The Infinite Dial

... is a Christian rock station, specifically WUFM Columbus, Ohio, flagship of the "Radio U" network.

I spent about 40 minutes with them yesterday afternoon, and if I'd listened to them at my normal office level, none of my colleagues on the third floor would have been able to have a phone conversation. And after two songs with speed/thrash System of a Down-type elements to them, they then ran the promo for the Saturday night show that really rocked.

Now, I'm not a habitual Active Rock listener -- some of whom could possibly tell me that this was nothing on their 1 to 11 scale. And you will hear some less-edgy music on this station that could be Chevelle or Nickelback. But as Active becomes more mainstream and library driven in many places, Radio U stands out. It's been a while since radio stations decided the way to get a 19-year-old's attention was to rock harder, particularly because so few have wanted to get a 19-year-old's attention for a while.

Also standing out, by the way, was a promo soliciting listener contributions which asked, "Doesn't it suck when your favorite music is polluted with commercials?" thus proving, once and for all, that the once-graphic word in question is apparently now barely more profane than saying that something stinks.

Here's WUFM around 3 p.m. yesterday:

The Fold, "Medicine"
Emery, "The Party Song"
Underoath, "Everyone Looks Good From Here"
August Burns Red, "Composure"
Deas Vail, "Anything You Say"
Project 86, "Molotov"
Search The City, "Clocks and Timepieces"

There are a lot of people who just take it for granted that radio is no longer the best way to hear music. And inherent in some of their comments is the notion that radio's "music (of our choosing) + brief personality + commercials" only worked for 45 years because there were no other choices. So why is it then that WCBS-FM New York came back even bigger after the Oldies' format's two-year-hiatus. Didn't listeners realize they were better off somewhere else? We look at the larger implications for radio's future as a music delivery system in this week's Ross On Radio.

I wanted to give Hip-Hop and R&B outlet KXJM (Jammin' 95) Portland, Ore., one more listen before its announced change to all-Sports next week. Jammin' had created a lot of trouble for heritage Top 40 KKRZ (Z100), particularly during that period when many considered Hip-Hop to be the only music that mattered to an 18-year-old. And even as a lame duck, it ended the winter book with a 2.9 share to Z100's 2.8.

Today the station I heard in middays was jockless (teasing that a change was coming Monday, but with no mention of to what) and playing a lot of relatively new music -- a definite difference from the old days when the jocks of a station with an announced format change tended to dig in the crates for their favorite oldies that would never otherwise be heard.

KXJM's change shouldn't be spun into any larger pronouncement on the state of Hip-Hop radio. It wouldn't be entirely surprising to see somebody else show up with its morning show and name/library next week, as happened in Phoenix and (with Top 40) in Indianapolis. Besides, such pronouncements usually only mean that a rebound is imminent. And three hours away, KUBE Seattle -- the station that proved Hip-Hop had a place on Pacific Northwest radio -- remains atop its market.

Here's Jammin' 99.5 today just before 11 a.m. local time:

Baby Bash, "What Is It"
Day26, "Got Me Going"
Ray J., "Sexy Can I"
J. Holiday, "Suffocate"
Topic, "I Gotta Get It"
Alicia Keys, "Like You'll Never See Me Again"
David Banner, "Get Like Me"
V.I.C., "Get Silly"
Rick Ross, "The Boss"
Sean Kingston, "There's Nothin'"

There's a good piece in yesterday's Washington Post by Marc Fisher looking at the state of local AM -- weakened by the departure of All-News powerhouse WTOP and the recent advent of Gospel on FM. One of the most interesting aspects of Fisher's article is the connection between the type of local content that AM was once famous for and the things that people now look for elsewhere on-line.

"The swap shop call-in shows that once filled the midday airwaves on many local stations are the spiritual godfather of Craigslist and other online classified sites. The sports phone-in shows that have long been an AM staple spawned the fan message boards that have proven so popular on the Internet. And although the great American tradition of ranting -- passionate political tirades, righteous religious preaching, get-rich-quick financial schemes -- surely dates back to Colonial times, it was first propelled into a mass, coast-to-coast culture on AM radio, and has found a happy new home on the Web," Fisher writes.

When I first heard Clear Channel's KOLZ (Kolt Country) Cheyenne, Wyo., in the late '90s, it was a very different sounding station: more traditional (as you'd expect, given the market), and playing some interesting older library titles at a point when the "hits and legends" approach wasn't as widespread. It was, in short, a market leader that sounded like the market. KOLZ didn't stream its signal at the time, so I hadn't heard them since. But I found them streaming again this morning and am happy to report that Tuesday at the station is double-play "Chris LeDoux'sday," something that couldn't possibly work in many other markets. "Whatcha Gonna Do With A Cowboy," LeDoux's big duet with Garth Brooks was indeed one of the songs, but so was "Call of the Wild," which I didn't know. They're worth hearing here.

An interesting tidbit from yesterday's release of Arbitron March PPM data for Philadelphia and Houston that has, as best I can tell, gone uncommented on elsewhere:

Halfway through March, Smooth Jazz KHJZ Houston became Top 40 KKHH. That station, which was already declining in previous months, went 2.6 - 1.9 6-plus. Urban AC KMJQ (Majic 102) was off 6.9 - 6.7 but maintained its market lead. AC KODA (Sunny 99.1), which had been tapering off since the Christmas music ended, was up 4.5 - 5.9. The traditional jazz station, noncommercial KTSU, went down as well 0.6 - 0.5 although few partisans of either station would see the other as in any way connected.

Another full month might better tell the story, of course, but for now it's intriguing that the demise of Smooth Jazz seemingly does everything to help the Mainstream AC and nothing for the Urban AC -- this even though one of the existential issues for Smooth Jazz had become its musical proximity to Urban AC.

So what do you do when you have a morning host like WDCG (G105) Raleigh, N.C.'s Bob Dumas with a series of seemingly calculated outrages over the years, some of them trifling (anti-bicyclist) and some more serious? For more than 20 years, broadcasters have perfected the art of letting the people they offend become their public relations machine in a way that rarely backfires (Imus, Opie & Anthony) and rarely backfires indefinitely (Imus, Opie & Anthony). So what to do when neither engaging nor ignoring is the perfect strategy? There's always suggesting alternatives as this Raleigh News & Observer story does.

And here's the question that must now be asked anytime somebody goes into a small market and encounters a live and local personality:

Didn't they get the memo?

How is it that some stations carry on with a local staff when many stations in much larger markets went to the hard drive and/or jockless a long time ago?

Meanwhile, check out this small-market station (discovered by iN3 Media Partners' Robert Unmacht) and their playlist with 50 songs (and many, many extras).

There were reports elsewhere on line this morning that Clear Channel's KZPS (Lonestar 92.5) Dallas had completed the segue back to Classic Rock from its Americana/Classic Rock/Country hybrid. KZPS, you may remember, has been written about here every now and then as we check the progress of both this oft-attempted but tricky format and the station's attempt to replace traditional spots with sponsorships.

And the answer is that the station gets closer to straight Classic Rock all the time, but in the segment we heard this morning, there was still a Pat Green song standing between the station and a complete format change. There's also a lot of Southern Rock that you don't usually hear on most Classic Rock stations and, interesting to me anyway, a lot of that holdover blues rock from the early '90s that you never hear on the radio anymore (e.g., "Bad Thing" by Cry Of Love).

Willie Nelson is still the voice of the station's legal ID. Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, Jr., (and his dad) are still mentioned in the promos.

As for the sponsorships, we'd established a while ago that Lonestar was running some traditional spots. The streaming stopset we heard this morning was a mix of traditional spots, a seemingly pre-recorded testimonial that was meant to sound like a live read, and instrumental fill music. The stopset also went from :22 to :28, a long break for a station that used to not run spots at all. There was another stopset between :48 and :52.

(By the way, I shouldn't be too hard on that instrumental fill music. It was during that second stopset that a co-worker looked up and said, "Wow, I haven't heard that song in a long time," referring to Joe Satriani's "Motorcycle Driver," which then ended abruptly as the station went back to music.)

Here's Lonestar 92.5 at 11 a.m. this morning:

T. Rex, "Bang A Gong (Get It On)"
Bob Seger, "Night Moves"
Rossington Collins Band, "Don't Misunderstand Me"
Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Who'll Stop The Rain"
Eagles, "In The City"
Pat Green, "Wave On Wave"
Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Saturday Night Special"
Rolling Stones, "Ain't Too Proud To Beg"
Fabulous Thunderbirds, "Wrap It Up"
Jimi Hendrix, "Foxey Lady"
Allman Brothers, "No One Left To Run With"
Eric Clapton, "I Shot The Sheriff"
Steve Miller Band, "Jungle Love"

Bonneville's new L.A. Triple-A is on the air and I wanted to put the first hour out there for anybody who's come to look for such things on this site. Here's KRBV (100.3 the Sound) L.A.'s sign on at 10 a.m. local time.

