The new krth

[davideduardo]

Something from another thread got me to thinking. If rankings on the Billboard chart before 1980 didn't really mean anything, does that mean that the Beatles, holding down the top four spots in April 1964, didn't mean anything either?

That chart anomaly was probably as much fate as it was fact.

As has been explained, the Billboard and Cash Box charts from that era were based on shipments to retail, not retail sales. In many cases, labels filled the channels with excess product to move up the chart, and dealers who had liberal return policies overstocked, particularly on hot single artists as they knew that the window for sales of any particular title was very narrow.

Were the songs hits? Undoubtedly. Were they really 1, 2, 3 and 4? Possible... but understanding the underpinnings of charts makes the achievement less than bankable.

 

[CTListener]

"The listing of records herein is the opinion of KHJ based on its survey of record sales, listener requests, and KHJ's judgment of the record's appeal."

Unsurprisingly, the same wording appeared at the bottom of WRKO Boston's "Now 30" as well.

 

[oldies76]

That chart anomaly was probably as much fate as it was fact.

As has been explained, the Billboard and Cash Box charts from that era were based on shipments to retail, not retail sales. In many cases, labels filled the channels with excess product to move up the chart, and dealers who had liberal return policies overstocked, particularly on hot single artists as they knew that the window for sales of any particular title was very narrow.

Were the songs hits? Undoubtedly. Were they really 1, 2, 3 and 4? Possible... but understanding the underpinnings of charts makes the achievement less than bankable.

Either way, that's what collectors, radio stations, oldies geeks...etc...go by when we reference music. It is what it is. That goes for the KRTH or KHJ charts, Billboard, Cash Box or any chart you want to mention. 35 #1 songs in 1974?? That's what we go by. Beatles having the top four slots occupied, that's what we go by...It's history and it's the facts and it's in book form, selling tons of copies through Record Research. The facts cannot be denied.

Lorde's song "Royals" is now #1 for EIGHT weeks on Billboard this year. It's the facts. They don't lie.

 

[davideduardo]

It's the facts. They don't lie.

The thing is that charts, just like ratings, are estimates.

A chart in first three decades of Top 40 was based on wholesale shipments for the most part. Not retail. Lots of product came back as returns. Lots of product was given in exchange for sales reports. So the chart was an estimate, a best guess, based on data. But a chart was not "fact".

Ratings are also estimates, not facts. They are based on the behavior of some people, who may or may not behave exactly like all people do.

In both cases... charts and ratings... the data is eminently usable. But you said... twice... that charts were "facts" and that is not so.

Estimate: I think Microsoft closed somewhere just under $40 today.
Fact: Microsoft closed at $37.08.

Both are correct. But only one is a hard fact. You are making estimates based on rather imprecise data into facts. You just cant breathe life into that straw man.

 

[davideduardo]

Unsurprisingly, the same wording appeared at the bottom of WRKO Boston's "Now 30" as well.

Well, if you are going to get a big bill from a corporate lawyer, you'd better get full value for the legal opinion.

 

[semoochie]

They were both RKO owned stations, in case anyone missed that.

 

[krth101]

So let's sum up Rick Thomas 4 month KRTH track record - 60s songs virtually eliminated, 80s and 90s tracks added, overall playlist changed by about 20% and shrunk by several hundred titles. Many of the jingles eliminated, logo on the website changed and the break from the "drake" formula apparently imminent. *Have to wonder if this was a CBS directive to evolve KRTH or is this solely ricks vision. And begs the question - what would Jhani have done?

 

[davideduardo]

So let's sum up Rick Thomas 4 month KRTH track record - 60s songs virtually eliminated, 80s and 90s tracks added, overall playlist changed by about 20% and shrunk by several hundred titles. Many of the jingles eliminated, logo on the website changed and the break from the "drake" formula apparently imminent. *Have to wonder if this was a CBS directive to evolve KRTH or is this solely ricks vision. And begs the question - what would Jhani have done?

The real issue: 3 weeks into the November book, and the numbers in 25-54 are making nice improvements and significantly reversing the 9-month downtrend this year.

 

[CTListener]

The real issue: 3 weeks into the November book, and the numbers in 25-54 are making nice improvements and significantly reversing the 9-month downtrend this year.

Apparently mirroring the surge of WDRC-FM up here using pretty much the same formula and adding one or two '90s tracks an hour as well. This should settle the argument, but knowing the people involved on the "play all the oldies" side, it most likely isn't.

 

[Thomps2525]

The majority of the "play all the oldies" people are probably in their 50s and 60s and no longer part of the "target audience" of a classic-hits station. David seems to have access to all kinds of research, so maybe he can answer: Over the past three decades, has there been a drop in the percentage of 50-year-olds and 60-year-olds who listen to AM/FM radio? Have older people migrated to Internet radio and satellite radio? Or, perhaps, have many of them quit listening to music altogether?

