Alternative Rock May Be the New Wave : Radio: Predictions at a three-day seminar on radio trends also call for the news/talk format to jump to FM.

Alternative rock music, traditionally shunned on radio, will soon be embraced by stations as a viable, full-time format, Santa Monica-based radio consultant Jeff Pollack predicted Thursday.

“This is the first significant underground movement since the trend that brought the album music of the late ‘60s to radio,” he said.

Pollack, speaking to about 150 radio officials from around the world at the opening of his Pollack Media Group’s annual three-day seminar on radio trends, said that alternative rock, which encompasses the music of R.E.M., Nirvana, the Cure and Depeche Mode, is “the new, exciting, contemporary format of the ‘90s.”

“In recent years, The Cure and Depeche Mode have been selling out stadiums, yet in most markets they are not being played. . . . By the end of 1992, alternative music formats will explode onto the scene in most markets,” he said.

Los Angeles has been ahead of the country in this trend thanks to KROQ-FM (106.7), “Mars” KSRF-FM (103.1) and “Pirate” KQLZ-FM (100.3), he said.

The gist of Pollack’s advice to radio programmers was to specialize their formats. “Unless you have a specific niche, you’re in trouble,” he warned. “The way people use radio is very, very specific-oriented.

“While the middle ground was supposedly the safest place to be, it’s now the most dangerous,” he said in an interview later.

Pollack emphasized that mainstream Top 40 radio “has lost touch with the streets” and is essentially dead, pointing to the 100-plus stations of this kind around the country that have either gone out of business or changed formats in recent years. In their place are emerging the alternative rock stations and dance-rap stations like KPWR-FM (105.9).

Despite his belief in the ascendancy of alternative rock, Pollack also said that “classic rock is here to stay, as are oldies stations.”

He also predicted, as have other industry officials, that the news/talk format, a staple of AM radio, will soon make the jump to the FM radio band.

“The baby boomers grew up with FM and will clearly find it acceptable and preferable to find news/talk on FM,” he said, predicting that such a station will appear in the Los Angeles area in the near future, as will a comedy-oriented talk station.