With even Philadelphia embracing the 90s, I got curious about stations still playing some 60s, a healthy share of 70s but no 90s. That's the way it is in Portland and I just wonder how common it still is. I don't want to get too crazy with this. The top 50 or so markets would suffice. If that's the case in your market, I'd like to know. It would give me some idea when to expect a change here. Thank you!
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Classic Hits Stations Still Playing 60s & 70s But No 90s
- Thread starter semoochie
- Start date
CTListener
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I don't think the Conn./R.I./Mass. oldies simulcast on various AM and FM frequencies has touched the '90s yet. It seems to favor '70s slightly over '80s, with only a sprinkling of '60s hits.
Scott Shannon's True Oldies format, on several stations across the country, plays '60s through '80s but avoids the '90s. I'd put the split somewhere around 40 percent '60s, 50 percent '70s, 10 percent '80s. The '60s are still a very strong decade on this syndicated feed. Even '50s songs are used as "spice" in "roots of rock and roll" flashbacks.
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vchimpanzee
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I didn't want to start a whole new topic, but Good Time Oldies has been saying the 60s and 70s and earlier this week they said 60s, 70s and 80s. They have been doing the 50s too but i don't know if they still are.
landtuna
Walk of Fame Participant
I know what I am about to say does not agree with the majority of radio programmers but.....Classic Hits (or Oldies if you prefer) is not a sliding measure of what-were-then popular songs. CH and Oldies are a specific period in time which generally runs from the mid-50's through the mid-80's. Most pop music from the mid-80's onward will never be considered CH or Oldies no matter how long OTA music radio lasts (and its days seem already to be somewhat numbered).
That ought to stir the pot.
That ought to stir the pot.
eriedj
Leading Participant
Their classic country is also very old.
The pot is not stirred.
"Oldies" and "Classic Hits" are terms-of-the-trade and have specific meanings.
Oldies formats generally are 60's based, and may have some 50's... or not... and usually have some early 70's.
Classic hits formats are now based pretty much on 1975-1990, with the most songs from 1982 to 1986, and declining numbers in the 5 to 6 year periods preceding and following the core years. 1985-1990 is very, very important to most classic hits stations.
For example, 40% of the songs on KOOL-FM in Phoenix are from 1985 onwards. Nearly 55% are 1980-1984. So, in fact, well over a third of the KOOK-FM songs are from the period of 1985 on which you say "never" to. KOOL-FM is universally considered to be a classic hits station in the industry.
Oldies and Classic hits are different They are two separate formats. Per Nielsen. Per BDS and MediaBase.
Neither format is based on what was popular "then". They are based on songs from a specific era which are still popular now, based on current listener research.
Yeah. "Streets of Bakersfield" is considered a "current" there...
From 1988. They are very 70s heavy...but a lot of their stations are AMs. They also offer a Nash Icon format that's more 80s-90s.
landtuna
Walk of Fame Participant
They may be terms of the trade but they are also prevalent in casual conversation by non-radio folks. That's one reason I said Oldies and CH terms are pretty much interchangeable. Not for radio professionals but for the general public.
According to my definition KOOL-FM hasn't been Oldies in at least two decades. I quit listening to them long ago and there was a time I would not have left Phoenix because I loved that station and the great DJ's that lived there.
Not really. It all depends on the terms local radio and social media and even Sirius/XM use.
Generally, classic hits stations shun as toxic the "oldies" term.
One can look at the paid services and see that the biggest change at KOOL was when they tightened the playlist in the very early 00's. The result was that the bigger testing hits of the late 60's and 70's got played a lot more. Gradually, over the next decade or so, they dropped off the 60's and then the early 70's and now are killing all but a few late 70's. This is a slow process, running in parallel with the desire to not appeal to those who drop out of their target demographic.
In other words, they stopped being an oldies station when oldies appealed almost entirely to those over 55.
