The Most Musically Aggressive Stations In CHR?

I’ve railed a lot about the prevailing sort of CHR station of recent years — the station where power rotation contains as many recurrents as currents; where “different”-sounding songs show up months after their digital buzz, making neither active nor passive listeners happy. Increasingly, we’ve seen an odd compromise where “Blinding Lights” and “Adore You” stay in power forever, streaming hits show up faster but still stay past their seeming freshness date, while mainstream pop titles have just a moment to either muster up or out. 

The problem is that there isn’t a successful second model for a different type of Top 40 station. WODS (Amp 103.3) Boston was, for a while, the station aggressively finding the streaming hits, and having little apparent impact on WXKS (Kiss 108), one of the format’s most successful, and relatively conservative, CHRs. There aren’t a lot of station-level program or music directors known for their enterprise, and a few of them have left the format or the business lately as a result of consolidation and cutbacks.

I became aware of what KFTZ (Z103) Idaho Falls was doing lately in the process of researching a recent article on BTS. Z103 was at that moment the station playing “Dynamite” in power rotation, more than any other CHR at the time. But it also got my attention because “Come & Go” by Juice WRLD was in power. So was “Heather” by Conan Gray and “Laugh Now Cry Later” by Drake f/Lil Durk. In their first 10 days on the station, SZA f/Ty Dolla $ign’s “Hit Different,” Big Sean f/Post Malone’s “Wolves,” and Rod Wave f/ATR & Son Son’s “Rags2Riches” have all gone into a new-music rotation around 50-60x a week.

Z103 PD/MD Viktor Wilt began programming the station in March, already overseeing the cluster’s Active Rock KCVI (K-Bear) as well as Country KTHK. Wilt says he’s concentrating on keeping the station “as current as possible with what’s happening in real time,” more influenced by streaming and sales than national charts. (I’ve also heard it soliciting new music picks from listeners.) The intent is “new streaming-era paradigm,” although you could also view Z103’s musical aggressiveness as what you would have expected to hear on a smaller-market CHR at one time. 

Here’s Z103 at 4:45 p.m. on Sept. 22:

• AJR, “Bang!”
• Lizzo, “Truth Hurts”
• BTS, “Dynamite”
• Tate McCrae, “You Broke Me First”
• Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, “Can’t Hold Us”
• Drake f/Lil Durk, “Laugh Now Cry Later” (No. 5 on the Top 5 at 5)
• Marshmello & Demi Lovato, “OK Not to Be OK” (No. 4)
• Justin Bieber f/Chance the Rapper, “Holy” (No. 3)
• Taylor Swift, “Cardigan” (No. 2)
• Lil Baby, “Emotionally Scarred” (No. 1)
• Pharrell Williams, “Happy”
• Billie Eilish, “My Future”
• AWOLNATION, “Sail”
• Arizona Zervas, “Roxanne”
• Jawsh 685 x Jason Derulo, “Savage Love”
• Post Malone, “Circles”
• Beyonce, “Crazy in Love”
• Harry Styles, “Watermelon Sugar”

Then on Sept. 18, Hot AC KGSR (Star 93.3) Austin, Texas, flipped to CHR under new PD Jay Michaels. The station is now billing itself as “93.3 Austin: New Music Now.” KGSR is co-owned with KSXY Santa Rosa, Calif., which has appeared in this column a number of times over the years with its own format experiments, including an all-current CHR that also took songs from the Country charts.

Michaels came to prominence at KRBE Houston in the ’90s, then one of the great music discovery CHRs, with stops in Austin (programming the same frequency) and Dallas. His hiring is a rare case of an enterprise programmer actually returning to the format. The new station is heavily current, with only 1-2 recurrents/recent gold per hour. One liner declares “if you’re tired of it, so are we.”

One of the new 93.3’s trademarks is a “TikTok on the 10s” stager for new music. Unlike Z103, KGSR’s showcase songs tend to be more in the 15-20x range, but it’s a deep stack of new titles, a few of them in the “not exactly what every CHR is playing now” category. KGSR’s new titles range from Machine Gun Kelly’s “My Ex’s Best Friend” to James Bay’s “Chew on My Heart” to Katy Perry’s not-yet-a-single “Cry About It Later” to the Billie Joe remake of “I Think We’re Alone Now.” 

KGSR is currently running jockless outside of the recently reviewed Brooke & Jeffrey show in mornings. The station has announced plans to add an airstaff and is currently running song tags after every song.

Here’s KGSR just before 4 p.m. on Sept. 21:

• Jawsh 685 x Jason Derulo, “Savage Love”
• Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande, “Rain on Me”
• Drake f/Lil Durk, “Laugh Now Cry Later”
• Bea Miller, “Feel Something” (the “TikTok” on the :10s song)
• Harry Styles, “Watermelon Sugar”
• Black Eyed Peas f/J Balvin, “RITMO (Bad Boys For Life)”
• Sam Smith, “Diamonds”
• Post Malone, “Better Now”
• Gabby Barrett f/Charlie Puth, “I Hope”
• Miley Cyrus, “Midnight Sky”
• Trevor Daniel, “Falling”
• Surf Mesa f/Emilee, “ILY (I Love You Baby)”
• Post Malone, “Circles”
• DaBaby f/Roddy Ricch, “Rockstar”
• J Balvin/Dua Lipa/Bad Bunny (f/Tainy), “Un Dia (One Day)”
• Juice WRLD & Marshmello, “Come & Go”
• Kane Brown w/Swae Lee & Khalid, “Be Like That”
• Dua Lipa, “Break My Heart”
• David Guetta & Sia, “Let’s Love”