Classic Hits: Evolution or Revolution?

[oldies76]

I'm sure you're not the only one, but if you're not in the majority, it's not going to matter. The key to winning in the ratings is to do what works for the biggest block of listeners within the target demographic. As we've said before, slowing down the rotation means the typical listener may not feel she/he is hearing their favorite songs often enough, given that they're at most usually hearing them only once every three weeks or longer.

So........if you were programming a classic hits station today or in 1985, would you have weekend specialties or not (true to the bone though, not fake specials) to lessen the weekday monotony. How many core songs would you carry overall and how often would you play these core songs?

 

[DavidEduardo]

So........if you were programming a classic hits station today or in 1985, would you have weekend specialties or not (true to the bone though, not fake specials) to lessen the weekday monotony. How many core songs would you carry overall and how often would you play these core songs?

I'd likely do superstars weekends, with fewer of the lower rotation songs and none of the songs by artists who had one or two or three hits. That would mean a list that was perhaps 50% shorter on weekends, so that with irregular listening patterns, every time someone tuned in they would hear a really, really big hit (with "pardons" to Ed Sullivan).

Some of the weekends, I'd feature one artist or kind of artist, playing them once per quarter hour, perhaps accompanied by giveaways of downloads of that artist's songs or some other new media tie in via the station's FB or website.

 

[michael hagerty]

So, you'd rather have a station run like Jay Coffey would, with far fewer songs in rotation and only the highly rated tested songs airing?? 900 is a good number, 1200 to 1500 would be much more thorough, 2000+ would be fabulous!! But we'll settle for 800+ for now.

"Amazing" and "prefer" are not synonyms.

Let me make it more clear:

It is very hard to get a majority of people to agree on most things.

The fact that a majority of likely listeners to Classic Hits radio between the ages of 35 and 45 can agree upon 850 songs that they all love, like or at least will tolerate is amazing. Especially considering that many of the songs were not current hits during their formative years.

As I've said before, I have deep and wide musical tastes. I just don't expect a broadcaster to go broke trying to cater to me.

 

[michael hagerty]

So........if you were programming a classic hits station today or in 1985, would you have weekend specialties or not (true to the bone though, not fake specials) to lessen the weekday monotony. How many core songs would you carry overall and how often would you play these core songs?

That's a couple of unanswerable questions, Oldies.

Who determines what's "true to the bone" and what's "fake"?

As for number of songs, the listeners tell me that through research.

 

[oldies76]

That's a couple of unanswerable questions, Oldies.

Who determines what's "true to the bone" and what's "fake"?

As for number of songs, the listeners tell me that through research.

When a station promotes a weekend as, for example, a British Invasion weekend and really only plays 2-4 songs per hour, then it's really not a British Weekend. It's just a small feature among their everyday songs, during a weekend. Now, if the ENTIRE weekend is British Inv. music, around the clock, then that would be true to the bone. Same theory applies to a holiday Top 500 countdown. When a station says it's the listener voted top 500 "of all time" countdown, then you expect to hear songs from "all time", meaning from the birth of rock and roll through their cutoff year. Granted, most of the songs chosen will be late 60's to mid 80's music. The PD has the determination on how these specials will run. But, I believe it would be to the benefit of the station to run their specials "as stated", not just to give us glimpses, by playing only a quarter of every hour. That to me, would be fake and not a true special. That's why I always reference the mid 80's as the time when radio really provided quality programming and weekend selection.

 

[michael hagerty]

When a station promotes a weekend as, for example, a British Invasion weekend and really only plays 2-4 songs per hour, then it's really not a British Weekend. It's just a small feature among their everyday songs, during a weekend. Now, if the ENTIRE weekend is British Inv. music, around the clock, then that would be true to the bone. Same theory applies to a holiday Top 500 countdown. When a station says it's the listener voted top 500 "of all time" countdown, then you expect to hear songs from "all time", meaning from the birth of rock and roll through their cutoff year. Granted, most of the songs chosen will be late 60's to mid 80's music. The PD has the determination on how these specials will run. But, I believe it would be to the benefit of the station to run their specials "as stated", not just to give us glimpses, by playing only a quarter of every hour. That to me, would be fake and not a true special. That's why I always reference the mid 80's as the time when radio really provided quality programming and weekend selection.

Here's the problem:

Focus on one genre (British Invasion, Motown) exclusively for an entire weekend and you:

a) risk losing listeners who aren't big fans of the genre

b) don't present a representative sample of what the station sounds like for anyone tuning in for the first time.

As for phrases like "all-time", if the station is taking listener votes and something from 1955 could win and be played, then fine (though I've never liked the "all-time" label because time did not begin with rock and roll...unless you're willing to play Gregorian chants, I'd use another term).

