In my opinion, the source of the problem is not people like Jeff Marks or Pete 'The Gnat' Rosenblum, but an industry-wide shift expecting quicker and greater gains out of the fragile College Radio market. This may make money for multinationals, but makes it damn confusing for MDs. The format is now skewed to accelerate the "college first, commercial next" REM, Nirvana, Green Day formula via false numbers and false hype. But even when those numbers are real, I still say it is false hype. The specifics of gaining false numbers are great. Some, like the Want Adds, work the system, buddying up using toaster oven numbers and trendy indie-rock hipness to inflate numbers, while others like the dreaded Interscope crew use crude, explicit, almost pornographic methods to achieve the same means. Giveaways / shitloads of free CDs, tix, etc. will always have a legit purpose, but the resources on the playing field are quite unbalanced. What would change this scene? A Neil Bogart pop punk label? An Industry wide crash? No more microwave ovens for a top 10 position? Mike Halloran doing PSAs saying "Just say no, kids"? Probably Promo VPs backing off the pressure on the small guys at the label and focusing on actual artist development. And more retail focus. And perhaps, if music directors were realistically, unbiasedly made aware of what precisely is going on. Most people don’t want to hear this. Most people wish it just didn’t exist.

College Radio Becomes Commercial Alt. Jr.
Alternative rock, indie-rock, starts to make real money (Lollapalooza, Green Day, Nirvana). Then, when the sharks smell blood they get more hungry—feeding frenzy. They want as much as possible. Since college is where cult & cred is built. This parlays into crossover money-making formats. This formula is now force fed, making everything skewed. College Radio is now the doormat format, the wall to which the mud test is applied (if it sticks…). People are paid to dupe you into thinking crap commercial music is cool! When you tell a rep you think the record is 'commercial alt' and they reply ‘but it’s not getting played on com alt’, like it makes a difference! With commercial pressures from above, College Radio is promoted to more like comm alt: more pressure on numbers, this for that, don’t do this (everyone forgets about this one), tricky forms of payola. Often college MDs don’t realize the severity of this manipulation and don’t take their charts as seriously as the major label promo VPs do. The system comes handed down from the seventies, classic commercial style of promotion. A style that has NOTHING to do with the love of music…

The Homogenization of College Radio
Single Reference Chart [CMJ]

• Majors service all reporters to said list, skewing chart from indies & world music, etc.

• No one reports “specialty” records to top 35, and no one asks them to. The week Guru was the number one Retail Breakthrough, it wasn’t even in the Top150.

• This is fully supported by the industry, and CMJ does not actively challenge this.

The Purpose of Promo People

• Why have promo people? To alert people to good music? To get that band maximum exposure via charts and air? To what level should manipulation occur (both emotional- and product-wise)?
• Do VPs care if the band gets development and decent exposure but shows poorly on the chart?
• Do individual promotion people define college promo or does it come from the above?
• Is there really a fine line between loving music and music business?
• Do college stations really care about adds to the dimension promo people do? Why should college radio do specific add dates at all?

Personality
Obviously some people are natural players; others couldn’t work a room to get their mom a Christmas present. With practically the same motives, look at the grace and savior faire of Chuck Slomovitz vs. the style of Jeff Marks. Yet some players actually care about music, for example Tommy Daley who made sure Charlie Hunter Trio was serviced to college radio. And the personality of the company often predicates sleaziness.

Specifics of Sleaze

• Game-playing. It is possible to work the chart without product. This technique is quite advanced, yet standard. It involves manipulation via emotions, playing to insecurities, and basic human needs, flirting, false friendship, bonding, etc.
• The emotional manipulators take on a new importance when applied to smaller stations. They are more likely to chart records if the label just calls them. Often just someone to listen to their problems and act as though they will look out for them is enough to solidify a strong relationship. And promo personnel rarely call stations that don’t or aren’t charting product.
• Working the system and chart methods to maximize artist exposure on charts.
• Charting major label product is encouraged via the pavlovian method of giveaways as support. Five or ten free CDs is always quite an exciting moment around a college station, especially if most staffers are volunteers.
• You can sell CDs at stores and get enough money to pay your utilities and bad record buying habits, maybe even enough to cover your mom’s collect calls from a correctional facility. You can even trade in product for records you think your station could use, yet you have still betrayed the industry to the same degree. White lies? Excusable crimes?
• Exact techniques (just a quick list): giveaways, free meals, free drinks, free drugs (as if alcohol wasn’t a drug!), guest lists, backstage to Lollapalooza or other big shows, interviews with bands you actually care about, T-shirts of bands you’d actually want a shirt from, box sets, free CDs of anything you chart, back catalog, cab rides, plane rides, free badges, specific product for specific positions (big during the 4th week of a record), don’t chart this, don’t add this, get you a job in biz when you graduate, get you laid at conventions.

#############