More than any other, Alternative radio supports programmers’ contention that personality is the secret weapon against streaming. Personality isn’t the only thing happening for Alternative now — current music is on an upswing; library titles are dominant on Spotify — but four out of five September PPM success stories were for stations driven by prominent morning shows.
On Tuesday, we took a Fresh Listen to 7-7:30 a.m. on Alternative radio across the country: WWDC (DC101) Washington’s Elliot in the Morning; KTBZ (The Buzz) Houston’s Rod Ryan Show; KXRK (X96) Salt Lake City’s Radio From Hell; KYSR (Alt 98.7) Los Angeles’s The Woody Show, and KROQ Los Angeles’s Klein/Ally Show.
Four of the morning shows are long-running. The relative newcomer (at five years) was part of KROQ’s best month in more than 20 years; KROQ’s Kevin Weatherly notes that its 9.4 25-54 is the top showing for any English-speaking morning team. What is most notable about the shows is their real-time feel — something not guaranteed in mornings anymore. Callers still figured prominently in most of the five shows.
DC101’s Elliot in the Morning with Diane, Tyler, and Kristen relies heavily on open phones and the host’s ability to discuss anything with anyone. On Thursday, there was a discussion of the Renoir Museum robbery in France, and he volunteered that he had only seen some of the paintings that were recovered.
One of the major topics across morning radio on Tuesday was the man thrown from a roller coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia and killed. There is allegedly video online. “It’s a character flaw of mine that I had to look,” Elliot says. A caller says that a friend of his repairs amusement-park rides and quality control is typically lax. (Elliot challenges whether that could really be true.)
There’s also a caller whose friend went to a Commanders game in London and ended up on a plane that plunged sharply. There’s a discussion of the couple who lost $8 million in clothing in a house fire and a call from a neighbor familiar with the situation. A woman who inadvertently unplugged a grocery-store freezer to charge her phone prompts the story about the grocery stores in Europe whose freezers have been hacked and destroyed.
Elliot is teasing his “Hundreds-a-Day” cash giveaway, which plays again at 7:30 for $100. There’s also an upcoming chance to win Wizards/Raptors tickets and “pick a player” to also win the team jersey of your choice. Given the free-flowing nature of the show, Elliot promises “we’ll jam it in somewhere.”
The Buzz’s Rod Ryan Show with Mo, Alex, and Chile begins and ends the 7:00-7:30 stretch with a handful of topics: Selma Blair’s in-flight meltdown, why Pearl Jam won’t play the Sphere (Ryan thinks it would be funny if they showed up and did their typically stripped-down show with no projections or effects), and last night’s NFL game. Ryan is from Buffalo, and Alex notes that “your Bills got by the Rams last night.”
It’s 90 degrees in Houston and Ryan says it’s interfering with everybody’s plans to go apple-picking and wear their flannel and Uggs. This Saturday, the show will be at the Monster Jam, followed by Ryan and Mo at a Houston Children’s Charity gala featuring Blake Shelton. The show’s Chile is giving away Monster Jam pit passes every 20 minutes to listeners who hashtag the show on X for Hashtag Tuesday. There are also win-before-you-can-buy tickets for Def Leppard, the Goo Goo Dolls,and Struts given away. There are two songs in the half-hour monitored: Korn’s “Freak on a Leash” and Neon Trees’ “Animal.”
X96’s long running Radio From Hell with Kerry, Bill, and Gina differs from most morning shows with its strongly liberal POV. That’s typical of the larger contradiction of the Salt Lake City market being both conservative and relatively younger and thus one of Alternative radio’s strongest markets throughout the history of the format. That made it the morning show with the least overlap of what I heard elsewhere.
When I tuned in to Radio From Hell mid-break, a caller was trying to guess which of five moderately known actors was no longer among us. (He guessed Joe Dallesandro but got a second chance to come up with Brent Briscoe.) The celebrity birthdays were read as if by the Grim Reaper. Paul Simon was 85 that day — “it’s Paul and Julio down by the graveyard.” Marie Osmond was turning 67.
