Can radio listeners still rock in an age of corporate ownership and computerized playlists? Five Knoxville stations are betting they've got the formula for success.

by Mike Gibson

It's a sun-drenched Wednesday afternoon; thousands of weary worker bees are wending their way across traffic-choked Knoxville by-ways, and WXVO disc jockey Carlito, the station's drive-time ace, is sending them home in fine style with his nimble patter and trademark insolence. Brandishing a wit that's never fewer than two steps beyond that of any of his hapless request-line callers, he liberally dispenses rude ripostes, condom key chains (the station's stock souvenirs), and bad advice as the city's newest rock station, 98.7 "The X," rolls through another boisterous 4-to-7 broadcast.

"Has the valium worn off yet?" he queries one caller, a contest winner who displays all the enthusiasm of a drowsy garden snail. Another victim, a Blount Countian, is ribbed mercilessly for his nearly impenetrable East Tennessee drawl. "You're from Muhr-ville, huh?"

Then he cues up a commercial spot, a mean-spirited groin shot at a rival station ("We realize our competition has been around 17 years. All we can say is—that sure is a long time to suck!), and launches into a long set consisting mostly of thunderous—if more-or-less radio-friendly—heavy rock.

Since signing on in December of last year, Dick Broadcasting's 98.7 WXVO has been the bristling bull terrier of Knoxville rock stations—loud, aggressive, bellicose in its refusal to back down and go away. Its playlist calls for an abundance of commercial alternative, as well as raucous doses of mainstream rock's heaviest hitters—Metallica and Megadeth and Black Sabbath and other cacophonous favorites that had heretofore received little airtime locally.

Its DJ roster includes a stable of hip young jocks, avowed rock fans unafraid to discuss the finer points of prophylactic use on the air. Its promos take pointed pot-shots at competitors, lobbing sometimes crude barbs at rivals like 103.5 WIMZ in a market unaccustomed to such hostile on-air offensives.

In short, WXVO is everything a rock 'n' roll station is supposed to be—hip, subversive, irreverent, maybe even just a little bit crude...

Until now. Between songs, the computer system that holds the station's entire playlist in its memory banks and relays—via digital read-out—what the 98.7 DJs are to play and when they are to play it (even the station's nightly Mandatory Metallica selections are mapped out, on a calendar, a month in advance) suddenly crashes. There is a glaringly obvious on-air silence, a moment of unadulterated DJ hell, and for the first time today, Carlito is speechless.

After several seemingly interminable moments, program director Todd Thomas rushes into the DJ booth, slaps a disc into the system by hand, and instructs Carlito and fellow DJ Ripley to begin selecting the songs they will play in the next hour from a rack of generically-packaged CD singles on the wall.

"Some of the other stations have it worse than we do," Thomas says. "The news station, especially—they've got all kinds of pre-taped bits, so they're going nuts."

Which points out another shattering reality: Not only is Knoxville's hippest new rock station a pre-programmed and computerized corporate creature, but it shares its building with such nonsubversive, nonirreverent, and decidedly un-hip broadcasting entities as Newstalk 990 AM, WOKI 100.3 the Eagle (Dick's recent attempt at cornering the gentler sector of the classic rock market—think Eagles, Elton John, et al), and 107.7 WIVK, the city's frog-mascoted country music powerhouse.

Niche programming, computerization, tight playlists, group ownership...these are the hallmarks of radio circa 1998, the era that has watched broadcasting evolve from a largely intuitive medium to a carefully calculated corporate product (see sidebar).

What these trends and tendencies mean is still an open question. On one hand, they've spurred a competitive free-for-all in the local market, a knock-down, drag-out rock radio slugfest, complete with on-air insults, in a city that has traditionally hosted only one or two rock-oriented stations. Today, fans can avail themselves of five commercial rock formats, including 98.7, 100.3, 103.5 (classic rock), 94.3 WNFZ (commercial alternative rock), and 93.1 WWST (Top 40).

"From a listener standpoint, you've got more companies with financial means moving in," says Jim Kelly, program director at WIMZ. "That means you're more likely to get a radio station you want to hear but that isn't available right now."

Conversely, many observers believe increased group ownership bodes ill both for those within the industry (in terms of job security, opportunity, and income) and for consumers seeking less regimented fare and a medium more responsive to its local listenership.

Though corporate ownership of local stations has been a radio reality for many years, the 1996 national Telecommunications Act paved the way for an unprecedented wave of buy-outs and consolidations. According to Dr. Herbert Howard, broadcasting professor at the University of Tennessee, the FCC set the stage for the Telecomm Act in the early 1990s when it began relaxing strictures on station ownership. The '96 legislation took that policy to its logical conclusion, dramatically increasing the number of stations a company can own in a single market (now as many as eight, although not all of those can be on the same band), and removing outright the limits placed on the number that can be owned nationwide.

