The old KRTH

[gr8oldies]

What are we talking about? Screaming 70s jocks hitting the post on Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus songs?

You're exactly right. No one should. The problem today is that today's radio is stale without advances in creativity that made radio great so long ago. Today's crowd.....they are totally missing out. If only they knew and the same thing can be done today....but classic hits radio won't let them have a chance.

 

[oldies76]

What are we talking about? Screaming 70s jocks hitting the post on Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus songs?

Using station presentations, jingles and techniques used in the 80's and 90's with the demographics of today, using the music as a base for it. We heard A to Z's and holiday specials with 50's thru 70's music. Why not have the same thing with 80's thru 00's music for their new demographics?? It's never been tried before, so what's the hesitation? Besides the all 80's weekends and the new 90's at nine, there isn't much else to brag about.

 

[TheBigA]

Besides the all 80's weekends and the new 90's at nine, there isn't much else to brag about.

No one's asking for your advice. Are they?

 

[oldies76]

No one's asking for your advice. Are they?

Maybe a more mellow approach to our discussions and our new poster, Vinnie for that matter, would be much appreciated. Mr. Hagerty is a good example. You should heed his style. We're just having a discussion. Btw, this current discussion is 10 pages long, not 33. This thread was dormant for over a year with a far different tone and topic and there's nothing wrong with reviving it with new ideas and discussions.

We're all radio folks here.

 

[davideduardo]

Using station presentations, jingles and techniques used in the 80's and 90's with the demographics of today, using the music as a base for it. We heard A to Z's and holiday specials with 50's thru 70's music. Why not have the same thing with 80's thru 00's music for their new demographics?? It's never been tried before, so what's the hesitation? Besides the all 80's weekends and the new 90's at nine, there isn't much else to brag about.

In the real world, stations frequently test composite samples of real djs as well as prototypes of program and presentations styles. Several times I have stuck in airchecks from 30 or so years ago. The general reaction was laughter and the response option most often checked was "phony and dated"; nobody ever selected "fun and entertaining".

If you want to go back to the 60's, buy one of those modified De Loreans. Most folks don't want that stuff today.

 

[davideduardo]

If I am remembering correctly that was the Los Angeles station that would air the old Elvis Only radio show that was hosted by Jay Gordon until he finally retired the show after a couple of years of repeats.

Michael, I don't recall this show on KRTH in the last 20 or so years. Did they run it, or did anyone else in the market run it?

 

[TheBigA]

We're all radio folks here.

No...your interest is music, not radio. You're not bringing new ideas, just the same circular argument.

 

[michael hagerty]

I often use KROQ when they went away from AOR rock to experiment with this new thing called new wave and literally became a taste-maker instead of a taste follower as a good example of what radio can really be when it thinks outside the box. It is true that later on they did start using traditional radio research methods to narrow down the playlist to Top-40 style formatics, which many will say is what kept the format viable for many years and the station itself viable for many decades.

ChannelFlipper: I meant to address this yesterday, but never got back to it: The Top40-ization of KROQ came very early on in its new wave format. Rick Carroll had that thing tight as a drum. The perceived anarchy of the presentation and of playing music that wasn't on other stations made it seem radical, but every record was there for a reason, there weren't a lot of them, he played the you-know-what out of them while they were hot and only the strongest survived into recurrent or gold. He out-Draked Drake. He just did it with songs his target audience knew or responded to instantly while the rest of us wondered where it all came from.

 

[michael hagerty]

Using station presentations, jingles and techniques used in the 80's and 90's with the demographics of today, using the music as a base for it. We heard A to Z's and holiday specials with 50's thru 70's music. Why not have the same thing with 80's thru 00's music for their new demographics?? It's never been tried before, so what's the hesitation? Besides the all 80's weekends and the new 90's at nine, there isn't much else to brag about.

Here's the problem: Every one of those specials..."A to Z", "The number ones", "The number twos", whatever...all rely on something other than what the audience wants to hear today as the criteria for the music.

Let's go with the 80s. What are we talking about? A Madonna A to Z weekend? Michael Jackson? 48 hours where only a die-hard fan of the artist is going to feel the station is meeting their expectations? Dirty little secret: Even at their peak---when their music was considered to be a unifying force for a generation---doing a Beatles A to Z weekend (and I myself did them) was guaranteed to blow off anyone who wanted to hear anything else. With the exception of the week John Lennon was murdered, it was probably trading away as much or more audience than it attracted over the long haul.

"The Number Ones?" Now we're back to putting a song on the air because for one week 36 years ago it sold more copies wholesale than any other 45 RPM record---at a time when singles sales were dropping like a stone. The vast majority of listeners didn't care about whether a record was number one or not back in the day. They liked it or they didn't. They certainly don't care about whether it was number one or not when they were nine years old. As I've said to you before, Oldies76---number one is a statistic, not an award.

