M
Music Lover
Guest
When I was a kid, I liked some boy bands from the UK. I seek out UK stations like this to hear their hits: http://www.heartbeatfm.net
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Please Explain The Logic to "No Soft Music on AC Anymore"
- Thread starter Gregg
- Start date
M
Music Lover
Guest
According to the Wikipedia article about AC, the format had it's roots in easy listening and soft rock. That's why I've always considered it synonymous with soft and lite. It wasn't until the late 1990s that I ever heard of Hot AC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_contemporary_music
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_contemporary_music
Reads like it was written by someone who wasn't there. AC began in the late 60s and for its first 15 years, mainly on AM stations like WGAR, Cleveland, KFMB, San Diego and (at certain points) WNBC, New York was just a slightly dialed-back Top 40 minus the five hardest records and with deeper gold. It had much more in common with Top 40 than it did MOR which is why it was called Adult Contemporary.
Or, often referred to as "chicken rock". It was definitely a Top 40 derivative, not an offshoot from Beautiful Music or MOR.
M
Music Lover
Guest
They have it in line with what Allmusic.com and About.com has.
http://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/adult-contemporary-ma0000004445
http://oldies.about.com/od/oldieshistory/g/adultcontemp.htm
This one says it serves the same purpose as MOR: http://www.udel.edu/nero/Radio/readings/acontemp.html
Could be whatever sources they used to compile the articles.
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Written by someone, as Michael says, who did not live the era. Close, but muddled.
Just downright wrong, written by an "oldies expert" who looks way to young to have been around music and radio in the 60's and 70's. And he can't even spell right: "piece" instead of "peace". Lightweight, with many errors of fact.
At one point, "Easy Listening" and "Beautiful Music" were pretty much synonymous, with the format morphing from Billy Vaughn and Enoch Light to Percy Faith and Paul Mauriat in the mid to late 60's. The article says pretty much the opposite, and even commits the monumental error of saying "Beautiful Music" did not play vocals, making me wonder how "The Last Farewell" managed to get played on all the SRP and Bonneville stations.
That one gets it right, although there may be too much analysis of the simple fact that Adult Contemporary is Top 40 music without the harder stuff (hard Urban, hard rock, hard country, hard alternative) and with more gold than a CHR.
Disclosure: that description is based significantly on the Keith book which is widely accepted and used, and makes use of real industry experts. I was even asked to collaborate in the last revision, so I am biased (and honored).
M
Music Lover
Guest
Even on the forum at Amazon people are equating AC with soft rock/MOR: http://www.amazon.com/forum/music/r...dPage=1&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=TxPXQ9487Y7JOZ
My baby boomer relatives have even equated old-school AC with easy listening.
My baby boomer relatives have even equated old-school AC with easy listening.
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No argument regarding the evolution, but by the late 80s/early 90s, AC was synonymous with a 'lite' format being marketed primarily to women ('Lite FM'). It was then that any logical mention of an AC format would have a listener expect a 'soft' music format. Not beautiful music by then, but certainly nothing trending towards even mildly hard rock. Barbra, Celine Dion, lighter Madonna fare, Michael Bolton, etc.
In the last 6-7 years this assocation has changed with the format trending more to what it was at its inception.
In the last 6-7 years this assocation has changed with the format trending more to what it was at its inception.
I've also heard the "chicken rock" format called "housewife rock," due to its marketing to women. (Maybe they meant "chick rock"? In either case it's somewhat disparaging.) If you look back though to AC charts from, say around 1973-74, a great many of the performers and records were also in heavy play on Top 40. Ringo Starr, Helen Reddy, Barry White, Anne Murray, John Denver, Cher, Paul Simon, Diana Ross, Tony Orlando, and others. The more pop-oriented stations played primarily artists of this type; while the more traditional easy-listening stations played some of them in the mix with Humperdinck, Jack Jones, etc.
M
Music Lover
Guest
I remember the format most during my teen years in the 90s. Of course, at that time, they were playing Barbra, Celine Dion, lighter Madonna fare, Michael Bolton, boy band ballads, etc.
Here's an article talking about one my family listened to in the 80s, when I was elementary school age: http://www.roanokeradio.com/wpvr/. This is the Wikipedia entry for the station now, but as the entry mentions, the station evolved from the mostly instrumental format to vocal Lite AC of the 90s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSLC-FM
Maybe some of these articles are more familiar with stations that evolved like WPVR did.
Here's an article talking about one my family listened to in the 80s, when I was elementary school age: http://www.roanokeradio.com/wpvr/. This is the Wikipedia entry for the station now, but as the entry mentions, the station evolved from the mostly instrumental format to vocal Lite AC of the 90s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSLC-FM
Maybe some of these articles are more familiar with stations that evolved like WPVR did.
