How long do you think before classic hits does an 80s focus and sounds like the hot hits stations of the 80s and early 90s? The reason I am asking is the classic hits station in my area focus' on 70s, but still plays about 3 60s and 3 80s an hour. I have no idea why they are playing that many 60s songs...but they are. I believe that an 80s focused classic hits station, would be the perfect target demo for 25-54. They could really make it sound like the hots hits format of the 80s and early 90s hits station.
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Classic Hits 80s
- Thread starter AM/FMRAINMAN
- Start date
Because those songs supposedly still test well and are timeless, that they still get airplay. 80's are slowly coming on board, with many CH stations focused on the 1983 to 1987 timeframe, skipping the 1980-1982 period for some reason. Late 80's and 90's will be more difficult to sort out, due to the changing music scene....ie...rap, hip hop, hair bands, grunge....etc..
Do you think that classic hits will sound like hot hits did in the 80s? I agree there are some 60s sons that are timeless...but I think an 80s focused station would be right in the money demo. I agree about hip hop...although there are some classic hit stations playing Tone Loc, MC Hammer and Young MC. I think the right Hair Bands would work. Artists like Whitesnake(Here I Go Again, Is This Love), Def Leppard(Photograph), Bad English(When I See You Smile), Poison(Every Rose Has It's Thorn), Night Ranger(Sister Christian) etc. They are already playing Bon Jovi. What are your thoughts about moving away from a 70s based to an 80s based?
Three little letters: M-T-V. Ask anyone who was of prime hit-radio-listening age in the '80s to name a song that just screams "80s" and I'd say 99 percent of them are going to name "Simply Irresistible" or "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" or "Angel in the Centerfold" or any of the other catchy hits whose popularity was enhanced by videos in heavy rotation on MTV. 1980 and 1981 were transitional years. Disco had crashed and radio was waiting for the next big musical trend and filling the time between commercials with country crossovers and forgettable pop.
Actually, there may be more early '80s hits than you think being played. I just checked out Billboard's top 100 songs of 1980 and found 26 titles that I still hear on WDRC-FM. No Kenny Rogers, no Dan Fogelberg, no Anne Murray, no Herb Alpert, but legitimate hits by Kool & the Gang, Queen, Donna Summer, Tom Petty, the Pretenders, Blondie. I would think the number of songs would be about the same for any year in the focal years of the CH format these days: approximately 1975-1987.
The early '80s seemed to be the period (in particular) of the regional hit. An internet acquaintance of mine out in SoCal once burned a CD for me with early '80s one-hit-wonders on it. Most of them I was at least passingly familiar with, but there was one on there that I had never heard before: "Mexican Radio" by Wall of Voodoo. Cool song, but I was just totally unfamiliar with it, living here in TN. I would call it a novelty song, but I have heard it on the radio just a time or two since I got the CD, mostly on retro and dance programs on the weekends, but never in regular rotation.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
I just find it rather odd how some cbs classic hit stations play like 5 or more 80s songs an hour, maybe 1 60 every hour or every other hour and one CBS station in philly that plays 3 60s and only 3 80s. You would think they would follow the same format as the others playing a lot more 80s. Any ideas why this is the case and do you think the 80s will ever be the focal point of classic hits or will it always be 70s based?
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
Different markets, different audience composition, different songs test well.
As has been pointed out elsewhere on RD, WOGL in Philadelphia plays a lot of 70s R&B songs that don't test well in Los Angeles and aren't being played on KRTH.
That said, I think the center of the Classic Hits format will not only eventually be the 80s, it will be the ceiling of the format, largely due to the fragmentation of top-40/CHR into narrower genre-specific formats starting in the 90s. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find songs that test well with all listeners who formed their musical preferences in that decade, because of that fragmentation: Just taking 1991 as an example, and comparing sings that hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 that year (actually, that shows sales strength, but no song ever got to the top of the Hot 100 without huge airplay so the examples are valid), you will find all of these songs as contenders for CH airplay:
Love Will Never Do (Without You)/Janet Jackson
Coming Out Of The Dark/Gloria Estefan
Unbelievable/EMF
I Adore Mi Amor/Color Me Badd
When A Man Loves A Woman/Michael Bolton
Rush, Rush/Paula Abdul
Joyride/Roxette
Good Vibrations/Marky Mark
Cream/Prince
(Everything I Do) I Do It For You/Bryan Adams
Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)/C&C Music Factory
Someday/Mariah Carey
More Than Words/Extreme
Where are you going to find enough listeners who like all of those songs to make up an audience? Sure, everyone is going to like some of them ... but they're going to dislike (or at best, be neutral) as many as they like. Which means that a 90s-based CH that tried to run the full spectrum of what the hits were in that decade runs the risk of having huge chunks of listeners tune out on every segue.
If CH survives as a format with music past the 80s, it will be as fragmented as was CHR in that decade, with little chance of achieving the audience share it has now, when it can draw from music that was more universal in listener appeal.
Same thing.
A song that tests well is a hit. A song that does not test well is not.
Some songs that were hits do not test well today. Thus, in the context of being played today on the radio, they are no longer hits.
In the context of a Billboard or Whitburn book, once a hit always a hit is the rule. But that is a historical perspective. Radio does not curate music museums... we play what people want to hear today, not what they liked yesterday or yeasteryear.
