Do You Remember Rock and Roll Radio?

I attended a multimedia lecture by legendary New York rock radio DJ Dennis Elsas in New Jersey last night, which was very entertaining. He featured audio from old radio broadcasts - both his own broadcasts and audio form various other New York music stations - and reminisced about interviewing John Lennon , Elton John, Pete Townshend, Clarence Clemons, and. for an old news-magazine TV show, Jerry Garcia,  all of which he played.  Dennis Elsas used to be on WNEW-FM, staring in 1971 and leaving in 1998, just before that station dropped its rock format, and has been at public rock/eclectic station WFUV-FM since 2000.

So what does Elsas think about the current state of commercial radio?  He noted that the former WNEW-FM - now WWFS-FM - plays very contemporary pop directed at women, and that it's obviously very successful,  and that it is what it is. Later, he said that the good old days of rock radio are gone and we can't get them back . . . and that while it may be easier for aspiring rockers to get their music out on the Internet, it's no easier than before to get noticed.

Elsas took questions at the end.  I seriously considered asking him about the state of commercial rock radio, as yesterday was the second anniversary of WRXP-FM's final demise, but he seemed to have answered that question already vis-à-vis his earlier comments, so I asked him the other question I had in mind - if he had any recollections of Family, who, I am told, got a good deal of attention from WNEW-FM when they toured with Elton John in 1972.  Short answer - he didn't.  Long answer - he didn't.  Oh, well, it was worth a shot.

Later I began to wonder if I should have asked Elsas about the state of commercial rock radio anyway, but I think the reason I didn't ask him was because I already knew the answer.  The answer, as I have phrased it,  is the same as always  - rock is a declining genre, and rock radio formats cater to an aging and increasingly irrelevant demographic.  Heck, most of the people in the audience were considerably older than I am, and I'm 49.  (I'll only matter to advertisers for another year.)  I don't think hearing the answer from someone actually in the radio business would have mattered, and unlike Chris Matthews, I try not to ask someone a question I already know the answer to simply because I want to see if they know it.  

If there's anything I took away from last night, it's that nothing lasts forever, and you'd better appreciate what you have while you still have it.  At least in New York, there is WFUV-FM, where Elsas is now.  More importantly, he's there playing the same eclectic mix of music that WNEW-FM started out playing in the early days of FM radio.  And you can bet that, thirty years from now, some hip-hop DJ will be giving lectures looking back on his career and lamenting the decline of rap and rap radio.  Don't think that can happen?  It's not only happening to rock, it's already happened to big-band jazz pop.

In 2015, fans of Frank Sinatra will be celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of his birth.  But not too many of them will be radio station employees.  How many commercial "hit parade" stations are left on terrestrial radio anymore?

There's always '40s on 4 on Sirius XM. :-O