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KRTH playing 2004 music!

Speaking of MTV hits, KRTH played this one today:

The Metro - Berlin (58/1983)

I wonder if KRTH will ever play Berlin's first hit, Sex (I'm A...). At this point, I don't think I'd be surprised.
 
I say gradually because KRTH still plays Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, Bee Gees, Temptations, Hall & Oates, an occasional Beatles song and You're The One That I Want by John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John. Do you foresee a time when KRTH will no longer be playing any of those artists and instead will focus on 1980s-90 rock and alternative? I do.
 
Thomps2525 said:
Speaking of MTV hits, KRTH played this one today:

The Metro - Berlin (58/1983)

I wonder if KRTH will ever play Berlin's first hit, Sex (I'm A...). At this point, I don't think I'd be surprised.
Click to expand...

You answered yourself in an earlier post when you correctly referred to songs with videos that were prominently featured on MTV. The Metro was. Sex (I'm A ...) wasn't.

So my guess is ... no.
 
Thomps2525 said:
I say gradually because KRTH still plays Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, Bee Gees, Temptations, Hall & Oates, an occasional Beatles song and You're The One That I Want by John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John. Do you foresee a time when KRTH will no longer be playing any of those artists and instead will focus on 1980s-90 rock and alternative? I do.
Click to expand...

I concur, if for no other reason than the proven fact that rock songs age better than pop songs, in terms of listeners' desire to continue hearing them. Witness Classic Rock as a format: KLOS and KSWD still play a lot of rock songs that are older than the span of KRTH's playlist ... and the same thing happens in every market with both a Classic Hits and Classic Rock station.

Hmmmm ... I think I just explained Hotel California.
 
K.M. and I agree on something. Wow! I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that KLOS was adding more 1990s music to its playlist. Today KLOS has played Jane Says by Jane's Addiction, My Hero by the Foo Fighters and Give It Away by Red Hot Chili Peppers.....but they also played Satisfaction, Foxey Lady, For What It's Worth and I'll Follow The Sun. Even though rock songs "age" well, from a programming standpoint does it make sense for a station to play '60s and '90s? Would KLOS's ratings improve if they dropped the 1960s and early 1970s music the way KRTH and KOLA have done?
 
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On many levels, he's right. CHR stations in their time played a very narrow time span of music. Gold in CHR is 5 years ago. So when you broaden a format to cover 3 decades, you're mixing generations. That typically doesn't work.

Technologically speaking, there's an obvious break that happened in the 80s with the advent of digital recording.

It was the decade of the CD, the Walkman, and the Gameboy. This is when radio started to lose TSL to other devices, and music began to become more individual and personal.

In terms of radio, the 80s was the first primarily FM decade for music radio. By then, the formats that we know today were in place.

And then of course you have MTV, which as others have already discussed, had an incredible impact on its time.

So yes, as far as programming a classic hits radio station, as you begin to take the core sound from the 80s and 90s, the previous decades have far less relevance to the audience.

BTW I'm not one of the hard liners in terms of decades or dates. I understand there were transitional artists from the 70s that continued to have an impact in the 80s, and shouldn't be eliminated just because their songs were released in certain years. That may be how Sirius programs its Decades channels, but it wouldn't be what I would recommend.
 
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Thomps2525 said:
Speaking of MTV hits, KRTH played this one today:

The Metro - Berlin (58/1983)

I wonder if KRTH will ever play Berlin's first hit, Sex (I'm A...). At this point, I don't think I'd be surprised.
Click to expand...

Thomps, has KRTH ever played "No More Words" by Berlin (1984)?
 
I checked the KRTH playlists from 2007 through 2015 and No More Words isn't on any of them. If KRTH plays that song, it isn't very often. For your amazement and amusement, I'm posting the link to the playlist from January 2011. (Go to the page and scroll down.) There were 1087 songs. I have a playlist from early 1991, two years after 93.1 switched to an oldies format, and KRTH was playing 1091 songs!

http://xmfan.com/viewtopic.php?t=88117&start=0
 
Thomps2525 said:
I have a playlist from early 1991, two years after 93.1 switched to an oldies format, and KRTH was playing 1091 songs!
Click to expand...

Where could I find this playlist from 1991?
Also Thomps, please check this out, another poster sent me a link for this nice station playing nothing but music from 1955 thru 1982 in chronological order. If you like those lost hits, here you go!

http://thetop40timeclock.radio.net/
 
Thomps2525 said:
I'm posting the link to the playlist from January 2011. (Go to the page and scroll down.) There were 1087 songs.
Click to expand...

However, if you go to songs that played at least once a week, there were just 600 of them (average) for any single week period. If you go to songs that played more often than once a month, we only go up to about 750. Obviously, back in that time there were specialty shows and overnight fills that pumped up the song count.

If you exclude overnights and weekends, there are 415 songs (average) that got played once a week or more.
 
oldies76, I finally located the old KRTH list. It's from October of 1990. It was sent to me by a DJ who was working at another oldies station out of state. The manager was monitoring airplay at several oldies stations nationwide. KRTH then was playing For Your Love by Ed Townsend, Who Put The Bomp by Barry Mann, Darling Baby by the Elgins, How Do You Do by Mouth & MacNeal, Forever by the Little Dippers (actually the Anita Kerr Singers.....and, of course, Brown Eyed Girl, "The Song Which Will Not Die."

I scanned the pages and I'll be glad to send a copy of the list to you and anyone else who would like to see it. E-mail me at [email protected]
 
Thanks Thomps!!! KRTH back then was in transition from the larger playlists of the 1980's and went instead to a much tighter presentation throughout the 90's.
 
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I really thought that KRTH would expand their playlist after KODJ put a similar oldies format on the air in 1989. I also though in 1990 that KRTH would finally add more 1970s songs to the playlist. I was wrong on both counts. KRTH's playlist got progressively smaller throughout the '90s, and songs from the latter half of the '70s wouldn't be added until the early 2000s.
 
DavidEduardo said:


However, if you go to songs that played at least once a week, there were just 600 of them (average) for any single week period. If you go to songs that played more often than once a month, we only go up to about 750. Obviously, back in that time there were specialty shows and overnight fills that pumped up the song count.

If you exclude overnights and weekends, there are 415 songs (average) that got played once a week or more.
Click to expand...

Which proves that when Jhani was PD and fixing the mess KRTH had been left in by his predecessors, he used multiple tactics: First, he used the tight regular playlist to be very familiar during the high-listening dayparts; second, he did go deeper for special weekends than many of you had speculated; third, he did have some "nights only" titles to prevent burning through the rotation overnight.

All of you who said bad things about him at the time now owe him an apology. I'll be happy to forward any you want to give to him.
 
Thomps2525 said:
I really thought that KRTH would expand their playlist after KODJ put a similar oldies format on the air in 1989..
Click to expand...

The usual reaction of a station with a direct competitor is to shorten the playlist to the maximum. Doing the opposite is like giving up.
 
Brother Louie still shows up on Classic Hits. CBS-FM just played it at 9:13 tonight. "Popcorn" annoys me. :)
 
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