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Is AC no longer the family friendly/at work format?

I was not aware of every possible situation but this is one case where AC and soft rock weren't the same thing.
 
CTListener said:
Will we eventually see AC, hot AC and soft AC as separate, universally accepted formats?
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We do now. To say "soft rock isn't a format" begs the question, says who? Soft rock is both a positioner and a format, just like classic rock.

Are classic rock stations that add songs from the 80s no longer classic rock? That depends. Same with soft rock.

The reason rock is losing influence as a format is because its been fragmented in many different ways. Soft rock is a fragment of AC, just as Hot AC.
 
AbrahamJSimpson said:
Soft rock isn't a format. It's a brand position, a descriptor. AC is format.
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In 1982 when the changes happened, a lot of AC stations were calling themselves soft rock. There were two in the market where I lived. And a new AC station which had signed on for the first time, thought it wasn't calling its music soft. It was actually referring to "The energy of tomorrow, today". The station playing Queen was responding to the new AC by moving closer to what Billboard's AC charts were doing. Whether Queen was part of that, I don't know. That could have been left over from what they were doing before the change.
 
vchimpanzee said:
Don't you mean 90s? Even that would be outdated. I think now the debate is whether a station is still classic rock if it plays songs from this century.
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No I mean anything other than 60s/70s, which is primarily what classic rock plays. There is a debate on another board that new wave, which was popular in the 80s, would qualify as classic rock. My view is if it got played on a rock station when it was current, then its classic rock now.
 
TheBigA said:
No I mean anything other than 60s/70s, which is primarily what classic rock plays. There is a debate on another board that new wave, which was popular in the 80s, would qualify as classic rock. My view is if it got played on a rock station when it was current, then its classic rock now.
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And that discussion centers on a station that's tweaking its classic rock format to "the next generation of classic rock," eliminating all '60s and many '70s tracks in favor of '80s and '90s material. Some argue that The Cure, The Pretenders and other new wave acts, even though they were played on many AOR stations at the time, shouldn't be part of classic rock radio now because they don't fit in with Def Leppard, AC/DC and all the "hair bands" of the '80s that eventually got their own FM stations as rock radio splintered further later in the decade.
 
CTListener said:
And that discussion centers on a station that's tweaking its classic rock format to "the next generation of classic rock," eliminating all '60s and many '70s tracks in favor of '80s and '90s material.
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But it's similar to all the other sub-formats we're seeing on the AC side. They're building song lists that draw on music that was played in multiple formats when they were currents. So some people are shocked to see a song by Styx getting played on a soft AC station. On the surface it makes no sense in terms of genre, but it makes sense if you're creating a playlist based on tempo. There are lots of ways to chop up the same head of lettuce, and lots of vegetables you can add to a salad. If we're building radio formats strictly around song lists, this is going to happen more and more.
 
TheBigA said:
But it's similar to all the other sub-formats we're seeing on the AC side. They're building song lists that draw on music that was played in multiple formats when they were currents. So some people are shocked to see a song by Styx getting played on a soft AC station. On the surface it makes no sense in terms of genre, but it makes sense if you're creating a playlist based on tempo. There are lots of ways to chop up the same head of lettuce, and lots of vegetables you can add to a salad. If we're building radio formats strictly around song lists, this is going to happen more and more.
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"Babe" is the only Styx song that would qualify as soft AC. WEZV plays it. Any other Styx songs would be AC, if the AC station was still playing the 80s, or perhaps the 70s.
 
vchimpanzee said:
"Babe" is the only Styx song that would qualify as soft AC. WEZV plays it. Any other Styx songs would be AC, if the AC station was still playing the 80s, or perhaps the 70s.
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"Come Sail Away" and "The Best of Times" are other possibilities. I think that you expect "Soft AC" to be softer than it really is.
 
oldiesgirl said:
I have been listening to AC stations since I was a six-year-old kid in 1992, and I remember that the soft rock stations as we used to call them were always advertising that they were the station you could listen to with your kids in the car and there would be no awkward lyrics. I very rarely listen to local radio anymore as I am 31 going on 71 when it comes to music, so I don't know if they're still using that slogan. I usually listen to online streams of oldies or AC from other cities because they play the older music I like. Right now I'm listening to KGDE in Dallas to see what it's like, and the first song I heard when I opened the player after the commercial break was "Uptown Funk" by Bruno Mars, and although it was edited, there were still some pretty suggestive lyrics that you probably wouldn't want to hear your little kid singing along with at the top of their voice.

I'm not trying to sound prudish, but it has got me curious. Has AC discontinued the family-friendly claims, or do they tone down their playlist when the soccer moms they are presumably targeting would be listening? If they are not, which stations would fill that gap?
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Wasn't the claim "Family Friendly" really based on the consultants in the 2000's saying that the AC/ Hot AC Format main audiences was mother/daughter tandems as their core audience from 2001-2006?

But that was when Five For Fighting, Train, Michelle Branch, Pink, Vanessa Carlton, Avril Lavigne, John Mayer, Dave Matthews Band, Rob Thomas, Matchbox Twenty and Kelly Clarkson were then the big names in Pop at the time the claim was made.
 
semoochie said:
This is a little bit like telling someone who has never been there to stop at the house that used to be red!
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I'm just saying that if you're going to use a term it needs to mean something. WEZV is soft AC now, and softer than the ones in Miami and Tampa, but they tried to call their format soft AC for a decade before the big change, when it was really borderline standards. WMNI is almost a standards station as well, but for lack of a better term, it is called soft AC. Why "Hold On" by Wilson Phillips is even played on the station (or was; I haven't listened lately since KLO came back) is a mystery.
 
vchimpanzee said:
What, then, do you call WEZV in the years 2008 to 2017, or WMNI? Both stations used the term.
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You mean the station you constantly talk about and compare every other station in the format to? Don’t know, didn’t listen to it back then, but judging from research and from your posts, a hybrid of standards and some soft oldies.

WMNI is the modern soft AC.

Soft oldies and soft AC are virtually the same thing, just tweak the playlist slightly to local tastes and emphasize a certain period and you’re set. (As a former programmer, format lines and descriptions blur so much.) Also, the modern soft AC has to be somewhat mainstream enough and get somewhat edgy. You can’t expect songs like “Hold On” to not be on the playlist because of personal opinion or whatever. Sonically, it fits, and it was a staple on AC stations when it was first released and many years afterward because it tested well.
 
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