The Straight Skinny

 

Outside, Looking In: Pt. 1

Like Alice, former format programmers step through the looking glass, follow the genius down (white) rabbit holes

By Carol Archer

 

If you want to program as art, there's a broad swath of Internet bandwidth that's dying for unique niches to create strong brands. The fundamentals of NAC are still great building blocks for a brilliant new adult lifestyle format, one that may not be recognizable as "NAC for 2010," until years from now when a next-gen Sean Ross-type notices the resemblances between these cycles.

 

 But if you insist on doing ad-supported music radio, you're going to be some type of AC outlet, as long as the Holy Grail is getting the 18-49s or the 25-54s the agencies want. Your AC station may lean toward George Strait or toward Justin Timberlake, but it's still AC, which to most casual listeners is just "radio" -- not a

playing field that's ripe for experimentation.

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At the risk of blasphemy, can we forget about Smooth Jazz for a moment? Let's talk about NAC, the genre most of us signed up to do when we were picking our format allegiances. That was a challenging mix of formats-be-damned mellow music for our generation (dare I say it?). It evolved into Smooth Jazz, because economics forced us to get bigger ratings and sell more ads to help pay down the ridiculous debt our companies racked up buying our stations for ludicrous prices. And we evolved with it, because that was the way to survive. We weren't necessarily happy about playing Motown classics and instrumental covers, because it was a-180 away from the format we signed up to do. But when it got ratings it seemed like a good idea. Then our owners wanted even bigger ratings, so we continued the watering-down process we started. We all did it.

 

 To a casual listener, here's what happened: We became like everything else on radio. We homogenized ourselves into the modern-day mix of 300-song libraries, jingles, contests, and commercials that the casual listener calls "radio," because most really don't care enough to define a difference between stations and formats.

“We became like everything else on radio. We homogenized ourselves into the

modern-day mix of 300-song libraries, jingles, contests, and commercials that the casual listener calls "radio," because most really don't care enough to discern a difference

between stations and

formats.”

– Blake Lawrence

Music radio is now a whole bunch of AC stations with subtle

differences – to the listener, that is. The format we signed on to do was subjugated a long time ago by the form of AC called Smooth Jazz (and later Smooth AC, but what's in a name, right?), and those of us who say it's dying are clinging to the stations we've been loyal to, in denial of the fact that the sensibilities of NAC haven't been present for a long time.

 

 One by one, as our stations shift to yet another permutation of AC, we hear that "our" format is dying. Friends, Smooth Jazz began to wither when the spirit of adventure and experimentation was

replaced by the safety of '70s and '80s hit vocals and instrumental cover versions -- when it became AC. It's what we had to do to

survive, and it robbed us of what made us unique.