Contact: Richard Sands (415) 383-5955 • richard@thesandsreport.com ©All Rights Reserved

JANUARY 9, 2020

THE REPORTSands

The Greybeards Speak: How To Handle The 2020 Election

Welcome! It’s the first issue of 2020. Which just happens to be an election year! And a very big one at that. As we wrapped things up last year, we had this

quote from longtime WBCN PD Oedipus, “The biggest act in the world is Trump; he dominates the conversation yet Alterna-tive has not seized the moment. Alternative should stand as an alternative to Trump.” Well, if that’s true, this year provides a perfect platform. But is it true? How should you handle the election? To find out, I asked just that to some of the “greybeards” who’ve been around the format for a long time.

MIKE HENRY, Paragon Media StrategiesI completely agree with Oedipus. The Alternative

format is not simply about “alternative” music, but rather an “alternative” POV of the world around us. The young target audience for Alternative stations is growing more diverse by the day, and this generation has an acute smell test that sniffs out brands that don’t walk the talk. Rather than focusing on the election though, stations should focus on issues that most young Americans agree with: voting rights and get out the vote cam-paigns, gun control, climate change, homelessness, the minimum wage and income inequality, equal rights for all persons, etc. Worse than ignoring these issues is talking about them but not doing anything about it. Paragon’s Mar-keting Tips (sign up here) featured this topic in June with a link to a Fast Company article (here) whose headline says it all—“Why brand purpose marketing isn’t working with young people: ‘Brand purpose’ doesn’t count unless your brand actually has a purpose.”

MIKE STERN, Jacobs Media StrategiesDeciding how to handle the 2020 election

17 YEARS OF UNIFYING THE ALT COMMUNITY

Year17 AN N I V E R S A R Y !

Mike Henry

HEADED TOP 30

8 MILLION STREAMS

TWO FEET / “YOU?”OF MONSTERS AND MEN / “WARS” POST MALONE / “CIRCLES”

HEADED TOP 20

10 MILLION STREAMS

HEADED TOP 25

ALMOST 1 BILLION STREAMS!

THE

NEW ALT

TODAY’S

TOP HITS,

GLOBAL TOP

50

NEW AT

KTCL &

WFUZ!

cycle comes down to one thing, expectations. What your listeners expect from your show or station should be what drives your strategy. In most cases listeners have no expectation of tuning in to an Alternative station to hear someone dissecting the President’s latest tweets.

What they do (hopefully) expect is for stations to be timely and topical which can mean looking for ways to talk about the election without talking politics or taking sides. That can be as simple as encouraging people to register and exercise their ability to vote or it can be creative, topical promotions like holding an election for the President of Alternative music with primaries, debates and online voting that mirrors the national process. If it’s within the audience’s expectations there could also be opportunities to put a relatable spin on the odd stories that are inevitable during the upcoming election cycle. When it came to light that President Trump has a button under the oval office desk that he uses to call for a Diet Coke, Dana and Jayson at Alt 94-9 in San Diego asked listeners what they would want their red button to summon. They got some entertaining calls and then spent the afternoon delivering listener’s red

button requests. It wasn’t partisan. It was a relatable promotion based on an interesting story from the world of politics.

Finally, most listeners hope-fully expect their station to be involved in the local community and that could present opportunities to get involved. There may be a way to champion a particular

cause or issue that impacts your audience. But this isn’t something to enter into lightly. Beyond potentially angering listeners who disagree (and most stations don’t have many listeners to spare) there are legal and financial risks as well. So be sure to carefully vet any plan with the appropriate members of your manage-ment, corporate and legal teams.

MAX TOLKOFF, OddcastThe phrase “This is the most consequential election in our lifetime!” has been bandied about almost every election cycle since Nixon. But I fear this time it may actually be true. Look, there’s no reason radio’s involve-ment in politics needs to be partisan. EVERY broad-cast outlet; radio, TV, internet, satellite, dolphin speak, etc., should be involved up to their eyeballs. We still need to shame the two-thirds of the population who don’t vote, into voting. It’s just

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gross. But Eddy Puss is right, of course. Alternative COULD take an alternative position. With tremen-dous amounts of humor cuz the humorless will always be, well, humorless. And that includes your garden variety General Manager. Stay with me for a sec. If you’re a PD go ask your GM if you can jump into the 2020 election with all sorts of great creative shit, mostly to the left of Karl Marx, but all in the name of RATINGS and RELEVANCE. Your GM will pass that up the chain until it eventually reaches Mr. Pitman’s office. He will immediately go, “Nope! Our sharehold-ers would prefer not to rile up the White House and have to worry about license renewals for a whole bunch of properties.”Max is the host of the Oddcast podcast with Michael Halloran. Listen to the latest episode here.

