In that same span, they also heard Starbucks icon Sheryl Crow ("Love Is All There Is"), a 20-year-old trifle from Edie Brickell and New Bohemians ("What I Am"), a 2003 novelty hit by Fountains of Wayne ("Stacy's Mom") and Train ("Drops of Jupiter," a song that even corporate radio seems weary of).
Tuning in can be a maddening experience. It's possible that WFPK's listeners are just that eclectic, happy to groove to a playlist that swings wildly from Arcade Fire to Eagle Eye Cherry, from the Velvet Underground to Counting Crows. Someone who doesn't change the station when Vampire Weekend gives way to Blues Traveler.
But if you're 23-year-old barista Kane Holbrook, it's the kind of thing that makes you just turn the radio off entirely, turning instead to websites like Last.fm and Pandora.com for new music.
"They're okay, but my mom really likes them," said Holbrook, who works at Sunergos Coffee in Germantown, with a shrug. "They're not my main source of music."
Billy Petot, a 30-year-old insurance agent and part-time musician, is less diplomatic.
"WFPK is too white, and often times too stale," he said. "A lot of the music lacks flavor. I don't feel like the station introduces us to anything or promotes something that hasn't already been tested. It's like Hillary Clinton waiting for the poll numbers to decide her stance on an issue."
Long viewed as the city's most adventurous radio station, the WFPK that you now get depends on when you tune in. Dial up 91.9-FM and you might get to sample what the early adopters are listening to. Or you may get the soundtrack to "Grey's Anatomy" -- or worse, "Closing Time" by Semisonic. All within the same set.
How did the station that reinvigorated public radio back in the 1990s find itself in such a muddle?
Stacy's mom
We're at the Louisville Public Media building on Fourth Street in downtown Louisville, where programming and music director Stacy Owen is giving me a tour.
"It all starts with me," Owen explains. "All of the new music that's mailed to us comes to me. I don't ever get to all of it. We get 50 to 100 new CDs in the mail every week. Sometimes, I'll share them with other staff members, to get their review -- if they think it's something we ought to take a serious look at."
At the door to the music library, we run into afternoon DJ Marion Dries.
"Stacy, did I hear that Moby has a new CD out?"
On this day, Moby's latest CD has been out for two weeks. Owen dryly acknowledges this to Dries, and the tour moves on.
A decidedly thoughtful, warm person, Owen, 44, has presided over what she claims is 15-percent membership growth since advancing to program director in 2004, replacing Dan Reed, who is credited with establishing the format known as adult album alternative at WFPK. Reed is now the music director at WXPN in Philadelphia, one of the nation's more influential AAA public stations and home of the popular syndicated show "World Café."
A thick musical stew, with pop, rock, alt-country, folk, blues, alternative rock, bluegrass, world music, classic rock, electronica, jazz, new wave, reggae and punk rock, the AAA format's eclecticness is both a blessing and a curse, an unfocused array of music that defies the niche-driven, long-tail culture we live in today. Even Owen is hard-pressed to put her finger on exactly what it is.
"AAA can mean a lot of things depending on what city you're in, and the flavor you're trying to create," she said. "For Louisville, I think it means a bit of classic rock, because it's a classic rock town. Maybe dig a little deeper into some of those albums instead of just hearing the Top-40 hits that our 40- and 50-year old listeners grew up with. I like to call them the 'wow factor' songs. 'Ooh! I haven't heard that on the radio in years!' Also, being based in the singer-songwriter (genre) … and also the Louisville music -- that's definitely a mission of the station, is to play music from here in our own city, and not just an hour on the weekend, but in the mix with everything else."
Before 1996, Louisville listeners were relegated to commercial stations that concentrated on Top-40, modern country, oldies, hard rock and the like, or the city's three public stations: WFPK-FM and WUOL-FM, which both played classical music, and WFPL-FM, which concentrated on jazz and news programs like "All Things Considered," with the occasional alt-rock or blues show.
That year, the public stations merged to become the Public Radio Partnership (now Louisville Public Media), shuffling their formats in the process. WUOL stayed classical, while WFPL dropped jazz and added more of news and talk shows. WFPK, meanwhile, dropped classical, picked up jazz and, in a most drastic change for staid public radio, began playing pop and rock music in regular rotation.
But as WFPK and the AAA format have aged, it has become increasingly difficult to please the audience that wants to hear the Indigo Girls and Lyle Lovett -- two icons who helped build the format -- and a younger crowd that questions why Sea Wolf and Winterpills must compete for airtime with Los Lonely Boys, Tracy Chapman and David Crosby's umpteenth musical incarnation.
"I feel like WFPK only introduces me to new music from old artists," Petot said. "If Louisville is the cultural center it claims to be, why don't we encourage that culture by introducing folks to new art that is starving for promotion?"
If anyone understands the problems facing WFPK, it is Reed, who oversaw the station when it began its fan-friendly "Live Lunch" program and the hugely popular Waterfront Wednesday concerts. He is also infamous for clashing with local jazz buffs who were upset with his decision to slash jazz programming in 2003.
"It's absolutely imperative to cultivate a younger audience with this format (but) it's a hell of a lot harder to cultivate that audience now," he said. "This is not just a problem for 'FPK. You have to work twice as hard, it seems, to get the under-40s to switch the radio on."
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