Issue #14: Winter/Spring 2006

Dialing for Cool

by Jon Cornea

One need not be a music-phile to notice something strange with the sounds emanating from our radios, day to day, station to station: it’s a subtle similarity. It isn’t just that the songs sound too close to call – whether that last number was by the same artist as the one just before – or how the DJ’s voices and humour seem faintly familiar from city to city, province to state, with all the same sampled sounds, the same voice selling fast food or far-away vacations. Quietly, calmly, something went unnoticed and radio executives made a decision for us all. Somewhere, someone concluded that humour and obnoxious behaviour are what best rouses us from our state of rest. Morning drives should as well have similar antics, but with of course a healthy dose of advertisements to digest. From station to station, format after format, it is no mystery what has happened. Radio is big business.

In business terms, it’s consolidation, the spawn of politicians’ love affair with conservative economic policies, to open up the bastions of public enterprises domains. In the 1990s, the US – and Canada in a roundabout way – removed regulations limiting levels of ownership on broadcasters. Mergers and acquisitions (m&a, not to be confused with t&a, which of course in radio talk is “traffic and accidents”) became the way of the radio-exec. Bigger is better, bigger is cheaper, larger markets mean more dollars. I think we all know the rhetoric.

While in cultural terms many saw it as the commodification of a form of communication, it was just another opportunity for profit. In the US, Clear Channel Communications, after the intoxication of a spending spree to acquire more than 1,200 megawatt stations, has been criticized for censorship and for laying off thousands of workers. From banning bands critical of the Republican government’s foreign policy, to cutting back on expenses at local stations, Clear Channel is the hegemonic hoard community radio lovers abhor.

Not to point fingers though, the homogeneity of the airwaves has been steadily securing itself, the marriage with the major record labels far too convenient. The practice of payola has run rampant, so that artists only make the airwaves if their label pays to have them played. Is there no space in a deregulated radio market for a diverse voice, one that embraces Canadian content because it too is a part of our cultural landscape? Where the information, be it music, news, sports or the arts is the focus, not just the filler.

Long gone are the days of the dedicated DJ, ducking payola, patiently shuffling through crate upon crate of the mediocre, to amaze us with the gems of passion and inspiration. Today’s DJs sound more like carnival ride conductors, calling out to see if we want to go faster! Yet most of us are left wondering if that ride couldn’t have been something, well, a little more interesting.

There was a day when listeners could tune in, check out what was fresh, what was happening, have a laugh, or just plain sing along. But where is it now? I know it must exist. That medium through which to tap that slippery notion of what’s cool, the mysterious morph that is what’s HOT. A station that means more than just the dollars and cents, full of ideals concerned not only of the outcome, but attentive to the action.

The internet claims a stake: the ability to connect and communicate with like minds around the world on what is the latest rage, or get turned on to the discovery of a new music-world darling. Websites like pitchfork.com, or a personal favourite betterpropaganda.com offer free, legal mp3 downloads, descriptions of the bands, and the most useful invention, “similar music” links, and they are fantastic. But it takes time and energy to sift through the seemingly endless lists of artists, the task accomplished by the DJs of radio past, and the one so appreciated by listeners. There is no denying the ubiquity of handheld mp3 players, and the ease with which we can fill them with all manner of music, thought to be cool. But if one seeks the wisdom of wise ears, seasoned critics who know where music has been and where it might go next, where does one turn?

Will it be satellite radio, with its bulk offers of hundreds of stations to satiate the sonic appetite? Isn’t it just that sort of thing people are fed up with? What about digital audio broadcasting? A new player in the market, offering, along with crystal clear audio, text, images and potentially even videos dialed in on its own receiver (read: purchase another gizmo). Though, don’t we have enough problems keeping peoples’ minds on the road, everywhere busy hands already dialing cell phones while driving. More distractions? Please!

So does that mean radio will continue to be the darling of the driver? It survived 8-tracks, cassettes, cb Radios, cd decks, multi cd changers in the trunk: you name it, radio has prevailed. Ipod wants in on the action, but you know, I still wager that radio will remain. There’s something about that sizzle of static between the stations, or the sweet satisfaction of dialing it in. Yet, it hardly seems worth it if all we have are prerecorded DJs, constant commercial interruption, or the latest reincarnation of the Pop Star of the week.

What about originality, community engagement, and some sort of local focus? Is it too much to ask to be connected to time and space anymore? And then, like the faint trickle of a signal on the AM dial, driving the long highways of the great Canadian expanse, enter realization. Our community does have its very own station.

CITR 101.9 at UBC has been broadcasting local, Vancouver-brand community radio for more than 62 years. With a focus on UBC events and happenings, citr personalities pride themselves on searching through the crates, and on reminding us of the beauty of our diverse culture. Providing programming not focused on the latest hit of the week, but on the passion of those who love what they are doing and to express something about their world, and that world is Vancouver. Radio grounded in the place we call home may just be that elusive gem some call, “cool.”

So dial it in, dig the cool. After all, it’s from where we’re from. ¤

Jon Cornea is working on a master’s degree in resource management at UBC. He is also a singer songwriter in what he calls “folktronica,” or heavy metal folk rock.