 

[staggmovie]

There's absolutely no such thing as pleasing everyone. You aren't hurt by what you don't play. No non-geek person drives to work and says "I haven't heard Donny Osmond today. Donny Osmond might please somebody and send everyone else running for their presets. There's no need for a "resident geek" to suggest songs no one remembers.

You are correct about it when you say There's absolutely no such thing as pleasing everyone, and I be there is a lot of music that we might love or hate that somebody else might have the opposite opinion of music that you do. You might like a singer when somebody else might hate that same singer.

 

[gr8oldies]

In commercial radio, you have to go with the majority. Donny Osmond is on Spotify if you need a Donny Osmond fix.

There's absolutely no such thing as pleasing everyone. You aren't hurt by what you don't play. No non-geek person drives to work and says "I haven't heard Donny Osmond today. Donny Osmond might please somebody and send everyone else running for their presets. There's no need for a "resident geek" to suggest songs no one remembers.

You are correct about it when you say There's absolutely no such thing as pleasing everyone, and I be there is a lot of music that we might love or hate that somebody else might have the opposite opinion of music that you do. You might like a singer when somebody else might hate that same singer.

 

[oldies76]

Here's the problem: Every one of those specials..."A to Z", "The number ones", "The number twos", whatever...all rely on something other than what the audience wants to hear today as the criteria for the music.

Let's go with the 80s. What are we talking about? A Madonna A to Z weekend? Michael Jackson? 48 hours where only a die-hard fan of the artist is going to feel the station is meeting their expectations? Dirty little secret: Even at their peak---when their music was considered to be a unifying force for a generation---doing a Beatles A to Z weekend (and I myself did them) was guaranteed to blow off anyone who wanted to hear anything else. With the exception of the week John Lennon was murdered, it was probably trading away as much or more audience than it attracted over the long haul.

"The Number Ones?" Now we're back to putting a song on the air because for one week 36 years ago it sold more copies wholesale than any other 45 RPM record---at a time when singles sales were dropping like a stone. The vast majority of listeners didn't care about whether a record was number one or not back in the day. They liked it or they didn't. They certainly don't care about whether it was number one or not when they were nine years old. As I've said to you before, Oldies76---number one is a statistic, not an award.

Let me ask you this, why then, did KRTH run those specials every year (and not just the #1's....many others as well) from 1978, the year after Mr. Hamilton arrived, thru 1990? 13 years of creative programming, before some hot shot music director came in (I don't remember his name...) and ended it abruptly by 1991?? The word is that even Brian Beirne was told firmly not to play his legendary records anymore. (I think the song was "Running Bear", and was told.) It's a simple question

 

[CTListener]

Let me ask you this, why then, did KRTH run those specials every year (and not just the #1's....many others as well) from 1978, the year after Mr. Hamilton arrived, thru 1990? 13 years of creative programming, before some hot shot music director came in (I don't remember his name...) and ended it abruptly by 1991?? The word is that even Brian Beirne was told firmly not to play his legendary records anymore. (I think the song was "Running Bear", and was told.) It's a simple question

"Running Bear"? In 1991? On a station targeting listeners who were in high school in the '70s? Talk about an instant station-switcher!

 

[gr8oldies]

Your audience, even if they are listening to music from the past, still lives in today. They aren't going to work dressed like it's still 1983. They have current interests. That's where I think our local classic hits station succeeds. They sponsor a lot of events geared to today's listener (i think their saving graces in a cluster of younger-skewing stations is non-traditional revenue from those sponsoring the New Years Eve celebration, and other events throughout the year). Their audience may go see a live performance of "Grease" but they'll also see the Celtic show. Thus, we don't re-create "Music Radio WLS" (even though a rimshot station tried, pleasing all 7 radio geeks in the area).

Using station presentations, jingles and techniques used in the 80's and 90's with the demographics of today, using the music as a base for it. We heard A to Z's and holiday specials with 50's thru 70's music. Why not have the same thing with 80's thru 00's music for their new demographics?? It's never been tried before, so what's the hesitation? Besides the all 80's weekends and the new 90's at nine, there isn't much else to brag about.

 

[oldies76]

No...your interest is music, not radio.

You don't know my background. I was in radio for over six years, you are in radio, just like Vinnie, just like Mr. Hagerty and so forth. In varying degrees, sure. Knowing music helps too.

 

[TheBigA]

13 years of creative programming

To you, it's "creative programming." To everyone else, it's the simplest, dumbest, least creative idea possible. "Gee, let's play every song in alphabetical order, with no thought given to tempo, topic, or quality." What was creative about it? Where is the creativity? It's taking a list and playing it in order.