U2, "Beautiful Day"
Los Lonely Boys, "Heaven"
Rilo Kiley, "Silver Lining"
Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter (Live)"
Talking Heads, "Once In A Lifetime"
Lifehouse, "Hanging By A Moment"
Spoon, "Don't You Evah"
Elvis Costello, "Every Day I Write The Book"
Doors, "Love Me Two Times"
Keane, "Somewhere Only We Know"
Police, "Driven To Tears"
Bruce Springsteen, "Girls In Their Summer Clothes"
Foo Fighters, "Learn To Fly"
Grateful Dead, "Uncle John's Band"
Nirvana, "About A Girl (Unplugged)"

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"

Speaking of "La Radio Country Rock" (see below), it's a proposition that continues to bedevil U.S. broadcasters who have been trying for years to make the format work without ever fully tackling some of the inherent problems (not enough Southern Rock hits, not enough male/uptempo Country that tests). But I enjoyed hearing New Northwest's KXLW (96.3 the Wolf) Anchorage, Alaska on its second day, Friday (28). As with the format in general, there was at least one song where I couldn't quite figure out the Country angle (Joe Cocker?), but it was more focused and listenable than other similar attempts. It's worth noting that there's no "rock'n' country"-type attempt to explain the music here beyond "the Soundtrack of Alaska" and other similar liners.

Here's the Wolf on Friday at 3:20 a.m. local time:

Hank Williams, Jr., "Family Tradition"
Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Travelin' Band"
Brad Paisley, "He Didn't Have To Be"
Eric Clapton, "Lay Down Sally"
Eagles, "On The Border"
Johnny Lee, "Looking For Love"
Dwight Yoakam, "Little Ways"
Joe Cocker, "With A Little Help From My Friends"
Stevie Ray Vaughan, "Little Wing"
ZZ Top, "La Grange"
Charlie Daniels Band, "Uneasy Rider"
Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Tuesday's Gone"

Readers have a lot to say about the recent Ross On Radio column, "How Fast Is Too Fast: The 45-Minute Power Rotation," a column inspired by the monster sign-on rotations on KHJZ (Hot 95.7) Houston, among others. To see their comments click here and scroll down, and then check out the discussion that began on Radio-Info.com.

It doesn't stream its signal yet, so unless you're in Upstate New York, you probably haven't had a chance to hear Entercom's newly acquired WPXY Rochester recently, so it's worth noting that the heritage CHR has returned to the mainstream-to-rhythmic side of the format, after a period of leaning more adult/Modern AC and competing more with Modern AC WDVI (the Drive) than Rhythmic WKGS. Here's the station in middays yesterday:

Justin Timberlake, "SexyBack"
Linkin Park, "Shadow of the Day"
Alicia Keys, "No One"
Akon, "Don't Matter"
Miley Cyrus, "See You Again"
Rihanna, "Don't Stop the Music"
Sean Kingston, "Take You There"
Colbie Caillat, "Bubbly"
Beyonce, "Crazy In Love"
Chris Brown, "With You"

I've always been a little conflicted about the current Cumulus version of KRBE Houston. It's a well-produced, well-executed, well-presented radio station, as evidenced by its ratings success in a PPM market. It's just going back to Clay Gish's late '70s version of the station, I've always liked KRBE best when it was musically aggressive -- and this KRBE is its most conservative Top 40 incarnation ever.

There hasn't been a lot of new CHR building in recent years, but it always seemed that somebody would try to challenge KRBE, which indeed happened yesterday with the launch of CBS' "Hot Hits" KHJZ (Hot 95.7) under PD Jeff Garrison. The new station is more rhythmic and more current than KRBE with rotations of 45-minutes on at least a few titles. And as the first WNOU (Radio Now) Indianapolis did at its launch, it's also offering "the hottest hit of the hour" with the added wrinkle of sending listeners to vote for it on the station Website.

The new station had an instant purchase on the affections of radio junkies. (It was, for a while, hard to get an available stream yesterday afternoon, probably because of the number of industry people listening!) There have been surprisingly few attempts to invoke the spirit of Mike Joseph's game-changing early '80s "Hot Hits" CHRs in recent years. WNOU was one. WWWQ (Q100) Atlanta used the positioner at its launch, but resembled it in no other way. So positioning yourself as "Hot Hits" is a good way to get the industry's attention.

The 2008 version of "Hot Hits" doesn't have jingles between every song or jocks offering short, carefully structured breaks that always feature a local place reference. So far, it doesn't have any jocks. What it does share with the early Hot Hits station is fast rotations on a tight handful of titles. The station is billing itself as "the new generation of Houston radio" and promising "no more boring radio."

Rotations, as mentioned, have been as tight as 45 minutes on "Take You There" and ":Love Song" (although not every play on either song has been as tightly spaced). And depending on how you count, Mediabase shows the station as having played about 33 current titles and 28 gold or or older recurrent titles. (Most are relatively recent, but "Mo Money, Mo Problems" made it in there.) Musically, KHJZ is more rhythmic than KRBE, but it's also playing both Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers. And in a market where dance was once an important food group, it's playing both Cascada and Enur.

I listened to an hour of Hot 95.7 this morning, then punched over to KRBE which, again, was a good sounding radio station. It just happened to be playing three ballad recurrent/gold titles next to each other. Which means that the outcome of this battle will hinge on the following question: How much of an advantage does the younger, more rhythmic station automatically have these days? In the late '90s, a younger, more rhythmic CHR could at least create a war of attrition for the incumbent that most owners were unwilling to participate in. Of course, in the late '90s/early '00s, rhythmic product was also thought to be the only music that mattered. These days, the rhythmic hits are less dominant and more likely to be Chris Brown and Fergie than the DMX and Eminem records that challenged so many adult-leaning CHRs.

We'll check in on this battle every now and then. We'll also write more soon about the concept of 45-minute rotations. For now, here's Hot 95.7 at 9 a.m. this morning:

50 Cent, "In Da Club"
Sara Bareilles, "Love Song"
Miley Cyrus, "See You Again"
Sean Kingston, "Take You There"
Cascada, "What Hurts The Most"
Finger Eleven, "Paralyzer"
Alicia Keys, "No One"
Rihanna, "Don't Stop The Music"
Buckcherry, "Sorry"
Timbaland f/Nelly & Justin, "Give It To Me"
Pitbull, "The Anthem" (the hour's "hottest hit")
Chris Brown, "With You"
Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love"
Natasha Bedingfield, "Love Like This"
Enur f/Natasja, "Calabria 2008"
Fergie, "Clumsy"

And here's KRBE from the following hour, 10 a.m.
Colbie Caillat, "Bubbly"
Chris Brown, "With You"
No Doubt, "It's My Life"
Sean Kingston, "Take You There"
Nickelback, "If Everyone Cared"
Avril Lavigne, "I'm With You"
Akon, "Don't Matter"
Ferras, "Hollywood's Not America"
Black Eyed Peas, "Hey Mama"
Buckcherry, "Sorry"
Santana & Rob Thomas, "Smooth"
Rihanna, "Don't Stop The Music"

One of the most fascinating stations of the mid-'90s was Rawlco's CKIS (Kiss FM) Calgary. At a time when Country music, despite its popularity, was M.I.A. from Top 40 and Hot AC, Kiss was an Adult Top 40 with a healthy compliment of Country titles, capable of going from Savage Garden into Vince Gill or a pre-stardom Shania Twain. For several years, it functioned as Hot AC, Top 40, and second Country station to the market.

The original Kiss is now Calgary's Jack FM and owned by Rogers, but Rawlco is back with CIGY (Calgary 97.7), that market's second new station this week. During the day, CIGY is very much like Kiss a decade later: a 50/50 Country/Hot AC mix that plays both Bon Jovi's "Living On A Prayer" and Emerson Drive's "Moments," Colbie Caillat's "Bubbly" and Dixie Chicks' "I Can Love You Better," as well as almost any song you can think of that straddles Country and AC. At night, it becomes considerably more eclectic: a mix of Triple-A and alt. country/Americana. (Canadiana?)

Throughout, the presentation is decidely mainstream -- reminiscent (in a good way) of the George Johns-consulted personality Hot ACs of 20 years ago. The eclectic nighttime mix is a product of the station's promise-of-performance to Canada's broadcast regulator. But something interesting happens when you take eclectic singer/songwriter music and present it like any other AC music, it sounds like AC music. (Of course, the late-'90s singer/songwriter boom proved the same thing.) And the positioning here is no more exotic than "all your music on one station."

Here are two monitors of Calgary FM. The first is from 5 a.m. this morning and thus doesn't include the Canadian music, which doesn't start rolling until 6 a.m. at most stations.

