Sic Transit Gloria Radio
By Mitch Berg
One of the truisms of playing in a bar band (as I do) is that bar bands aren’t musicians. They are beer salesmen.
And if you’re playing an American Legion in Anoka, and you bust out some Parliament or Sonic Youth, or Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd, you’ll make a few hipsters and fanboys happy – and send the rest of the crowd to the exits, sooner or later,. Mostly sooner. The American Legion in Anoka (or wherever( wants its Creedence Clearwater and Tom Petty and Bad Company and a little classic country probably woudn’t hurt.
We’ll come back to that.
The big splash in local media this past week is KQRS – the classic rock station that used to have literally the highest ratings in the country, the station that was so powerful it could beat back Howard Stern at (or near) his peak – is adjusting its format.
Along with a playlist more heavily steeped in ’90s alternative rock — including a promised bump in Minnesota acts such as Soul Asylum and the Replacements — KQ’s corporate operators Cumulus Media announced the addition of new on-air personalities who will be familiar to listeners of other Twin Cities stations.
Longtime 89.3 the Current midday jockey Jade Tittle and former Cities 97 host and music director Paul Fletcher have joined the remade KQRS staff, a clear attempt by Cumulus to pick up some of those competitors’ audiences.
The classic rock crowd is angry. The 90s alt rock crowd is chanting “it’s about time”.
Me? I’m surprised it took this long.
Here’s why.
Like the (not remotely hypothetical) bar band in my example at the top, radio isn’t about music (or sports, or even conservative talk. Radio is a delivery system for advertising. Nothing more.
Advertising focuses on people who have money – specifically, money to spend on an advertiser’s products. A station’s “format”, whether talk or sports or some genre of music, is pretty tightly associated with a demographic group that is in some way desirable to advertisers, and the products they sell. Whether pitching nightclubs to 20-somethings (KDWB in the ’90s) or lifestyle products to women from 25-40 (KS95) to stuff for harried moms (ChickTalk 107) to mental red meat for men 35+ (conservative talk), you can tell who the station is trying to reach by the products they’re trying to sell.
And it gets to them via the emotions.
One of the little secrets radio programmers know is that people form deep, lifelong, intense emotional bonds with the music that they were exposed to between, roughly, puberty and the time the brain stops growing – usually the mid-to-late 20s. Doesn’t matter what the genre – the music of that part that you associate with that part of life when so much else about peoples personalities get formed, and they start noticing and getting noticed by the opposite sex, has an intense emotional connection for them. More or less intense, maybe, but still, it’s a a powerful hook into a person’s psyche.
“Classic rock“ is music of the baby boom. For the past fifty years, they’ve been the biggest, wealthiest demographic surge in history. And “classic rock” is the music of the people who were born between 1945 and sometime in the early ’60s. Who were entering puberty between the late ’60s and the mid-seventies. And whose brains became more or less fully formed between 1970 and 1980 or so.
And for most of the past 45 years or so, KQRS has prospered by cracking the emotional response of one of the biggest, wealthiest demographic groups in the area – white men (remember – mens and womens brains are different!) whose brains started forming in the mid-sixties, and pretty much switched to emotional, and thus musical, cruise control sometime during the George HW Bush administration.
The baby boom starts turning 80 this year. The younger ones start retiring. They don’t have the money or the clout anymore. Advertisers are moving on. Which is the same reason the last of the Big Band and Beautiful Music stations (KLBB, WLTE, KMFY) left the air 30+ years ago, and why KOOL108 switched from Elvis and Carl Perkins to, well, the stuff KQRS was playing until two weeks ago; because their audiences aged out of the prime advertising years.
It’s not about the music. It’s about business. You gotta sell the beer.
