Let me just say that 90% of the music played on WPLR I have no problem with. Much of it is classic rock and will always be great. I don't want you to think I'm here to go after the actual MUSIC. That's far from the case. It's not the music's fault this and other stations play the bejesus out of them. Queen, the Who, The Cars, Kiss, Aerosmith, The Beatles, AC/DC, and Cheap Trick are some of my favorites that WPLR plays. Honorable mentions go to Pat Benatar and Billy Squier. Now, probably the top act that is overplayed on WPLR is the band The Doors. I have nothing against the Doors whatsoever. I don't have any of their albums, but I don't take issue with them in any way.
Sometime around 1991, when Oliver Stone's film The Doors came out, WPLR went into Doors overdrive syndrome and has not let up since. Perhaps it was some kind of marketing tie-in at the beginning, you know, "Play a lot of Doors music and that will be like covert marketing to sell tickets" or some such corporate conspiracy theory. But, somehow, even at the time of writing in 2009 and surely long after, the memo has been lost to take the Doors playlist down a notch or two.
The hacks that program WPLR (although surely now it's a computer -- a computer that doesn't need much space at all) don't seem to care whether you're a fan or not. They seem insistent on cramming Doors music down all of our throats. Who is commandeering this mission? And why? I mean, if you take away the DJ's talking (invariably about how they played "Break On Through" for the 9 trillionth time), commercials and Doors songs, you literally get about three extra seconds of something else. Probably dead air. Or the second most-played band, Lynrd Skynyrd. If they cared about the music of any of the bands they play, they could play more than just one or two of their most well-known and well-worn hits. Many of the artists have long careers and have many more songs they could use, but no. In some corporate boardroom somewhere, a room full of guys in suits decided amongst their charts and graphs that playing the same songs over and over makes a certain profit margin for the company and that's that. It has nothing whatsoever to do with music or talent or artistry. I believe the phrase "familiarity breeds contempt" DOES NOT apply for the zombie-like fanbase of 'PLR.
Here's a transcribed commercial (please read in stereotypical "rock radio announcer voice"): "WPL-DOORS!!!! Nothing but Doors, every hour! Not ON the hour, for the FULL hour, EVERY hour! If we play ANY song by ANY other band, YOU win a cash prize! Hell, we'll just give you the damn radio station - 'cause it'll NEVER happen! And even if it did, we only have ONE CD! The greatest hits of.... THE DOOOOOOOORS!!!!!!!"
Okay, that was not a real commercial. But it very well could be. I mean, is Ray Manzarek at the console with a shiv, threatening the DJ's at shiv-point, saying "Play our stuff, we're not big enough yet, we need the constant publicity"?
It's just somewhat depressing that their view of the rock music world is so incredibly limited. There have been thousands upon thousands of bands since the 60's yet PLR and their ilk choose to only play a tiny, almost insignificant fraction of that. It's so narrow minded it beggars belief. New bands have no chance on stations such as this, and the WPLR model stifles creativity and cuts off lifeblood to struggling artists, many of which deserve a place on their roster. Consequently, concert attendance is down, CD sales are down, and "the scene", such as it is, suffers. Imagine if PLR put its weight behind emerging acts and "supporting the scene"...the difference would be huge because they reach so many more people than college radio. But thanks to the internet, stations like WPLR are becoming increasingly more irrelevant. And I say that's a good thing, because their outmoded, insensitive, unbelievably boring and creativity-deadening model should be shown the door. Or possibly, in a bigger building, "The Doors". Heh. That'll show 'em.