Bruce Springsteen, "Dancing In The Dark"
Alison Krauss & John Waite, "Missing You"
Faith Hill, "The Lucky One"
Traveling Wilburys, "Handle With Care"
Keith Urban, "I Told You So"
John Mellencamp, "Wild Night"
Big & Rich, "Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy)"
Eagles, "Busy Being Fabulous"
Carlene Carter, "I Fell In Love"
Jack Johnson, "Upside Down"
Lee Ann Womack, "I Hope You Dance"
Georgia Satellites, "Keep Your Hands To Yourself"
Rascal Flatts, "Stand"

And here's a stretch of the more eclectic 10 p.m. version from last night (the first day):

Tracy Chapman, "Fast Car"
Justin Rutledge, "Robin's Tune"
Byrds, "Mr. Tambourine Man"
Cowboy Junkies, 'Misguided Angel"
Jennifer Warnes, "First We Take Manhattan" (one of two Leonard Cohen Cancon covers heard in 80 minutes time)
Tift Merritt, "Broken"
Barra McNeils, "Darling Be Home Soon" (cover of Loving Spoonful song)
Randy Hutchings, "South Country"
Randy Scruggs & John Prine, "City Of New Orleans"
Jeremy Fisher, "Cigarette"
David Gray, "Babylon"
Proclaimers, "Life With You" (from their new album)
Rankin Family, "North Country"
Piscale Picard, "Gate 22"
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, "Please Read This Letter"

Amidst the various gloomy reports in America's radio trade press, I was interested to find this report from the U.K. Commercial radio in the UK actually grew 7.1% in the fourth quarter of last year - and the industry grew as a whole for the year.

Of course, commercial radio is a far younger industry in the U.K., which helps it. But what stands out is the last paragraph where one sees the impact of coordinated efforts by Commercial Radio's representative agencies. Surely there is a lesson for U.S. radio in that.

In America, the Jack- and Bob-FM Hot AC/Classic Hits hybrid may have been thought of as the next generation of Oldies. But in Canada, it was the closest thing to an Oldies format that had ever existed on FM. Canadian government regulations required stations to take roughly half their music either from 1981 or later or from songs that weren't top 40 chart hits (easier for a Classic Rock station than an Oldies station).

But as the Oldies/Classic Hits format moved further into the '80s, it was inevitable that it would become easier to do the format on FM. Quebec already has a French-language gold outlet. And this week, Newcap has launched a '60s/'70s/'80s-gold-based format on former Smooth Jazz outlet CIQX Calgary, now known as XL103.

As a longtime fan of Canadian radio and music, this is a launch that I was particularly proud to be involved with. Check it out here.

It's one of those things that people talk about wistfully when they recall the old days of Rock radio: coming out of a concert and being able to hear those artists on the radio for the ride home.

The Eric Clapton/Steve Winwood tour came through New York last week for three nights, so just out of curiosity, I checked out Classic Rock WAXQ (Q104.3) and new Triple-A rival WRXP (which in some ways invokes the spirit of the old WNEW-FM).

Both stations acknowledged the shows, although Q104.3 did so much more extensively:

Mediabase shows that WRXP had "Layla" playing around the time the shows let out on the second night; I heard them playing Clapton deep cut "The Core" when the show let out on the third night.

Q104.3 did six song sets of Clapton, Winwood, Blind Faith, Cream, Traffic, etc., for all three nights -- starting about 15-25 minutes after everybody would have been back in the car (and after WRXP's briefer tribute had ended).

All in all, I felt better than I did a few years ago when I came out of the musical "Jersey Boys" and couldn't find any place to hear the Four Seasons. WCBS-FM was gone. Suburban WMTR, which played a lot of Four Seasons, was in sports. I finally heard "Sherry" on the now-defunct AM oldies format on WWKB Buffalo, N.Y.

There are undoubtedly going to be some readers who find programming for the concert crowd to be just one more "Two for Tuesday"-style cliché. But it's something I wasn't hearing as much for a while. And it's not a bad way for a station to connect with listeners when those opportunities are becoming rarer.

On Friday, Washington DC's Smooth Jazz outlet, WJZW, became the latest in the format to be unceremoniously dumped, leaving yet another of radio's ever-dwindling bodies of rabid fans with nothing more than a "thanks for listening" letter on their website. I'm sure there were reasons for the flip, and I hope those reasons extend beyond merely the most recent book. WJZW has had a very good run as a Top 10 performer in that market, but becomes yet another casualty in a long line of format flips designed to infuriate listeners. I have written before about the "snow globe" theory of audience dynamics that many programming experts still subscribe to--if we shake 'em up, they'll settle somewhere else, and we will either get them with Station 'A' or Station 'B.' Unfortunately, they never consider the third option--that the globe isn't sealed, and they never settle anywhere, period.

So we sound the death knell of Smooth Jazz in DC. Is it now time to sound the death knell for the format? I have mixed feelings about that. Clearly there are some markets (San Diego and Seattle, for instance) where the format is far from dead--it is dominant. Some of you may know that in a prior life I spent quite a bit of time working in the format--indeed, for WJZW itself back in the 90s--and have seen the format through its best and worst times. I've heard stations that you can't turn off when they are really humming (The Wave in LA (KTWV) always sounds perfect for its place and time to me) and I've heard forgettable jukeboxes--devoid of passion, local flavor and personality. When executed properly, the format can be a golden goose. Done poorly, it can also be positively moribund. With New York and Washington dropping Smooth Jazz, are the format's best days behind it? Is it a classic format? Or as much of its time and place as Arrow was?

I don't think New Adult Contemporary (NAC) is dead. There are very few formats that generate as much passion 35-64, or can still move those same adults to get excited about new music--it is like Country in that regard. It can also be a terrific sales performer--take a potential advertiser to a station concert or Sunday Brunch for a great NAC station and they can't help but be impressed. NAC generates passion, excellent qualitative numbers and sounds great in public settings (hello, PPM!) It is a format, however, that benefits from a dedicated sales staff, a luxury few clusters can afford. Even so, I would dispute the notion that NAC is dead.

I do think, however, that Smooth Jazz (TM) is on its last legs. The format needs more than just "TV" to survive--it needs to tap into a more compelling benefit than "smooth out your workday," like it is little more than a Xanax. There are few formats that respond as readily to local customization; yet many Smooth Jazz stations sound remarkably the same. There are, of course, programmers who have successfully crafted unique sounding NAC stations, but those are a struggle. In the case of WJZW, WQCD and other notable format flips, some operators have decided to switch rather than fight.

I'm not close enough to the product these days to dig authoritatively into the issues with currents, cover songs, or burn scores, so I won't go down that path here. Where Smooth Jazz (TM) has really failed to evolve is in how it is marketed. Even today, stations are rolling out the same purple-y sax logos and billboards with Dave Koz and Sade, proudly proclaiming themselves as "Smooth Jazz" even though there is plenty of research suggesting that the word Jazz may turn away as many potential fans of the music as it invites. The primal need to relax in this country is a powerful benefit that NAC could tap into and market in a thousand clever ways--with passion, with humor and with a more universal approach--yet the format continues to identify itself with unfamiliar artists and events geared to "jazz buffs" instead of helping moms get their kids to soccer practice, or otherwise truly mattering to the 95% of potential listeners who will NEVER go out to see Kirk Whalum at the local jazz club. Brands like Calgon, General Foods International Coffees and Quantas and don't market flakes, crystals or increased cabin legroom--they market where they take you. For too long, the tired, overworked "Trip-a-day" contest has served as the format's proxy for this, but contesting is not branding.

Reinventing NAC will take vision, commitment, guts and, yes, an investment in branding and marketing. Yet those few stations still putting Smooth Jazz on the air view it as a cost-cutting measure, or the ugly stepsister to the "more popular" AC. NAC could be a magical format, bringing disparate ages, sexes and races together. To do that, however, it can't be the ugly stepchild, and it can't be a format-in-a-box. The format has tremendous potential if and only if it is treated as a big box station, not as a jukebox, and if it is marketed for how it can reach and touch everybody, not just the select few who know who Boney James is. I'd love to see that happen. Until then, I fear we will continue to shake listeners completely out of the snow globe, never to return.

A lot has been written here about the mess that many stations make of the on-line streamed versions of their stopsets. Some stations are doing a better job of selling local spots to parallel the national ones that would create an AFTRA issue. Others are still giving the audience 4 to 6 minutes of dire-sounding PSAs, bad incidental music, repeating morning show promos, fill songs, or some combination thereof.

In recent weeks, I've been spending more time than usual with Internet-only radio, and I've had the following moment of clarity (which I admittedly could have had a year earlier if I didn't do most of my on-line listening to terrestrial).

Almost every major on-line service offers a premium subscription level with no stopsets -- even though their stopsets are much shorter than most terrestrial stations. Terrestrial stations that at least do the work to fill their stopsets with actual songs are effectively giving the listeners that for free.

