, the station at 96.1 on the FM dial, which has played rock in some format since 1974, became a top 40 station.  It’s new name, Power 96. 

We’ve gone from Power 99 to Power 96 in twenty years.  Things have come full circle.