Sarre-Chasm
A Letter to my Local Radio Programmer
by Jon Sarre
illustration by Tim Walker
Greetings, you don’t know me, but I’m comin’ at you from the tail-end of that all-important 18-25 male demographic bracket and even though I don’t buy sport utility vehicles, car stereos, in-line skates, or rollerblades or whatever you call those dumbed-up rollerskate things, I do happen to have the misfortune of holding a job that requires me to spend lots of time in a truck with a shitty FM radio. So, needless to say, I happen to tune into your station every now and then.
One thing your station seems to have lots of, besides endless ad spots and sex-obsessed middle-aged disc jocks, are ID promos with that generic radio-voice-over-guy who claims you “really rock,” sometimes even continuously. Uh-huh. I know you’re probably a busy guy, you may even program “Classic Rock Marathons” and “Oldies Weekends” for other stations your company owns, but have you ever stopped and listened to an hour of your own programming? Tell me, Mr. Rock Authority, does Live Really Rock? Filter? How ’bout an Ozzy ballad that sounds just like a Madonna song? Does anyone on the fucking planet “Unplugged” Really Rock?
I realize that the true purpose of radio is not merely to entertain, but to sell products to prospective consumers. It’s ad revenue that pays the bills, not how many copies of the new Sammy Hagar album get sold when people hear “Little White Lie” and realize that there is a God and He has once again freed up the Screechy One for his stellar solo career as the thinking man’s, well, nobody. Obviously you can’t play anything that’s gonna offend your sponsors, that’s a given. Unfortunately, this leads way too often to whitebread filler that’s forced upon your listeners, who, screwed as they usually are by the miserable selection of formats in their area, have to swallow it or tune into the local “Modern” or “Classic” “Rock” stations. Larger cities are gonna have more variety, but when every “Rock” station plays the same shit, why does it matter that there’re two, three or four of them in the market?
About those ad spots, I thought a big “benefit” of format radio was that sponsors could target advertise, you know, tailor their sales pitch to the demographic slice the programming appeals to. In reality, the Classic Rock and Talk formats, to name two, run the same damn ads you do. This leads me to suspect that your sponsors don’t know/care who’s being targeted in their spots. In fact, your typical advertiser probably couldn’t care less if your programming consisted of dead air, just so long as their stuff gets on and they know someone is listening – and buying. Do you honestly believe that anybody other than the Draconian bureaucrats at the FCC monitors the pap you play? Even so, would the occasional Chrome Cranks, fuck, Jon Spencer song cause any advertiser to cut the purse strings? Probably not. The Butthole Surfers‘ monotonously successful “Loser”/”88 Lines About 44 Women” rip-off, “Pepper,” got played and was considered a “hit single.” Shit, I didn’t see that comin’ back when they were pissin’ in whiffle-ball bats.
It’s not like I’m askin’ you to run Thee fuckin’ Mighty Caesars in heavy rotation (although I’d personally love that and I’m sure once they heard ’em, lotsa others would too). The occasional Mudhoney tune (they are still around, despite rumors to the contrary) could probably be allowed to sneak in between Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and the assorted grunge refugee-sound-alikes that lend credibility to your claims of rockhood. Hell, if it weren’t for those guys and the consistent-if-nothing-more Metallica, your playlist would still be weighted down by twenty-plus-year-old Zeppelin and Aerosmith, near-two-decade-old AC/DC nugs, lightweight Black Crowes and Def Leppard recyclings and whatever offerings are vomited forth from the L.A. hairmetal crües who survived the commercial and chemical highs of the ’80s! Shit, that ain’t nothin’ more than AOR for yer typical Jethro Tull fan’s little brother!
While I’m in the general direction of the topic, what’s with all the Pink Floyd and Van Halen you play anyway? It’s not like Dark Side of the Moon and 1984 came out last week, you know. I mean, who decided that a pre-’84 VH destruction of a thirty-five year old Roy Orbison ditty is at all relevant to someone who doesn’t remember that the band’s newest singer used to be in a wretched sap-metal outfit hideously mis-named Extreme? And if “Oh Pretty Woman” is played at least once a day cuz it’s just so rockin’ timeless, how come the Clash’s “Brand New Cadillac” ain’t? Should it matter that “Rock the Casbah” is all people know about them, cuz that’s all that charted when lotsa stuff doesn’t dent Billboard at all cuz it doesn’t get played on the fucking radio?
Man, don’t you think most of your listeners could do without “Holy Diver” for an hour or two, maybe even long enough for “Ace of Spades” or “Love Me Like a Reptile” to make a coupla gas-pumpers and convenience store clerks really, really rock out? It’s sad, criminal even, when ya think that Motörhead, fast’n’loose and irresponsible with umlauts and everything else, gets zero airplay on your station. Sure they’re ugly and don’t sell many records, but how many units would MTV-driven crud like Pearl Jam or Ugly Kid Blow, or whatever they called themselves, have moved if palms and other body parts weren’t bein’ lubed to loosen up the uh… rotation?
I dunno, maybe Lemmy’s savin’ to get some warts removed, payola money must be tight if he couldn’t even swing the headlining spot on a tour with (the new, improved, industrialized?) W.A.S.P.. Radio should be playin’ his records as a service to the fucking industry! Same thing with the Ramones, ‘cept they’re R.I.P., but then again, I hear lotsa bands who are long gone, not all of them of Zep status either. When it all comes down to it, who had/has/will have the bigger impact, Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee et al, or Living Colour? If ya gotta think about the answer, you have no business programming radio.
If you lucked out and answered the question correctly, you oughtta put yer money where your geriatric DJ’s generic patter spews forth and play some different fucking records by some different fucking bands! You could actually really rock for a change! Don’t worry, I won’t be holding my breath… The radio’s still gonna suck tomorrow, just like it did today… just like it did yesterday…