So while the best scenario would be to actually resolve the AFTRA issue (and the accompanying Arbitron issue of separately tallied stream listing), and the second best would be to sell more Web-only spots, stations that can't do that have a pretty clear mandate. It's time to fill those breaks up with songs, not fill music or McGruff the Crime Dog (the undisputed king of streaming PSAs) and to tell your stream listeners that they're getting commercial-free music without paying extra for it.

In today's Chicago Sun-Times, longtime radio columnist Robert Feder looks at how that market's radio stations responded to last week's shooting at Northern Illinois University. Feder praises the job done by WBBM, WGN, and suburban WERV (the River) and its OM Matt DuBiel, but he notes that Talk outlet WLS both chose to "bail out" of coverage at 7 p.m. to air a taped Sean Hannity program then ran on-air promos "bragging about its coverage."

Seeing Feder's column this morning reminded me that the recap of how local media covered a major news event, particularly a tragedy, used to be fairly standard within journalism. Now, it's rare to hear a music station break for anything other than tragedy, it's common to find national talk programming when you're looking for local information, and it's less common to see this sort of story about how the news was covered.

While Feder has a 10-to-15 year start on many of his colleagues, it was gratifying during the '90s to see daily newspaper coverage of radio proliferate in many markets. Much of the coverage, of course, was frustrating -- people who clearly didn't like radio in the first place and were now determined to make PDs pay for their failure to play enough (insert name of obscure critical favorite here). But the increased coverage also reinforced the notion of radio as a major medium and if broadcasters didn't take sufficient advantage of it, you can't blame the messenger.

So with newspapers, facing their own financial travails, continue to thin their workforces, you have to wonder what's going to happen to media coverage, and radio in particular. Writers who cover radio as a beat -- even the avenging angel rock critics -- generally have a better, more informed take on the industry. They are less likely to repeat the truisms about the business that are not necessarily true (e.g., "In response to the massive inroads made by Satellite Radio, panicked broadcasters have retreated from their lowest common denominator programming of playing the hits every half-hour"). They are also more likely to figure out that the man living on the billboard that said, "I need a job," didn't just coincidentally become a station's new morning man.

And more coverage of radio means that there will be continuing scrutiny, some of it perhaps unwelcome by others, of how radio covers the news or fails to. Radio's importance during a crisis continues to be one of broadcasters' talking points whenever radio's importance in listeners' lives is challenged. If radio is performing well, we need that story told. If radio is not, we need to be able to address it. It is distressing to think that one day there may be nobody to cover the news, and nobody who knows that it isn't being covered except for the people looking for information.

First WNYZ-LP (Pulse 87) New York launched last week with a big helping of late '80s/early '90s freestyle and other forgotten rhythmic titles. Then WKTU, which had always played some of those songs, seemed to make them more prominent. By this weekend, it was all out war with WKTU in an '80s weekend and both stations seemingly trying to dig deeper in the crates than the other. Not since 1991. when the brief repackaging of WPLJ New York as "Mojo Radio" had prompted WHTZ (Z100) to pull out some '80s music as well, was it as possible to hear two New York stations trying to out "oh wow" each other.

And the upshot? In the last week, I've heard all three Samantha Fox hits -- "Touch Me (I Want Your Body), "Naughty Girls (Need Love Too)" and "I Wanna Have Some Fun" on Pulse, WKTU or both. Fox, you may remember, is the former British pinup model who managed three American hits between late 1986 and late 1988 with a little help from Full Force and other prominent producers of the time. In a Britney Spears/Paris Hilton world, she'd hardly be notorious, but both her road to stardom and the retro-sleaze feel of "Touch Me" stood out in 1986. (I remember one PD in particular telling R&R that some of the hits of the time "said something troubling about society" and it wasn't hard to guess what they were referring to.)

These days, of course, the songs are innocuous and are, for better or worse, surprisingly of our time. And even if it was Full Force's doing, "I Wanna Have Some Fun" took on some larger significance as one of the first house records to breakthrough in the U.S., not unlike Missy Elliott's "Work It" becoming the mainstream point-of-entry for the "electroclash" movement (subsequently heard on "SexyBack" and Timbaland's own records). And most of Fox's hits were already playing on WKTU--you just weren't as likely to hear all of them within the period of a few days.

The songs that I've heard on WKTU and Pulse in the last week are rarely songs that would reliably perform well in research outside New York. And they're from an era which has proved hard to build a radio station around, as evidenced by the issues that the new Rhythmic AC has had in most markets. But in New York, those songs are the legacy of the old WQHT (Hot 103.5) and I can definitely think of a few co-workers here in Central New Jersey for whom those songs are indeed the music of their life.

When word began circulating last fall that WNYZ-LP New York, the LP-TV station that broadcasts audio on 87.7 FM, was switching from Russian pop to some form of Top 40 with Star & Buc Wild as the morning show, it was immediately clear that they would need to do two things:

1) Find the format that will make people seek out a frequency that is not even on every radio dial and doesn't have any existing traffic (except for Russian pop fans).

2) Sound "big-time" enough to be taken seriously and simultaneously underground enough to take advantage of the odd "TV on the Radio" nature of the station. There is certainly an audience out there for whom broadcasting at 87.7 FM gives you some extra points for not being radio-as-usual.

Being some form of Top 40 instantly eliminated some of the things that would draw people to a left-field frequency in New York: an all-Caribbean format; a harder-core rap format than what's being played on the two mainstream Urbans, or some sort of younger-targeted/indie rock-driven format (in which case you could play the group TV on the Radio).

That left playing current dance music -- which hasn't been heard much in the market since WKTU segued to Rhythmic AC a year ago, although it still maintains some presence on WHTZ (Z100). And that was indeed the format that the new Pulse 87 unveiled yesterday under new PD Joel Salkowitz, who was doing a similar format on his "Original Hot 97" Website.

As heard in its first two days, the new Pulse 87 is about 40% freestyle and lost '80s/early '90s dance of the sort that would have been on the original WQHT (Hot 97) New York, (okay, Hot 103.5 actually), about 20% current pure dance product, and 40% dance remixes of current pop and R&B hits. (As Billboard's Silvio Pietroluongo pointed out, what's not there yet is some of the dance music from the last two years or so that the market never got to hear--something which was a big part of the current WKTU when it launched in 1996).

It's not a bad time to be launching a dance music station. With recent hits from Cascada, Enur, Bob Sinclair, and even Rihanna's "Don't Stop The Music," you have a better chance of finding enough hits to represent dance music in a research cluster or a TV spot. And we can set aside the issue of whether Rihanna or even Enur represents "real" dance music: there's a lot of danceable R&B and pop right now and regardless of how listeners view it, it still helps them accept the music that comes from the dance community (as opposed to Timbaland or the Neptunes).

As for that other question, of how an LPTV pushes its way into the market with the big guys, adding Salkowitz to the mix added some extra credibility. On its first day (sweepers only, no moring show yet), Pulse certainly sounded slick enough in the opening stage, with one misstep: sending listeners to the Website for audio, even though there's not yet a Listen Live link at this writing.

And streaming will be key for the station. I was told that the signal would be surprisingly good on the station and it was -- I can hear it at my home in Northern New Jersey, about 30 miles from the city, although it's sometimes spotty. It dies out about 10 miles to the west, about 20 - 30 miles short of where other NYC FMs start to fall apart. And here in Somerville, what you get on 87.7 is the audio from Philadelphia's TV 6. But it's a comparable signal to, say, KNGY (Energy 92.7) San Francisco -- a well-respected station that hovers just under a 1-share at most times, and which many market observers think would do better with a better signal.

There's been some speculation among dance and radio fans in the last day about how and if WKTU would react. Yesterday and this morning, it felt like the station was doubling down on freestyle/late '80s (a monitor this morning shows Samantha Fox, Lisa-Lisa & Cult Jam, and George Lamond in close proximity) -- music that has always been on the station but felt like it was appearing with greater frequency today. As for current dance product, it's likely to be there only if the combination of Z100 and Pulse 87 is able to create some more records of the magnitude of Enur.

Here's WNYZ from around 5 p.m. yesterday. All non-dance songs are represented by dance mixes:

Ida Corr vs. Fedde LeGrand, "Let Me Think About It"
Ne-Yo, "Because Of You"
Justin Timberlake, "Until the End of Time"
Corona, "The Rhythm of the Night"
Mary J. Blige, "Just Fine"
Nelly Furtado, "Promiscuous"
Sandee, "You're The One"
Santana f/Chad Kroeger, "Into the Night"
Erika Jayne, "Stars"
Cascada, "What Hurts the Most"
Filo & Peri, "Anthem"
Hillary Duff, "Stranger"
DJ Antoine, "This Time"
Flo Rida, "Low"
India, "The Lover Who Rocks You All Night"
Sean Kingston, "Take You There"
Jo Jo, "Too Little, Too Late"
Ne-Yo, "Sexy Love"
Samantha Fox, "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)"

Meanwhile, if you're looking for another dance choice, one of the other great brands in New York dance radio is now represented by an on-line radio station as well. Longtime A&R person John Parker, now of Robbins Entertainment, is paying tribute to B91, the Brooklyn non-comm that started dance music on its journey to Hot 97 in the late '80s. Check out his station here.

