While listening to the faint, static-filled transmission of 105.5 WDHA, a rock music station out of Dover, N.J., I couldn’t help but be frustrated when as the results of their “Rock Madness” contest, I couldn’t hear the winner.
Depending on which side of Kearny Ave./ Ridge Rd. that you’re on, you can either get WDHA, or you get the static-filled mess that was bestowed upon me.
Ever since the ending of 92.3 K-Rock in early 2009, I’ve been searching for that one radio station to get hooked on. It baffles me that still in New York, there are no modern rock stations and only one classic rock station.
If that part doesn’t infuriate you, even worse, we are stuck with virtually the same three stations in Z100, 92.3 Now (took over for K-Rock in March 2009), and 103.5 KTU.
I’m not trying to put down the Top 40 stations, but the amount of times I’ve turned from one station to the other and heard the same song is just plain ridiculous. Sorry Katy Perry, but I don’t need to hear about what you did last Friday night 24 times on my five minute trip to work.
Since K-Rock’s ultimate demise, Q104.3 has remained the only station playing any sort of rock music, and even they play the same Zeppelin, Floyd, and Sabbath songs every day.
One station, 101.9, had a brief run as a New York rock station, billing themselves as, “The only station in New York playing modern rock,” but just months later the brash styling’s of Foster the People were replaced with dull talk radio.
Will there ever be a rock station in the biggest city in the world? Personally, I don’t see it coming until there is another band that just changes the landscape in the rock genre. Bands today know what makes money, and it’s simply not in rock music.
Hopefully someday that will change, until then, I’ll continue to listen to old rock music on Pandora radio.
-Anthony J. Machcinski
