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Does anyone besides me think AC today is a joke?

michael hagerty said:
Well, I seem to have gotten one lengthy thread back on topic today...let's try for two.

AC is whatever women between 25 and 54, or 18 and 49, depending on the station and market, want to hear.

It's not a type of music. It is contemporary music for adults.

It has gone back to what it was in the beginnings of the format (the late 60s/early 70s)...Top 40 with the five or six hardest records (rock then, hip-hop now) left out.

When Top 40 became CHR in the early 1980s, there was a corresponding shift in music. Air Supply, Kenny Rogers and Juice Newton were replaced at the top of the charts by The Police, David Bowie and Duran Duran.

Jhani Kaye then crafted a soft, emotional music mix for KOST in Los Angeles that was a huge hit with adult women. And other Adult Contemporary stations followed his lead.

As I've said before, demographics are like archery. Aim for the center of the target and the ripples will spread. We're talking about 39-year-old women in 25-54, 33-year-olds in 18-49.

When Jhani launched his "Continuous Soft Hits" approach at KOST, he was pitching to...and hitting...39-year-old women. In 1983, that meant women born in 1944. They liked Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand and Lionel Richie.

Those women are 71 today.

The change to what AC is now seems jarring because, like Oldies (the format, not the poster), programmers afraid to upset the applecart let it go too long and the demographics got very top-heavy on them.

A 39-year-old woman today? She was born in 1976. She graduated high school in 1994. College in 1998. She was raised almost entirely on 90s music. And since CHR has entered one of its cyclical periods where there are mostly mass-appeal, hook-laden tunes (we've had "Blurred Lines" in 2013, followed by "Happy" in 2014 and now "Uptown Funk"), she's very likely to be listening to CHR, as well.

So we're back to AC being a format where that listener is just as likely to hear her favorite music as she is on CHR, without having to hear Flo Rida's "GDFR" (but some of them may like that).

Tempus has done fugited, gang.
Click to expand...

I'm glad you're still out there, Michael and thank you for using my "apple cart" reference. :)
 
Cherry picked by research? :)
 
vchimpanzee said:
In Myrtle Beach SC, AC the way it used to be is coming back.

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/news/local/article20139936.html
Click to expand...

Not even close. Read the key passage in the article.

He said with the conclusion that after about seven years, “Movin” had “reached all it could reach,” the switch was made to “The Tide,” to attract some younger listeners.

Rather than go with a contemporary hit radio format, which appeals to younger adults, “The Tide” will aim for “a happy medium,” Wally B. said, but without rap and “being too edgy.”

The new station touts the slogan, “Today’s Best & Yesterday’s Favorites.” Wally B. said besides current hits, the playlist will reach back decades as far back as the 1960s, when such groups as the Tempations, Miracles and Supremes had their “monster hits” and “cherry pick” some other standards from the 1970s through the ’90s.
Click to expand...

If he's going younger than "Movin'", and his example of 60s are all Motown acts, I think what you're going to see is a rhythmic pop station that...as he said...avoids rap and being "too edgy". It certainly won't be AC the way it used to be.
 
eriedj said:
Cherry picked by research? :)
Click to expand...

That's how cherry picking of titles is done, yes.

I wouldn't expect this station to be anything close to soft AC. The '60s titles may be limited to a couple of dozen superhits, if that. If they just limited the format to '60s-'80s, it would be a pop-leaning classic hits station. Finding the right '90s titles -- and some say there are none to be found, so polarizing was the decade's music -- will be the station's biggest challenge. The Temptations ('60s) and Huey Lewis and the News ('80s) should be able to coexist. Will the Beatles and Hootie and the Blowfish be able to do the same or will each other's songs prove to be "bad songs" -- station-switchers for certain segments of the audience?
 
CTListener said:
That's how cherry picking of titles is done, yes.

I wouldn't expect this station to be anything close to soft AC. The '60s titles may be limited to a couple of dozen superhits, if that. If they just limited the format to '60s-'80s, it would be a pop-leaning classic hits station. Finding the right '90s titles -- and some say there are none to be found, so polarizing was the decade's music -- will be the station's biggest challenge. The Temptations ('60s) and Huey Lewis and the News ('80s) should be able to coexist. Will the Beatles and Hootie and the Blowfish be able to do the same or will each other's songs prove to be "bad songs" -- station-switchers for certain segments of the audience?
Click to expand...
If this isn't Soft AC, it's going to sound weird with the older songs. People described how My 102.5 in Greenville held on to too many 70s songs when it went Hot AC, and the result must have been something like this. K-104.7 in Charlotte also sounds quite weird when it tries to play older songs, especially soft ones.