When Emmis launched Triple-A WRXP New York last week as "New York's Rock Experience," it was with a nod to the cult that has sprung up around non-commercial KEXP Seattle, even if the music mixes barely overlapped. Now, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that the real KEXP will be heard in New York next month through a deal with non-commercial WNYE.

I didn't want to let the recent departure of KMBY (X103.9) Monterey, Calif., go unmourned. X103.9 was the most recent in a series of attempts at an Alternative/Hip-Hop hybrid, one of those formats like the Classic Rock/Country format that makes sense to everybody but often turns out to be an unstainable niche for a terrestrial station.

As do most stations, X103.9 had morphed a little since its heavily publicized launch. The music had gradually become a little more hit-driven and a little less extreme. By its final week, the powers (Flo Rida, Linkin Park, Finger 11, Timbaland./One Republic, Soulja Boy, Linkin Park, and Snoop Dogg) could have been the hits on any rhythmic-leaning large-market Top 40 (although X103.9 was playing them a little less--39 times a week or thereabouts). And if you looked further down the playlist, there was still Avenged Sevenfold and Flyleaf next to Lupe Fiasco and Gnarls Barkley.

When the first attempts to acknowledge that Hip-Hop had usurped guitar rock's long-ago place as "the only music that mattered" to a 22-year-old male came along, the issue was that there was still an age limit on a male rock listener's tolerance for rap. A 22-year-old might understand the mix perfectly. A 32-year-old would not. Lately, there's been another wrinkle. As many Top 40 programmers will tell you, Hip-Hop is definitely not the only music that matters to a 16-year-old either. So suddenly the notion of a Rock/Hip-Hop coalition isn't only limited from above but from below.

And yet, as was noted when we wrote about KMBY at the time, if X103.9 wasn't the way to go after the young males who are becoming disenfranchised from radio, the onus is still on broadcasters to figure out what is. You can't help thinking that the architect of today's Adult Modern hybrids or even the new WRXP New York are figuring that stations that mix new and old, whether it's Led Zeppelin or Local H. are targeting 18-24 males because, in the absence of galvanizing new music, they've turned to older music themselves. But it's hard to imagine somebody else's music being the thing that draws younger listeners to the radio again.

One of the interesting stories of the last year or so has been the continued rise of Oldies KLUV (K-Love) Dallas which is generally believed to have gotten a boost when Smooth Jazz sister station KOAI (the Oasis) switched to Rhythmic AC -- leaving them as one of the few 45-plus choices.

So the departure of WQCD (CD101.9) New York yesterday had to provide some encouragement to the folks at WCBS-FM, one scanner punch to the left. The new WRXP, with its ample Classic Rock component will undoubtedly be of interest to some CBS-FM fans, but they're also likely to send some folks in the other direction. So maybe it was no coincidence that the first song I heard on CBS-FM when I punched in this morning was Chuck Mangione's "Feels So Good." (I'm not waiting for Count Basic and David Sanborn, however.)

Meanwhile, WRXP, which signed on hosted in afternoons, has been jockless (at least for now) when I've heard them in late nights and mornings. During those times, they've been running a lot of those drops that sound like they could as easily be a jock or a listener as the station voice--so they're not without their WRFF (Radio 104.5) Philadelphia-type elements.

The early hours of Emmis' new Triple-A WRXP (101.9 RXP), "New York's Rock Experience," are going to be amply dissected everywhere tonight, but in the absence of a Listen Live link on the station site at this writing, I wanted to pass along a monitor of the station's first two hours for anybody outside their listening area, and some early notes:

Emmis isn't using the words Triple-A to describe the new station. On the press release, it's "new adult rock." On the air it's "where New Music, Classic Rock, and Alternative merge." It resembles a traditional Triple-A in its "Classic Rock through today" approach and in the presence of on-air hosts who serve as tourguides to the music (APD/p.m. driver Brian Schock, in this case). In that regard, it's trying to invoke the legacy of the old WNEW-FM and setting itself apart from the jockless Adult Modern hybrids that are regarded in many quarters of the industry as "the new Triple-A." (And it's ironic that the launch comes four days after heritage Triple-A WBOS Boston moved from the former camp to the latter.)

What WRXP has in common with the new Adult Moderns is a healthy component of Alternative gold and a small but noticeable "indie rock" presence. There were a few stretches where they might have been an Adult Modern for several songs. There was also, in the first two hours anyway, an emphasis on tempo and none of the singer-songwriter balladry -- old or new -- that one would hear on a typical Triple-A. (Newly appointed WNYZ-LP PD Joel Salkowitz has been doing something in the same ballpark on his The Finest Rock webstream for several months.) And WRXP does deserve points for being hip enough to play Iggy Pop and the Flaming Lips and not too hip to play Finger Eleven's "Paralyzer" or Nickelback.

Here are the first two hours of the station:

Velvet Underground, "Rock 'N' Roll (Live)"
R.E.M., "Supernatural, Superserious" (introduced by Michael Stipe as the New York premiere)
Elvis Costello, "Pump It Up"
Tom Petty & Heartbreakers, "Mary Jane's Last Dance"
Blondie, "Call Me"
The Bravery, "Believe"
Bruce Springsteen, "Blinded By The Light"
Flaming Lips, "Do You Realize"
U2, "Angel Of Harlem"
Nickelback, "Rockstar"
Red Hot Chili Peppers, "The Zephyr Song"
Black Crowes, "Hard To Handle"
Killers, "Somebody Told Me"
Lenny Kravitz, "Fly Away"
Silverchair, "Straight Lines"
Iggy Pop, "Lust For Life"
Jet, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl"
Rolling Stones, "Shattered"
Cold War Kids, "Hang Me Out To Dry"
Pretenders, "Mystery Achievement"
Everclear, "Everything To Everyone"
Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Foxey Lady"
Radiohead, "Bodysnatchers"
The Police, "Message In A Bottle"

With Clear Channel's R&B WWPR (Power 105.1) New York in the headlines today, I thought outgoing PD Helen Little deserved a mention. Under her watch of slightly more than a year, Power became a much more listenable station -- almost an R&B version of Clear Channel's gold-based Modern/AC hybrids. (Arguably, in fact, Power got to that formula first. having experimented with various forms of it over the years.) I'm looking forward to hearing Little in her new job, middays on WLTW, but didn't want her tenure at Power to end without a mention.

Three out of New York's four Urban stations have had a PD change in the last 10 days, setting off inevitable speculation about direction changes. At this moment, both of the R&B/Hip-Hop outlets sound better than they did 15 months ago. But there is still room for a station that plays the Hip-Hop and R&B Hits like a WPGC Washington, D.C., or KKDA (K104) Dallas, sounds great doing it, and becomes part of life in N.Y.C. in the way that WQHT (Hot 97) was a decade ago, or WBLS did in the early '80s.

If Fort Wayne, Ind., isn't usually on your radar as a market, it's worth checking out the fall numbers for Russ Oasis' Country WBTU. The heritage Country FM, which had languished until being relaunched last year as US93.3, was up 4.3 - 8.6, pushing ahead of rival WQHK (8.0 - 7.7): a net gain of more than four Country shares over the spring book and nearly two shares over a year ago.

The easiest way to describe US93.3 is that it's like hearing "Froggy Country" in its early days, but with patriotic references instead of amphibians. The jocks are Sam Adams, Dolly Madison, Clara Barton, Andrew Jackson, Betsy Ross, and Patrick Henry (all shown as registered trademarks on the station Website). Frequent listener club members sign up for "U.S. citizenship." The station's current variation on the ages-old "High/Low" contest is "Operation Tax Refund," in which listeners have to guess what amount the check from the station's "Department of the Treasury" is written for. The language of the station is developed to the point where it has its own on-line glossary..

Musically, US93.3 is yesterday-and-today Country, imaged around "the newest of the new and the legends the other guys have forgotten about" with a heavy presence of early- and mid-'90s titles. Like Oasis' WKLU Indianapolis, its spotload is low (only four minutes in the two hours I heard). And like Oasis' other stations, its formatics are grounded in traditional top 40--in the 3 p.m. hour, Dolly Madison could be heard talking briefly about hockey's Ft. Wayne Komets playing that night or about Edwards and Giuliani pulling out of the presidential campaign.

In other words, US93.3 is a relatively developed package.at a time when stations are going more minimal. It plays a lot of music, including a lot of "oh wow" titles. But presentationally, it's not going to be mistaken for an iPod.