 

[oldies76]

Estimate: I think Microsoft closed somewhere just under $40 today.
Fact: Microsoft closed at $37.08.

Estimate: I think "Hey Jude" is from the late 60's and spent a long time at #1.
Fact: "Hey Jude" is from 1968 and spent 9 weeks at #1.

 

[Thomps2525]

Hey Jude is from 1969, not 1968, and it got only to #23.

Or are you talking about another version besides Wilson Pickett's?

Today I added five more songs (below) to the KRTH list. KRTH, of course, is now the station that plays all the same burned-out songs that we can hear on KCBS-FM, KLOS and KHHT.

Keep On Loving You - REO Speedwagon (1/1980)
She’s Gone - Hall & Oates (60/1974, 7/1976)
Some Guys Have All The Luck - Rod Stewart (10/1984)
Stuck With You - Huey Lewis/News (1/1986)
The Rubberband Man - Spinners (2/1976)

And this morning at 9:58, KRTH played Brown Eyed Girl...again! Michael keeps insisting that I couldn't possibly hear that song 20 times a week on KRTH. Well.....19 maybe.

 

[oldies76]

And KRTH added: "Too Much Heaven" by the Bee Gees, played at 6:33pm today!

And this morning at 7:52, KRTH played "Sukiyaki" by Kyu Sakamoto from 1963!! (Morning Drive)
Must be testing well among participants, otherwise KRTH wouldn't touch it. Or is it that a "Lost Hit" feature?

Is "Sukiyaki" on your list RR?

 

[oldies76]

Just heard a promo from KRTH, announcing their "specialty" this weekend, beginning at noon tomorrow. A No-Slow Weekend, meaning, no slow songs all weekend long, just upbeat songs. Basically, a parade of hits weekend, without the slow songs.......
Sound familiar??

 

[michael hagerty]

David, from 1967 through 1980 I typed the weekly list of top 30 singles and top 20 albums for a local record store. (That was back when there were such things as records.) Every Friday, someone from KHJ would call and ask for the entire list of singles. Our store was one of many that were called each week. As you pointed out, our list was just a ranking and did not include sales figures. In the latter half of the '60s, KHJ moved songs up and down their Top 30 very quickly. It was rare for a song to be on for more than eight weeks. During any given week, songs that were still among our top ten biggest sellers would already be off KHJ's list. For three weeks in April-May 1976, Jimmy Dean's IOU was, by far, our biggest seller. I imagine it sold well at all the other stores too. Of course KHJ never played it. Why?, you ask. Let's read the "small print" on the old Boss 30 surveys, shall we?

"The listing of records herein is the opinion of KHJ based on its survey of record sales, listener requests, and KHJ's judgment of the record's appeal."

Obviously IOU had appeal to record buyers...but not to Bill Drake and Ron Jacobs.

Here are two more "small print" disclaimers:

"This list is selected on the basis of combined sales and KRLA's opinion of its entertainment valuie."

"This survey is compiled each week by radio station KFWB, Los Angeles, California, from reports of sales of recorded sound gathered from all leading retail outlets in the Los Angeles area. This survey is a true, accurate and unbiased account."

In other words, if KFWB still played top 40 in 1976, ol' Jimmy would have been on the Fabulous Forty survey.

Curiosity got the better of me.

I decided to check in to see if anything had changed.

Nah.

So before I let myself back out...

Steve: Whatever you were selling at one record store in April-May of 1976:

1. Not only didn't count with KHJ, but tell me which Los Angeles contemporary hit radio stations did play Jimmy Dean's IOU.

2. You imagine it sold well at the other stores, do you? Nice imagination. Record stiffed at #35 in Billboard but you think KHJ should have been on it because it was the #1 seller at your store and you imagine it sold well elsewhere.....(it did make #9 on the Country chart...maybe those were Country listeners you were selling to).

3. It had appeal to some record buyers who shopped in your store (how many copies a week did you move, Steve?). Whether it had any appeal to Bill Drake and Ron Jacobs was irrelevant since Drake left KHJ three years before IOU was released....and Jacobs seven years before.

4. You do know that KRLA crushed KFWB and KHJ crushed them both, right?

 

[mighty met]

The majority of the "play all the oldies" people are probably in their 50s and 60s and no longer part of the "target audience" of a classic-hits station. David seems to have access to all kinds of research, so maybe he can answer: Over the past three decades, has there been a drop in the percentage of 50-year-olds and 60-year-olds who listen to AM/FM radio? Have older people migrated to Internet radio and satellite radio? Or, perhaps, have many of them quit listening to music altogether?

