Air Sickness
Remote-controlled from the Mainland,
Honolulu radio insults us all.

Chad Blair

March 6, 2002

It came as a rude shock, akin to a betrayal or a loss of faith. Tuning in to Classic Rock 98.5 FM in November of 1999, die-hard rockers discovered the station no longer played Led Zeppelin and the Who, and instead was spinning tunes by local artists — utterly bland covers of pop songs or lazy, by-the-numbers reggae beats overlaid on other pop songs.
     Now called Island Rhythm, KDDN 98.5’s format continues unabated today, marked by horrible things like a take on the already-treacly "More Than Words" by the supersweet Justin, or a pot-infused Jawaiian version of Marc Cohen’s "Walking in Memphis" called "Walking in Kingston" by Marty Dread. Sure, there might be a Bruddah Iz tune thrown in to dignify the mix, but "Island Rhythm" is not only the latest moniker for 98.5 FM but is also the demographically powered mongrel that a decade ago blindsided classical Hawaiian music, then laid waste to radioland in general.
     It’s not a pretty story.
     98.5 FM’s programming change to island bubble-gum was such a success that other stations quickly followed. KCCN 100.3 FM, long the local stage for contemporary Hawaiian stars like Amy Hanaiali‘i Gilliom, Cecilio & Kapono, Olomana and Gabby Pahinui, now heavily rotates young cover tunesmiths like Three Plus and Sean Na‘auao.
     Even KINE 105.1, the Hawaiian station people over 30 listen to, spins some of the island-rhythm canon — when it’s not busy playing lame covers of pop tunes by Nä Leo Pilimehana and Sistah Robi. In fact, seven of the Top 10 radio stations on O‘ahu play some form of ersatz "Island" music; the sad part is you won’t hear much from the roots — the Hoopi‘i Brothers, Dennis Kamakahi, Aunty Genoa, Sonny Chillingworth, Frank Hewett, etc. — on any of them.
     The reason for major format changes like 98.5’s is simple: money. With Honolulu stations now mostly owned by Mainland media giants like Clear Channel (see below), local programming is evermore obsessed with the bottom line. And, while Mainland corporate types likely don’t know who Ten Feet and Colón are, the reason those bands get so much play on Honolulu stations is determined less by local demand than by Mainland companies seeking the coveted "money demo" — the demographic niche of 18-to-35-year-olds that advertisers covet.
     It’s not just the island-rhythm trend that’s troubling. For older audiences, who grew up listening to great stations like KCCN AM that played Hawaiian music nonstop — but who also swore allegiance to KPOI’s "the rock you live on" rock ’n’ roll format — the Big Pineapple’s radio selection is increasingly homogenized into unoriginal formulae that guarantee audiences will hear much the same from station to station. In addition to KCCN 100.3 and KDDN 98.5 FM Jawaiiana and cover crapola, radio-dial choices are limited to:
     • so-called modern "alternative" rock (KPOI 97.5, KUCD Star 101.9 and Lava Rock, KAHA 105.9 FM), a la Creed and Tool, most of it useless to audiences over 30;
     • urban dance, hip-hop and rap, e.g., City High, Usher, DMX at al., geared to teens and boom-box cars (I-94, KIKI 93.9; Da Bomb, KDDB 102.7; and Xtreme, KXME 104.3;
     • talk radio, most of it on the AM band, marked by relentlessly angry, conservative barking, most of it beamed from the Mainland — KHVH 830, KHNR 650, KHBZ 990, KWAI 1080 and KCCN 1420 AM;
     • Christian programming, with four AM stations to choose from; and ethnic-language programming — two Japanese, two Korean and one Filipino.
     • There are also two "oldies" stations: KQMQ 93.1 FM (mostly ’70s to ’90s music), and KGMZ Oldies 107.9 FM, which was popular when it debuted a few years back, but it didn’t take long for listeners to realize that 107.9 ignored 90 percent of tunes from the ’50s to the ’70s in favor of the same 15 songs every hour. Neither station currently makes Honolulu’s Top 10.
     • Lastly, there are a couple of stations that you can sing along to in the car, stations that vend soft pop/rock programming, called "adult contemporary," with the occasional oldie and local ditty tossed in (KSSK 92.3, KUMU 94.7, KRTR 96.3 and KORL 99.5 FM). The problem is, these stations are nearly indistinguishable from each other, and so there is little listener loyalty. (A veteran Island DJ at KORL bristled at the notion that KORL sounds like the FM version of KUMU, which used to play elevator music. He argued that KORL is unique. Perhaps, but KUMU was the surprise success story of the latest Arbitron book.)
     Honolulu has no jazz station, no blues, no new age and no world music (except for limited, scheduled slots on public radio — thank God for public radio — and on KTUH 90.3 — thank God for KTUH’s new antenna).
     There is also no place on the dial for reliable, classic Hawaiian music; no place for classic rock, country music and old-fashioned Muzak; and virtually no liberal, even middle-of-the-road, talk radio. (This in an ostensibly progressive state run, for the time being, by Democrats.) Enlightened audiences may well rejoice the absence of Muzak or Travis Tritt, but, with over 30 stations to choose from, isn’t there room anywhere for Keola Beamer?
     Local radio’s sorry, lowest-common-denominator condition is further soiled by the rank stupidity of its on-air personalities. With few exceptions, Honolulu drive-time hosts and disc jockeys are dumb and dumber, exemplified by Star 101.9’s Hudson and Scotty B. and Island Rhythm’s Lanai and Augie. Rather than attempt to engage listeners with some treatment of issues of the day or even just decent entertainment, they spew sex and seventh-grade humor.
     There’s some indication that the formula no longer works so well: Star’s Arbitron book is on the rise, according to January numbers, but it hasn’t made the Top 10 in recent surveys. Island Rhythm, after a long run in the Top Five, has slipped to the next tier.
     No wonder: Honolulu’s on-air radio chatter consists of an incessant barrage of cash and prize giveaways, which, one suspects, is supposed to drag Honolulu’s impoverished radio listeners to the dial. Radio as gutter lottery.
     Short of a commercial, broadcast-radio revolution, predictable homogeneity would appear to be the wave of the future. (The Weekly recommends you call these stations and bitch ... or tune them out altogether. There is always the Internet, you know.)