Here's US93.3 at 3 p.m. today:

Gretchen Wilson, "Here For The Party"
Josh Turner, "Another Try"
Billy Ray Cyrus, "Achy Breaky Heart"
Tim McGraw, "It's Your Love"
Craig Morgan, "International Harvester"
Vince Gill, "Trying To Get Over You"
Tanya Tucker, "It's A Little Too Late"
Gary Allan, "Watching Airplanes"
Rodney Atkins, "Watching You"
Clay Walker, "Dreaming With My Eyes Open"
Chuck Wicks, "Stealing Cinderella"
Brooks & Dunn, "You Can't Take The Honky-Tonk Out Of The Girl"
Reba McEntire & Linda Davis, "Does He Love You"
Brad Paisley, "Letter To Me"
George Strait, "One Night At A Time"

Throughout our debate on the role of imaging, there's been a recurring theme from advocates of the new presentational austerity that can be roughly paraphrased as follows: "No matter how much I liked listening to CKLW Detroit and WLS Chicago growing up, they would mean nothing to today's audience." But the new austerity isn't new either, and it wasn't a panacea the first time. For more, see this week's Ross On Radio, "The Last Days of CKLW."

WJPZ (Z89) Syracuse, N.Y., -- the student-run noncommercial station associated with Syracuse Univ. -- has always run more like a mainstream, commercial station than most college outlets, doing Top 40, Rhythmic, and (if memory serves) Dance formats over the years. And now it's gotten local press following a marathon of Michael Jackson's "Beat It," followed by a heartbeat to promote its segue from Mainstream to Rhythmic Top 40 tonight as "The Beat of Syracuse." In an interesting sign of the times, however, besides generating the inevitable call to 911 by a concerned listener, the stunt also set off a flurry of text messages to the station.

As is the case whenever we cover major format changes, the impending departure of WNNX (99X) Atlanta from its terrestrial frequency has brought forth a lot of comments from listeners, many of them seemingly from outside our industry, and many of them ending with that common last line of angry listener e-mails, "From now on, I'm going to listen to satellite rado and/or my iPod."

In the world of The Infinite Dial, of course, there are lots of other replacements for 99X. Which leads me to pose this question for readers: What currently extant terrestrial Alternative stations would a former 99X listener enjoy? While it's hard to replace a legend -- particularly one that is already looming larger in listeners' minds before it even goes away, there are still plenty of choices for a long-time 99X listener, who misses some of the music that the station made famous, still cares about new Alternative rock, and has sensibilities that lean toward the pop/singer-songwriter/true alternative side, not the harder side of the format.

That description covers probably 40-45% of the format these days, including two of the longest running success-stories, KROQ Los Angeles and KXRK (X96) Salt Lake City. Both have become slightly more adult over the last year in a way that might appeal to a 99X person, and X96, like 99X, prides itself on having a thinking person's morning show. You might also steer a former 99X person to:

* The first wave of Adult Moderns (which 99X briefly joined) like KBZT San Diego or KNRK Portland, Ore.

* The new crop of stations on the cusp of Modern Rock and Modern AC. And lest this become one more plug for WRFF (Radio 104.5) Philly, any of the Clear Channel hybrids have similar appeal, including WDVI Rochester, N.Y., or KJMY Salt Lake City. So, for that matter, would its Hot AC WMAX Grand Rapids, Mich., where the top 5 most played oldies are from the Bodeans, Shawn Mullins, Black Crowes, Nine Days, and Toad the Wet Sprocket.

* The more contemporary half of the Triple-A format (e.g., KBCO Denver, KMTT Seattle, KINK Portland, Ore.)

There's also the radio station that kept me on the terrestrial dial for Modern Rock when WXRK (K-Rock) New York went all-Talk for a year, WHTG (G-Rock) Monmouth/Ocean, N.J. Even after being tightened up by a new PD, it's still aggressive with both currents and gold and still has some "what will they play next" aspect to it.

Okay, this is a very partial list -- that's where you come in.

I was really looking forward to hearing Jack-FM or something like it come to Eastern Europe. Even before the wall fell, that area was a hotbed for all things Eurosynth: Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, New Order, and a zillion others from the category that had much less impact in North America. Even now, listening to the Russian contemporary format on WNYZ-LP-TV in New York, soon to be Pulse 87 FM, it's possible to hear new music that sounds like '80s Europop.

There's actually disappointingly little of that music on Kekc-FM, the new Russian licensee of Jack-FM serving Moscow and St. Petersburg. Only about four songs an hour are in English and there are definitely some '80s-sounding Russian music, but there's also a lot of traditional sounding balladry and a lot of more generic pop/rock that is hard to place in any particular decade. The English language songs I heard in my first half hour were Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" and Bryan Ferry's "Slave To Love."

Ferry, by the way, already has more of a presence on Kekc-FM than he has on its counterparts here in the U.S. WCNR (the Corner) Charlottesville, Va., PD Brad Savage sent an e-mail around to friends/colleagues on Friday night headlined, "I discovered the best radio station EVER," in which he writes, "I did hear "Lemon Tree" by Fool's Garden, a worldwide smash that U.S. audiences didn't get in 1996. I also just heard "Jealous Guy" by [Ferry and] Roxy Music. Different is Good!" Savage also writes that "the imaging rules," although the station voice sounds more sonorous and (if you can tell this about somebody speaking in a language you don't speak) somewhat less ironic than the U.S./Canadian voice.

To hear the station, click on the right-most drop-down menu icon on the right-hand side of the page.

It hasn't gotten the same national ink this week, but here in the New York area, the return to the radio of Luis Jiménez is a big story, generating nearly as much press coverage as the return of Don Imus. Jimenez was part of the market-leading ""El Vacilón de la Mañana" on SBS' Tropical WSKQ (La Mega) New York. He's been sitting out a non-compete for a year, but returns, as expected, on Univision's WCAA (La Kalle). That station was reggaeton but, like much of the Latin Urban format, has evolved heavily, putting it more in WSKQ's neighborhood these days. WSKQ has responded by re-adding Jiminez's partner Moonshadow to its morning show. Both stations have somewhat obscure Web addresses, but both are streaming and can be reached through the links above.

Mainstream(ish) formats are still sufficiently rare in the non-commercial band that I'm always fascinated when I run across one. I hadn't checked out WMWX (ClassX Radio) Cincinnati since its debut, but reading about some recent lineup changes prompted me to check them out again this morning. The station is doing a mix of deep cuts Classic Rock and like-minded recent material and reminded me, at its best moments, of my other favorite deep cuts outlet, KCDX Phoenix.

Here's ClassX at 11:30 this morning:

John Fogerty, "Eye Of The Zombie" (1986)
Eagles, "Ol' 55" (1974)
J.K. Northrup, "So Long" (2007)
Eagles, "I Don't Want To Hear Anymore" (2007)
Soul Asylum, "Sexual Healing" (1993)
Bob Seger, "The Fire Inside" (1991)
Neal Morse, Mike Portnoy & Randy George, "Where The Streets Have No Name' (2006)
ELO, "I'm Alive" (1980)
David Gilmour, "Wish You Were Here (Live)" (2007)
Albert Cummings, "I Feel Good" (2006)
Kiss, "Strutter" (1974)
Supertramp, "Sister Moonshine" (1975)
Bryan Adams, "Let's Make A Night To Remember" (1997)

In late November, we named Salt Lake City one of our Ten Best Markets For Radio Listeners. Since then, there have already been a few changes. One is the switch of Adult Standards KDYL to Oldies, the second station to go Oldies on AM in two months. But the other, involving public broadcaster KCPW-AM, makes the already wide variety of offerings here that much broader.

Just a reminder: If you haven't seen it already, be sure to check out the list in last Wednesday's Ross on Radio of the Most Intriguing Stations of 2007, as well as readers' own suggestions and comments.

This could have been an anti-climactic First Listen to write. The hole in Orlando for something in the Oldies/Classic Hits neighborhood on FM has been pretty obvious for a while now -- particularly since there were two Alternative outlets in the market. And the former O-Rock has been signaling its intentions by running "The History of Rock & Roll" this week. That said, the first hour of WOCL (Sunny 105.9) was very good, and very well-produced. If it wasn't as momentous as the first hour of sister WCBS-FM New York, it did have that "we've been here doing this all along" feel that few just-launched stations achieve these days.

