Are Radio DJs Going the way of the Buggy Whip?

By way of The Globe and Mail: Don't flay the DJ

There's a new hate-on for DJs among radio listeners out there, at least that seems to be the message in two billboard campaigns currently plastered around Toronto.

At the downtown corner of Richmond and Spadina, in the centre of the city's fashion, media and arts district, a billboard for the radio station 92.5 Jack FM extols its policy of no on-air DJs. The station actually went DJ-less in September, but it's now rolling out a big campaign advertising the fact.

Then across the street are two billboards for Radio Libre, a new Montreal-based Internet radio service. Radio Libre allows listeners to use their computers like radio to listen to music chosen by tastemakers and guest celebrities. For a fee, subscribers can also program their own preferences in music, post their choices for other users to peruse and generally become part of a Radio Libre community of amateur programmers. The selling point is that the service enables users to discover hard-to-find new music based on their preferences. In effect, the website helps listeners to be their own DJs.

So what are Jack and Radio Libre trying to tell us? At a time when satellite radio and podcasts are redefining the whole notion of radio, and with even more digital services planned by Motorola and Vodafone due out later this year that will turn cellphones into radios, is this the thin side of the wedge for DJs and traditional radio? Are DJs becoming as retro as an old transistor radio or a clunky, push-button car dial?

Emphatically no, says Patrick Cardinal, general manager and program director at 92.5 Jack FM. DJs may have gone from his station, but they still have a solid place in the industry. Traditional radio and DJs are still alive and well, he argues.

"What we've done is not a response in any way, shape or form to iPods, digital downloading and/or satellite radio. It's a response to other radio stations and a response to giving Torontonians another radio choice, not another choice vis-à-vis satellite radio," Cardinal says.

"You know, people have been predicting the demise of conventional radio for over 50 years, going back to when television started in the early fifties. Radio adapted. When eight-track tapes and cassette players came along in the sixties and seventies, radio adapted," he says, adding that it's now surviving the era of MP3 players and satellite radio. "And you know what? We're going to be here for a long time to come."

As a way to find a niche on Toronto's crowded radio dial, his station's no-DJ policy came about from market research and listeners' comments. "Every city is different. . . .There are lots of other radio stations [in Toronto] with DJs, and pretty good ones at that. We just want to offer something different," Cardinal says, noting that it wasn't a cost-cutting move.

The station switched to its Jack format in June, 2003, and is said to be the only Jack station in Canada that's currently DJ free. The format is actually licensed by Big Sticks Broadcasting Corp. in Long Island, N.Y., and SparkNet Communications in Vancouver. Most stations switching to the format usually start out without DJs anyway in order to emphasize the music, which on Jack stations is a kind of free-for-all mix of highly commercial songs across genres and across recent decades. Toronto's Jack FM is one of a number of Jack stations owned by Rogers Media and is Rogers's answer to CHUM's Bob FM stations with their equally varied play lists.

The Jack and Bob formats (and there are other stations dotting North America using similarly oblique guy names such as Dave, Simon and Mike FM ) target listeners generally in their 30s and 40s with songs that many are likely to have in their record collection, broadly ranging anywhere from the Rolling Stones and U2 to Depeche Mode and Van Halen. The play list is none too discerning, which is the whole point. Many have commented that the format arguably feels DJ-less to begin with, given its scattered song selection.

The Radio Libre Internet-based service, which is owned by Astral Media and is in French and English, comes at the no-DJ strategy from an entirely different tack. By selling itself as a way to discover new music, the DJs aren't typical radio people, but celebrities, tastemakers and you.

The service plays on your computer, with streaming audio that can't be downloaded. So you have to listen to it while at your computer. (Radio Libre does say, though, that it will offer some downloadable podcasts for subscribers. Podcasts are typically transferable to pocket-sized MP3 players and iPods.) But rather than being like traditional radio, where you can flip from station to station, this service offers various, free play lists of songs chosen by guests and celebrities. For a monthly or yearly fee of $6.99 or $59.99, respectively, you can choose your own genre preferences and rank the songs you hear. Through a technology called collaborative filtering, Radio Libre's computer program then matches your preferences with other Radio Libre users, with the aim of offering you music that may match your tastes more closely, but which you might not have heard before. (Vodafone's planned radio service, it seems, will offer similar personalized services via your cellphone.) Radio Libre subscribers can then post their preferences and participate in forums and blogs to share their choices, the service says. There are also links to purchase the music for permanent use.

"There's the community aspect, because you'll be in a position to share your musical profile with your friends and the experts. You'll be also in a position to participate in our programs because you're a subscriber," said Denis Rozon, vice-president and general manager. "So there will be a lot of interactivity."

In the end, everyone's a DJ. But listening to Radio Libre ends up feeling a lot like listening to Jack. Whereas the curious appeal of Jack is to sit through, say, an old ZZ Top track you'd never ordinarily listen to, Radio Libre offers a boundless array of little-known music you'd also never ordinarily listen to.

A few hours spent fiddling with my preferences and song rankings on the service somehow gets me no closer to my own tastes in music. The end result feels like flipping the radio dial, albeit with an infinitely more varied selection of relatively obscure music. Instead, I find myself continually gravitating to other people's choices. I know what I like, but have little interest in continually defining or ranking it. That's the job of a brilliant DJ.