People that want to hear their endless favorites will do it on their own, not rely on a medium that throws 15-18 minutes of advertising down your throats every 50 minutes, plays the same 200 burnt to a crisp corporate songs that few like anymore and endless, ridiculous chatter.
Give the "corporate songs" thing a break. There is no such thing.
Stations play the songs that listeners want to hear, and not the ones they don't.
Stations that can afford to do music tests, so the listeners "pick" the music and the station just plays the songs that have the broadest appeal and fewest negatives.
Stations that can't afford music tests fall into two groups: the ones that emulate the lists on stations in markets and areas like theirs, and the ones that thing (as you do) that we are all wrong and that there are loads of big songs from the Whitburn books all waiting to be played.
The copycats generally do well. The independent thinkers do OK if they are in small markets, but their owners leave lots of money on the table because they don't get the kind of results for advertisers that a better executed station would!