(insert title here) - Volume 1 Issue 1 - What's Going on with College Radio? by PhiLL Ramey

A weird thing happened during the early to mid 90s. College radio and commercial radio ended up on the same plateau and both promoted and pushed the same music. That time, however, is over and it would be thought that college radio would go back on its merry way of concentrating largely on independent artists. Unfortunately, this hasn't been the case entirely and bands on the large music labels have managed to do incredibly well on the College Music Journal's (CMJ) top 200 chart that represents the overall airplay of college radio.

There are of course good bands on major labels such as Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey, Blur, and Radiohead and these are the types of bands that tend to do the best on the chart. However, there are those not so choice bands that are making the top 200 as well, such as Rage Against the Machine, Everclear, Marilyn Manson, and Orgy. What is the line that divides these two factions? The answer to this question isn't very cut and dry. There are two main stances on the issue of what is acceptable for a college radio station, and these two stances use two completely different things to make their decisions.

One side supports such big name acts as Rage Against the Machine holds true to the idea that the music should decide what gets airplay. The other side bases its decision more on principle and uses commercial airplay as the deciding factor on what not to play. To make a decision based on either of these stances would rely heavily on your own opinion, especially in regards to what is good music, but one can also ask, how much commercial airplay is too much airplay?

Both sides do have their points, however, radio is about the music being played and college radio is about exposing listeners to artists ignored by large commercial stations. Some college radio stations seem to be taking a middle of the road approach to this issue by opening their charts to slightly larger name artists like Radiohead. However, their seems to be no definite answer to this issue in sight as even at the CMJ music conference this past fall, an hour long panel came to a close with no definite statements made about where college radio should be headed in order to maintain its future.

What's Going on with College Radio?

by Gordon Moore