It’s indicative of the news cycle that Shane Gillis’s appearance on Saturday Night Live was already gone from the other shows. Here the show tried to counter its “liberal outrage” by reading a New York Post column that tried to posit the comedian as an unfairly maligned “truth teller.” “He didn’t do any of that,” said the team. “You can’t even set it aside and say, ‘at least it was funny,’” said Gina.
Similarly, two of the three news stories competing in the show’s long-running “Boner of the Day” feature were political: Nick Shirley’s attacks on a Seattle seafood market and the Susan Collins campaign inadvertently buying ads in Portland, Oregon, not Maine. (The campaign blames its ad agency; whether programmatic buying was involved didn’t come up.) The third was the children’s digestive remedy that accidentally contained alcohol.
The morning show played one song — Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box” — in the 35 minutes monitored. There was also a keyword for the station’s “$1,000 Cash Bribe.”
On Alt 98.7, The Woody Show with Gina Grad, Greg Gory, Menace, and Sebas has just announced the lineup for the station’s January “ALTer Ego ‘27” concert, featuring Evanesence, the Offspring, Billy Corgan, Death Cab for Cutie, Slightly Stoopid, Modest Mouse, Young the Giant, Temper City, and the Warning. Both the last act’s “Kerosene” and Offspring’s “Gone Away” play during the half-hour. There are also more tickets coming up before 8 a.m.
The syndicated Woody Show felt like the edgiest of the five programs I listened to, with cheerfully R-rated banter between Woody and Greg, but its “LoCAL News” feature stories were straightforward — the new Burbank Airport opening (“goodbye cancer and mold”), a mosquito infestation, Mel’s Dine-In potentially being torn down, a Halloween-card drive for Children’s Hospital.
The show is bringing back a feature pitting listeners’ “First World Problems” against news stories from its “that sucks” segment. Woody’s laptop won’t hold a charge. Greg’s coffee maker is demanding to be cleaned after three uses. They agree that it’s not as bad as falling off a roller coaster, or a new drug-resistant strain of sexually transmitted diarrhea. (“If I die of that, please change my death certificate,” says Greg.)
With the local news, the concert announcement, and the emphasis on callers, the segment of the syndicated show heard here did sound like a real-time morning program for the market. When the team solicited callers’ gripes, they added, “You can text, but it works better if you call us.”
KROQ has always been known for its CHR underpinnings. Perhaps that’s why the [Kevin] Klein/Ally [Johnson] Show played the most music of any of the shows — four songs in the segment monitored — but went through as many beats and bits as the other programs. (The songs also represented KROQ’s pop/rock balance: Sombr’s “Back to Friends,” Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle,” Julia Wolf’s “In My Room,” and Foo Fighters’ “All My Life.”)
Unlike Ryan, Klein was in “recovery mode” after the Rams’ loss on Monday night. Team member Vanessa Garcia, not a football fan, had been going to the games and was going to do a report later.
Upcoming giveaways were to L.A. Comic Con as well as KROQ’s “Trick or Treat” giveaway of My Chemical Romance tickets. Contestants had to listen to a doorbell, but only if it was followed by the band’s music. (This time around, it was followed by Khia’s “My Neck, My Back.” There was no giveaway.)
Klein aired a caller who expressed surprise that Johnson and her wife were having previously discussed problems in their sex life. But finding a time when two women were both in the mood at the same time was even harder than a man and a woman, Klein said. The Venn Diagram of two women “not on their period, not in a bad mood, not being bloated, not feeling gross, not having a headache, and having the energy” didn’t often overlap, said Johnson.
More than its counterparts, Klein/Ally often seems to move easily between edgy/not edgy. Often the M.O. seems to be PG-rated discussion, PG-13 zingers. Johnson and a caller squared off in a news quiz. Neither Ally nor the caller knew why the Pope was undergoing surgery for lung cancer. “It’s a vasectomy, so he can do some of that sweet raw-doggin’” said Klein.
We took a Fresh Listen last week to KROQ in afternoons and fellow PPM success KTCL Denver. Here’s more on Alternative’s up-trend.
