Indie 103 1 Radio Station

It's come to this -- a Sex Pistol drives a Prius. On a recent crisp afternoon, Steve Jones, the guitar architect of London punk in its primacy, zipped down Hollywood Boulevard in his shiny white hybrid Toyota, which is customized with a rooftop image of her majesty Queen Elizabeth, a safety pin jutting from her lip. And you thought punk rock was dead. Even with the distraction of nubile young tourists strolling up the Walk of Fame, Jones was in a melancholy mood.

Decades before Radiohead or Trent Reznor became the rebel darling of a new media age, Prince was raising a well-manicured middle finger toward anyone who'd tell him how to be a pop star. It was 1984 when "Purple Rain" forced the world to remember that "black music" and "rock" are not contradictory terms, and as he's moved through various phases, he's never given up on that mission. So it's not surprising that Thursday he premiered four songs on the Steve Jones-helmed "Jonesy's Jukebox" on Indie 103.1 -- a rock show, and the closest thing to anarchy on commercial radio today.

Indie 103, the high-profile but low-rated alternative-music radio station, ceased original programming Thursday morning, a little more than five years after it debuted, but said it will continue life on the Internet. At 10 a.m. the station bowed out by playing "My Way," both the versions by Frank Sinatra and late Sex Pistol Sid Vicious, a nod to the genre-bending playlist that Indie often aired. After that, listeners heard only a repeating loop of songs, interspersed by a recorded announcement that Indie was moving to the Internet.

The future of Indie 103.1 FM, hailed by Rolling Stone magazine as "America's coolest commercial station," may be in jeopardy because a shift in federal regulations will force Clear Channel Communications Inc. to abandon its business partnership with the station's owner. Indie 103.1 is owned by Entravision Communications Corp., a Santa Monica-based Spanish-language media company.

Fans of Indie 103.1 will have to stay tuned to learn the fate of the station. A spokeswoman for Entravision Communications Corp., the Santa Monica-based owner of the station, said Thursday that the company is "evaluating its options" for the station and will likely continue to do so through April 1. That date is circled on the calendar because it will bring to an end Entravision's business partnership with Clear Channel, the radio titan that has been selling ads for Indie 103.

Fans of radio station Indie 103.1 FM will notice nothing different in what they hear on the outlet today, and that's big news. Today is the first day of the station's new life without its ad sales partner, Clear Channel Entertainment, which terminated its joint sales agreement with the station's owner because of revised federal regulations. That put in jeopardy a freewheeling format that made 103.1, according to Rolling Stone, "America's coolest commercial station."

Courtney Love watchers have a new forum through which to keep tabs on the provocative rocker. For the month of October, Love is hosting a weekly radio show on KDLD/KDLE-FM (103.1) in Los Angeles. The two-hour show, for which Love plays favorite recordings from her own collection as well as from the station's archives, airs at 7 p.m. Fridays through the end of the month. The final episode comes a day before Love's Oct.