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Great 21st century rivalries chapter 222: Kiss FM versus Magic 93
Archive
Not since Coke remade itself in the ’80s to match its closest competitor, Pepsi, has an undisputed success gone to such great lengths to preserve its monopoly. Earlier this year, Magic 93 ditched its old format – its most entertaining and tolerable hour of programming, The Flashback Cafe – and remade itself into “the new sound of Magic 93.” I still can’t see the difference.
Whatever you can think to say about either of the two stations, whichever you prefer or find most painless, three truths abound a). The stations are almost exactly the same b). The stations both overplay crappy music and c). Both are in grave danger of playing more tags on how good they are than actual music.
What is funniest is when the stations both use the same tag lines to distinguish one another – “All the hits, not just some of them” – was co-opted by both stations at one point. Once Kiss FM held over Magic 93’s head their “crusty” ’80s music, and though Magic has allegedly abandoned its ’80s format, Kiss still runs the ad (amusingly, Magic once tried to counter Kiss’s claims of playing ’80s music with an ad featuring the ’80s Thompson Twins’ hit “Lies”).
Magic does have a trump card in its deck, blasting Kiss’s lack of “live and local” DJs and its import – from Michigan, if I’m not mistaken – of annoying “Disco Duck” creator Rick Dees for its morning show. Still, it’s not as if I really tune in to hear guys talk from Boise, Detroit or wherever else. When I’m getting ready in the morning and looking for peppy music, there are times when the only song playing is something like Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen” on Mix 106.
I suppose there is method behind Magic’s madness in changing its format. After all, 99.1 has now become an exclusively ’80s station and Mix proclaims, “no one plays more hits from the ’80s.” 99.1, which unfortunately does not come in on my dial, is sheer proof that the ’80s were not an infallible musical decade. Sure, the New wave stuff still holds up, but the amazing number of terrible Adult Contemporary hits, of the ’80s and early ’90s were bad enough the first time.
I’m amused still by this notion of “crusty” old stuff being a bad thing to play, because for one thing the new stuff really sucks, and secondly – correct me if I’m wrong – but the oldies station is No. 1 in Boise.
I guarantee if I do like a song, the twin Top 40 stations will play the hell of it until I never want to hear it again. I was overjoyed that pop radio started playing people like Moby or Daft Punk, but now I change the station when “South Side” comes on the air, usually just in time to catch the end of the song on the supposedly different other Top 40 station.
I can be glad that innovative new artists like Nelly Furtado, Jill Scott or Macy Gray get some play, but it’s a bad sign when a favorite song comes on and you have to change the channel because you are in grave danger of never wanting to hear that or anything else from the artist ever again. Case and point: I anxiously purchased the Dido CD just after her Eminem duet, and now that radio has had their way with her, I’m ashamed to own it.
I refuse to believe that so few people are producing music that there is nothing to play but the same 10 to 12 songs ad nauseum. Meanwhile, there are a great deal of very interesting, commercially accessible artists getting absolutely no rotation (at least not until they duet with Gwen Stefani). Radio stations also don’t seem to realize that artists are frequently in the habit of releasing not just one, but several, singles from the same album. Frequently they also put out second albums (do people even know that Fiona Apple released a great follow up to Tidal?)
I see songs rising up the Billboard charts that I’ve never heard on Boise radio. This is besides the fact that a lot of what does hit is crap, and a lot of what doesn’t is great.
A recent article in Salon.com was quite enlightening. Evidently, record companies now broker paid deals to get their artists played on influential radio stations – thereby almost conclusively shutting out competition from independent or burgeoning labels.
In an era where groups – like Dream, O-Town and Eden’s Crush – actually admit to being factory-produced by big-name producers – even releasing television shows about how they did it, and get away with it, it’s time radio as a whole gets one giant enema.