Editor: David Tanny
Home, Latest News, 2005 Archives, E-Mail
San Diego Radio Oblivious To Dance Music (March 9, 2005)While the dumbfounded music directors of the low-rated by Arbitron clunkers continue to churn out irrelevant old music that nobody cares to get excited about anymore, one of the most interesting genres in music continues to remain unrepresented on a local San Diego radio staiton: Dance music.People are tuning out oldies stations mostly because many of original listeners who originally heard them while they were once new on Boss Radio or KCBQ in the 60's are dying out, and youngsters interested in this kind of period-piece programming are far and few between. This is why stations that mix in some old hit classics to their playlists such as KIFM, Star, or KYXY according to their formats, continue to get listeners, while others that play only the songs made famous by other music programmers at long-gone stations from decades past are simply not going to get any new listeners. In anohter genre, the local alternative rock stations that lean too much on old music are losing out to Pirate 96.9 playing a whole lot of stuff never heard before on the airwaves. This is why Rock, 91X, and 94/9 are all floundering because they're relying too much on old music from 2-3 decades ago to fill out the dayparts. In the same city, someone is, albiet illegally, is putting out a quality rock product that is taking listeners away from the other stations aimed at the same demographic: males 18-34, and no iPod required! Put on something that is not represented in San Diego, and the listeners will flock to it like flies. Punk rock is one, but one of the other genres of music that used to get airplay in the 90s but has disappearred off the airwaves is dance music. Turn the dial. No dance on Magic (except for old disco). No dance on any of the hip hop, Top 40, alternative rock, or Hot CHR stations. What a travesty of the airwaves. Which is why if anyone, even a pirate, would start up a dance pop station along the lines of Energy 92.7/101.1 in Phoenix or the late Party 93.1 in Miami, that would bring in the listeners who are disenfranchised to the point where they are getting their fix only on their iPods and elsewhere. Dance pop was once a staple on the playlists of Q106, Z90, and the first year of Channel 933. Nowdays, the predictable styles of corporate-sounding urban and rock rule the airwaves. If the local broadcasters want to fight the exodus of their listeners to their iPods, Internet, Satellite, and mp3 downloads, they need to look into dumping the low-rated concepts that don't serve a broad-based interest such as 50s-60s oldies or obscure new wave 70s-80s songs and implement a modern-sounding format embracing electronica and other forms of dance music, without the rap or slow rock stuff. Forget shorter commercial stopsets...find some good new music and put it on the radio! On occasion, I like to report the ten most popular dance songs of the week from my favorite weekly dance music chart compiled by Tuned In Radio of Canada. Here's what they ranked for the week beginning March 9, 2005:
1. "Home", by Suzanne Palmer
Folks? San Diego broadcast radio has fogotten to put the fun into the music that they are programming such as these top dance songs, except for #5 which got played on FM 94/9. That's not good enough. The music directors need to get off of their duffs and put together an all-dance station featuring the hits that I heard on other dance stations on the Internet and satellite, but never locally, instead of force-feeding us oldies that generates no excitement in America's Behindest City. And coming Thursday, San Diego hits the dreaded 3,000 mark in another milestone in radio mediocrity. And be sure to check out the weekly Random Access Radio feature where I copy the playlist from Energy 92.7/101.1 Arizona for all to see a list of dance hits that they are currently spinning for the week.
|