X Remains the Spot
Given a reprieve, 97X keeps trying to navigate the future of radio, music and the Web
BY HANNAH ROBERTS

Brian Jay Miller has had a rough couple of months. In early February, the investors behind 97X, the once-FM-now-Internet-based radio station, announced that if finances didn't take a hefty swing into the black they were going to have to pull the plug.

As general manager, it was Miller's responsibility to inform listeners that woxy.com would need to convert to a listener-supported model in order to generate enough funds to keep the lights on, pay rent at Longworth Hall downtown and feed their full-time staff of four.

A tremor of panic rippled through the hearts of dedicated listeners, and many leaped to the rescue, donating money and spreading the word. For several tumultuous weeks, an online tracker reported the number of dollars and new subscriptions acquired, while interested parties gnawed their fingernails.

In all honesty, things looked a little grim. By the March 6 deadline, only 1,850 of the 7,000 required new members had subscribed.
The outpouring of support from the independent music community was touching - and deserved, as in its former life 97X had won the Best of Cincinnati readers pick for Best Radio Station three consecutive years (2002-04). For more than 20 years there's been no bigger supporter of new music - especially Cincinnati-based acts.

Standing in its charmingly cluttered studio among band-stickered filing cabinets and a colossal CD library, it's hard not to feel a powerful sense of family at woxy.com and to recognize their team as soldiers in the fight to deliver something unique and untainted by popular ambiguity.

The station's tagline, "The Future of Rock and Roll," has never been more relevant or more at risk.

Miller has been in the lead car on the 97X rollercoaster since before original owners Doug and Linda Balogh sold the station to a Dallas-based media firm in 2004. That year, the crew abandoned the infamous "squat brown building next to a Bob Evans" in Oxford, as Miller remembers it, and headed south, simultaneously announcing the conversion to Web-only broadcast.

"We expected major changes when we switched to Internet," he recalls. "First there was the obvious stuff, like the fact that you suddenly couldn't access us unless you were in front of a computer. And we lost a lot of local advertising when we moved into a national market."
Other things, however, didn't change at all.

"We pretty much kept playing what we wanted to play," Miller says, adding that 97X DJs are given unlimited leeway when it comes to playlists. "We never really had to worry about the FCC because we were always conscientious of our listeners. It's not like we're going to drop the 'f-bomb' on the air when we know we have people listening from work."

When it comes to the tight relationship between 97X and its fans, a recent update on the Web site might sum it up best: "We may not have the biggest audience, but undoubtedly we have the loudest, most devoted and best damn listeners anywhere."

That sentiment is echoed by people like Dan Schwartz, a 13-year listener from Edgewood, KY.

"I would venture that 90 percent of the CDs I own I bought because of a track I heard (on 97X)," Schwartz says. "I've been to 25 or more concerts with tickets I won through them."

Schwartz believes that two things set 97X apart from banal corporate radio: 1) The station's song schedules are thoughtfully and adventurously crafted of Modern Rock from off the beaten path, and 2) the DJs, unlike most FM personalities, aren't interested in just hearing themselves speak.

"They don't crowd a song by quipping right up to the second the lyrics begin," he says.

'Things are changing'
Despite not meeting its listener membership goals by March 6, Miller says he's received a reprieve from 97X's investors - though he admits the station remains on thin ice.

He says he hopes there won't be a decline in new memberships with the deadline crisis now averted and acknowledges that, although the investors are impressed with the station's resilience, there's still plenty of cause for concern.

"We're getting rid of the tracker on the Web site, but we'll still be watching our numbers very closely and setting weekly goals," Miller says. "We also want to create new and more interaction between the station and our listeners through membership bonuses and other things."
Seattle's popular Internet station KEXP perhaps is a good example of how to do it right. Their annual membership drive includes gifts for those contributing $10 or more as well as a city-to-city challenge where the largest contributor wins a remote broadcast from their home town. These efforts have yielded more than $350,000 for KEXP since this year's pledge drive began.

On a smaller scale, Miller hopes to implement a number of innovations to stay similarly connected to 97X fans.

One might wonder why an Internet radio station would go to the trouble of seeking subscriptions for funding. Unlike public stations such as WGUC-FM, WNKU-FM and WVXU-FM or a community station like WAIF-FM, where local listener memberships provide a significant chunk of their operating budgets, 97X serves a national and even international community.

It's difficult to reach that type of new listener with any sort of traditional marketing approach, meaning word-of-mouth becomes the main avenue of communication. And 97X certainly has had its share of national buzz, from being listed on iTunes Radio to receiving favorable press from the likes of Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and LA Weekly.

Still, why not find bigger audiences by upstreaming to XM or Sirius satellite radio? Well, it doesn't really work that way.

"Satellite radio is kind of like cable television in the sense that they don't have unlimited space," Miller says. "They would have to get rid of something else if they wanted to add us."

Plus, says Miller, those behemoth companies solicit the radio stations, not vice versa.

"We've looked into it, but it's just not in the cards right now," he says.

What is in the cards, according to Miller, are more changes. The way he sees it, it's only a matter of time before cell phones have the strength to stream Internet, spelling trouble for satellite radio. And high-definition capabilities will change the dial as we know it, making AM sound like FM and FM becoming CD-quality.

"Things are changing," Miller says. "Someone who is 15 or 16 or 20 expects different things from the radio than a 40 or 50 year old."
That's what 97X still does best - planning for the future of Rock & Roll. ©