ConclusionThanks to the greybeards for their insights. My take:1) Be prepared for the election. This is the year’s biggest and most talked about event. Plan accordingly.2) Brainstorm. You’re looking for some creative ideas.3) Ideas needn’t be partisan (but potentially can be).4) There are many issues that are likely of interest to your listeners that you can address as Mike Henry pointed out, such as homelessness, voting rights and/or “get out the vote” campaigns.5) If you want to cover your butt, make sure you’ve run the election plans up the flagpole!

Handling The 2020 Election (Con’t)

Alt Photo Corner

Rush your Alt photos to pics@thesandsreport.com

“THANKS FOR

ALL YOU DO!”

-MIKE KAPLAN

The Xmas shows are over, but the pics live on. This is from Alt 92.3’s Not So Silent Night. From the left Todd

Violette, Matt Pollack, Mike Kaplan, and Ron Poore.

CONTACT: GARY GORMAN 323.871.5260 gary.gorman@umusic.com

33* ALTERNATIVE35+ STATIONS: ALT NATION SXMU KROQ KITS 91X KRBZ WWCD KDXA WEBN KMYZ KROX WLKK WMRQ

WRMR WZNE WEQX WKZQ MC ALT + MORE

8M+ STREAMS TD / 2B+ ARTIST STREAMS TD

“UNEVENTFUL DAYS”

BECK

NEW @

WEDG & WAQX

8* RT ALTERNATIVERTM #9 P 18-34

30M+ STREAMS TD 1B+ ARTIST STREAMS

“2ALL”NEW @

WRDA & IHC

ON

DEMAND

STREAMS

+15%

THE SANDS REPORT ● page 4 of 6

Added/New in the Top 50

The End-Seattle Federal Empire, Dan Luke and the Raid, Lumineers, Unlikely Candidates

KPNT-St. Louis Black Keys, Glorious Sons

KLLT-St. Louis Mumford & Sons

97X-Tampa Half Alive, Lana Del Rey, Yungblud

CFNY-Toronto Blue Stones, Meg Myers, Unlikely Candidates, White Reaper

DC-101-DC No adds

Send your station’s playlist to:adds@thesandsreport.com

WRDA-Atlanta Catfish/Bottlemen

KROX-Austin No adds

WEND-Charlotte No adds

WKQX-Chicago Black Keys, Grouplove, Yelawolf

CD102.5-Columbus No adds

Alt 103.7-Dallas No adds

KTCL-Denver Mumford & Sons, Two Feet

KTBZ-Houston Shinedown

iHR Custom Catfish/Bottlemen

KRBZ-Kansas City Sub Urban

KXTE-Las Vegas Dan Luke and the Raid

KROQ-L.A. Lumineers, Sub Urban

Alt 98.7-L.A. No adds

WSFS-Miami Dan Luke and The Raid

WLUM-Milwaukee Cage The El-ephant, Mallrat, Taylor Janzen

KCMP-Minneapolis beabadoobee, Big Thief, FEET, Mura Masa, The Big Moon

KQGO-Minneapolis Highly Suspect,

Neon Trees, Saint Motel, Vampire Weekend

Music Choice No adds

WBUZ-Nashville No adds

Alt 92.3-New York Goody Grace ft. Blink-182, Local Natives, Two Feet

WZRH-New Orleans Billie Eilish

WROX-Norfolk Blue Stones

The Edge-Ok City Nice Guys, Scumbag.

WQMP-Orlando No adds

WRFF-Philadelphia No adds

KDKB-Phoenix No adds

WXDX-Pittsburgh Neil Fallon, Raconteurs, Twenty One Pilots

KNRK-Portland No adds

KKDO-Sacramento Niall Horan, Dan Luke and the Raid, Michigander

X96-Salt Lake City Matt Maeson

KBZT-San Diego No adds

91X-San Diego No adds

Alt 105.3-San Francisco No report

Buzzing At Alt1. Billie Eilish2. Goody Grace/Blink 1823. Black Keys4. Half Alive5. Cage The Elephant6. Sub Urban7. Taylor Janzen8. Dan Luke & The Raid

NEW @ WLUM, WRMR, TUNEIN/ALT HITS

ALREADY ON @ ALT NATION, WNYL, KITS, & MORE!

TOP 5 @ ALT NATION (OVER 200X!) / #1 CURRENT @ KBCO

ON 20+ STREAMING PLAYLISTS INCLUDING: • APPLE MUSIC: BREAKING ALTERNATIVE • AMAZON MUSIC: HOT SINGLES • SPOTIFY: THE NEW ALT & MANY MORE!