April 4th, 2025 at 8:15 am
I agree with your rationale as it concerns music format, but you threw in talk radio, and that is completely wrong. Rush, Berry, Hannity (puke) and many other conservative talk radio heads are all examples of radio hosts doing what THEY want to do, not to drum up advertising. Advertising revenue came after the fact. They did not change formats to please changing demographic and appease advertisers. Quite the contrary, they doubled down on what THEY wanted to say. Another example of your rationale being wrong when applied to talk radio, is advertisers who will support failing talk radio format just to score political points – each and every libturd radio show is a case in point, each and every one is an abject failure, and they still draw ad dollars. So, for music, your ratrionale holds up, but breaks down spectacularly in the talk radio world.
April 4th, 2025 at 8:31 am
GenX here. I like Classic Rock and the 90s alternative scene (as you do to, judging by the playlists you post). I think KQ lost its way in how they shrunk their on air music library. It was the same tired Bob Segar song, followed by the same Petty songs and always ending with Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain. Yes, all fine artists who made good songs, but there was a whole back catalog of Classic Rock that KQ shelved for the same 500 songs.
April 4th, 2025 at 8:55 am
When I was a little kid my parents went out to a nice restaurant once a year on their anniversary and the background music was quiet piano or violin something classy and classical sounding
Nowadays even classy restaurants are playing CCR.
I dread to think what they’ll turn to next.
April 4th, 2025 at 9:13 am
One of the little secrets radio programmers know is that people form deep, lifelong, intense emotional bonds with the music that they were exposed to between, roughly, puberty and the time the brain stops growing – usually the mid-to-late 20s.
Bingo. For me it is the KS95/WLOL/KDWB pop from 1982ish right up until grunge hit the scene, with most of my favorites being songs from 1986-1988. My dad is the exact same way. He was born in 1942 and music from the era of The American Graffiti soundtrack is his jam.
April 4th, 2025 at 9:33 am
Craziest thing for me is to hear the music I grew up with now being seen as “classic rock”. Even more amazingly, it’s weighted towards hard rock and hair metal, and neglects most of the soft rock dreck that I hated.
And then in a while I will retire, and yes, I fear for what will come next. Hoping for a revival of classic Motown or something, but I’m guessing I will be disappointed.
April 4th, 2025 at 9:36 am
Music is supposed to sell stuff?
I don’t believe it.
If so, why does Hy-Vee blast DEATH GROWL at 300 decibels (loud enough to rattle cans in the soup aisle). They do this during mid-afternoon on weekdays when only shoppers over 70 are in the store.
Every time I go in there I feel like a cockroach in a RAID warehouse.
I suppose it is to suppress impulse buying – because everyone scurries about in a panic and the scooter cohort sets their throttles to over-drive.
Someone please explain.
So why don’t I go to Aldi’s? I always intend to – but who the hell remembers to bring their own damned bags.
April 4th, 2025 at 10:45 am
Interesting about musical preferences. 1953 boomer here, enjoyed middle/late 60’s pop music. As time has passed, I’ve come to enjoy more of the 70’s and 80’s pop/progressive music. I’ll also listen to the swing era and classical music and not turn it off. But heavy metal/grunge and rap are total turn offs. It’s a physical response that repels me. Auto tune music is just boring. Give me BTO, 10CC, Allman Bros, ELO, etc. !
April 4th, 2025 at 10:58 am
JPA,
They did what they wanted to do, more or less, and they were lucky enough to get Programming Directors to see an untapped market at the beginning.
I’m also old enough to remember a specific episode of Hannity from 2008. He spent the first hour going all in on John McCain, and then he spent the rest of his show explaining why he didn’t think John McCain was the best candidate for the GOP to nominate, while promising that even if McCain was the GOP candidate for November, Hannity would maintain his principled opposition whenever McCain became too moderate on an issue. A couple of months and an endorsement later, every episode was like that first hour and woe to any caller that would challenge Senator McCain’s conservative bona fides. That bandwagoning has only become more pronounced since 2008.
That doesn’t contradict Mitch’s point about who is advertising on talk radio shows now.
April 4th, 2025 at 11:31 am
Hey! Anyone old enough or Twin Cities enough to remember Tony Glover?