 

[gr8oldies]

It's likely safe to say Oldies believes people listen for hours (as much as 12-15) at a time to a single station, or would if you played enough obscure material and backed off the big hits; rather than the short segments of 20 minutes apiece that are more typical.

I can remember being that high schooler in the 70s (in Ohio), and I can tell you more people knew Pete Rose's batting average than what was #37 that week on American Top 40. I could have asked people to name the daytime jock lineup of CKLW or WMEE and they likely wouldn't have been able to come up with more than one or 2 names. We had plenty of people listening to the TM Stereo Rock affiliate. I don't even remember guys who collected every 45 that was released, even the more music-oriented kids who formed or joined a rock band.

As near as I can tell, we've been having this discussion with Oldies76 for five years now (seriously---2011). Here's the takeaway from that half-decade:

He's stuck on the idea that everyone has higher tolerance levels of songs they don't strongly like or outright love than they actually do. He believes that if most people don't actively dislike or hate a song, they'll stay tuned.

He believes that hitting a given number on a Billboard chart 40 or more years ago means the song is a hit for all time and that should guarantee airplay today (though, apparently, he'll make an exception for "Ring My Bell").

He believes that if you'd only just expose music and programming concepts from before the time of today's target listener, they'd love it.

And he believes that KRTH is consistently top five in the ratings because listeners have no choice, and that if you put KFXM up on top of Mt. Wilson with a 100,000 watt signal, they'd crush KRTH.

What's interesting in all this is that we all have something in common: We're way more interested in music than the typical listener. I could name every song on that week's KHJ Boss Thirty when I was in 9th grade. I'm betting David could do the same for the local Top 40 where he grew up and so could Oldies76. And maybe-----MAYBE---two or three other people in the whole school could do the same.

The other 997 (in the case of my school)? Five. Seven? Maybe ten, tops. They liked some songs that were popular at the time (most likely the seven that really were selling). Music was not their life in high school. And after high school, most of the non-music freaks I knew got really serious and really grown up really fast. They didn't have time to spend three hours with Casey Kasem writing down the top 30 backwards every week.

In other words, they never cared about---and don't remember---two-thirds of the songs I do.

If the core of KRTH is 35-54, that makes the center 45. So:

Born in 1971.
Graduated high school 1989.
Graduated college 1993.

A high statistical probability that he or she is:

Married.
Has at least one child in late high school or early college and one or more younger than that.
Works full time.

And we know that this person listens to Classic Hits not as a steady diet, but as part of a group of stations (between six and nine) that they share their listening time with.

Now...the trick to getting a strong rating here is to get as many of those people as possible who share a core of songs that they all agree on---the least likely to make them push the button sooner than they would anyway----to listen.

If it works, the ratings are good. KRTH is #3 right now. Consistently Top 5 overall. Performing well enough in the demo to make the cut for most ad agency buys. Not making the cut makes a difference of millions of dollars in billing per year.

Again, we have a lot in common. I believed a lot of the things Oldies76 believed when I was starting out as a young programmer. I learned through trial and error how people actually use the medium. As I've said before...what we really need is a radio programming simulator, so people can crash a few radio stations without costing stockholders money and people their jobs.

 

[oldies76]

To you, it's "creative programming." To everyone else, it's the simplest, dumbest, least creative idea possible. "Gee, let's play every song in alphabetical order, with no thought given to tempo, topic, or quality." What was creative about it? Where is the creativity? It's taking a list and playing it in order.

My point is that they did it for 13 years. Almost a decade and a half under one PD. It was successful then (otherwise they'd kill it after a year or two). It can be successful today with the new demos, if planned right.

Other markets do this today. Just look at CBS-FM and Philadelphia.

Creativity means, something other than the ordinary.

 

[gr8oldies]

You aren't going to make or break the station by doing, or not doing that on a holiday weekend. You really think everybody stays home on a Labor Day weekend to listen to A to Z. They catch it here and there like they would the regular format.

My point is that they did it for 13 years. Almost a decade and a half under one PD. It was successful then (otherwise they'd kill it after a year or two). It can be successful today with the new demos, if planned right.

Other markets do this today. Just look at CBS-FM and Philadelphia.

Creativity means, something other than the ordinary.

 

[TheBigA]

My point is that they did it for 13 years.

So what? Radio stations ran Fibber McGee & Molly for years too.

How do you know it would work today? Imagine going to a concert, and the artist does his songs in alphabetical order. Has that ever happened? Doing something dumb is not being creative. Just ask the artists. They know about creativity.