CTListener
Walk of Fame Participant
Do non-radio people even use the term "classic hits"? I worked with a woman in her mid-50s a couple of years ago whose favorite station was WHCN Hartford, which is a mid-'70s through mid-'90s classic hits station but uses only "The River" for branding, and she was always calling it "the oldies station" when she couldn't remember its name or call.
I've never heard SiriusXM use either "oldies" or "classic hits" on air on any of its decades channels. Their identity is exclusively the channels' official name. SiriusXM is married to the decades concept and has never has a broadly based channel for Top 40 hits. What's played on each of the channels is determined, by and large, strictly by year of release, which creates ridiculous situations such as Grass Roots and Three Dog Night hits that have pretty much the same sound being played on separate channels just because one came out in late 1969 and the other in early 1970.
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Good point.
Format names... let's take the extreme of "Adult Hits"... are generally industry terms. ("Adult Hits" in case anyone is not aware, is the Nielsen-approved term for formats like "Jack")
"The Music of Your Life" was not a standards format. It was a music of your life format, because, as you say, that is what the station calls itself. Listeners apply whatever term the want.
"Beautiful Music" was often described as the "soft music station" or the "nice music station". Maybe liners like "All day, all night, all nice" had something to do with it.
And, going to the extreme, no current pop hits station calls themselves See-Aych-Arr on the air.
This is kinda' like how every kid in the 40's had their own mental image of what The Lone Ranger looked like. And to most, he did not look like some guy in a suit with a comb-over in a studio at WXYZ in Detroit.
Theater of the Mind still lives in the images we create.
CTListener
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Same goes for "Ay-Cee" and its sub-formats: Soft, Hot and Urban. As a listener, I can't even think of a label I might put on an adult contemporary station if I didn't know the industry label. I think people who listen to AC stations regularly generally refer to them by their call, their frequency or their imaging (Mix, Lite, etc), not by the kind of music they play.
"Top 40," CHR's ancestor, successfully moved from industry jargon to common parlance. I'd imagine that many people in their 20s and 30s would know the kind of station you were talking about if you were to describe one as "Top 40" to them in conversation. It would be their local "Hits" or "Kiss," the station concerning which they'd look at you blankly if you were to call it a CHR.
vchimpanzee
Walk of Fame Participant
Good Time Oldies doesn't have a problem with being called oldies, but it should. Sometimes the music is good. And then sometimes it sounds more like classic hits. For example. "Rock and Roll All Nite" by Kiss.
vchimpanzee
Walk of Fame Participant
This just makes no sense. "She Blinded Me with Science" and then an hour later "Chantilly Lace". No DJs. No satellite. Just automation.
It's a local station which seems to do well with all the local advertisers who also advertise on a Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh/ Hannity station with local news in the morning and during breaks and Swap Shop.
It's a local station which seems to do well with all the local advertisers who also advertise on a Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh/ Hannity station with local news in the morning and during breaks and Swap Shop.
CTListener
Walk of Fame Participant
Not sure wildly different songs played an hour apart constitute a train wreck. After all, a significant number of the listeners who heard the Thomas Dolby hit were no longer listening to the station by the time the Big Bopper uttered his salacious "Hello Baaaaay-beee." They had left their cars or switched the station, the latter being extremely likely because any station that would play those two songs is probably playing a lot of tracks that will get folks in cars pushing preset buttons.
Those local advertisers are probably paying just enough for the station to survive.
Your little local station reminds me of a station I listen to when in Vermont or New Hampshire. "That's Life" and "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" and "What Am I Gonna Do With You" and "Superstition" and "Love Is Blue" and "What A Wonderful World" all in the same hour. Lots of mom-and-pops advertising.
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vchimpanzee
Walk of Fame Participant
I know it's not a train wreck unless one follows the other but it doesn't make a lot of sense.
I didn't say it but meant to. This station and the Beck/Rush/Hannity station are co-owned and share a building.
I didn't say it but meant to. This station and the Beck/Rush/Hannity station are co-owned and share a building.
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