Frankly, I think KRTH's current approach to specials is fairly smart...it doesn't sacrifice consistency, and I doubt their core audience considers it "fake".

 

[johndavis]

I'd likely do superstars weekends, with fewer of the lower rotation songs and none of the songs by artists who had one or two or three hits. That would mean a list that was perhaps 50% shorter on weekends, so that with irregular listening patterns, every time someone tuned in they would hear a really, really big hit (with "pardons" to Ed Sullivan).

This is where the SiriusXM decades channels trip over themselves on the weekends running the same countdown shows several times a weekend. It seems like every time I get in the car I'm tuning in to the same three stiffs in the mid to upper 30's and then turning it immediately off. It never fails - Friday, Saturday, Sunday I always catch the same spot in the playlist.

It's the same reason a PD I knew who would obsess over creating the "perfect" 8 hour weekend specialty playlist and then copy and paste it over and over in Selector ultimately got fired for the practice. While people use radio differently on the weekends than during the week, they tend to keep the same routine on Saturdays and Sundays from week to week. Showcasing your best stuff is good. Being able to predict what's playing next isn't.

 

[PirateJohnny]

What/how many stations played songs as currents that should now be considered for "classic" status? For example, I listened to 60s/70sTop 40 on basically one station, and so did all the other listeners. But music really split up in the 80s/90s. So now when a "classic" station (call it D) wants to add 80s and 90s music, that one station is trying to attract listeners who used to listen to several "current" (call them A, B and C) stations. Can that really work? Will a listener listen to station D that plays "classic" songs that were current on A, B and C when that listener did not listen to stations B and C back in the day?

Yes.

Because they didn't see music splintering they way we did as outsiders to that generation. To them, it was just variety and choice. And, through the filter of nostalgia...what they want to remember and what they don't, they'll tell us what they want to hear. It will likely be a bit from this and a bit from that, in the same way that Classic Hits stations today play quite a few things that weren't Top 40 records and some Classic Rock stations are playing songs that AOR would have thought too commercial, too pop, too wimpy.

Now, wait a minute. The person who used to listen to station A and did not listen to stations B and C is now hearing on station D unfamiliar songs (formerly played on stations B and C). Aren't those unfamiliar songs "stiffs" or "tune out factors" to that listener?
That seems like a gray area of "the rules".

 

[michael hagerty]

Now, wait a minute. The person who used to listen to station A and did not listen to stations B and C is now hearing on station D unfamiliar songs (formerly played on stations B and C). Aren't those unfamiliar songs "stiffs" or "tune out factors" to that listener?
That seems like a gray area of "the rules".

If we're talking about the 70s, which is where most Classic Hits are coming from these days, what played where back in the day is irrelevant. Anyone old enough to have listened to A but not B or C is too old to be in the sales demographic, or very close to aging out of it.

Get past that into the 80s, 90s and beyond and from MTV onward, there were multiple sources exposing young people to music regardless of their choice of radio stations. None of it is unfamiliar. There will be likes and dislikes and the job of the programmer will be to find those songs that have a consensus of positives.

 

[firepoint525]

Since aiming at the high end is not practical, you usually find situations where a station might target 35-54, but only research 35-49. They will get the 50-54's anyway, so it is more important to look carefully at the "entry years" where people will mature into listeners to the format.

No, you won't "get us anyway," David. People only go where they are being fed, and we sure as hell won't STAY where we aren't being fed. I am busy downloading new CDs to listen to when I go on trips, because radio is too iffy.

Yeah, I know, radio must cater to its advertisers, but those advertisers are rapidly taking radio over the cliff even faster than it otherwise would go.

 

[johndavis]

Now, wait a minute. The person who used to listen to station A and did not listen to stations B and C is now hearing on station D unfamiliar songs (formerly played on stations B and C). Aren't those unfamiliar songs "stiffs" or "tune out factors" to that listener?
That seems like a gray area of "the rules".

Well, that's a difference between your generation and mine.

I'm a child of the 80's. We had more than one station to choose from, and we punched around a lot. At various times of my youth, I'd listen to two AOR stations, two or three top 40 stations, a couple of what became known at Hot AC stations, plus alternative rock stations (one back when alternative was still "new wave" on a daytimer AM and others when it was "alternative.") Which station I listened to most at any given time was a combination of what they were playing and what my peers though was cool at that moment, but I switched around a lot. Then you have the influence of MTV, which in the beginning was more like AOR than top 40 until they had more videos to play.

My generation grew up with many different musical choices on the radio and elsewhere and we tried all of them. Is it any wonder music formats that are an inch deep and a mile wide have been successful as of late?