Here's the first hour of Sunny 105.9:

KC & Sunshine Band, "That's The Way (I Like It)" (1975)
Foreigner, "Feels Like The First Time" (1977)
Prince, "1999" (1983)
Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," (1965)
Four Seasons, "December 1963 (Oh What A Night)" (1976)
Marvin Gaye, "Sexual Healing" (1982)
Doobie Brothers, "Listen To The Music" (1972)
Maxine Nightingale, "Right Back Where We Started From" (1976)
Billy Joel, "Uptown GIrl" (1983)
Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl" (1967)
Barry White, "You're The First, The Last, My Everything" (1974)
Huey Lewis & the News, "I Want A New Drug" (1984)
Fleetwood Mac, "Don't Stop" (1977)
Beatles, "Twist & Shout" (1964/1986)

Even when he was group PD of United Broadcasting in the '80s, you didn't read much about Bill Parris, but he's always created quirky, intriguing takes on any format he does. And he's already had a knack for getting to some groups of records a few years before they end up back on the radio. When UBC did a short-lived Adult Top 40 format on WYST (92 Star) Baltimore in the early '90s, shortly before it became WERQ (92Q), it was the first place I'd heard "Hungry Like The Wolf" back on the radio in a decade. When suburban D.C.'s WINX was doing Oldies in the mid-'90s, I remember hearing it throw in "Staying Alive" and "That's The Way (I Like It)" and thinking it was kind of gutsy to play those songs as Oldies again. Now, of course, they're a regular part of most Oldies stations.

In recent years, Parris has doing a format that can best be described as the early '90s version of 92 Star a decade or so later on two AMs, WKHZ Ocean City and WYRE Annapolis, Md. The format is meant to promote a website, KHZTV.com that will launch March 1 as "an e-store for new DVDs and music from indie creators," but which is up and running now, if you want to stream the format. The "oh wow" records now are from the late '90s/early '00s. And even if this seems like an unusual mix now, I don't doubt that there will be something like it in the mainstream in a few years now.

Here's a recent hour of WKHZ in mid-mornings:

Kool & the Gang, "Celebration"
Good Charlotte, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous"
Meredith Brooks, "Bitch"
Sean Kingston, "Me Love"
Aerosmith, "Jaded"
Prince, "1999"
Avril Lavigne, "When You're Gone"
Michael Jackson, "Bad"
EMF, "Unbelievable"
Sheryl Crow, "If It Makes You Happy"
George Michael, "Monkey"
James Blunt, "1973"
Santana, "Maria, Maria"
Murray Head, "One Night In Bangkok"
Lionel Richie, "All Night Long (All Night)"
Jennifer Paige, "Crush"
Billy Ocean, "Caribbean Queen"

Many of you know that Edison Media Research does research in many other areas than radio. Our experience in doing research for many kinds of media businesses makes us better radio researchers. Doubtlessly our most high-profile work is the Exit Polling that we do for the television networks (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC) and for the Associated Press. When you watch television on the night of an election, or read the newspaper the next day, and see people saying things like: "Obama beat Clinton among women in Iowa," that information is coming from your friends at Edison. You can find examples of our recent work in Iowa by clicking here.

For the Iowa Caucus we actually do entrance polls, not exit polls. And in an example of The Infinite Dial, Larry Rosin was interviewed by a German radio station last night for their morning news this morning. Test out your German and you can listen to Larry's sound bite here:

We can make ourselves available to talk about our polling to any radio stations who want to discuss the topic. Send an email to info@edisonresearch.com if you are interested.

It was a distinctly contrarian position in the AC world until not that long ago, but the "soft and contemporary" AC has proliferated over the last year. Cox was an early believer. CBS was the chief proponent of "Fresh" and Clear Channel used KBIG (My 104.3) Los Angeles to showcase its own version. And you can hear Cumulus' take on soft and contemporary on the new WWFT (Warm 93.9) Indianapolis, doing an '80s/'90s/now AC without the '70s in contrast to gold-based rival WYXB (B105.7).

Within the boundaries of "no '70s" of course, there's a lot of wiggle room. Unlike WWFS (Fresh 102.7) New York, which has gotten a little edgier as the year goes along and dropped the word "soft" from its positioner, WWFT still feels very much like a mainstream AC, and has plenty of '80s (and still at least one '70s song in the hour or so I heard.). It's also emphsizing "best music mix" and "10-in-a-row" and not trying to reposition (or talk about) B105.7 as too soft. Were they inclined to do that, it could make things interesting, since B105.7 now has an Oldies station to defend against as well following the recent switch at WKLU.

Here's Warm 93.9 at 11:40 a.m. today:

Lee Ann Womack, "I Hope You Dance"
Rob Thomas, "Never The Same"
Wilson Phillips, "Hold On"
Josh Grobin, "You Raise Me Up"
Pat Benatar, "We Belong"
George Michael, "Faith"
Elliott Yamin, "Wait For You"
Sting, "Fields Of Gold"
Elton John & Kiki Dee, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart"
Phil Collins, "You'll Be In My Heart"
Bryan Adams, "Straight From The Heart"
Amy Grant, "That's What Love Is For"
Daughtry, "Home"
Richard Marx, "Right Here Waiting"
Edwin McCain, "I'll Be"

And here's WYXB (B105.7) at 12:05 p.m. today:

Foundations, "Build Me Up Buttercup"
Lionel Richie, "My Love"
Fleetwood Mac, "You Make Loving Fun"
Counting Crows, "Big Yellow Taxi"
Neil Sedaka, "Laughter In The Rain" (part of a mystery year contest/feature)
Steve Winwood, "Higher Love"
Bee Gees, "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart"
Atlantic Starr, "Secret Lovers"
Michael Buble, "Everything"
Bruce Hornsby & Range, "The Way It Is"
Kelly Clarkson, "A Moment Like This"

If you grew up with Country radio in the '70s -- and there aren't a lot of people my age who can make that statement -- it's hard to find more than a smattering of titles from that era on the radio. The relative (but growing) handful of Country Gold stations tend to emphasize the '80s with only the biggest '60s and '70s titles (hard to find songs that test as well as "The Gambler" and "Ring Of Fire" when not everybody heard the other stuff). Some Classic Country stations have a lot of the late '80s/early '90s music that has some presence on a lot of mainstream Country outlets.

Being part of a combo with a Mainstream Country station won't clear out that music entirely, but it does usually result in a somewhat older average era. Cox's KTHT (Country Legends 97.1) and Journal's KXBL (Big Country 99.5) both have the advantage of a mainstream Country next door. So does Clear Channel's WLND (the Legend) Chattanooga. And recently, I've really enjoyed KSOP-AM (Gold Country 1370 AM) Salt Lake City, which is good for lost Country titles from the '60s, '70s and '80s.

The combo factor also seems to be helping WLTM (The Legend 96.7), Clear Channel's Atlanta rimshotter, which over the holidays nudged its way into a market that already has three Country stations: CCs WUBL (the Bull) and Citadel's WKHX (Kicks 101.5) and WYAY (the Eagle), a one-time gold-based station that has gone more '90s and now. The 96.7 frequency has a long history of format changes, except for a period in the '90s when it concentrated on being a suburban station. Its best recent Atlanta traction was as Active Rock WBZY, which was eventually folded into WKLS (Project 9-6-1).

I've heard two stretches of Legends 96.7 so far. Yesterday, it was pretty unapologetically old -- only one foray into the early '90s and a lot of '50s, '60s and older -- in a way that only a station that is born-to-flank can be. This morning, it was somewhat newer. So it's clearly in the shakedown period.

Here's WLTM at 11:30 a.m. yesterday:
Juice Newton, "Break It To Me Gently" (1982)
Charlie Daniels Band, "The South's Gonna Do It" (1975)
Bellamy Brothers, "If I Said You Have A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me" (1979)
Roy Acuff, "Wabash Cannonball" (1936)
George Jones, "She Thinks I Still Care" (1962)
John Conlee, "Backside Of Thirty" (1979)
Waylon Jennings, "Just To Satisfy You" (1969, the solo original version)
Tennessee Ernie Ford, "Sixteen Tons" (1955)
Crystal Gayle, "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" (1977)
Mickey Gilley, "Stand By Me" (1980)
Brooks & Dunn, "Boot Scootin' Boogie" (1992)
Ricky Van Shelton, "Statue Of A Fool" (1989)

And here they are around 10:30 this morning -- a little newer and with more late '80s/early '90s:

Buck Owens, "Act Naturally" (1963)
Randy Travis, "Forever And Ever, Amen" (1987)
Waylon Jennings, "America" (1984)
Forester Sisters, "I Fell In Love Again Last Night" (1985)
Willie Nelson, "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain" (1975)
Don Williams, "Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good" (1981)
Eddie Rabbitt, "Two Dollars In The Jukebox" (1976)
Aaron Tippin, "There Ain't Nothin' Wrong WIth The Radio" (1992)
Earl Thomas Conley, "Holding Her And Loving You" (1983)
Johnny Cash, "I Walk The Line" (1956)
Mark Chesnutt, "Brother Jukebox" (1990)
Jerry Reed, "East Bound And Down" (1977)

It's interesting that 2008 is beginning in much the same way that 2004 did, with the launch of gold-based, adult-leaning Modern Rockers. This time four years ago, you'll remember, existing Alternative stations were rushing to cover their bases, lest somebody come into the market and siphon their upper-demos, as KBZT San Diego had done to heritage XETRA-FM (91X) at the time.

