Twang!

The former WFME-FM, the Christian station in New York City, was sold to Cumulus Media last year, and many New York-area rock and roll fans eagerly awaited and expected a change to a modern rock format, the one seemingly logical radio format currently missing from the greater New York market. Instead, it was country and western fans who won out - 94.7 FM is now WNSH-FM, the first country station in the Big Apple since 1996.

So, New York radio is pretty much divided like the nation in general: The white Tea Party types who resent America's changing demographics get country, and the hip, young multiracial Obama generation gets hip-hop and dance pop. (White suburbanites started listening to country as a culturally conservative reaction to the music favored by "minority" groups.) Greater New York's rock fans - who obviously don't matter - remain reliant on suburban stations in northern New Jersey and Westchester County whose weak signals have to compete with other stations on the same frequencies.

The idea of a country station in New York sounds like it makes about as much sense as the Vatican trying to create a diocese in Riyadh, but in fact the greater New York area has the largest number of country fans in the nation.  They just account for a smaller percentage of radio listeners in New York than they do in other markets.  But there's apparently enough of them to make Cumulus give the format a try after seventeen years of New York radio being country-free.  "Country is more than just music — it's a lifestyle that is rich with content and marketing opportunities," Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey explained.  "Country is mass appeal and very much underserved in all forms of media." 

That sums up why there's no modern rock station in New York now, and why there probably won't be one ever again.  Today's rock groups lack the mass appeal of an Alan Jackson or a Michael Jackson, and their fans aren't as affluent or as lucrative to marketers as the Baby Boomers who listen to classic rock. And, I have to admit, New York has long been a song-and-dance town in which rock and roll was always an afterthought in the city's musical culture. New York has been the home of Broadway, big band jazz, disco and now hip-hop; it's always been hard for rock and roll to stand out there. Punk rock bands and pre-punk rockers like the Velvet Underground (which included Lou Reed) and the New York Dolls were as relevant as Big Apple rock ever got. I've been conscious of the fact that the rock and rollers who made the biggest history in New York City - the Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show," Hendrix or the Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East, Pink Floyd's 1980 The Wall concert(s) at Madison Square Garden - came from somewhere else.

The reasons for rock radio's failure in New York have been attributed to many things - tiresome formatting of the same old songs from the same old bands, the death of locally controlled broadcast media, ratings not sufficient to satisfy advertisers and shareholders - but the argument that rock doesn't matter to the youth of today is also persuasive. "The real underlying reason," one anonymous blogger wrote in 2011, "is that kids are not being introduced to rock 'n' roll for the most part, except through the few parents who know how important it is to explore music with their children. Otherwise they will listen to the junk that all their friends listen to. Rock 'n' roll has lost a generation of listeners that I fear cannot be recovered. The few young people who do listen to rock, are the exception."

I guess those kids I always see wearing rock T-shirts aren't indicative of a greater hunger for rock among young people after all. They may be even wearing those shirts for their "ironic subtext."

Most of us in the Tri-State area will soldier on listening to public station WFUV-FM, with its varied approach to music, and that station will always be there when we want it, right? Not so fast, Sparky. WFUV is hoping to get a grant of $500,000 from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but in order to qualify for it, they have to get an unspecified amount of money from listeners, and the station is aggressively seeking donations in its current pledge drive. There's no guarantee WFUV will meet its goal, which could mean - I know it's alarmist to suggest this - a part-time broadcasting schedule.

The day I get satellite radio for my car could be sooner rather than later. And I'd better buy more CDs on Amazon before Amazon starts taxing New Jersey residents in July, or before CDs themselves are no longer produced.

This article by blogger Robert Sheldon from July 2011, incidentally, sums up the sad state of New York rock radio better than I ever could.