Posted by Allan Sniffen on September 30, 2001 at 21:25:03:
I spent the weekend reading Richard Neer’s book “FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio”. It is a book I would recommend to anyone who has an interest in WNEW-FM and New York radio in general. Yes, there are a few factual inaccuracies that Neer should not have made but overall it as a book about Progressive Rock Radio’s rise and fall. It’s a big picture story, not a discussion of minutia. If you’re looking for a compendium of who worked when at WNEW-FM then this isn’t the place to find it. Instead, Neer’s purpose is to paint a picture of what he believes built WNEW-FM, what sustained it and what ultimately destroyed it. It is a book about the forest, not a book about the trees in it.
It basically has three parts. In the first, Neer talks about getting his first job in commercial radio at WLIR on Long Island, how he became lifelong friends with Michael Harrison (now of Talkers Magazine) and how he fell in love with WNEW-FM just by listening to it. He describes the station’s genesis from the remains of WOR-FM’s foray into Progressive Radio and how people like Scott Muni, Bill “Rosko” Mercer, and Allison Steele were visionaries in creating this new format. He acknowledges listening to Top 40 radio as a young child but claims the seed for its destruction was clear by 1965. He admires people like Dan Ingram and Cousin Brucie but they’re not his heroes. People like Scott Muni are.
Neer, in my opinion, very accurately describes the musical artistry of Progressive Radio as well as the circumstances that allowed that artistry to prosper. Stations like WNEW-FM came to be in an era of political unrest (the Vietnam War) where young people were looking for an alternative to anything “establishment” and the decidedly leftward politics of most everyone doing Progressive Radio further endeared it to its audience. That combined with FM’s infancy and the need for corporate broadcasting to find alternative formats for a slice of radio spectrum it had little use for, allowed the inmates to take over the asylum (so to speak). Neer argues that was a good thing because it allowed an art form to grow under circumstances where its founders had the freedom to make something special without worrying about real world issues of running a business to make a profit.
At the same time, Neer doesn’t have rose-colored glasses on. For example, the book is very blunt in its description of how drugs played a big part in the lives of many (not all) of those doing Progressive Radio. He does not celebrate that. Instead he notes the influence of it and also points out how destructive it could be to many of those in the business.
The second part of the book describes what life at WNEW-FM was like in the seventies when the station reached its peak influence (but not its peak ratings). Neer writes about the concerts, the promotions, the personalities and the perks of that era. He enthusiastically describes the experience of working with virtually no format demands and how great it was to be able to play pretty much whatever you wanted to as a disk jockey. He discusses the stewardship of Scott Muni with humor but also with admiration. Scott was very hands off but, at the same time, was the “heart” of WNEW-FM and was able to make the station work with a management style that was somehow effective even though unconventional (to say the least). After reading about Scott in this book, I find it hard to believe he was ever able to work for a detail-oriented manager like Rick Sklar.
Neer speaks of his time as WNEW-FM’s program director and the difficult time he had trying to steer the station toward economic reality as FM grew. He acknowledges that no longer could the station function without some kind of format. But he claims that even his most minimal efforts to focus the station were met with resistance. He writes of the difficulty he had in trying to rein in friends who now suspected him of betraying them to upper management and how that foreshadowed what would follow as outsiders came in to manage the station.
The last part of the book describes WNEW-FM’s eventual downfall. Neer goes through a long list of program directors and general managers who came and went. He clearly didn’t like Charlie Kendall but, at the same time, is fair in acknowledging his success in elevating the station’s ratings in the mid eighties (after WPLJ’s abdication of the AOR format in 1983). He also liked Mark Chernoff (a good thing since he now works for him at WFAN) and points out the Chernoff/Kendall Era brought WNEW-FM’s greatest ratings and financial success. He seems to feel that Dave Logan and Steve Young were never really given the chance to have significant influence, which he argues was not their fault. At times he seems to like Ted Utz, at other times he doesn’t. He disliked Ted Edwards but tried to work for him. He saves his strongest venom for Garry Wall who he paints as totally incompetent. Also, the station seemed to live in total fear that consultants like Lee Abrams and Jeff Pollack would eventually take over. In fact, Pollack almost did.
Neer makes it clear, perhaps unintentionally, that one of WNEW-FM’s biggest problems throughout its existence as a rock station was its staff. The station always seemed to have various factions within it. Change was frequently hampered by personalities who disagreed with each other as well as with management. At times the staff did unite when threatened by outside forces but there always seemed to be various factions within the station that made developing a “team spirit” impossible. “DJ A didn’t like DJ B” type problems seemed to always be an issue.
The strength of this book is Richard Neer’s true passion for what he loved about Progressive Rock Radio. At the end of the book you truly feel sad that it’s gone. The weakness is perspective. For all that was good about this kind of radio, the reality is that it existed in a vacuum of economic reality. Neer alludes to that but I don’t think he truly puts it into context. For all its success as artistry, it was a failure in appealing to a mass audience. Those who loved it really did have a home -- but there were too few of them. For example, Neer doesn’t emphasize that WNEW’s greatest commercial success was after its greatest artistic success. That’s very important because ultimately, that’s the reason the format is gone.
Neer is obviously biased toward the original WNEW-FM. Also, in my opinion, he gives way too much credit to people like Michael Harrison (a good friend but marginal in his contributions to WNEW-FM) and not enough credit to people like Dennis Elsas and Pete Fornatale. He also seems to disregard market legends like Carol Miller and Pat St. John. My suspicion is that both were competitors from WPLJ for so long that he never really felt they were part of the WNEW-FM family (even though both spent a lot of time at the station). In their case Neer himself seems to be part of the “WNEW-FM personality conflict problem” that so frequently comes up. He is also very careful not to be particularly critical of Mel Karmazin. Since he’s currently writing Neer’s WFAN paycheck, that’s not surprising (if I were he, I probably would not criticize either -- but it is worth noting).
There are some inaccuracies in the book. Carol Miller has already disputed some of the comments about her and I’ve heard from others who are also in disagreement with some assertions made. And, as much as Neer was into the day in and day out occurrences of WNEW, he has several things wrong about its chief competitor from the seventies and early eighties, WPLJ. For example he does not point out that WPLJ handily beat WNEW-FM ratings period after ratings period. While personally frustrating to Neer, it is a fact that is important in understanding WNEW-FM’s evolution.
But the negatives are minor if you’re reading the book to get a feel for how it felt to get a job and then work at WNEW-FM. Whether you’re a fan of this kind of radio or not (and I’m not), you come away with an understanding of what made it great to those who loved and worked in it. You also get a feel for what brought it down and how the station might have succeeded into the future had it been more willing to reinvent itself.
This is not a book for those looking for radio trivia. It’s a book for those looking for some insight and understanding of the big picture of what made WNEW-FM work -- and then what made it fail.