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M
Music Lover
Guest
This is another one my family listened to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMAG. When we tuned in, it was during my teen years in the 90s. At that time, the station's playlist was like this one: www.softneasy.com
This is another one that my family listened to when it was MOR and Soft AC but I don't remember too much about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMKS
This is another one that my family listened to when it was MOR and Soft AC but I don't remember too much about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMKS
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I remember Chicken Rock. In the late 60's, I worked for WGTO, Cypress Gardens, Florida. They played 'Chicken Rock' ....
It was called Chicken Rock because the format was somewhere between MOR (Middle Of the Road) and Top 40. The stations were too Chicken to play songs which might offend some of their listeners who professed to hate Rock & Roll.
I Googled 'chicken rock radio' and found this which I copied from Wikipedia:
Adult Contemporary has existed in one form or another since the 1960s. During that decade, programmers discovered that not all adults disliked rock music. There were some adults who actually liked it and others who would tolerate a little rock music with their adult (MOR) standards.
To appeal to this audience's tastes, radio programmers developed a format called Chicken Rock. The term started as a joke to indicate that these stations flirted with the rock sound but avoided rock's harder edge. Chicken Rockers culled the softer sounding hits from the Top 40 playlists. As a result they appealed to adults who wanted to be "hip" but still claim they did not like rock music.
It was called Chicken Rock because the format was somewhere between MOR (Middle Of the Road) and Top 40. The stations were too Chicken to play songs which might offend some of their listeners who professed to hate Rock & Roll.
I Googled 'chicken rock radio' and found this which I copied from Wikipedia:
Adult Contemporary has existed in one form or another since the 1960s. During that decade, programmers discovered that not all adults disliked rock music. There were some adults who actually liked it and others who would tolerate a little rock music with their adult (MOR) standards.
To appeal to this audience's tastes, radio programmers developed a format called Chicken Rock. The term started as a joke to indicate that these stations flirted with the rock sound but avoided rock's harder edge. Chicken Rockers culled the softer sounding hits from the Top 40 playlists. As a result they appealed to adults who wanted to be "hip" but still claim they did not like rock music.
This is what it looked like before Jhani Kaye and "Continuous Soft Hits" took hold in 1983-ish: (The site shows the format as Top 40, which shows the similarity between the formats:
http://www.las-solanas.com/arsa/surveys_item.php?svid=34784
And here's the Top 40 station in the same market in the same month:
http://las-solanas.com/arsa/surveys...=641&lcnt=30&srt1=tsc_psv DESC&vqry=san diego
All of which is revisionist history, no doubt fueled by the comments of people who did not live the era, understand the metamorphosis of formats or both.
M
Music Lover
Guest
Looks like the people on the Amazon forum probably grew up hearing it in the 80s.
As for my family, they equated it with easy listening because we had a station in my neck of the woods that evolved from instrumental easy listening. Here's what I had posted about the station on page 15:
Here's an article talking about one my family listened to in the 80s, when I was elementary school age: http://www.roanokeradio.com/wpvr/. This is the Wikipedia entry for the station now, but as the entry mentions, the station evolved from the mostly instrumental format to vocal Lite AC of the 90s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSLC-FM
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WBZ(AM) Boston went Chicken Rock soon after WNAC dropped talk and became Top 40 WRKO, in 1967. In the summer of '66, you could hear "Psychotic Reaction" and similar guitar-driven rock hits on 'BZ. Come the following summer, the hard edge was gone. Before long, it was a full-blown full-service AC -- hipper than WHDH, but nothing that kids who were listening to WRKO and WHDH would want to listen to in any great numbers.
WBZ - Radio 103. I listened to them in the early 60's.
M
Music Lover
Guest
The two I mentioned here: http://www.radiodiscussions.com/sho...Anymore-quot&p=6001007&viewfull=1#post6001007 were in the "Continuous Soft Hits" era.
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M
Music Lover
Guest
Then again they may have grown up in the 70's. Many of them talk about collecting 45's and talk about "back in the day when radio was mostly top 40, you could hear James Taylor, Carpenters, Carly Simon, America, Barry Manilow, Billy Joel and on and on right along with current rockers of the day."
A
Avid Listener
Guest
Does it really matter what the Adult Contemporary format started out to be several decades ago? It's 2014. I don't know about anyone else, but none of my radios have the time travel option. I can only tune in what is being broadcast today. And compared to what certain radio stations were playing a relatively short time ago, much of the kind of music I liked on those stations a few short years ago isn't played anymore. As a result, I've stopped listening to those stations.
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