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R E C E N T L Y

Friction or fact?
By Andrew Leonard
Trendy theories of a "friction-free economy" hit some bumps
(02/12/98)

Just pay for it
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Technology may bring the Olympics to your desktop someday -- but not for free
(02/11/98)

21st Challenge
By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau
Ticklers for every situation
Plus: Haiku error message winners
(02/10/98)

Windows on their world
By Karen Lillington
On site at Microsoft's museum and shop: Where the Windows never cease
(02/09/98)

AOL's insecurity complex
By David Cassel
The online service can't even keep its own staff bulletin boards private
(02/06/98)

BROWSE THE 21ST FEATURES ARCHIVES

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Everyone in this business is betting on the future. Certainly, audio quality on the Net is now far superior to those long ago days in 1993, when the first intrepid Web explorers had their socks knocked off by the sound of Mark Andreessen's voice emanating from the Mosaic home page at the University of Illinois.

Jones himself is hoping to leverage a successful KNAC relaunch into possible future syndication, with an eye to perhaps getting back into the over-the-air broadcasting biz. His goals throw an unusual twist into the Internet name brand game. Examples abound of old media entities extending their brand into cyberspace, and there are a growing number of new media darlings who are now branching back into the worlds of print and broadcast. But the KNAC model, in which a dead brand is reborn on the Net with the hope of one day returning to the offline world, is rare, and may even be unique.

"I think it is," says Jones. "We are going to build the case for it. KNAC has inherent credibility for what it was, and there will be a lot of people who want to see it for what it will be ... It's going to be a headbanger's oasis," said Jones.

Fans are hopeful.

"Time will tell if the magic is still there," said one former KNAC listener who is "excited" about the return of KNAC on the Net. "If it is, I hope Pure Rock radio will return to the L.A. airwaves. The rest of the country can't believe we have no hard rock radio in L.A. This should be the first step. I still listen to the tapes I made of KNAC during the last three months of broadcast."

So just how valuable is KNAC? Well, valuable enough for people to be fighting over it. Valuable enough for HardRadio to have included the word as a "metatag" on its home page, hoping to attract search engine attention and to lure KNAC-deprived Web surfers to its own oasis of metal madness. Valuable enough so that Rob Jones wasn't necessarily the first entrepreneur to try to turn its call letters into gold.

The Web page address for KNAC on the Net is "knac.demonet.com." But if you pop the address www.knac.com into your browser, you get whisked away to the "Official" KNAC page, where you are urged to join a grass-roots campaign to get KNAC back on the air and invited to attend a series of KNAC Pure Rock nights at Southern California rock clubs.

Www.knac.com is registered to Radi Todorov, a Bulgarian émigre who has lived in southern California for some 20 years, and who registered the name KNAC as a business trademark in L.A. County last April. Further complicating affairs is the fact that the call letters KNAC themselves have been assigned by the FCC to an educational foundation in Earlimart, Calif., a small town just outside of Bakersfield.

The raging aggression of true metal lives on in the relationship between Todorov and Jones. Todorov claims that Jones "stole my idea to bring KNAC back" for impure reasons.

"Obviously if people are fighting over it, it's worth something," says Todorov. "Basically it's synonymous with hard rock and heavy metal. I started out purely trying to revive the music and the lifestyle. Rob Jones' motives are completely different -- he wants to start a chain of radio stations."

"To give Mr. Todorov any credibility as KNAC is utterly ridiculous," says Jones, who does admit to seeing the KNAC-on-the-Net launch as the first step in a series of Web-based radio shows. "KNAC is a broadcast entity, was and always will be -- only the delivery and method has changed. The perception of what was KNAC and what is KNAC today are the key issues ... Radi is good for a few tickets to local promoter's events and that is about the extent of his validity to anyone in this business."

Long Paul says that KNAC on the Net is registered as a federal "class 33" trademark. But Jones, citing "pending litigation," refused to give any details as to how, when or from whom DemoNet had acquired the rights to the KNAC name.

The plot is further thickened when HardRadio is brought into the heavy metal mix. Although Jones says he wishes "the utmost success" to Tracy Barnes and HardRadio, he hasn't always been so polite. In late December, he posted an anonymous message to the Usenet newsgroup alt.rock-n-roll.metal trumpeting the return of KNAC and announcing that it "Smokes Hard Radio big time" -- earning the not inconsiderable ire of Barnes.

Jones says Barnes initiated hostilities when he told some former KNAC jocks to choose between HardRadio and KNAC on the Net. Barnes denies that charge with the counter-accusation that Jones was requiring his jocks to sign exclusive contracts. Whatever the truth, one thing's for sure, that good old crosstown radio rival mentality has made a seamless transition to the Net.

"It's actually a detriment to us to have our name even associated with the poseur attempt that they are making," says Barnes. "The only reason that they mention HardRadio in almost every article that they have done is that they would love to try to capitalize on our traffic and our own brand name. KNAC is virtually unheard of outside of Southern California. HardRadio has become an international phenomenon."

Ultimately, all the infighting over who has the rights to the KNAC legacy may be irrelevant. Beneath all the sound and heavy metal fury remains one basic question -- if we grant that for every niche, no matter how small, there is an adoring audience in cyberspace, then does that mean there is a business model for serving each and every one of those niches?

Jones and Barnes obviously both think so, at least in the context of the underserved hard rock marketplace.

"When we talk to our advertisers," says Barnes, "they say, 'heavy metal - oh, you're going after the teenagers.' But we're talking about the No. 1 music sales genre of the 1980s. Our listeners are all over 21 years of age, if you look at the domains [Web addresses] that our listeners are tuning in from, they are Boeing, Nasa, IBM ... The black T-shirt crowd that was driving a beat-up Pinto in the '80s has now cut their hair and is doing software or hardware development and driving a BMW. But as far as mainstream pop culture is concerned, they're a whole lost generation."

There are no lost generations on the Web. There's time enough, and space, for every community to be found. If, as Barnes proclaims, hard rock is poised for a comeback, then couldn't the Web be the place where critical mass will first gather, or is already gathering? It might not be easy, its ascent may well be plagued with new technological problems and old industry infighting, but whoever said headbanging was supposed to be a free ride? After all, when the radio station KNAC first launched its hard rock format in 1986, it kicked off the first set with the AC-DC song "It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock 'N' Roll)."

On or offline, that's good advice to live by.
SALON | Feb. 13, 1998 "