From Rolling Stone:
More importantly, (at least in my life) he was the legendary all-night underground disc jockey on KDWB in the late 1960’s. He pretty much played what he wanted, which included (almost unheard of at the time), long play tracks and entire albums.
The funny thing was, he delighted in savaging his sponsor J A Gerber Jewelers and they loved to be abused by him, because at that hour, we all perked up when he read and commented on the “ads”.
April 4th, 2025 at 2:14 pm
People are still listening to commercial radio??? My husband and I listen to Sirius. They have any kind of music you want even ***gulp*** a Barry Manilow station for cripes sake.
As for talk radio I used to listen to Joe Soucheray periodically (like 20 years ago). He and Reusse (sp) had hilarious stories. Now? I don’t bother. Hannity is a narcissist and Bongino was a screamer. But oh! I forgot. I would listen to Mitch on Saturdays when I had a chance.
April 4th, 2025 at 3:31 pm
Im 61 and will retire within next 4yrs. I am at my most financially stable point in my life ever. So I have money to spend but I don’t spend flippantly. I am looking at some nice keyboards to fill out my music studio though.
April 4th, 2025 at 3:38 pm
I’m pretty much with ya Zdad. I do like prog-metal though but not as much as I did 10-20yrs ago. I like all sorts of music that is interesting, good melodies, song structures, able musicians. Cannot stand RAP or hiphop -rappy stuff. I do like old-school funk and R&B from 70s and 80s though. Born in ’64. Check out the Ozric Tentacles. One of my favs!
April 4th, 2025 at 3:55 pm
Most of my music listening today is when am working and on Youtube. I have been directed to many bands modern and older that I had never heard of be recommended via algorithm of my tastes. I have a few new fav lp’s and groups I listen to today, most of the European. Some of that old French and Italian Prog was/is pretty dang good.
April 5th, 2025 at 1:49 am
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April 5th, 2025 at 8:20 am
Greg
part of the overnight Glover experience was him reading the Farm Report. KDWB sent Tony for promo pictures – he was not amused but he went.After the first few shots the photographer asked him to smile or move or something he replied “No”. so all the proofs from the shoot look identical.
more albums(worth the listen)
Good Old Koerner, Ray & Glover (1972)
One Foot in the Groove (1996)
Legends in Their Spare Time (1987)
Ashes in My Whiskey (1990)
Picture Has Faded (1993)
April 6th, 2025 at 7:05 am
Betty, I used to like Sirius’ all-music format but they just HAD to go and tinker with it. Now there are DJs to babble between songs, same as in the olden days of AM push button radio in the dashboard.
Did ANYBODY tune into a radio station to hear the record-changer fill dead air between songs? I never met those people, all my fellow listeners kept shouting at the radio, “Shut up and play the song!”
Okay, yes, we were mostly pissed because we were trying to record the music on our cassette tape recorders so we could play it later. The DJ timing his babble to step on the intro music until the singing began, was not clever, it was infuriating. And I’m NOT going to give Musicland $3.99 to buy the collection of songs from K-Tel, not when I could get them for free if the DJ would just shut up.
I suppose nowadays I could spend $1,500 to download all my favorite singles from Amazon but you know who I really envy? My buddy who was big into Napster. He’s got all the good music – babble free – on a USB that slips into the AUX port of his car radio. Bastard.
April 6th, 2025 at 7:38 am
Also, talk about intense emotional bonding, I got a summer graveyard shift security guard job in 1975 as a 22-year-old college student. The place we guarded was an ancient industrial site that was remote from most everything else, kind of spooky as it only operated a day shift, and my other student partner and I were utterly alone. We played WMMR, the Philly prog rock station, all night, all summer long. That play list, repeated several times through the night, was SEARED into my head! Today, hearing anything from that play list instantly transports me back to a dreary guard shack, hoping to stay awake through the night.
