FM Stations Try to Talk Their Way Out Of Trouble

Last week's demise of Z-104 is another sign that radio in the era of listener empowerment is becoming a chattier, newsier medium. Commercial broadcast radio is fighting the emergence of iPods and Web radio not with more musical choices but with less music altogether.

When Bonneville International Corp. juggled its lineup of radio formats in the Washington market Wednesday, bolstering its offerings of news and talk while diminishing classical music and eliminating its rock station, the company acknowledged two eternal truths of popular culture:

One, every time a new technology comes along, threatening to rock the old media right out of this world, the old media tend to take on new roles rather than die. And two, if you can't fight 'em, join 'em.

As FM radio emerged in the 1970s as a clear-sounding vehicle for delivering music to a mass audience, AM radio evolved from the country's main provider of pop music into an outlet reserved almost entirely for news, talk and sports. Now, with FM music stations losing audience to the more finely cut niches of pay satellite radio, and to the make-your-own-station technologies of MP3s, podcasting and Internet radio, the nation's big radio companies are searching for what works on good old broadcast radio. One answer so far is talk -- not the Rush Limbaugh political talk of AM radio, but all manner of other talk: sports, news and the raunchier, funnier talk of wacky morning shows and descendants of Howard Stern.

In Washington, where public radio's more serious news and talk draw a larger portion of the audience than almost anywhere else in the country, Bonneville is joining its successful noncommercial competitors by betting that the appetite for news has not been sated. With both public radio and its own all-news WTOP going gangbusters, Bonneville has decided to scrap its rock station and develop a new kind of news format. Washington Post Radio will debut in March on WTOP's old frequencies (1500 AM and 107.7 FM), presenting the newspaper's reporters and columnists in a radio news and talk format that is Bonneville's effort to extend what works elsewhere on the dial.

What clearly isn't working these days is music -- or at least rock music -- on free radio.

Z-104 debuted in 1996 as a high-energy pop station with an emphasis on dance music. It was, for Washington, an unusual attempt to cross ethnic divides and appeal to black, Hispanic and suburban white audiences. Radio is one of the most segregated places in popular culture, and Z was what passes for a daring venture in commercial radio: an effort to appeal to white women who liked WASH-FM's soft rock, blacks who didn't want a steady diet of heavy rap and Hispanics who felt left out by programming aimed at the two larger population groups.

The original Z-104 quickly jumped to No. 2 in the market, pumping out the '90s bubble-gum sound of groups such as Hanson ("MMMBop"), Spice Girls ("Say You'll Be There") and Blackstreet ("Don't Leave Me"). But in a micro-niched world, advertisers want to buy a specific demographic group. A station that appeals across ethnic boundaries doesn't seem to have much staying power, at least not in Washington. New York's WKTU, which first carried disco to a broad audience in the '70s, is one of the few stations left in the country that consistently maintains a strong, ethnically mixed audience. In the D.C. market, however, almost every station in town has an audience that is at least 80 percent members of one major ethnic group.

After its cross-cultural experiment failed, Z's programmers searched without success for a rock-pop niche. Bonneville, which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, does not permit its stations to get into hard rap or raunch talk, so Z-104's attempts to develop strong personalities on its morning show were always hindered by the fact that its competitors were getting more and more explicit in their sex chatter. (The station could take credit for developing one semi-celebrity, morning deejay Billy Bush, the president's cousin, who moved on and became co-anchor of TV's "Access Hollywood.")

In later years, Z-104 tried to be the female rock counterpart to harder-edged DC101, but the station could never create much space for itself between the somewhat more eclectic Mix 107.3 and the pop hits of Hot 99.5.

Even after WHFS (99.1) dropped its alternative-rock sound to go Spanish-language in 2004, Z remained mired in the nether regions of the ratings rankings. The station's relatively weak signal didn't help.

The station's demise, however, had less to do with its music niche than with radio's overall plight in an era of fast-changing technology. For the moment, at least, the public's fascination with choosing its own music makes radio seem old-fashioned and hierarchical. But that may change as listeners tire of their own 10,000-song library and wonder what new music they're missing out on.