It comes from the Mainland
     Promoted by the media and telecom giants and supported by President Clinton, the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 sparked a massive consolidation in the radio business. The act, which relaxed ownership restrictions in most markets, has indeed revitalized radio, but not for the better.
     With deregulation, conglomerates like Clear Channel have scooped up formerly independent mom ’n’ pop radio stations. Media companies that used to be limited to 40 stations, total, can now own an unlimited number. The act also allowed doubling the number of stations that can be owned in a single market from four to eight.
     Now, these media conglomerates, with hundreds of radio stations spread across the country, use satellite technology to shape their stations into a network. What they have to sell to advertisers is unprecedented access to and saturation of the national market, and it’s all available with a single buy.
     The efficiencies the new giants offer to advertisers are indisputable; the effects on local culture are indisputable, too. Marketing types, not music lovers, dictate play lists, critics say. Whole blocks of programming are shipped out from a headquarters studio and then customized for different markets.
     "The government, the FCC, the politicians — they all acted like a bunch of whores for the media giants," Ron Jacobs says bitterly. A longtime local radio personality, Jacobs, whose local ties go back to KPOI in the 1950s (and, later, KGU and KCCN AM), is the author of the just-published KHJ: Inside Boss Radio (Zapoleon Media Strategies), a book chronicling the glory days of radio history.
     "It sucks," Jacobs comments about the sorry business of Honolulu’s radio stations. "It’s all a big media swirl — the ownership lines are so blurred, companies swallowing other companies swallowing other companies.
     "Radio was born, and died, in the 20th century," he says flatly.
     Jacobs says one of the results of the dumbing down of radio is that music fans are heading to the Internet, where near-commercial-free programming runs the full gamut (check out Live365.com, for one). Similar preprogrammed music via digital cable is also available. Or, music fans are burning their own CDs and ignoring the radio altogether. In 2001, blank CDs outsold prerecorded ones.
     Then there’s a company like XM Radio in Washington, D.C., which Jacobs calls the "radio of the future." Only available, at this point, on the Mainland through satellite, XM Radio offers 100 commercial-free channels of music, news, talk, sports and comedy aimed at an estimated 200 million-plus car and truck drivers as well as home-radio users. Cost: $9.99 a month.
     Record companies are in a panic, The New York Times’ Neil Strauss reported on Feb. 24. Lawsuits targeting Napster and other free, digital-music sources haven’t stemmed the slump in music sales, down 5 percent from last year.
     On the Grammy Awards broadcast on Feb. 27, Recording Industry Association of America President C. Michael Greene complained to viewers that music lovers illegally download 3.6 billion songs per month. At the same time, high-profile acts like Billy Joel and the Dixie Chicks are suing record companies for royalties.
     Lastly, the costs of marketing new CDs are sky-high, writes Strauss, as musically knowledgeable executives are replaced with "corporate bean counters — multinational companies demand quick profits and instant hits."