 

[Robert Bass]

Well, that's a difference between your generation and mine.

I'm a child of the 80's. We had more than one station to choose from, and we punched around a lot.

Perhaps you did, but I sure didn't. I was loyal to one station as a teenager, and that was Dallas' KISS-FM. Yes I watched MTV back then, but I hardly ever gave KEGL my ears.

R

 

[DavidEduardo]

Perhaps you did, but I sure didn't. I was loyal to one station as a teenager, and that was Dallas' KISS-FM. Yes I watched MTV back then, but I hardly ever gave KEGL my ears.

That's not typical listener behaviour in any era.

I used to switch between the three Top 40's in the city where I lived, sometimes on a song by song basis. And that was in the mid to late 50's. I even added a station when we got an FM classical in the market a few years later. So I listened to at least 4 stations regularly, and none was an overwhelming favorite.

My friends and contemporaries used radio similarly (except for, maybe, the classical station option).

 

[landtuna]

That's not typical listener behaviour in any era.

I used to switch between the three Top 40's in the city where I lived, sometimes on a song by song basis. And that was in the mid to late 50's. I even added a station when we got an FM classical in the market a few years later. So I listened to at least 4 stations regularly, and none was an overwhelming favorite.

My friends and contemporaries used radio similarly (except for, maybe, the classical station option).

You obviously lived in a city with multiple stations having close to the same playlist. During the 50's there was only one station in my town with a playlist I liked so I always listened to that one station - and so did an overwhelmingly large number of the population. Later, when I moved to the Bay Area, there were more options but I still listened primarily to one station (KYA). As far as I can remember that was also the listening habits of my circle of friends.

 

[oldies76]

That's not typical listener behaviour in any era.

I used to switch between the three Top 40's in the city where I lived, sometimes on a song by song basis. And that was in the mid to late 50's. I even added a station when we got an FM classical in the market a few years later. So I listened to at least 4 stations regularly, and none was an overwhelming favorite.

My friends and contemporaries used radio similarly (except for, maybe, the classical station option).

It depends where you live David. It's very typical to listen to one station that played great CHR music when you're a teen. In Southern California (South Orange County), it was the Mighty 690 in the early 1980's and KRTH for oldies. When going to the mountains then, it would be 99.1.

 

[michael hagerty]

It depends where you live David. It's very typical to listen to one station that played great CHR music when you're a teen. In Southern California (South Orange County), it was the Mighty 690 in the early 1980's and KRTH for oldies. When going to the mountains then, it would be 99.1.

For you. But for most teens in Southern California in the early 80s, AM was dead, KRTH was only barely on their radar and the stations that mattered were KIIS-FM, KIQQ, KKHR, KROQ, KNAC (a cult favorite that rarely got a number), KMET and KLOS (all of which were stronger or weaker depending on the exact year).

 

[michael hagerty]

Spring 1982 Arbitron

1. KABC (Talk): 6.7
2. KBIG-FM (Beautiful): 5.0
3. KMET-FM (AOR): 4.0
4. KIIS-FM (Top 40): 3.9
4. KLOS-FM (AOR): 3.9
6. KROQ-FM (Modern Rock): 3.7
6. KIQQ-FM (Top 40): 3.7
8. KFWB (News): 3.6
9. KHTZ-FM (A/C): 3.5
9. KJOI-FM (Beautiful): 3.5
9. KNX (News): 3.5
12.KRTH-FM (A/C): 3.2
13.KPRZ (Standards): 2.6
14.KFI (Top 40): 2.5
14.KZLA-AM/FM (Country): 2.5
16.KMPC (Talk): 2.4
16.KOST-FM (Beautiful): 2.4
18.KNX-FM (Soft Rock): 2.2
19.KLAC (Country): 2.1
19.KRLA (Oldies): 2.1
21.KTNQ (Spanish): 1.9
21.KUTE-FM (R&B): 1.9
21.KGFJ (R&B): 1.9
24.KACE-FM (R&B): 1.5
24.XETRA (Top 40): 1.5
24.KDAY (R&B): 1.5
24.KHJ (Country): 1.5
28.KLVE-FM (Spanish): 1.3
28.KWKW (Spanish): 1.3
28.KWST-FM (Top 40): 1.3
28.KFAC-AM/FM (Classical): 1.3
32.KALI (Spanish): 1.2
32.KJLH-FM (R&B): 1.2
32.KKGO-FM (Jazz): 1.2
35.KNOB-FM (Beautiful): 1.1
36.KEZY-AM/FM (AOR): 0.8

 

[oldies76]