"That law triggered a massive round of buying and selling stations," Howard explains. "Now you've got some big companies who own as many as 400 across the country."

Howard says the deregulation was necessary redress for an industry in bad straits, spread too thin in the early 1990s by a proliferation of stations and a corresponding decline in advertising revenues. "There were serious financial problems in radio, and the act has strengthened the industry," Howard says. "But a lot of people have arrived at the conclusion that while it was meant to be beneficial, it may have gone too far. There have definitely been negatives as well as positives."

Most working professionals view the act with some reservation, if not out-and-out trepidation. Poll a handful of local disc jockeys and program directors and you're liable to hear the same story—several times over—with the same disheartening conclusion, usually involving a buy-out, a format change, and a wholesale firing.

"I hate it [the state of the industry]," says Carlito, a.k.a. Christopher Hamm, a 25-year-old native of Lansing, Mich. Hamm started as an intern at a Lansing classic rock station in 1994, witnessed four ownership (and a couple of format) changes in three years, and survived one mass purging before being fired himself last year.

"We were doing great in the market by that time, but the last company that bought us didn't know what to do with a rock station," Hamm remembers. "I was on my way back from a Marilyn Manson concert and I turned the station on and nothing was broadcasting. I called work and no one would answer any of my questions. They changed formats and fired us all without telling us what was going on."

"I learned not to get too sentimental about corporations," says Thomas, also a native Michigander who worked briefly with Hamm and 98.7 music director Kristin Burns at the same Lansing station. Prior to the Lansing debacle, Thomas had worked his way up from intern to interim program director at Detroit's WLLZ when the station's owner, Westinghouse, was purchased by CBS. The new owners saw fit to fire most of the staff and change the format of the city's third-rated (out of seven) rock station from active rock to smooth jazz.

"They [CBS] were really conservative, and here we were, this rock station playing Metallica and doing 'pull my finger' jokes on the air," says Thomas, a lanky 30-year-old with California-surfer blonde hair. "They didn't like that at all. The bottom line is that no matter what your ratings are, you will change formats if someone in the higher corporate structure gets the idea you can do better with something else."

WIMZ morning mainstay Phil Williams traces the roots of radio as Big Business back to the early 1980s, when New Wave and MTV spelled the death knell for '70s rock and the FM album-oriented format and offered a host of new programming options (and dilemmas) for stations.

"When I started, things were a lot looser, less researched," says Williams, who has spent 17 years of his two-plus decades in radio with WIMZ. "You could throw on anything and not worry about train wrecks [industry slang for mismatched musical selections]. Now, when you turn on the radio, there has to be some consistency. You have to know what you're going to get."

"There's much more niche formatting now," 93.1 program director Rich Bailey agrees. "In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a Top 40 station like us played a little bit of everything—adult contemporary, country, rock. Now you have to specialize a lot more."

Williams believes that on balance, the changes have been good for the industry. But he also acknowledges the inherent dangers when corporate monoliths lose touch with the markets they serve. Jacor Communications, for instance, a Cincinnati-based group with more than 200 stations in its portfolio, is notorious for making local program and policy decisions from its corporate headquarters, with little input from individual program directors. (The company formerly owned WMYU 102.1 in Knoxville.)

"There are certainly lots of people with hands in their backs—their mouths are moving, but someone else is talking," Williams says. "When they [Jacor] owned 102, they didn't seem to care much. It was like it wasn't as important as their other children."

While none of Knoxville's radio players approaches Jacor in sheer number of stations owned, consolidation has had the effect of placing control of local airwaves chiefly in the hands of only three companies—Dick Broadcasting (98.7 "The X", 100.3, and four other area stations), South Central Communications (103.5, 94.3, and three others), and Journal Broadcast Group (a Milwaukee-based company, with four Knoxville holdings including 93.1). "Our situation is fairly representative of what has happened in most markets," Howard says.

The impact has been most dramatic (and most interesting) in rock radio. In the last year, Dick Broadcasting has entered the competitive fray with two frequencies, both of them former country stations acquired from smaller owners. And South Central's purchase of 94.3 from a local family has seen the station tweak its modern rock format to include a more commercially viable mix of songs—heavier on Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and other '90s post-alternative staples.

"We're what's hip; we're what's happening; we're what's now," avers 94.3 program director Shane Cox, a blonde-mulleted 30-ish fellow and former classic rock jock who up until six months ago was spinning BTO and Foghat on WIMZ.

The result of such call letter re-shuffling has been much akin to a round of on-air musical chairs, a game of format one-upsmanship in which the competing companies (particularly Dick and South Central) have positioned their holdings at different points on the demographic spectrum, targeting opponents' perceived weaknesses.

"It's not a case of one station in a building competing against everyone else," says Cox. "Now it's like having different battalions in an army. And you're not going up against one station but an entire broadcast group."

