Radio Daze

Focus groups don't work for radio. People don't know what they like until they hear it a few times. Sure, you can test new music on them in a focus group, but that's no way to hear new stuff. You need to hear it at home, in your car or in a club. And relying on focus groups over a period of years -- as big radio has done recently -- is going to ensure that fewer and fewer new artists get on the air.

So, yeah, most big Houston radio sucks. I think KRBE does a decent job, with pop, and the Party, Mega and the Box are exciting to listen to, mainly because mainstream hip-hop is in a far better place right now than mainstream rock, if such can even be said to exist right now.

But if you look elsewhere, there's plenty of stuff on there that doesn't suck. There's lots of good ethnic stuff: In the afternoons, not one but two AM stations (1180 and 1560) play East Indian music, and the Spanish-language AM 850 has a fun tropical feel, not to mention the ranchera on 1230 AM and the Spanish Top 40 on XO FM 107.9. As for rock, Alvin Community College's Gulf Coast Rocker is a better mix of classic and new rock than KLOL ever was, KTRU spins the edgy modern stuff, and KPFT's overnight shows are dynamite. KCOH is one of the last real community-oriented stations in America, not to mention of the last black-run blues stations around, and KTSU's mix of hard and smooth jazz and specialty shows is a winner. Gospel 1360 plays wonderful gospel and stirring sermons, one of which comes back to me now as I write this. "The essence of freedom is choice -- we are free so that we can choose. To be a slave is to have the ultimate lack of choice. We are free people so we can choose, so as free people we must choose."

So choose. Give some of these small and ethnic stations a chance. Reprogram your presets. And if you still think it sucks, there's always satellite radio.