Nic Harcourt Steps Down At KCRW
After 10 years as the host of Morning Becomes Eclectic, KCRW LA’s influential music director Nic Harcourt is stepping down on November 30th to pursue several independent projects. Harcourt will continue hosting a 3-hour show on Sundays from 6-9 pm.
“As a parent of two young children, I believe it’s time for me to explore new career opportunities and expand upon my other activities in movie, television, voice over work, advertising and the Internet,” Harcorft said in a statement. “Nic is a hard act to follow”, said General Manger Ruth Seymour. “We are now in the process of choosing a new Music Director. We have been looking at potential candidates with an eye toward announcing a choice in the new few weeks.”
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How refreshing: a new president- elect,
a renewed look on life in America and now to hear that Nic “Hardcore” is out as Gate -keeper of all underground music for the public airwaves in greater L>A> at KCRW.
Look, let’s be frank, payola is still alive even at KCRW and in all different forms. Even the last MD at KCRW was working for, and on the pay-roll of, Maverick Records. He was a real Fire Starter.(that was the song that got him snagged).
Now, dealing with Nic was a joke and not much different then that thug before him. Nic was all about “what cha gonna do for me” or “who are you….oh…if this is about music then I’m gonna pass”.
For real. OH, and you could only get him at his desk for one day out of the week!(Not the hardest working guy in show-biz after all).
And no matter how many other stations were playing your music or artist(s)..if you were not in his “network” or he didn’t “know you” or do business with you…then you were never gonna get played… muchless his ear.
Heck, he even did a deal with Urban Outfitters to sell his “mix-tapes” of other peoples music. I wonder if he paid all the rights to use those tracks? Doubt it.
The point is this. Good bye to this elitist. Out with the old and in with the new. In fact, I’d wish that the students at Santa Monica C. College, where the station is located and permitted to operate, was taken-over and that they challenged the rights for KCRW to operate as it has been.
Even as part of an earlier settlement, KCRW was supposed to let students and denizen alike take part in the daily operations and have a larger say in prime-time hours. But that never really happened.
It can be argued that the community of S.M., and the greater Southern California
area has been robbed of their rights and the opportunity to get their voice, ideas,
expressions and music heard and have had their airwaves highjack by elists and criminals.
Many there (Santa Monica/KCRW) know this to be true, and even the major labels laugh outload and boost that KCRW is still in their pocket. I’m sure Nic Hypcore will find a place amoung them.
Living in Germany, the stream archive of live performances from Morning Becomes Eclectic has always been pretty enjoyable.
Radio in Germany has been hardly listenable since the last 10 years. I don’t want to get into detail here, besides saying that the stations followed the trend of becoming formatted, but on average, there are just 3 or 4 different formats available in each area, even though there are more stations than that. And their rotations have gotten “hotter” (read: smaller number of songs) during that time.
So building up your own CD collection or migrating entirely towards webstreams have been the only solutions for music lovers over here.