Cool aside: As the guard service was desperate for a body to fill the job for that very night, my interview was minimal, maybe 10 minutes before I was issued a uniform. The kicker was the job required that we wear a gun while at the gate. Sure enough, I walked out of that short interview with a uniform AND a gun and holster/belt with ammo. My college roommates were quite impressed when I walked in saying “look what I got!”
April 6th, 2025 at 9:25 pm
“Betty, I used to like Sirius’ all-music format but they just HAD to go and tinker with it. Now there are DJs to babble between songs, same as in the olden days of AM push button radio in the dashboard.”
And one of those jocks on Sirius is the great Spyder Harrison, one of the best guys I ever worked with in music radio.
April 7th, 2025 at 6:27 am
zdad,
Funny story about the security job.
When I lived in Cali circa 79 to mid 1981, one of my neighbors in our apartment complex, was an overnight shift security guard at a defense plant in El Segundo. He told me the same story about being issued a uniform, gun and ammo, but he also got handcuffs and a big ass Maglite flashlight. He did get a criminal background check. He couldn’t believe that he didn’t have to qualify with his S&W .38 police special. In his case, the place was big enough that he had three other guys on his shift.
April 7th, 2025 at 7:49 am
JPA,
You’re right in the sense talk talk radio is a little different from music: it doesn’t engage in lizard-brain emotion like music radio does. Or didn’t, and still mostly doesn’t.
And there IS a market for liberal talk. It’s tiny, and most of it is tuned into NPR, but it’s out there. Its advertisers tend to be either tiny and niche, or buying “combo” ads at groups of stations that include a lib-talker (or a talker with some prog on the air).
And there’s nothing saying advertisers don’t have the right to throw their money away, ifi they have some ideological bent to do so. See: Penzey’s Spices.
April 7th, 2025 at 7:52 am
PaintedDog:
” I think KQ lost its way in how they shrunk their on air music library. It was the same tired Bob Segar song, followed by the same Petty songs and always ending with Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain. ”
Yep. And that’s not just the last few years. 20-odd years ago, they had a practice of picking ONE song by an artist, and playing THAT song for weeks on end.
I love The Who. But if I heard “Behind Blue Eyes” on Tuesday, and on Wednesday Zepp said “stick around for The Who”, I knew it’d be “Behind Blue Eyes”. And it would be. For weeks. Same with any other artist.
I started tuning out around then, and tuned out completely when it became clear the whole thing was phoned in.
April 7th, 2025 at 7:57 am
“Did ANYBODY tune into a radio station to hear the record-changer fill dead air between songs? I never met those people”
Sure, you have. I was one of them. I’d study how jocks would walk up and down ramps – there was a real craft to doing it well.
“Okay, yes, we were mostly pissed because we were trying to record the music on our cassette tape recorders so we could play it later. The DJ timing his babble to step on the intro music until the singing began, was not clever, it was infuriating. And I’m NOT going to give Musicland $3.99 to buy the collection of songs from K-Tel, not when I could get them for free if the DJ would just shut up. ”
I’ve heard that from so many people over the years.
Thing is, nothing in radio (at least, radio in cities larger than 50,000) is random. There’s research behind all of it. For everyone trying to rip from radio to tape, there was someone who just wanted to non-stop noise and chatter.
For the former? KQRS jocks almost never “walked up the ramp”. They were the station for people like you, Big. On the other hand, WLOL/KDWB? Unless it was a “cold open” or “cold close”, we walked up EVERY ramp. And the ratings showed that both did just fine with their audiences.
Because they’re different audiences!
April 7th, 2025 at 11:01 am
“the station that was so powerful it could beat back Howard Stern at (or near) his peak“
Exactly why after being pointed in the KQ direction after moving up to Woebegone in ‘91, I was already beginning to have doubts.
I remember seeing Tom whatshisname in the Uptown Bar one night. He was obviously *at least* 50 years old, and swooping on 20 something girls, wearing sunglasses and a pair of tiger stripe Zubas.
Who thinks that dude is something special?
Answer: Howard Sterns fans and aging boomers chasing 20 year old hot girls.