The Infinite Dial

WRXP, New York's new Triple-A variant is two months old this week and, as you'd expect with any new station, it continues to evolve. Most notably, the mainstream current rock component that was (ironically) the most controversial element of the station early on seems a little less prominent now. Staind, Linkin Park, Nickelback, Finger Eleven, 3 Doors Down, and Puddle Of Mudd aren't gone, but whether by design, or just because some of the big songs ("Paralyzer," "Shadow of the Day") have run their course and been backed down, you're more likely to hear those acts once or twice per daypart than six weeks ago when you could hear them within a few songs of each other. (And Daughtry, maybe the most pronounced example of the station's determined populism, was off this week.)

It's not hard to understand the logic that put Linkin Park and Edwyn Collins' "A Girl Like You" on the same radio station. The Linkin Park/Nickelback mainstream rock cluster is often the only strong post-grunge music that emerges in any sort of Rock radio. WNEW-FM, the station's clear intended forebear, would undoubtedly play it if it had continued as a Mainstream Rock station since 1994. And the same PPM mindset that would make a station willing to launch Rock in 2008 would also dictate a certain amount of cume-friendliness. And Triple-A's usual rules about what is and isn't OK (Lifehouse and Collective Soul, but not Nickelback and Linkin Park) have always been a little arbitrary.

That said, the ability to hear those songs, and to hear them next to Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd, was creating at least an anecdotal distraction for some people who should have really liked the radio station. A station that plays the Decemberists, Black Keys, and Carbon/Silicon should get some leeway, but it is easier perhaps to notice what you don't like. You have to invest some time and energy in the cool new music; if you don't like Linkin Park, you already have a considered opinion from the first notes.

Here's the station at 10:35 this morning:

Rolling Stones, "When The Whip Comes Down"
Radiohead, "Karma Police"
Police, "Message In A Bottle"
Raconteurs, "Salute Your Solution"
John Lennon, "Whatever Gets You Through The Night"
R.E.M., "Hollow Man" (tying in with a on-sale-date giveaway of the new album)
Peter Gabriel, "Sledgehammer"
My Morning Jacket, "Off The Record"
Neil Young, "Southern Man"
Blondie, "Atomic"