A day after Smooth Jazz WNWV (the Wave) Cleveland became 107.3 JenY, a reader tweeted to ask if I thought they would spur a resurgence of the Modern AC format. That was a lot to pin on one station, I thought. But it’s clear from the social media response overall that there’s still a lot of industry love for Modern AC, in part because it worked so well in the mid-to-late ‘90s. But there are also a lot of challenges, many of which I wrote about when its last well-known large-market flagship, KLCK (Click 98.9) Seattle, went away four years ago.
But shortly after the launch of “Jeny,” Hot AC KPLZ (Star 101.5) Seattle announced that it had re-added a number of Modern AC titles. You’ll still hear Shawn Mendes, but Brandi Carlisle is back as well on the station, which is now using the slug-line “so Northwest.” Some of the songs now heard on KPLZ are titles associated with onetime Triple-A KMTT (The Mountain), but Mainstream AC KRWM (Warm 106.9) also used that kind of singer/songwriter music as its secret weapon for a while in the mid-‘10s.
The WNWV change was well-received by radio fans in part because most of the other post-Christmas format changes have been to Adult Hits, or some other gold-based format. Jen-Y owner Rubber City Radio had been bold enough in taking WNWV back to Smooth Jazz after a few years as Triple-A V107.3, itself an intriguing, musically aggressive station under market veteran/consultant John Gorman. (I remember sitting in a parked car to hear V107.3 play “Rolling in the Deep” for the first time.)
For fans of the genre, Modern AC hasn’t suffered as much from a lack of product as the unlikelihood of much of it being ratified by another format. CHR will support one “Trampoline”-level crossover every nine months, and one Dean Lewis Capaldi-type acoustic ballad at a time. Mainstream AC won’t play much that isn’t ratified by CHR, and not until much later in any event. With Adult CHR/Hot AC also taking many of its cues from CHR, a lot of true Modern AC titles can only go as far as No. 15-20 on the chart.
Over the last three years, the best showcase in North America for Modern AC in a CHR context has been CKOI Montreal, although those titles share the airwaves with dance crossovers and French pop, and throwbacks as well. Sirius XM’s The Pulse has also continued to Modern AC titles, in part to keep the channel away from Sirius Hits 1 and others.
JenY is playing playing Dan + Shay, recent Maroon 5 and other Hot AC titles. But they’re also playing a lot of those Modern AC titles that not every Hot AC will play—to the point of going back for some recent, but now-peaked titles like Jason Mraz’s “Have It All.” Many of the songs on the station now are the more mass-appeal side of what V107.3 would have played.
RadioInsight did a first day monitor of JenY, including a link to audio of the format change. Here’s the station a few days later, around 8:45 a.m. on January 6. Positioners include “the pulse of the North Coast” and “where great songs get their start.”
- Dan + Shay & Justin Bieber, “10,000 Hours”
- Illenium f/Jon Bellion, “Good Things Fall Apart”
- George Ezra, “Shotgun”
- All-American Rejects, “Dirty Little Secret”
- Natasha Bedingfield, “Kick It”
- X Ambassadors, “Hold You Down”
- Gavin DeGraw, “She Sets The City On Fire”
- Meg Myers, “Running Up The Hill”
- Elle King, “Ex’s And Oh’s”
- Niall Horan, “Nice To Meet Ya”
- Twenty One Pilots, “The Hype”
- Pink, “U + Ur Hand”
- Dermot Kennedy, “Outnumbered”
- Rex Orange County, “10/10”
- Ellie Goulding, “Love Me Like You Do”
- Shaed, “Trampoline”
- Maroon 5, “One More Night”
- Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello, “Senorita”
- John K, “If We Never Met”
- Public, “Make You Mine”
- Plain White T’s, “Hey There Delilah”
When I wrote about Click 98.9 a few years ago, I threw out four accessible songs that I felt would sound good on pop radio. A prominent PD wrote me. “I don’t hear any of those as pop hits,” he said. Three never got anywhere close enough to pop for us to find out. But the fourth was “Ride” by Twenty One Pilots, not yet a single at the time.
Despite this batting average, I continue to hear songs that sound like potential pop crossovers at Alternative and even Active Rock. Some, like Blink-182’s “I Really Wish I Hated You,” sound more like pop than Alternative to me, but fall into the now familiar trick bag of being too pop to come home at Alternative, and thus never being worked at pop.
If what you want to hear is Alternative songs that sound like they belong at CHR, I found them a heavy concentration of them, without a lot of older gold, on WXRY-LP Columbia, S.C. “Columbia’s Independent Alternative” has some sweepers that would sound at home on Triple-A, but they also have jingles, and they’re one of the alternative outlets that plays Post Malone. When president/GM Steve Varholy is on in afternoons, the feel is very accessible. As important, WXRY is a far better realized radio station as a non-comm LPFM than many major-group FM translator throwaways.
Here’s WXRY just before 5 p.m. on January 6:
- Saint Motel, “Cold Cold Man”
- Tones And I, “Dance Monkey”
- Muse, “Madness”
- Local Natives, “When Am I Going To Lose You”
- Green Day, “Know Your Enemy”
- Lana Del Rey, “Mariner’s Apartment Complex”
- Dennis Lloyd, “Nevermind”
- Cranberries, “Zombie”
- Panic! At The Disco, “High Hopes”
- Of Monsters And Men, “Dirty Paws”
- Dominic Fike, “3 Nights”
- SHAED, “Trampoline”
- Sturgill Simpson, “Sing Along”
- Pearl Jam, “Better Man”
- SYML, “Where’s My Love”
- Coldplay, “Orphans”
Finally, here’s “the new sound of Star 101.5” KPLZ at 3 p.m. on Jan. 7:
- Shaed, “Trampoline”
- Incubus, “Drive”
- Ed Sheeran, “Shape Of You”
- Nico & Vinz, “Am I Wrong”
- John Mayer, “No Such Thing”
- Dean Lewis, “Be Alright”
- Maroon 5, “What Lovers Do”
- Revivalists, “Wish I Knew You”
- Selena Gomez, “Lose You To Love Me”
- Walk The Moon, “Shut Up And Dance”
- Sara Bareilles, “Love Song”
- Lewis Capaldi, “Someone You Love”
- Jesus Jones, “Righ Here, Right Now”
- Shawn Mendes, “If I Can’t Have You”
- Weezer, “Africa”
- Adele, “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)”