Interesting. WDRC-FM Hartford tried adding a bunch of '90s titles to its playlist last fall, only to drop most of them this spring. Among the survivors: Roxette (only one song, "The Look"), Paula Abdul (One song, "Straight Up") and Janet Jackson (2 songs). Hootie & the Blowfish? Gone. Chumbawamba? Gone. Smashmouth? Gone. Suzanne Vega ("Tom's Diner," not "Luka," which I thought would have worked)? Gone. So it may indeed be that the CH format is on life support, as you surmise.
A
Avid Listener
Guest
Most of you are totally missing the point. Tracing the history of popular music from the earliest days of recording technology, the one constant trend is the increasing diversity of sound. As the people who create new music are constantly influenced by the overall sound of all the recordings that came before, the isolated genres of music that used to dominate geographic regions and/or ethnic minorities have blurred. Musicians stopped slavishly trying to come up with a "new" sound, and instead addressed the issue of coming up with a good sound. Back in the early 70's, you could listen to almost any recording you'd never heard before and could reasonably expect to be able to guess within plus or minus five years when it was recorded. Those days are over.
Radio listeners are not just nostalgia freaks who want to hear the same songs they heard when they were experiencing milestone firsts in their lives. They want to hear music that pleases their ears. They don't care when it was recorded, but they care about what it sounds like. People who like the recordings of the Crystals, Shangri-las, or Ronettes would also like Tracey Ullman's novelty song, "They Don't Know About Us", but they would embrace it as just another early 60's girl group song. Fans of modern rockabilly (which is not played on the radio anywhere, to the best of my knowledge, though live concerts sell out) would enjoy classic rockabilly songs from the 50's. Fans of 70's prog rock would enjoy European bands like Within Temptation or Nightwish, who sell out venues all over the world outside of the US, because the sound of the music is so similar to the genre that included Pink Floyd, ELO, Renaissance, and others.
I don't usually agree with Mr. Eduardo, but he makes a good point about testing how songs are liked today. I'd simply carry the testing concept a giant step further. Don't just test vintage hit songs from a given era. Test all good songs that sound like the common songs of a given era, regardless of whether they were hits or not, and regardless of when they were recorded. Don't just test for familiarity. Test for "do you like it"?. Test songs for vintage formats the same way you'd test a brand new release. You'd probably end up with a playlist that's much more appealing to an even larger audience, including attracting younger listeners who listen because they like the music, not because it was the nostalgic "music of their lives".
Radio listeners are not just nostalgia freaks who want to hear the same songs they heard when they were experiencing milestone firsts in their lives. They want to hear music that pleases their ears. They don't care when it was recorded, but they care about what it sounds like. People who like the recordings of the Crystals, Shangri-las, or Ronettes would also like Tracey Ullman's novelty song, "They Don't Know About Us", but they would embrace it as just another early 60's girl group song. Fans of modern rockabilly (which is not played on the radio anywhere, to the best of my knowledge, though live concerts sell out) would enjoy classic rockabilly songs from the 50's. Fans of 70's prog rock would enjoy European bands like Within Temptation or Nightwish, who sell out venues all over the world outside of the US, because the sound of the music is so similar to the genre that included Pink Floyd, ELO, Renaissance, and others.
I don't usually agree with Mr. Eduardo, but he makes a good point about testing how songs are liked today. I'd simply carry the testing concept a giant step further. Don't just test vintage hit songs from a given era. Test all good songs that sound like the common songs of a given era, regardless of whether they were hits or not, and regardless of when they were recorded. Don't just test for familiarity. Test for "do you like it"?. Test songs for vintage formats the same way you'd test a brand new release. You'd probably end up with a playlist that's much more appealing to an even larger audience, including attracting younger listeners who listen because they like the music, not because it was the nostalgic "music of their lives".
It's all been done, with disastrous results. Many programmers have tried programming based on "it sounds like the format" accompanied by testing for likability. What you get are many nice sounding songs that are likable but not lovable. No passion. The B side of a hit single.
Curated music lists succeed based on exciting the passion of the listener.
I think the right early 90s music would work on a classic hits station and do believe you can blend it with 80s music. Look at what Kola FM is doing out in San Bernadino, CA. They are playing mostly 80s music with 1-2 90s and 1 70s song per hour. They are playing 90s songs like More Than Words by Extreme, Still The One by Shania Twain, Everything I do, I do it for You by Brian Adams, Whitney Houston I will always love you etc. I honestly thing a format from 1978-1992 would be the perfect classic hits station. You are attracting the perfect demo. I think an 80s focus instead of 70s would be ideal for classic hits. If this is coming, how far away would you say classic hits is from completely eliminating 60s and moving from a 70s focus to an 80s focus?
I'm surprised Kola would play this song, almost like the "You Light Up My Life" of the 90's.
The 60's are hanging on, they have lasting appeal. Granted 99.99% of them are no longer played, the ones that are left, are still hanging on by a thread. KRTH and WOGL still play a few 1960's hits.
EXACTLY!! and many songs out there do just that.
Eliminating the 80's "totally" from classic hits is still about 15-20+ years away. With limited appeal of the 90's and early 00's, we might be hearing the 70's and 80's for a long time to come. I've yet to see any "Café 80's" opening up yet on street corners, (and it's not even 2015 yet....) so if anything, the nostalgia for that decade has not even realized it's full potential, as compared to the 50's diners, which are still numerous, to this day. Yes, it's a movie reference, but I think you get the point.
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