Smells Like Top 40? : As Alternative Music Gains Popularity, So Does KROQ Radio

The management of KROQ-FM (106.7) would still like the world to think of the station as something of a renegade, even if the so-called alternative pop it plays has, in fact, become the music of the mainstream, the hits at the top of the charts.

“We don’t want to be too popular,” said Trip Reeb, KROQ’s general manager.

“If we went to No. 1, it would probably scare us to death,” said Kevin Weatherly, the station’s program director. “We wouldn’t want to trash our image.”

But whether listeners view KROQ as rebel radio or as a comfortable old pair of Doc Martens, they’re listening in bigger numbers than any time in the past decade. In the most recent Arbitron ratings for Los Angeles, KROQ catapulted to No. 5 in the market--ahead of all other rock stations including top-40 station KIIS-FM.

A year ago KROQ--which was born in the late ‘70s and has traditionally been the home of relatively accessible punk, new wave, British dance music and bands like the Clash, Devo and the English Beat--was No. 14 with 70% of the audience it enjoys today.

It’s happened because much of the station’s direct competition has disappeared. It’s happened because KROQ now plays its listeners’ “favorite songs” over and over again--”reflecting the market,” as Weatherly puts it, “instead of always trying to lead the market.” And it’s happened, at least in part, thanks to Nirvana, the Seattle band that two years ago turned grunge into multiplatinum.

“I don’t think Nirvana is a bad reference point,” Reeb said, “but what happened is that around that time you had the beginning of young people (in their teens and 20s) developing their own musical identity and preferences. Alternative music wasn’t Depeche Mode anymore and that synth kind of dance sound that KROQ used to play.

“And some of those bands that young people had been listening to for a long time were getting older, and now the whole thing has been taken over by new bands that are much younger and have become these people’s groups.”

Weatherly believes that the alternative boom was born out of a rejection of the music of the late ‘80s--when most pop-radio stations were playing nothing but “disposable one-hit wonders.” On one end, he said, there were pretty-haired rockers like Warrant and Bon Jovi, and on the other end were bubble-gum pop acts like Paula Abdul, Milli Vanilli and New Kids on the Block.

Into that scene bloomed “alternative”--which wasn’t so much a specific kind of music, but everything that wasn’t heavy metal, glam rock, Mariah Carey and R&B.; Radio consultant Jeff Pollack, who has been touting “alternative” as a hot format for the past couple of years, jokes that “alternative is everything that isn’t Neil Young.”

“Alternative music couldn’t be hotter,” Pollack said. “Mainstream rock bands are having a much tougher time getting launched and getting airplay. And where before alternative stations had to rely on a certain amount of fringe groups, they are now dealing with a huge number of talented, fresh and accessible bands.

“This music is better than it has ever been and it’s happening in a way it never did before. The fact that (former college radio fave) Smashing Pumpkins can debut at No. 10 (on the Billboard album chart) is incredible.”

Alternative as a record industry term now covers pop music that ranges from the mellow, melodic Cranberries to the rap group Cypress Hill to the guitar-heavy Alice in Chains to reggae-sounding UB40 to perennial superstars like U2, Sting and Peter Gabriel.

It has been pushed along by MTV, which has adopted this sound and these bands as one of its most prized possessions. And where many mainstream rock bands have had difficulty selling records and concert tickets, such alternative concerts as Lollapalooza have been big money triumphs.

Added to the sheer breadth and popularity of this genre, KROQ has imposed a more professional, more top-40 programming approach since Weatherly and his deputy, Gene Sandbloom, came to the station about a year ago. Both were award-winning programmers at CHR--certified hits radio or top-40--stations in other markets, said Ken Barnes, editor of the industry trade publication Radio & Records.

“They are now showing a greater skill in assembling a playlist, in picking the right music and rotating it properly,” Barnes said. “I hesitate to say that things are tighter or that they rotate songs with greater frequency than in the past, but they have hit on a formula that works. They don’t play very much that would alienate their loyal listeners, but at the same time they play enough variety to appeal to a vast number of tastes.”