My first thought when I ... well, we can't quote what is already "quoted". When I read the part about not edgy and avoiding rap, I thought it would be like AC is today, but not Star, which is supposedly Hot AC. Then I saw that they were going all the way back to the 60s. So I concluded maybe it would be like AC was before stations started focusing more on today than the 70s. After all, this company has done Soft AC before, but this will obviously not be soft like that.
 
Last edited:
Hip Hop; Rhythmic Hits

michael hagerty said:
Well, I seem to have gotten one lengthy thread back on topic today...let's try for two.

AC is whatever women between 25 and 54, or 18 and 49, depending on the station and market, want to hear.

It's not a type of music. It is contemporary music for adults.

It has gone back to what it was in the beginnings of the format (the late 60s/early 70s)...Top 40 with the five or six hardest records (rock then, hip-hop now) left out.

When Top 40 became CHR in the early 1980s, there was a corresponding shift in music. Air Supply, Kenny Rogers and Juice Newton were replaced at the top of the charts by The Police, David Bowie and Duran Duran.

Jhani Kaye then crafted a soft, emotional music mix for KOST in Los Angeles that was a huge hit with adult women. And other Adult Contemporary stations followed his lead.

As I've said before, demographics are like archery. Aim for the center of the target and the ripples will spread. We're talking about 39-year-old women in 25-54, 33-year-olds in 18-49.

When Jhani launched his "Continuous Soft Hits" approach at KOST, he was pitching to...and hitting...39-year-old women. In 1983, that meant women born in 1944. They liked Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand and Lionel Richie.

Those women are 71 today.

The change to what AC is now seems jarring because, like Oldies (the format, not the poster), programmers afraid to upset the applecart let it go too long and the demographics got very top-heavy on them.

A 39-year-old woman today? She was born in 1976. She graduated high school in 1994. College in 1998. She was raised almost entirely on 90s music. And since CHR has entered one of its cyclical periods where there are mostly mass-appeal, hook-laden tunes (we've had "Blurred Lines" in 2013, followed by "Happy" in 2014 and now "Uptown Funk"), she's very likely to be listening to CHR, as well.

So we're back to AC being a format where that listener is just as likely to hear her favorite music as she is on CHR, without having to hear Flo Rida's "GDFR" (but some of them may like that).

Tempus has done fugited, gang.
Click to expand...

To an adult listener of pop radio, "Hip Hop" means GDFR.

Avoiding hip hop means Flo Rida, not Fetty Wap and Rae Sremmurd.

Someone who likes Flo Rida, and is listening to CHR, is likely to also hear Wiz Khalifa.

Mass appeal songs, such as Blurred Lines and Uptown Funk, not only appeal to AC radio's target listener, but also those who grew up with R&B, not hip hop.

Both Oops Upside Your Head and Got to Give It Up predate the original and revived Billboard Top 40/Rhythmic-Crossover charts.

Throwback radio stations, one could argue, address the appetite for rhythmic hits of the 90s, better than AC can.

This includes songs you could describe as being hip hop, but are not truly "Classic Hip Hop".
 
Leia,

Please stop attempting to post the same thing over and over. As a guest, you are under moderation. Each of your posts must be approved before others can read them.
I urge you to become a member so that your posts will not be under moderation.

Thanks,
Frank Berry
 
frankberry said:
Leia,

Please stop attempting to post the same thing over and over. As a guest, you are under moderation. Each of your posts must be approved before others can read them.
I urge you to become a member so that your posts will not be under moderation.

Thanks,
Frank Berry
Click to expand...

I'm unable to register. I don't have a private email and I'm not interested in getting Facebook.
 
frankberry said:
Leia,

Please stop attempting to post the same thing over and over. As a guest, you are under moderation. Each of your posts must be approved before others can read them.
I urge you to become a member so that your posts will not be under moderation.

Thanks,
Frank Berry
Click to expand...

Sorry about that. I'm just impatient at times. However, I'm unable to register. I don't have a private email and I have no interest in joining Facebook just to post quicker here.
 
Leia Durane said:
I'm unable to register. I don't have a private email and I'm not interested in getting Facebook.
Click to expand...

Gmail
Yahoo
GMX
outlook.com
mail.com
Yandex
Hushmail
AOL
Inbox.com
Mail2World

... just to name ten possible (and free) solutions.
 
Leia Durane said:
K.M. Richards said:
Gmail
Yahoo
GMX
outlook.com
mail.com
Yandex
Hushmail
AOL
Inbox.com
Mail2World

... just to name ten possible (and free) solutions.
Click to expand...
Possible if I didn't have to share a computer with a roommate.
Click to expand...
Sure it is. Your e-mail account would have its own password; just make sure the browser doesn't auto-save your passwords and your privacy is maintained.
 
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