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When the HD signal goes down ... off the air.

semoochie said:
That may have started WABC's decline but I believe it was WKTU's Disco format that finally did them in.
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That's right, to the extent that KTU was the disrupter that moved all the contemporary listening to FM.

In Spring of 1976, the ranking was

WABC 9.1
WOR 8.1
WRFM 5.0
WBLS 5.0
WCBS (AM) 4.8
WINS 4.2
WPLJ 3.9
WMCA 3.5
WADO 3.3
WXLO 3.3

In teens it was WABC way ahead, followed by WXLO, WPLJ and WBLS tightly bunched and then WWRL and WPIX quite a ways behind.

WABC was dominant until mid 1978. In the October/ November book, WKTU went from a 1.2 to 11.3, and WABC fell to a still respectable 7.1. But it was now 4th in teens and third in 18-34.

By Fall of 1980, WABC was down to 10th with a 3.6, and KTU still had an 8.3. More important, WABC was down to 8th in 18-34 and 18-49. WNBC was beating it in teens and 18-34, and trouncing it in 18-49.

What happened was similar to what happened in a number of markets in the 70's... a really "special" FM only format went on and the young adults migrated and never came back.

The most extreme case of this I ever saw was the Puerto Rico market, where in 1978 the FM share among all stations combined was less than 15 share points. One of those "special" stations went on FM, and by April of 1979, that single station had a 33.5 share and the FM band had over 55 shares... and this in a market with over 30 signals on AM and FM. AM never recovered even one single share point after that.

In all such cases, there was a strong and exclusive FM cume magnet. There is nothing on HD that matches those two qualities of "strong" and "exclusive".
 
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Now, there's something I never thought of before: If there was suddenly a musical revolution among teens and no one else(like rock n roll in the 50s), would stations "play" to that audience?
 
semoochie said:
Now, there's something I never thought of before: If there was suddenly a musical revolution among teens and no one else(like rock n roll in the 50s), would stations "play" to that audience?
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Teens have traditionally been the starting point in the launch of new young-targeted stations. The theory was that if you got the momentum from teens, young adults would soon follow.

However, today teen trends are not started by radio. And there is no ad money for teen audience stations anyway.

So, the answer to the question is "no" until such point that it can be seen that there is a spread in appeal into 18-34 that can be jumped on.
 
DavidEduardo said:


Teens have traditionally been the starting point in the launch of new young-targeted stations. The theory was that if you got the momentum from teens, young adults would soon follow.

However, today teen trends are not started by radio. And there is no ad money for teen audience stations anyway.

So, the answer to the question is "no" until such point that it can be seen that there is a spread in appeal into 18-34 that can be jumped on.
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Interesting. If they had thought that way in the 50s, rock n roll would have quickly died, there would be no Beatles and Taylor Swift would still be playing Country. :)
 
tomservo said:
At least rock and roll was a cohesive format. Music has fractured into so many sub genres that it's almost impossible to cater to all of them without alienating fans of other types of music.
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I think it was more of a lack of stations that specialized than cohesiveness of the music. In the early days of RnR we had stations that played Johnny Mathis, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino to Lawrence Welk. Country crossovers were popular as were show and movie tunes, Standards, novelty songs and even foreign language records. There was a tremendous variety of music on one single outlet. With the rise of FM stations seemed to specialize in specific formats and RnR was broken down even further into a dozen or more formats.

I have found one station in my metro area (KAZG - the famous Lumberyard) that still plays something like a variety of years ago. It is possible to hear Jerry Lee Lewis followed by Kai Winding on this Oldies outlet. Purists might object to this kind of programming but I enjoy hearing songs I haven't heard in years and can adjust to the sequence without a problem.
 
tomservo said:
At least rock and roll was a cohesive format. Music has fractured into so many sub genres that it's almost impossible to cater to all of them without alienating fans of other types of music.
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Landtuna did a great post about how Top 40 in the "rock and roll era" was made up of pop, rock, rock 'n roll, r&b, MOR, country, even jazz.

Top 40 began in 1952, long before rock 'n roll was "invented". The stations played the most popular pop songs by Doris Day, Perry Como, Gogi Grant and others. In the mid 50's, when some stations had rock 'n roll night shows, some Top 40's began to add some songs that were definitely rockers. Many added them cautiously. Others played them in afternoons and nights only.

This is why, even into the early 60's we had big hits by Dominico Modugno, Dave "Baby" Cortez, Lawrence Welk, Percy Faith and others in the Top 40 charts. In many markets, it was not until the Motown and British Invasion years that Top 40 pretty much eliminated the traditional stuff for good.
 
DavidEduardo said:


Landtuna did a great post about how Top 40 in the "rock and roll era" was made up of pop, rock, rock 'n roll, r&b, MOR, country, even jazz.

Top 40 began in 1952, long before rock 'n roll was "invented". The stations played the most popular pop songs by Doris Day, Perry Como, Gogi Grant and others. In the mid 50's, when some stations had rock 'n roll night shows, some Top 40's began to add some songs that were definitely rockers. Many added them cautiously. Others played them in afternoons and nights only.