WATCH THE VIDEO: CLICK HERE“WHAT I DO...”TAYLOR JANZEN

www.taylorjanzen.com

O N T O U R T H I S

M O N T H W I T H

H A L F M O O N R U N

Stream Rank TW

Stream Rank LW

Artist/Title

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

2

3

1

6

4

5

8

9

7

11

16

10

21

17

13

12

19

14

22

24

Bubbling Under...31

35

41

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--

--

1

4

3

14

2

5

10

15

7

9

22

11

23

20

8

12

18

13

23

25

--

--

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Stream Rank 3W

Chart ranking based on Alternative Rock Radio P1 listeners and abridged from Bridge Ratings Top 100

National Streaming Report. The statistics are based on raw National U.S. streaming data provided by Bridge Ratings’ over 25 on-demand streaming providers including Spotify, Amazon Prime, YouTube and Apple Music. Station-specific on-demand streaming data is available from Bridge Ratings by subscription. Contact Dave Van Dyke at dvd@bridgeratings.com for more information.

Alt Radio P1 Streaming Chart

Dreamers “Celebrate”

MGMT “In The Afternoon”

The Score “Glory”

Billie Eilish “Everything I Wanted”

Billie Eilish “bad guy”

Tones & I “Dance Monkey”

Coldplay “Orphans”

Tool “Fear Inoculum”

SHAED “Trampoline”

PATD “High Hopes”

Twenty One Pilots “The Hype”

Lana Del Rey “Doin’ Time”

Billie Eilish “all the good girls”

Meg Myers “Running Up The Hill”

Rex Orange County “10/10”

White Reaper “Might Be Right”

Highly Suspect “16”

Fall Out Boy “Dear Future Self”

AWOLNATION “The Best”

PATD “Hey Look Ma, I Made It”

Illenium “Good Things Fall Apart”

Dominic Fike “3 Nights”

Absofacto “Dissolve”

The Sands Report™A New Year of Posit ive Vibes!®

THE SANDS REPORT ● page 6 of 6

Thursday Music Meeting & Three Dot Lounge

Happy new year! Hope you had a great holiday wherever you may be, or where you may have been...Let’s hop right back into a new year of music meetings, and as always, crank up the volume...A lot of “no adds” as people eased back into things in this new decade. Billie Eilish was your most added

record, nabbing 9 adds, followed by this Goody Grace song which features Blink-182 with 8 stations...Other winners this week include Half•Alive which has debuted just weeks after the pre-holiday launch...More from the charts: Coldplay sits at #1 at Mediabase, and #4 on our P1 streaming chart...Catfish and the Bottlemen is now on iHeart Custom. A Top 10 record...AWOLNATION will be ex-ploding into the Top 10 shortly. Moving up in rotation everywhere...Of Monsters and Men is headed Top 20. Republic label-mate Post

Malone “Circles” is crashing into the Top 25, withTwo Feet right on his heels. KTCL added it over the holidays...I never did a Top 5 songs of 2019 here, but if I had, Beck would surely have been in there (as would have been “Dance Monkey”). “Uneventful Days” picks up adds at WEDG and WAQX, as it closes in on the Top 30...There’s a new Cage The Elephant. It’s “Black Madonna” and it deserves all of your attention since the band is a #1 record-setter at the format...The Grammys are coming up later this month. I’m pulling for Vam-

pire Weekend, up for three awards. “Sunflower” is their latest hit...Over the break I heard a lot of Taylor Janzen on Alt Nation, where “What I Do” is a Top 5 record. This is going to be one of the first breakthrough hits of 2020... Finally, congrats to Sara Springer who is now presenting the nearly 30 year old Tek Report solo!...Hey, I gotta go. Thanks for stopping by today. —Richard Sands

The Big ListCLICK THE IMAGE AND LISTEN:

TAYLOR JANSEN “Phase”

AWOLNATION “The Best”

CATFISH/BOTTLEMEN “2All”

CAGE THE ELEPHANT “Black Madonna”

BECK “Uneventful Days”

POST MALONE “Circles”

HALF-ALIVE “Runaway”

VAMPIRE WEEKEND “Sunflower”

TWO FEET “You?”

JIMMY EAT WORLD “Love Never”

IMPACTING SOON:Best Coast “Everything Has Changed” (Concord) Black Keys “Shine A Little Light” (Warner) Magic Giant “Disaster Party” (S-Curve)

Send dates to richard@thesandsreport.com

3 GRAMMY AWARD NOMINATIONS● ALBUM OF THE YEAR ● BEST ALT MUSIC ALBUM ● BEST ROCK SONG

FATHER OF THE BRIDE NAMED BEST ALBUM OF 2019 BY ROLLING STONE, VARIETY, BILLBOARD, ESQUIRE, THE ATLANTIC, PASTE, GQ, NEW YORK MAGAZINE, PITCHFORK, COMPLEX & MORE!

A L B U M N E A R I N G 1 8 5 M T O TA L U S S T R E A M SON TOUR THOUGHOUT 2020

“Sunflower”