The Rise of Radio U.

Tommy Delaney is on the telephone, doing what he does best. "Mark!" he cries with his boundless enthusiasm. "What's up, bro? I bet you're still reeling from the interview. Dude, how great was that I had my arm around Adrian Belew! How rad is that? Guy, again, don't even sweat it, because it was a pleasure. I hope to see the band with you sometime. Next time they're in New York, you'll have to come in and we'll go."

Delaney, 25, a college radio promotion manager for Virgin Records, is just warming up. Mark is not his real quarry on this call, and it's time to move on. "Throw John on the phone, man," he says, and soon he's back to unraveling his spiel. "What's going on, dude? Dude, the day you get back, I've got a new Loudon Wainwright record coming out. It ships on the ninth. And you're going to get the new Acetone record. Do you think your program director will be weird about playing the Acetone? What? He resigned? Dude, you're making my day. You're still playing Blur, right? You're still smashing the hell out of that. I like talking to you, man. You make me feel good about all the other people I have to talk to."

Delaney loves his job, but he bristles when he's reminded of what a natural he is. Take the way he was courted by his bosses at the independent record promotion company whose clients he flogged while serving as music director at WSOU, the Seton Hall home of heavy metal. After he graduated, he got a job at Atlantic Records, and the folks at the promotion company tried to appeal to his vanity. "You're cut out for promotion," they told him. But to Delaney, that didn't ring right. "They should have said, 'You've got a cool personality."'

This is a crucial distinction, because Delaney got his start in college radio, where the best efforts of label reps undermine the credibility their companies crave. It's not cool to be cut out for promotion. Nobody can pinpoint the moment when college radio became huge. Was it back in the Eighties, when the commercial viability of R.E.M. and U2 was finally recognized? Was it in the early Nineties, when Nirvana busted off the college charts and sold millions of copies of Nevermind, paving the way for Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Green Day? Was it more recently, after the Smashing Pumpkins' indie debut, Gish, sold 300,000 units on the strength of college airplay alone, and its followup, Siamese Dream, debuted at number one on the college charts on the way to its multiplatinum success?

Or was it back in 1978, when Bobby Haber began publishing the College Media Journal out of the basement of his parents' Long Island home? All Haber did was launch a chart, which has grown over the years to spotlight the top 200 albums and singles playing weekly on the college airwaves. Of the more than 1000 college radio stations in the country, about 500 report to CMJ in any week. The CMJ charts have either created college radio or ruined it, depending on your perspective.

"Haber will probably tell you he's the reason for this college radio renaissance," says Charles Slomovitz, 27, who, as national alternative director at Virgin, is Delaney's boss. "I think he's the reason college radio sucks today."

When you have a major-label promotion guy accusing a trade-magazine publisher of ruining college radio, you know things have gotten a bit screwy in the land of antiradio radio. College used to be the place where you could tune in for a pure, anticommercial aesthetic experience. Now it's where big labels go to break baby bands, and you can never be sure what is being manipulated to get these bands on the air. Meanwhile, the various players in this process--label reps, trade editors, the college music directors themselves-- run around screaming about how despicable it is that everyone else has defiled their virgin princess.

•

CMJ's computer weighs playlists according to a station's reach and influence, then churns out the chart that lands on label executives' desks every week. "Before college radio reported to trade magazines, it was impossible to assess its impact," says Seana Baruth, college editor of Gavin, another radio industry trade weekly that also publishes a college chart. "And because there was no way to assess the impact, there was no label interest."

Now there is label interest. In recent years every major label has established its own college radio promotion department. Reps call college music directors to tout their latest CDs, arrange on-air interviews or live performances by their bands and coordinate student interns to paper campuses with posters, arrange coffee-shop performances and lobby the stations some more. "The labels continue to invest more heavily in promoting to college radio, spending money in order to influence it," according to Baruth.

But for what? It's an article of faith in the music industry that college radio can't be counted on to move product.

"As far as selling records goes, it's a joke," says Errol Kolosine, director of radio at Caroline Records. "You can have a number one college record and sell a couple thousand copies."

If college radio isn't selling records, why do labels bother to spend all this money? The more judicious promoters take refuge in the concept of "artist development," by which college radio is supposedly suited to introducing a band quietly and bringing it along slowly, the foundation of a long career.

That's the classic college radio concept, harking back to R.E.M. and U2. But it tends to be the exception rather than the rule. Since Nirvana set the standard, and since "alternative" rock went mainstream, record execs are more and more looking to college radio to give new bands a credibility infusion before liftoff. And in that game, chart numbers are paramount. A CMJ number one is a crucial bona fide on a baby band's tip sheet.

