This week, the City Pages writes what I already knew: the Current just isn’t cool anymore. The article mentions that the station brought in “consultants” to improve its sagging ratings. Which is another way of saying that the format was blanderized and homogenized to appeal to the suburban types who are looking for something slightly edgier than classic rock, but who freak out a little when they hear a song that wasn’t played the day before. The Current was an interesting experiment: could a truly free-form radio station attract listeners who have grown accustomed to the prepackaged, market-tested sameness of commercial radio. The answer seems to be a resounding “no”.
I like the Current DJs enough to keep listening from time to time and it’s fine as acoustic wallpaper, but I’m going to look elsewhere for my fix of musical eclecticism. Radio K and KCRW are good alternatives that I need to sample more. Others?
KVSC, the college station in St. Cloud, has been consistently awesome and eclectic for years. They play some of everything. They break up the day into programs, they have a schedule on their site so you can see what they have. You probably can’t pick it up in Minneapolis on your radio, but you can stream their radio station through their website.
Tundra trash.
“Still, the Current is hardly going Top 40, which is just fine by Wheat. “Our playlist is still huge compared to anyone else,”
We made a call into Wheat’s shift a few days ago requesting some ZZ Top, which, to our surprise they DON’T HAVE IN THEIR COLLECTION.
?!?!?!?
Oh man…I wish I had seen this post earlier. If you want to stick with “modern rock” I strongly recommend WOXY.com. Their playlist is even larger than The Current’s (even before the “format adjustments”). WOXY plays all the “modern rock” songs you hear on The Current plus even more obscure indie artists. They also tend to play deep album cuts. Sometimes they end up playing all the tracks from a particular album over the course of six or eight months. I will admit though that WOXY has such a huge playlist that you can kind of get lost in the jungle of modern rock. I only like about half of what they play but it’s totally worth listening to discover that awesome 50 percent.
I’m listening to The Current right now. I need to see if I notice any changes. So far so good though. Ooooo Mates Of State!