Radio ratings in Vancouver reveal public frustration with mediocrity

The radio ratings matter to some people, especially old radio hacks and advertisers. I’m a big radio fan, but listen to very little local radio these days. The declining audience numbers indicate that I’m not the only person switching off.

Rock music oriented radio in Vancouver is predictable and tired. Year by year it seems to get worse.

CFOX is impossible for me to listen to. There are those who continue to rawk with the Fox, but I think they should stick a fork in the whole format now. Their over-compressed audio output, dependence on lousy Can-Con nü metal and bubblegum punk, combined with advertisements for marijuana grow-op equipment are signals that they are only interested in wayward males (with no standards for good music or programming) as an audience.

The growth of soft-rock Clear FM proves that we mellow West Coasters have an unlimited appetite for “soft” stuff. You wouldn’t want to wake us from our yoga-induced bliss, would you? I thought there were meds out there to keep us from getting over-excited. Surely we don’t need Norah Jones too?

For the rest of you 40-somethings that have long since sold your Kiss and Devo records, but are not quite prepared to give up, move to White Rock and start an RESP, I urge you to plug back into Indie and alternative music. There are good bands out there worth supporting and listening to, such as Franz Ferdinand and Modest Mouse.

When it comes to radio formats, I cannot say enough about Seattle’s The End (KNDD 107.7 FM). They are owned by the huge Entercom radio corporation. Instead of forcing them to maximize market share and fighting their way from one ratings book to another, they let the station ask their audience what they wanted. They didn’t over rely on consultants, which have been the bane of radio for a generation. They dropped all radio announcers for over a month and ran a regular promo asking people to sound off about what they wanted in terms of music and programming style. They came back with an “alternative declaration“, a set of principles to support new music and to reduce replay frequency, and hired an airstaff that didn’t suck. The music is exceptional most of the time too.

The End also plays better Canadian acts, such as Metric, Tegan & Sarah, and The Arcade Fire, than Canadian radio stations do. Kind of puts the lie to Canadian content regulations that makes stars out of acts like Nickelback and Sum 41, yet allows stations to ignore our best artists.

There’s a way out of this mess for Vancouver stations, but that would require vision that appears to be lacking within local stations.