But fans of punk and even fans of many of the bands that KROQ regularly plays, fans who support the live music scene at such local venues as the Whisky, Bogart’s and the Hollywood Palladium, lament that “if it isn’t popular, KROQ won’t play it.”

Edgy, small-label bands such as Fugazi, Giant Sand, Sebadoh and Gallon Drunk rarely break into KROQ’s playlist and even a fairly big-name performer like Paul Westerberg rarely gets a chance, even though his KROQ band of the mid-’80s, the Replacements, was a trailblazer for current mega-acts like Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Fans of such music begrudge KROQ its renegade attitude because, they claim, it is nothing of the sort.

“I don’t see how they can call it alternative anymore,” said Dara Jaffe, 28, who has been listening to KROQ since she was in junior high. “You can hardly tell the difference now between KROQ and KIIS-FM.”

“I resent the fact that they consider themselves a rebel when, in fact, they cater to a much more mainstream and juvenile audience,” said Catherine Meyers, a 26-year-old former KROQ listener. “Their playlist is mostly made up of grunge schlock that is today’s flavor du jour. Any new and truly original rock artists are impossible to find on KROQ.”

“That is inevitable,” Barnes said. “If a station becomes popular, the real music fanatics will get frustrated and will not be able to hear the more cutting edge, avant-garde acts that they like. They are always way ahead of commercial radio and their favorite bands like a group as uncompromising as Fugazi, are simply not perceived as radio-friendly. So they can turn to (college station) KXLU-FM (88.9) where they play anything they feel like playing with no concern for advertising or sales or any of those mundane things.”

Reeb admits that a station concerned with making a profit cannot play everything. And while neither he nor Weatherly will say just how often they repeat the same hit songs each day, they insist that it is with less frequency than during other periods in KROQ’s 15-year history.

But Reeb, who came four years ago from alternative music station XTRA (91X) in San Diego, defends today’s KROQ by pointing to the enormous diversity in tempos and styles that the station showcases on a daily basis.

“We haven’t succeeded by compromising or homogenizing the radio station and, in fact, I believe that KROQ is one of the most challenging stations anywhere in commercial radio,” Reeb said. “We run the gamut between Julianna Hatfield to Blind Melon to Cypress Hill. We deal with all of them, and I’m not saying that every person is going to like every song. But young people today are much more open to pushing in all directions, and we are not disappointing them. I really believe that any station that tries to be more cutting edge with new music than we are right now is going to be a bad-sounding radio station.”

KROQ essentially has no direct competition in this market. KQLZ-FM (100.3), or Pirate, which for a time tried to compete with a mix of heavy rock and alternative, switched to a mellow adult-contemporary format earlier this year.

KAJZ-FM (103.1), or Mars, which not long ago went off into the galaxy, tried to compete with a kind of techno-industrial, alternative mix before changing its call letters and switching to jazz.

The departure of those stations from the rock radio scene, along with the immense continuing success of KROQ’s nighttime programming, especially the sex and drugs call-in show, “Love Line,” have boosted KROQ’s fortunes in all day parts, Pollack said. Reeb and Weatherly still believe that the station has plenty of competition from traditional album rock KLOS-FM and top-40 KIIS-FM, even though neither of those stations, because of their formats, can play anything but a handful of “alternative” hits at a time.

Despite its wide popularity, this genre still is probably not big enough to support two hot stations, even in a market as big as Los Angeles, Barnes said, and the well-entrenched KROQ would be an 800-pound gorilla for any new challenger. In San Diego, however, a new upstart, XHRM-FM (92.5), is challenging longtime alternative station 91X, and if it succeeds, Barnes said, some station might give it a whirl here.

But Reeb doesn’t buy it.

“I think with what it costs for a radio station in this market today,” he said, “anyone that will come in and try to compete with what we do on a different level than what’s already out there is going to cut themselves in for such a small share of the audience that they aren’t going to make any money.”