Ever on the look out for harbingers of change that may some day translate into problems or solutions for me, I have been following articles about the demise of Rock radio stations of late. A recent article in the NY Times has chronicled how the new rock format has disappeared from the largest radio markets in the country these last few months. At this point, NYC and Philly (and people are keeping on eye on LA) don’t have a new/alternative rock station because the Arbitron ratings were dropping and the station owners decided to change formats.

Now having lived in the NYC and Philly areas, I wasn’t an avid listener to either station. (I feel compelled at this juncture to make a shout out to listener supported WXPN in Philly) It is what has happened since that has aroused my interest.

When I said that NYC and Philly didn’t have new/alternative rock stations, I was sort of misstating the situation. It is more truthful to say they both don’t have terrestrial stations with that format.

The old crew from Y100 in Philly is now broadcasting over the internet from their bedrooms essentially at Y100Rocks.com They are scrambling to get funding to keep their shows streaming. Despite being out of work DJs with no physical radio station, they have attracted some fairly significant names to play a concert so they can make money and stay on the air. (I don’t believe they are a non-profit so it isn’t a fundraiser per se.)

In NYC, Viacom/Infinity took a different tack and moved their alternative rock programming to the internet at KRock2. I think KRock was a little smarter because they get to keep a segment of their listenership which they can now advertise to visually instead of just aurally because you have to go to their webpage to listen in.

The other reason is because I am thinking that internet/satellite radio is going to be the next phase of music delivery. iTunes provides you with the ability to buy music you already listen to, but the new stuff is gonna come from someone programming a mix.

FM may not even get the chance to become AM and have to find a format like talk radio to fill the airwaves because no one will be using AM/FM radio wave receivers anymore. This isn’t a matter of deciding you can afford to lose some of your customers to a competitor. This driving people to another delivery mode where there is no chance of them hitting the scan button and deciding to listen to your station again.

I can see has bits of this story makes it a metaphor for the arts in some respects and I will probably explore them in future entries.

There is another tale of possible unintentional self-sabotage in this story. Two of Y100s morning DJs left the station and were under a 6 month non-compete clause. However, a court just handed down a preliminary ruling that since the station changed formats the DJs can work in the market before the 6 months has elapsed because Radio One doesn’t own a competing Rock format station in Philly anymore.

Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, has a new book out called The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent . In it he apparently argues that the current socio-political climate in the US is going to start to alienate the creative class and they will move to other countries.

I say apparently because I haven’t read the book, but rather an interview with Florida on the Salon website. I am not sure I totally agree with him, but it might be because I read his entire argument a year ago in an article he did for the Washington Monthly. I have the same reservations I had in an entry a year ago.

While I would love to get a job in Wellington and am not such a model of American consumerism that I couldn’t get along just fine without whatever we got that they don’t, I just don’t see myself moving to New Zealand any time soon. (Of course, I never really saw myself moving to Hawaii either.) Nor do I see too many of the best and brightest I know doing so either.

My feelings were echoed last month by Karrie Jacobs in a Metropolis Magazine article, Why I Don’t Love Richard Florida. Like me, Ms. Jacobs doesn’t actually dislike Richard Florida, just the cult that has sprung up around him. She observes that the group he calls the creative class is the same cohort that was called yuppies in the 80s. Young successful cool people are going to want to live in cool neighborhoods no matter what the era.

Florida doesn’t tell anyone anything new by telling them these are the folks you want to attract. Actually, since he touts tolerance of ethnic and sexual differences as necessarily elements of successful creative communities, he is helping the social and economic mobility of a wider range of people than just rebranding yuppies (who you must admit were mostly caucasian).

I also don’t fault him for writing a book that collects easily observable trends and proposes the shaping of policy based on them. One of the things I have noticed in the last 10-15 years is that things that seem to obvious to mention aren’t necessarily so. People who give voice to these observations tend to get labeled geniuses. It’s happened to me much to my incredulous bemusement. I was just too embarassed to exploit the opportunity.

And who can fault him for letting people give him money to give speeches on the subject. I think what Ms. Jacobs and I have both been aiming at is not to let one person’s vision fill your entire horizon.