Few markets, as it turned out, had the Alternative heritage or shares that justified the move. Most of those Pixies songs that PDs were so excited about playing again came back at the bottom of the music test -- a lot of today's Alternative listeners had just never heard them. And many of the stations in question either crept back to Mainstream Alternative or somehow evolved.

But 2007 wasn't a bad year for some of the holdouts, such as KNRK (94/7 FM) Portland, Ore., or for new launches like WRFF (Radio 104.5) Philadelphia. Not every market is going to have the same conditions as Philly (no current-based Hot AC or Modern AC, no other Alternative, and a history of female-friendly Alternative in the market), but by year's end, the building boom was on again -- particularly within Clear Channel. But it has now jumped the border as well.

In Canada, CHUMRadio switched to a similar format in November on its CKLC (98.9 The Drive) Kingston, Ontario, billed as "essential alternative." And Newcap's CFUL (Fuel 90.3) Calgary, which launched with Alternative last year has evolved to "Classic Alternative," emphasizing the late '70s through the late '90s, under PD Murray Brookshaw, known to most American industryites as the former PD of CIMX (89X) Detroit.

Canada is going to be an interesting market for gold-based Alternative. Only Toronto had a dedicated Modern Rocker in CFNY. But Modern Rock was always a bigger part of early '80s AOR radio and even Top 40. (Acts like Split Enz and XTC were much bigger radio presences at both formats than they were here.) And Canada has always been good at furnishing homegrown rock for the 35-40% Cancon that most stations have to deal with (suffice it to say I've heard a lot of Tragically Hip so far).

Here's Fuel around 1 p.m. on Sunday (30):

Red Hot Chili Peppers,"The Zephyr Song"
Pearl Jam, "Black"
Tragically Hip, "Blow At High Dough" (Canadian)
Sum 41, "Still Waiting" (Canadian)
David Bowie, "Let's Dance"
Matthew Good Band, "Everything Is Automatic" (Canadian)
Gin Blossoms, "Hey Jealousy"
Alien Ant Farm, "Smooth Criminal"
Cowboy Junkies, "Sweet Jane" (Canadian)
Live, "All Over You"
Theory of a Deadman, "Hello, Lonely (Walk Away From This)" (Canadian)
Lit, "My Own Worst Enemy"
Clash, "Train In Vain (Stand By Me)"
Barenaked Ladies, "The Old Apartment" (Canadian)

We're going to kick off 2008 with as many "First Listens" of new stations as we can. Check back here daily for more.

The slug line for KEGL (the Eagle) Dallas, which returned as an Active Rock station earlier this week, is "Rock is Back" and that's true in several ways. It's not just that we've seen three major Rock launches in less than a week's time. I also took a spin through the playlists of various major-market Alternative stations today and was reminded anew of the crunchier feel of that format these days. For every WRFF (Radio 104.5) Philadelphia (bookended on the true alternative end by indie act Band Of Horses and on the hard side by Linkin Park), there's a WKQX (Q101) Chicago that has started rocking harder again. In between, there are an increasing number of stations that will still play a White Stripes or Silversun Pickups here or there, but lean to the harder side of the Alternative chart.

What's interesting here is that one of the stations in the latter camp is KEGL's sister station, KDGE (the Edge). With the Eagle flying again, I took a look at a monitor of the Edge tonight to see if they'd changed their music, but there was still a strong dose of Korn, Chevelle, Avenged Sevenfold, and Atreyu, although it was cut by some of the station's '90s heritage titles from 311, Tripping Daisy, etc. In Cincinnati, it was interesting to see Clear Channel sign on a modern AC that wasn't all that far from Adult Modern WSWD. Here, they're short-spacing themselves a little. (Both stations have a '90s Alternative component, for instance, although Eagle's is more likely to be grunge.) And that again says something about the perceived new sexiness of Rock radio.

All that said, Eagle on its third night was very palatable, even to a 45-year-old whose own personal tastes run more toward the true-alt side, with some amusing imaging. Here's KEGL at 10 p.m. tonight:

Ozzy Osbourne, "Crazy Train"
Live, "I Alone"
Stone Sour, "Zzyzx Rd."
AC/DC, "Back In Black"
Puddle Of Mudd, "Famous"
Linkin Park, "Breaking The Habit"
Guns N' Roses, "Sweet Child O' Mine"
Godsmack, "Good Times, Bad Times"
Green Day, "Basket Case"
Three Days Grace, "Just Like You"
Pink Floyd, "Brain Damage"
Ozzy Osbourne, "I Don't Wanna Stop"
Staind, "For You"

In the course of yesterday's posting about WRKS (Kiss FM) New York, I realized how weird it was to be writing in this day and age about stations that don't stream. During 2007, most of the major-market and large-group holdouts finally became available on the Web. If I moved out of range of New York radio tomorrow, I'd lose Kiss and its Emmis sisters -- at least for now -- and the oddball Oldies/Standards mix on Long Island's WNYH. And that's it.

That got me thinking about what I'd like on The Infinite Dial that still isn't streaming. And it's a gratifyingly short list. I haven't been able to listen to any of the British stations that are running an all-Christmas format (with some Web-only exceptions, as previously noted). I haven't been able to check out some of the intriguing looking HD-2 multicast channels. I wasn't able to write about Adult Standards WNMX Charlotte, N.C., when I was at NAB because they neither streamed nor were audible in my downtown hotel room. And I never got to hear Saul Levine's Southern California Classic Country AM, which promised to be as iconoclastic as any of his other stations.

It's not like I don't already have more radio than I can possibly get around to listening to. But in a pefect on-demand world who else would be streaming?

* WTIX-FM New Orleans and WAKY Louisville, two quirky Oldies FMs that are reanimating some vintage call letters;

* The Emmis stations that are still MIA, particularly KBPA (Bob FM) Austin and KPWR (Power 106) L.A.;

* Adult Top 40 WBMX (Mix 98.5) Boston;

* The English/Spanish-language CHR hybrid on KSSE (Super Estrella) Los Angeles, and Bob Perry's American "Radio Digital" Spanish-language CHR clients;

* KRXY Olympia, Wash., the unusual Adult Top 40 that was my P1 station for several months from 3,000 miles away when it did stream around the early part of this decade.

And after that, the list gets even more eclectic. And a lot of the list above is likely to appear on the Web sometime during 2008. But you definitely take for granted having so much radio available: I went looking for KEGL (the Eagle) Dallas in its first day back as a Rock station yesterday and was surprised to find it not yet there.

So what's your list? What station would you listen to right now if it was streaming?

Don't know about you, but here are some of the songs I look forward to hearing around Christmas time:

Honey Cone, "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show";

Brothers Johnson, "Get The Funk Out Ma Face";

Chic, "My Forbidden Lover";

Steve Arrington's Hall of Fame, "Weak At The Knees";

Evelyn "Champagne" King, "Bet'cha She Don't Love You."

Those are a few of the songs that have played today on WRKS (98.7 Kiss FM) New York's "12 Days of Kissmas," a staple on the station since it segued to Urban AC in 1994 (with a few years' hiatus in the early part of the decade).

As noted in these pages recently, R&B Oldies have become harder to find on the radio. Most of the true R&B Oldies FMs have segued to Urban AC, while most Urban ACs have become a lot more contemporary -- there are definite parallels to what's happened in Oldies radio, except that you can add 10 years to the equation (e.g., stations that were '70s-based are more '80s and '90s now, or newer).

The other issue is that as Urban AC becomes more driven by syndicated personality, Steve Harvey or Tom Joyner in the morning, and Michael Baisden in the afternoon, very few Urban ACs actually have the same music through the day. These days, trying to do a programming special at the format would more likely yield, "The 12 Midday Shifts of Christmas." (WRKS has one of its jocks sitting in for Baisden this afternoon.)

WRKS isn't streaming yet, unfortunately. But for those of us who can hear it, "12 Days Of Kiss-mas" is always good radio. And an illustration of how one of the few things that can go toe-to-toe with all-Christmas is other music that people haven't heard on the radio in a while.

A few weeks ago, the comments in our series on the Ten Best Markets For Radio Listeners sidetracked into a discussion on the importance of imaging and whether it will matter to iPod-era listeners in a PPM world. Some thoughts on this matter -- and why "no hype" isn't the answer for everybody -- in this week's Ross On Radio.

Even the news that PPM is being pushed back in some markets hasn't been enough to slow the ongoing rebuilding boom in Rock radio. Yesterday, Clear Channel's new Alternative outlet Radio 106.7 went into Columbus, a market that already has an Active Rock,an adult-leaning Modern, a Heritage Rocker and a '80s-based Classic Rock. Today, Cumulus unveiled its new "Pure Rock" format on 96 Rock Cincinnati, the former Talk outlet WFTK.

Cincinnati has a lot of Rock radio, too