Radio Radio

So today, WXPN, Philadelphia's notorious Adult Alternative station (this means they play some synthesis between really cool and sort of lame music on a regular basis) and Y100Rocks, a webstreaming descendent of Y100, Philly's only alternative rock station that was shut down a little more than a year ago, announced a merger of sorts.

It sort of seems like a good idea, almost. Jim McGuinn, who will be hosting the new evening show on XPN (called Y-Rock on XPN, which is not as lame as the XPoNential Music moniker that applies to the webcast), always had the best music taste at Y100, and I would sometimes actually try to listen to his Sunday show which featured good new music. However, McGuinn will be replacing Matt Reilly's usual slot. Reilly plays the best music on XPN, by a long shot. I'm glad to see the demise of the "Indie-Rock Hit Parade" (another exceedingly lame title), which I could never listen to because it was worse than WHPK, my radio station, on a bad day. But this new format seems to support everything that was silly about both XPN and Y100-- specifically XPN's frantic desire to reach out to young listeners (their current base is 35 and up, but hey, those people will at least give them money), and both stations' decision to not actual play so much that could be described as alternative. Y100Rocks has improved on this over the old Y100, considering the presensce of actual female artists (Sleater-Kinney, Rilo Kiley, Tegan and Sara) and good local acts on their top 150 songs of 2005. But Reilly is virtually the only XPN dj who would fit into both formats. Also the only dj who my friends and I wrote a fan letter to last year, after he first started. Reilly is also the only XPN dj that I regularly chose to listen to instead of my own music. I'm well under 35, but I have no money to give. Oh, well. Maybe y100 and XPN can recognize some of what they don't like about each other in themselve when they work more closely. This experiment will be interesting, at least.