The death of Honolulu radio
     Nearly half of Honolulu’s 30-plus radio stations (out of about 70 statewide) are owned by one of two Mainland companies: Clear Channel, which owns seven stations, and Cox Radio with six. Boston-based New Wave Broadcasting owns five, while several California companies control a handful of stations: Emerald City Radio Partners owns two, Christian-oriented Salem Media has four and JMK Communications and Trade Center Management have one each. The modestly sized Maverick Media, based in Connecticut, bought KAHA 105.9 (aka Lava Rock) from Emerald City three months ago. That leaves a total of eight independently owned stations in Honolulu.
     Cox, headquartered in Atlanta, is a huge multimedia company (radio, TV, cable, Internet, newspapers), while London-based Clear Channel owns or operates over 1,100 radio stations in the United States. New Wave Broadcasting, founded in New Jersey, owns about 300 radio stations nationwide.
     For small independents, survival is a day-to-day struggle. Cash-strapped Hawai‘i Public Radio is reported to be in negotiations to sell KIFO 1380 AM to a Utah-based upstart called Diamond Broadcasting/Legacy Communications, according to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
     Classical music station KHPR holds fundraisers to scrape by. It costs big bucks to syndicate popular National Public Radio programming like All Things Considered and Morning Edition, explains David Barsamian in The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting (South End Press, 2001). To make matters worse, public broadcasting stations are up against a huge demand for bandwidth in the wake of the Telecommunications Reform Act. Barsamian calls the act one of the greatest "giveaways" in U.S. history.
     "No matter what your politics are," Barsamian writes, "whether you are conservative, liberal or radical — it’s not arguable that homogenization is the order of the day. Listeners have commented that when they drive across the country they hear the same old song."
     A well-known, longtime Honolulu radio personality puts radio’s blandness another way: "It’s boring. There doesn’t seem to be any spontaneity, and that’s because the music is mostly programmed by people who have no idea that Hawai‘i is a unique market — not just because of Hawaiian music, but because we can’t pick up signals from other states."
     General managers at the big chain stations vigorously defend their play lists. Chuck Cotton, vice president and general manager of Clear Channel Hawai‘i (KSSK, I-94, Island Rhythm, Star), says, "It’s ridiculous to say that all markets are the same — if they were, they couldn’t compete. We do ongoing research to find out what people’s tastes are, including locally. We’d be nuts if we didn’t. I’ve never been told what record to play."
     Yes, but should 18-to-35 year-olds be dictating what everyone else in Honolulu listens to?
     Former owner of KRTR, Austin Vali, now VP and GM of Cox Radio Hawai‘i (Oldies, KRTR, Xtreme, KINE, KCCN), says, "I think the bottom line is that hits are hits — we play a majority of what listeners want to hear. We’re programming to the masses. I also think we have more choices than we ever had before. When I came to the Islands in 1977, we had no stations above 97.5 FM — that was the end of the dial. It wasn’t opened up until the early ’80s."
     Vali acknowledges that stations can sound the same: "There are some subtle differences, but we all have to pick a niche, and that’s based on a demographic."
     Jacobs disagrees with Cotton and Vali. "I know what the truth is, and that sounds like a bunch of c—ksuckers towing the corporate line."
     Maybe he meant Cox suckers. Regardless, Jacobs is especially critical of Clear Channel, the subject of a flattering, front-page Wall Street Journal story Feb. 25. The article called Clear Channel’s method of "perfecting the art of seeming local" the "future of radio." The illusion, the article explained, is done with advanced digital technology, especially the use of voice-tracking, in which stations share logos, jingles, promotional bits and even on-air talent.

The struggle for local control
     Other radio execs claim to run their stations as they please. Jeff Schatz, VP and GM of New Wave Broadcasting Hawai‘i (KORL, KPOI, KQMQ, Da Bomb), says, "In the case of smaller companies like ours, local origination still exists. We’re not cookie-cutters, because we don’t have to report to Wall Street. The only shareholders we have are our limited partners. That’s not the case with Cox and Clear Channel."
     A Lava Rock DJ, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said his station’s owner, Maverick, turns most of the programming decision-making to Lava Rock staff. "We keep it unique, we have local control," he says of his station, which came on the air in November 2000. "We’re real, we’re street, unlike KPOI and Star. We do this by playing the ‘deeper cuts,’ not just the singles. I think we’re carrying on in the Radio Free tradition."
     He further charges that KUCD (it used to play easy-listening jazz; under the name Star it switched to poppy alternative rock a few years back; now it plays heavier fare and tons of ads) and KPOI (for decades a classic-rock station, today in an identity crisis somewhere between Star and Lava Rock) are "micromanaged." But he also acknowledges that Mainland formulas have had ad-revenue success, noting that Star’s massive cash giveaways have led to better ratings than the other two stations.
     If Honolulu radio sounds different from the Mainland, the old salt says, save for island-rhythm productions that are mostly covers of Mainland pop, "I don’t hear it. We might as well be in St. Louis." He argues that the widespread use of national consultants and focus groups to determine radio programming, including locally, is flat-out a "payola scam."
     Local record execs deny that local labels are paying stations to play certain songs, but there’s little doubt that radio consulting is the norm — and profitable.
     "I know a consultant who made a fortune and is now retired to the good life on Kaua‘i," the old salt continues, anonymously, adding that perhaps KSSK’s Perry & Price are the only example of local programming largely untouched by Mainland trends — even though he also says that KSSK’s music has become more mainstream in recent years.
     "It’s because they are so successful," the wizened DJ says of Perry & Price.
     Of course, Michael W. Perry and Larry Price, like Cox and Clear Channel, are mostly concerned with the bottom line: Each has perfected the art of the seamless, shameless sales pitch so that whenever they’re nattering on, chances are 50-50 they’re selling something. When you can’t tell public discourse from a sales pitch — well, welcome to the future of radio.

Mahina Chock, Palana Hilton, Shimi Rii and Li Wang contributed to this article.