Spring 1982 Arbitron

1. KABC (Talk): 6.7
2. KBIG-FM (Beautiful): 5.0
3. KMET-FM (AOR): 4.0
4. KIIS-FM (Top 40): 3.9
4. KLOS-FM (AOR): 3.9
6. KROQ-FM (Modern Rock): 3.7
6. KIQQ-FM (Top 40): 3.7
8. KFWB (News): 3.6
9. KHTZ-FM (A/C): 3.5
9. KJOI-FM (Beautiful): 3.5
9. KNX (News): 3.5
12.KRTH-FM (A/C): 3.2
13.KPRZ (Standards): 2.6
14.KFI (Top 40): 2.5
14.KZLA-AM/FM (Country): 2.5
16.KMPC (Talk): 2.4
16.KOST-FM (Beautiful): 2.4
18.KNX-FM (Soft Rock): 2.2
19.KLAC (Country): 2.1
19.KRLA (Oldies): 2.1
21.KTNQ (Spanish): 1.9
21.KUTE-FM (R&B): 1.9
21.KGFJ (R&B): 1.9
24.KACE-FM (R&B): 1.5
24.XETRA (Top 40): 1.5
24.KDAY (R&B): 1.5
24.KHJ (Country): 1.5
28.KLVE-FM (Spanish): 1.3
28.KWKW (Spanish): 1.3
28.KWST-FM (Top 40): 1.3
28.KFAC-AM/FM (Classical): 1.3
32.KALI (Spanish): 1.2
32.KJLH-FM (R&B): 1.2
32.KKGO-FM (Jazz): 1.2
35.KNOB-FM (Beautiful): 1.1
36.KEZY-AM/FM (AOR): 0.8

Amazing that XTRA was only ranked at #24. Seems like it was always mentioned around 1980-83 for top 40 music at the time, besides KIIS and KFI.

Could there be a ranking for only teen listeners (if that was even possible then), in the southern Orange County area for that time? Mighty 690 had to have ranked higher. That seemed like the station of choice back then, even if it was AM. Being out of San Diego (Tijuana actually), the 690 signal was really good in San Juan Capistrano.

 

[michael hagerty]

Amazing that XTRA was only ranked at #24. Seems like it was always mentioned around 1980-83 for top 40 music at the time, besides KIIS and KFI.

Could there be a ranking for only teen listeners (if that was even possible then), in the southern Orange County area for that time? Mighty 690 had to have ranked higher. That seemed like the station of choice back then, even if it was AM. Being out of San Diego (Tijuana actually), the 690 signal was really good in San Juan Capistrano.

Teen numbers existed then, but demo breakouts would be tough to find 31 years later. I don't believe there was a separate Orange County book.

But let's look at San Diego's 1982 numbers:

1. KJQY-FM (Beautiful): 9.1
2. KGB-FM (AOR): 8.1
3. KFMB (A/C): 6.0
4. XHRM-FM (CHR): 4.9
5. KPRI-FM (AOR): 4.8
6. KSDO (News/Talk): 4.6
7. XETRA-FM (AOR): 4.2
8. KYXY-FM (A/C): 4.0
9. KOGO (A/C): 3.9
9. KFSD-FM (Classical): 3.9
9. KMLO (Nostalgia): 3.9
12. XTRA (Top 40): 3.5
13.KFMB-FM (CHR): 3.4
14.KBZT-FM (Oldies): 3.3
15.KSON-FM (Country): 3.0
16.KEZL-FM (Beautiful): 2.9
16.KIFM-FM (A/C): 2.9
18.KCBQ (Country): 2.7
19.KCBQ-FM (Country): 2.6
19.KSON (Country): 2.6
21.KCNN (News): 1.3

So, in San Diego, XTRA did better, edging out B-100, but both of them were getting killed by XHRM (Z-90). The next year, B-100 jumped to a 5.3, and KEZL had become KS-103, with a 3.6. XTRA stayed flat at 3.5. And in '84, it was all over, with KS-103 getting a 6.1.

All that tied in with the CHR renaissance of '83.

In '82, San Diego was still very much an AOR town.

 

[DavidEduardo]

It's very typical to listen to one station that played great CHR music when you're a teen.

Not really. I've been doing diary reviews at Arbitron going back to 1970 in Beltsville and teens typically used more stations in the 70's and 80's and switched between them more often than any other demo.

In fact, a typical teen diary might have listed "7 PM to 9 PM 560, 790, 100.7, 94.7, 95.9" showing that they didn't know how long they listened to any station but knew that they frequently switched between 4 or 5 different ones.

Of course, by the late 70's, it was uncommon to see an AM in a teen diary.