Classic Country in Phoenix

GeoffR said:

The Cavemanager's version of Classic Country includes Kansas, The Beatles, Carly Simon, The Everly Brothers, Jim Croce, etc. What a train wreck! (and current Country songs)

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I worked at 50KW FM that was mainstream country.. 60/40 mix new vs old.... and 2 hours a night, did classic country..... and that was the real classic country.. i played a song as old as the early 20s one day, but generally stuck to the 40s to 90s.. nothing newer then 92.

I did play the everly brothers and elvis now and then on the show.

and wouldnt you know, it was the most popular segment on the station...

SomeRadioGuy said:

I worked at 50KW FM that was mainstream country.. 60/40 mix new vs old.... and 2 hours a night, did classic country..... and that was the real classic country.. i played a song as old as the early 20s one day, but generally stuck to the 40s to 90s.. nothing newer then 92.

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Of course when Buck Owens owned KTUF 1580, it played a lot of older stuff. The original Real Country format, a classic country format syndicated by ABC Radio, originated there in the 80s. Last time I checked, that format is still being syndicated nationally.

GeoffR said:

The Cavemanager's version of Classic Country includes Kansas, The Beatles, Carly Simon, The Everly Brothers, Jim Croce, etc. What a train wreck! (and current Country songs)

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I remember hearing real small-town radio back in '89, with KTIL-FM in Tillamook, Oregon. They had a five song currents playlist ("Trouble Me" by 10,000 Maniacs and "Closer Than Friends" by Surface was in super heavy rotation), and they played American Country Countdown on Sunday nights, all in glorious mono. As a small town station, I can see how KAVV would go for variety instead of trying to "rimshot" Tucson with a defined format.

DavidEduardo said:

Funny, when the company I managed bought WTNT in Tallahassee in the late 80's, it was playing Elvis and the Everlys. On the first day we owned the station, we changed GM and changed consultant, going with Rusty Walker and Phil Hunt. We dropped about 600 songs from the playlist, including those two artists. While we had been #1, we added about 4 share points in the next book.

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Was this nominally a contemporary country station with an unusually deep library of recurrents and gold when you took over, or a purely classic country station -- which in the late '80s would have been playing songs largely from before 1975? After your new GM and consultant took over, did it become a tight-playlist, current-hits-intensive station with a few recurrents and a very few golds? And finally, did they simply eliminate 600 of what you always call "bad songs" or were a portion of them replaced by songs that did better in research? I can't conceive of any station being No. 1 in a competitive market with a playlist that's 600 songs too big.

CTListener said:

I can't conceive of any station being No. 1 in a competitive market with a playlist that's 600 songs too big.

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That's kind of the point. Rusty understood that when people say they want variety, they mean "I want a variety of songs I know" and there was never room for a clunker on his stations.

DavidEduardo said:

Funny, when the company I managed bought WTNT in Tallahassee in the late 80's, it was playing Elvis and the Everlys.

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Country was a different format then. It was older and more male. Rusty was one of the first to bring in programming ideas that made the format what it is today.

There were some classic stations still playing 50s artists like Elvis & Everly Brothers as recently as ten years ago. But they were mainly satellite AM stations in small markets.