Just anecdotally, both my parents, who are pushing 70, should theoretically have been fans of Oldies radio. They have original vinyl Beatles albums from 64, can talk about hearing Satisfaction as a new song on the radio, and later migrated to FM rock, as reflected in Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Don McClean, and ELO albums in their collection. (Well, the records in the attic. What they actually listen to are mp3s.)

Do they listen to the radio? As a kid, I heard Boston's WBZ AM constantly, top 40 WRKO, FM Soft Rock WJIB, classical WCRB... everything... Today? Never, not even when KRTH really did play Oldies. (They moved out here 15 years ago to escape the cold.) Radio is totally boring to them; it's not even on their radar. In the house, they don't even have radios, and in the car, it's NPR, maybe the Wave back when it was truly "The Wave."

The dirty secret of radio "ratings" is that all the people wearing the meters are pre-screened. I know because I was asked once. They first find out if you listen regularly. If you don't, they move on. If you do, they move in and try to slap a meter on you. That means they're only sampling people who a) actively listen, and b) are responsible enough to wear and recharge nightly their meters. The true story of radio is that very few people are listening anymore.

The only people I know who are passionate about radio are, surprisingly, children. They love AMP and KIIS....with a few renegades who like 98.7. Those of you with kids know what I'm talking about. For anyone over 20, though, radio is more of a background music thing at this point.

 

[Thomps2525]

I'm not getting involved in another debate with Michael...but I remember when top 40 stations (such as KFWB 1958-63 and KRLA 1959-63) played the forty biggest hits regardless of music genre. We heard Dave Brubeck and Don Gibson and Elvis Presley and Etta James and the Ventures and Pat Boone and Domenico Modugno and the Chipmunks and the Monotones and Johnny Horton and Dean Martin and Martin Denny, all on one station. Such stations would have played IOU if ol' Jimmy had recorded it in 1960 instead of 1976. Top-40 evolved into "Contemporary Hits Radio"---what I call "Hits Without Much Variety."

Mister oldies76, I hesitate to add Sukiyaki to the KRTH list. (That's the dumb American title of Ue O Muite Arukō, or 上を向いて歩こう? in the original Japanese.) Earlier in the week, Gary played Zorba The Greek by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. Who was listening? Were those songs played as part of a contest or special feature? Or maybe just a snippet of each song was played to accompany a weird news story? I bet we never hear them again on KRTH.

 

[davideduardo]

The dirty secret of radio "ratings" is that all the people wearing the meters are pre-screened. I know because I was asked once. They first find out if you listen regularly. If you don't, they move on. If you do, they move in and try to slap a meter on you. That means they're only sampling people who a) actively listen, and b) are responsible enough to wear and recharge nightly their meters. The true story of radio is that very few people are listening anymore.

While you may have been "per-screened" for some other kind of research, such as music testing, perceptual studies, etc., you were probably not called for Portable People Meter.

People meter recruiters are looking for a sample that reflects the population, radio users and non-users. While they do ask some "radio questions" of a very generic type as a warm-up to get people in the mood to accept household meter placement...

... and a parenthesis here, as Nielsen (and formerly Arbitron) recruit households / dwelling units, not individuals.

The idea of the initial questions is to make people feel that their opinion matters. Those responses are not tabulated.

In any case, the PPM, depending on the demo, shows that anywhere from 6% to 12% of people with meters don't listen to radio in any given week.

And people accept the meter because they are nicely incentivized, with the premiums accumulated on a household basis and often representing getting the new refrigerator or something similar.

 

[davideduardo]

Top-40 evolved into "Contemporary Hits Radio"---what I call "Hits Without Much Variety."
.

Top 40 has always been Top 40. CHR is simply a proprietary name R&R put on their Top 40 chart to make them appear to be better or different or unique. The name stuck.

The diversity of the format goes back to when there were few music stations in the early 50's when the format was created. By the mid-70's, with each market having many times more the number of viable stations, broad mass appeal playlists split into subsets. Heck, I knew that when I was about 10, as I would switch between stations when they played one of "my mom's" songs instead of one of my favorites.

 

[Thomps2525]

Hey, what kind of an animal hater are you that you couldn't stand hearing Doggie In The Window by Patti Page?

Very few country hits have gotten airplay on CHR stations since the early 1980s "Urban Cowboy" craze. Taylor Swift is an exception. In 1992, Billy Ray Cyrus's Achy Breaky Heart was a number-one country hit and reached #4 on the Hot 100. KIIS couldn't ignore such a big hit so the song spent a few weeks on the KIIS Top 30. However, it was played only once a week, during the Friday afternoon countdown show.