This is why, even into the early 60's we had big hits by Dominico Modugno, Dave "Baby" Cortez, Lawrence Welk, Percy Faith and others in the Top 40 charts. In many markets, it was not until the Motown and British Invasion years that Top 40 pretty much eliminated the traditional stuff for good.
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The station I listen to during the heyday of the British Invasion (64-65 WORC 1310 Worc), Ma played quite a variety also, You'd hear a Beatles Tune followed by a Frank Sinatra, then a country tune, Babara Streisand etc. I have fond memories of it today but hated what I saw as old people's music then on the station and only wanted to hear Beatles, Gerry and The Pacemakers, Dave Clark Five etc. I feel I have a better appreciation today of different types of popular music because of it, also a better appreciation of 50's music because the cut off wasn't as sharp as you hear it was today. I can remember Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, The Everly Brothers and others having hits after The Beatles broke.
 
DavidEduardo said:

Landtuna did a great post about how Top 40 in the "rock and roll era" was made up of pop, rock, rock 'n roll, r&b, MOR, country, even jazz.
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Oh, I'm not saying there wasn't a wide-ranging set of music to be heard on Top 40 of the era, just that I keep hearing people say today's youth are so used to the online streaming of exactly what they want to hear that they are turning away from the variety of current CHR and Hot AC stations which are trying to play a little of everything to appeal to a wider audience.

I don't know if that's true or not, but it's certainly been my experience with the younger generation. A person who wants to hear Cage The Elephant now isn't willing to sit through a Jason Derulo song, and vice-versa. Considering how highly rated many current pop stations are I can't imagine there's much truth to what I've been told, but it does make jibe with my limited interactions with the under 25 crowd. That fragmentation seems to affect rock formats, too.

BTW, when did you work at WERC-FM in Birmingham? My parents grew up on WSGN and enjoyed the battle between it and the AM WERC in the early 70s. The FM has fascinated me because I've read numerous articles on them getting a permit in the WBRC days for 500 kW, but little information on whether it actually went to air with that massive power, what the programming was or how much coverage it had. That was '46-48, well before the Top 40 battle was had out.
 
tomservo said:
BTW, when did you work at WERC-FM in Birmingham? My parents grew up on WSGN and enjoyed the battle between it and the AM WERC in the early 70s. The FM has fascinated me because I've read numerous articles on them getting a permit in the WBRC days for 500 kW, but little information on whether it actually went to air with that massive power, what the programming was or how much coverage it had. That was '46-48, well before the Top 40 battle was had out.
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I moved from Mooney's WUNO in San Juan in 1972 to be PD at WERC AM & FM right after the purchase closed.

I did the AC format revision on AM, with Doug Layton in Mornings, Frank Lewis as PD, and Jan Jeffries in PM drive.

The FM converted to Top 40 at the same time, with Stan Smith (J.W. Jason) and Rusty Ford and Tony Bruno. We had an immediate impact on WSGN. After I left, they decided to separate the FM further from the AM by changing calls and name.

At a dinner some years back here in LA, Rick Dees said that what I did with the FM motivated him to leave Birmingham and go to Memphis and then, of course, on to LA.

I did not know the high power story on WBRC-FM. When I got there, it was on the TV tower and was a conforming class C.
 
KB1OKL said:
The station I listen to during the heyday of the British Invasion (64-65 WORC 1310 Worc), Ma played quite a variety also, You'd hear a Beatles Tune followed by a Frank Sinatra, then a country tune, Babara Streisand etc. I have fond memories of it today but hated what I saw as old people's music then on the station and only wanted to hear Beatles, Gerry and The Pacemakers, Dave Clark Five etc. I feel I have a better appreciation today of different types of popular music because of it, also a better appreciation of 50's music because the cut off wasn't as sharp as you hear it was today. I can remember Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, The Everly Brothers and others having hits after The Beatles broke.
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Some of the biggest Top 40 hits of the LATE '60s were MOR as well -- "Love Is Blue," "Release Me," "Something Stupid," "This Guy's In Love With You." Even into the '70s you'd still get songs like Roger Whittaker's "The Last Farewell" getting Top 40 airplay. IMO, everything changed for good when disco started driving the older end of 18-34 toward AOR, AC or any other format that didn't program disco. There was no room for MOR in any of those formats; the splintering of mass-appeal popular music was underway.
 
CTListener said:
Some of the biggest Top 40 hits of the LATE '60s were MOR as well -- "Love Is Blue," "Release Me," "Something Stupid," "This Guy's In Love With You." Even into the '70s you'd still get songs like Roger Whittaker's "The Last Farewell" getting Top 40 airplay. IMO, everything changed for good when disco started driving the older end of 18-34 toward AOR, AC or any other format that didn't program disco. There was no room for MOR in any of those formats; the splintering of mass-appeal popular music was underway.
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The last qualifying title I can think of was Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York" in 1980.
 
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