To wit: 103.5 has for years been the city's dominant album-oriented FM station, trafficking in generally hard-edged classic rock and primarily targeting adults ages 25 to 54. There was little competitive overlap with the city's Top 40 or contemporary hits station (now 93.1, targeting the 18 to 34 bracket with an emphasis on females 25 to 34), and the challenge posed in more recent years by the perennially low-rated modern rock station 94.3 was almost nonexistent.

According to Thomas, the Knoxville-based Dick Broadcasting saw a golden opportunity to steal away the mostly-ignored younger half of the rock audience. "WNFZ was all over the place, and WIMZ was kind of a dinosaur," Thomas says. "There was no one really speaking to rock fans under 35. When I first came down here, I was listening to CDs in my car because I couldn't relate to any of the stations."

When it became common knowledge that Dick was entering the rock market, says Howard, the maneuvering began. "Then South Central got control of 94.3 and took aim at part of 98.7's audience, particularly the student population," he explains. "Then Dick went back and got the Eagle and went after the classic rock market, with one very powerful station competing against another—what we call 'power programming.' It's an interesting competitive situation to watch, to see who's going to control the dominant rock format."

And with the positioning has come extensive on-air jockeying, in the form of hard-hitting promotional spots, often belittling competing formats. The 98.7 campaigns have been the most pointed, occasionally mentioning WIMZ on the air (voice-over: "What crawled up your ass and died? Get it out of there; they're playing it next on WIMZ"). South Central's 94.3 launched a counter-attack, with a series of thinly-veiled potshots at the X's inclusion of '80s "hair metal" nuggets on its playlist. (Over the distorted strains of a 10-year-old heavy metal hit, the voice-over intones: "This is a band you wish you'd never hear again. Pro-gress. Don't regress.")

The results of these intra-format skirmishes came to a head in April when Arbitron issued quarterly ratings for area stations, ratings that included 98.7's first months on air, as well as 94.3's inaugural foray under the auspices of South Central. (The next round, due soon, should include numbers for 100.3.) The results would seem to indicate that the new formats have made inroads, with 98.7 earning a 5.5 percent overall portion of listeners in its first outing, claiming second place among listeners 18 to 34 (behind Dick's WIVK) and first among men in that category. WIMZ dropped from a 10.3 to a 7.4 over the period. And 94.3, a ratings loser through most of its tenure as an independently-owned station, rose a full point, 1.7 to 2.7. Star 93.1, meanwhile, rose slightly from 7.1 to 7.6.

The fall-out has been predictable; 94.3 and 98.7 claim ratings victories, 103.5 reps are nonchalant, and no one will admit to feeling competitive heat from any of the stations below them.

"We went from nowhere to number five overall," Thomas enthuses. "For a station just starting out, that's great. I thought it would take time to get what we did."

Thomas views WIMZ's slip as a sure sign that David's stone hit mighty Goliath squarely between the eyes. "We killed them 18 to 34," he says. "We really ate into part of their listenership."

In the same breath, he dismisses WNFZ: "We don't consider them a competitor; they're going after a more teen demographic," he says, noting that many of the station's music and marketing ploys—the skewering promos, the nickname, attention to the core alternative acts—have mirrored 98.7's. "I do think they've noticed the success of some of the things we've done and followed along. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I guess."

Kelly speculates that Thomas "may feel a little challenge" in targeting WIMZ. Another former Detroiter, Kelly worked at the city's top-rated rock station WRIF while Thomas was at WLLZ. But he maintains that his current station "didn't want or need" to respond to WXVO's attack. "Their target is a younger audience than ours, so there's really no need.

"If I've got the only restaurant on the corner, and someone else builds another across the way, I'll lose some business for a period of time," Kelly says. "But if I've done my job, a large portion of the people who go away to try my competitor will come back."

But in a mid-sized city with five rock-oriented commercial formats, the more prescient question may be not "who wins?" but "who will survive?" Howard speculates that even given the gradations in format, some of the current players will inevitably gravitate to a less crowded field.

"I suspect that in the long run, the number of rock stations will be reduced," says Howard. "One or two will seek another format. Stations are always looking for new opportunities in the guise of unfilled niches."

For now, however, most local program directors maintain that there's room on the dial for all of the formats. "Knoxville was under-radioed for several years, and consolidation helped change that," Kelly says. "It almost happened too fast, and it is approaching a saturation point. But I think there's a niche for pretty much everyone here."

Tim Sheehan, a 32-year-old Northeasterner who only this month assumed the programming reins at Dick's Eagle, agrees and makes a frank admission: "My car radio presets go from oldest to youngest format—the Eagle to WIMZ to 98.7 to 94.3," he says. "All the stations are well-defined by what they play. Somewhere in there, there ought to be something for everybody."