It’s ironic that the “new” WHFS (WWMX-HD-2) Baltimore appeared this year just in time for the latest slew of “rock radio is dead” headlines. WHFS’ switch from Alternative to a Latin Tropical format in 2005 set off its own spate of press stories, many of them wrongheaded. WHFS had a successful direct competitor in Washington, D.C., its primary market at the time. Its format switch said as much about the priorities of owner CBS Radio, which switched it in a pre-PPM era when major groups were on a Spanish-language building boom. But WHFS was a brand name to the consumer press and totemic for the format.

The “rock radio is dead” stories took on a new life last week with the rock-to-talk flips of WHTQ (96 Rock) Orlando, Fla., and WYSP Philadelphia. Whatever the travails of the Alternative format, and more about that in a minute, you would be wrong to extend them to all of Rock radio, particularly in Philadelphia, which has successful Alternative (WRFF), Active (WMMR), and Classic Rock (WMGK) outlets, or in Orlando, where WHTQ was the No. 2 Classic Rock station in its own cluster. And in a Friday tweet, consultant Fred Jacobs was able to reel off more than a dozen Active and Classic Rock success stories, including WMMR and market-leading KISW Seattle.*

The loss, a few weeks ago, of Alternative WKQX (Q101) Chicago and WRXP New York, is more concerning for the industry. But even those changes have to be viewed in terms of their new owner’s priorities. You don’t launch two All-News FMs and hire a hundred staffers if you’re looking for the easiest opportunity. Country in New York would have guaranteed a decent living. A slightly less unorthodox distillation of WRXP could have made a new owner look pretty smart. So the agenda here wasn’t just to escape the Alternative format.

A few more thoughts prompted by recent events:

FM Talk’s growth and Alternative’s travails are separate trends that sometimes intersect: As Philly and Orlando show, the rise of Talk on FM, particularly Sports talk, has reduced the available oxygen for the third Rock station of any stripe. Some of those stations confused their identity 15 years ago by becoming Howard Stern until 11 a.m. and then something-or-other during the rest of the day. At the end, it was Talk, not Rock, that was in the DNA of WBCN Boston, which only became a better vehicle for morning hosts Toucher & Rich when it became WBZ-FM (The Sports Hub). But Alternative’s problems started well before the FM sports rush, and are as tied to that format’s failure, in many places, to engage a 20-year-old, as to the increased choices for a 38-year-old man, which include FM Sports.

The issues that current-based Rock radio, particularly the Alternative format, has had in New York are not projectable to anything. For one thing, New York has never had an actual full-signal Alternative station on a sustained basis, even at the heart of the New Rock Revolution of the mid-’90s. Even then, WNEW cut their version with Classic Rock and Triple-A acts, while WHTZ (Z100), even at its grungiest, played Mariah Carey and Coolio. WXRK (K-Rock)’s various incarnations usually included Van Halen and Ozzy Osbourne. WRXP’s Alternative format wasn’t just heavy on 30-year-old first generation Alternative, but included Bruce Springsteen and AC/DC as well. Current-based Rock stations in New York feel like they need all the rockers to survive, and thus superserve none of them. So one answer to “why doesn’t Alternative work in New York” is “because nobody’s tried it.”

This has nothing to do with the performance royalty, or does it? The rise of FM Talk is happening, first and foremost, because it brings the format to more and younger listeners. But in recent weeks, I’ve been asked if I think this is related to the various threats of an FM music exodus if a performance royalty passes. Until a performance royalty actually exists, I don’t think we’ll be able to separate reality from posturing on that score. So it’s probably coincidental that the record industry’s favorite format is indeed losing so many of its outlets to FM Talk. Some group owners and GMs would gloat about taking WRXP away from its friends at the labels… if they knew.

The marginalization of Alternative took place from both sides: It’s harder than ever for Alternative to send its music to the mainstream. The bands that unite all those different rock constituencies are in short supply. And new music doesn’t achieve the same critical mass in a format with lower ratings in some markets, more gold-based stations in others, and no dedicated outlet in Chicago or New York. The problem, however, is exacerbated by a Top 40 format that has played very few Rock records for a decade, has often been happy to select its own Rock acts among the teen punk groups that Alternative ignores or relinquishes quickly, and is now even more rhythmic than ever. And while it’s possible for an indie rock act to debut atop the Billboard 200 now without significant airplay, it’s harder in an era of declining sales to achieve the sort of sustained critical mass that pop radio is forced to acknowledge.

If a tree falls in the forest and is No. 1 in 18-34, does anybody hear it? Both R&B/Hip-Hop and Alternative stations have found themselves in the odd position recently of being top three or even No. 1 18-34 in their market and still around or under a four-share in 6-plus overall. Neither has the ability to put together the coalition of 13- and 38-year-olds that Top 40 does at the moment. And each, despite its 18-34 success, is often shortchanged by the industry when it comes time to decide what format to launch (or maintain) in a given market.

If a format exists only on an FM translator, does anybody hear it? The HD-2/FM translator strategy that so many operators have enthusiastically adapted over the last few years is both blessing and curse for the format. It’s brought “99X” back to Atlanta and now WHFS to Baltimore. That said, the HD-2/translator combinations haven’t yielded a lot of big success stories yet. It’s easy to imagine FM translators as the equivalent of the Class As and suburban signals that housed the format in the decade before Nirvana—allowing the format to exist, but not to flourish, or tempt operators who would commit bigger sticks and better resources.

There are green shoots: When a Kings Of Leon, Neon Trees, or Foster The People is nudged across the divide to Mainstream Top 40, it is still enthusiastically consumed. It’s just that labels—discouraged by the Top 40 environment—don’t try it much. And without critical mass, the Alternative format is easy for Top 40 PDs to ignore, unless the labels put a record in front of them. That said, there are stations like WROX (96X) Norfolk, Va., and KLCK (Click 98.9) Seattle doing Alternative/Top 40 hybrids of the sort that presaged radio’s last New Rock Revolution by several years. Also encouraging, in my other life as a radio researcher, I’m starting to see a few Alternative tests that are not as dominated by grunge and the ’90s as they once were.

Rock on! The haters are making you stronger. There were consumer press stories about the decline of Country in 1986, even as Randy Travis was climbing the charts. There were articles about a lull in Hip-Hop just as “Ready To Die” was ready to drop. There were multiple predictions in 1996 that Top 40 would never again exist as a format that plays multiple genres of music. The road to the mainstream for the next Nirvana will be more complicated. But declaring any format dead is hubris.