"At a marketing meeting or a promotion meeting at a label, part of what they try to do is build a story for an artist," says Gavin's Baruth. "There have been plenty of instances recently where commercial stations have added a band or artist that they might not have added had that band or artist not been a college radio mainstay. So college radio, though it doesn't sell records as a rule, can be part of a story."

But what if college radio did sell records? What if a college station packed, say, a monstrous 100,000 watts of power, could be heard past the dorms into neighboring states? What if such a station played artists the way a commercial station does--25 times a week in heavy rotation? Imagine the label pressure that would pummel the young music director at that station. Now meet Anni Banani, music director at this atypical college radio station, which happens to exist in the form of Georgia State's WRAS, in Atlanta.

"WRAS is a huge station," says Sean Sullivan, head of college marketing at Sony Music. "It influences listeners and definitely sells records." And, probably just as important, it influences the charts. "If you had a record in the top ten at that station and didn't have another station playing it, it might still show up in the CMJ top 200," says Delaney, who wrestled with WRAS's power to hurt a record last summer. "I was working this band from England, the Verve. I had the band at number three on CMJ and number two on the Gavin chart. But the record didn't go to number one because WRAS wasn't playing it. The station single-handedly cost me a number one record."

To which Banani replies: tough shit. "We passed that Verve CD around to 50 people, and nobody liked it," she says. "It isn't a good record. I have the courage to say no. Major labels rely on us for their horse races. They want to keep a meal on their table. But that's not my job."

Not long ago major labels could send a Verve CD or even a Smashing Pumpkins CD to WRAS and expect it to get played as a matter of course. That was before another 100,000-watt Atlanta station, WNNX (99X), changed its format to commercial alternative and forced WRAS to reevaluate its identity. "Suddenly we were in the shadow of the big commercial station," Banani says. "We were playing bands before it was, but it was going to play them eventually." When Banani became music director, she pushed the station further away from music that might be commercially palatable. "Now 99X won't touch anything we're playing," Banini says.

(continued on page 147) Radio U. (continued from page 92)

The transformation of WRAS highlights one of the great ironies of the relationship between college radio and major labels: The stations theoretically most important to a major label--the bigger stations in bigger cities, the stations that Gavin has deemed most influential and that CMJ puts on its core chart--tend to be those most invested in their own independent, underground integrity. They are least susceptible to the blandishments of the promotion guys. Take, for instance, KFJC, at Foothill College near San Jose, whose signal reaches much of the Bay Area. "We're into very experimental, unstructured, unshackled sounds that tend to go on for a long time," says Alan Lowe, the station's 36-year-old music director.

Oddly enough, label reps love this stuff, even if it means they can't get their own music played on those stations. Partly it's because, at heart, they're college radio purists themselves, often recent refugees from the music director ranks, and they just can't stand to see that purity defiled. "College radio has to learn to say no," says Kolosine. Promotion people also love purist stations because they give college radio its credibility. Meanwhile, they're happy to call on the 80 percent of college stations that aren't so closely guarding their virginity.

"Those kids don't know what's hitting them," Kolosine says. "For the majority of them, if you send five CDs and a poster and tell them you're going to take them out to dinner, you own them. They don't even realize they're being bought." Every year, both Gavin and CMJ host conventions, where major labels showcase their newest bands and treat college music directors to expensive dinners. At last fall's CMJ Music Marathon, three major labels rented a loft in New York. They brought in 20 kegs of beer and had jugglers, fire-eaters and bands. They called this event the Pukefest.

Imagine the ambivalence this inspires among label reps who also fancy themselves college radio purists. "College radio used to develop careers naturally and effectively, creating a base for an artist," says Slomovitz. "But it has veered off course because of the very beast that serves the records. Label bosses are interested in achieving high chart status and therefore put pressure on college reps to deliver higher numbers. That in turn puts pressure on a DJ's choices, which results in less diversity and more mediocre mainstream music getting played on college radio." This from the man whose college promotion manager was last seen pushing the new Rolling Stones record to college music directors.

Eventually, something will have to give in the relentless promotion of college radio, before the major labels foul their own farm system and so thoroughly water down its indie cred that the cynic won't care who's charting on CMJ. Baruth believes the labels will be saved from this by the marketplace.

"Labels have built these paper houses, because right now they're investing a lot of money and energy in a radio format that rarely sells records. They're seeing little actual financial return. As this alternative explosion thing peaks and wanes, the labels are going to see that spending all this money on college radio isn't wise. And then things will wind down and go back to normal." And maybe then Delaney will go back to being just a guy with a cool personality, and Slomovitz will be able to sleep better at night.

"Send five CDs and a poster and you own them. They don't even realize they're being bought."