So WOGL is #1 6+ which is great. But if they're #6 25-54 and not doing much of anything in 18-34 or 18-49, one would assume that a lot of their listeners are 55+? I suppose that kinda makes sense: A 60-year-old was in his/her 20's during the '80s. But ad buyers don't want 60-year-olds. Doesn't this mean WOGL's library needs to start creeping further into the '90s and quick?
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WOGL #1...but with whom?
- Thread starter Miguelito
- Start date
In fairness, a good number of folks who were glued to 98 when it last played a lot of the same music it has now were kids, tweens or teens then, so under the 60 mark now. Maybe in the 40s/50s space, doing some admittedly fast and broad math.
Perhaps, I don’t know, they do have a good share of the later Boomers now somewhere around the 60 mark. Skewing that way could raise the average, but they could still be getting a nice chunk of still appealing (to advertisers I’m talking here) X-ers.
But sure, I’d say the library needs to keep an eye towards evolving gradually, and not stagnating as it did years ago. I don’t really have a reason to think they’re not fully on the case.
Hoping not to be too much off-topic, Miguelito, but it's been quite a few years now that I suspected that Oldies/Classic Hits would outlast the newer 'Classic Rock' in terms of prestige, audience and longevity. To me, the sonics of the more recent singles hits is friendlier to Classic Hits than the same approach of the newer rock songs. Just a thought.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the teens who flocked big time to those AoR stations in the mid 70's are now nearing 60 themselves. Three gals I dated from the 1974-or-so era of AoR are now past 60 themslves.
Yes, certainly there are many people age 35 or so who get off on Aerosmith and Ed Zeppelin. I doubt a nationwide format largely depends on their allegiance to fill the seats, though.
However: congrats to WOGL and WCBS-FM for finishing high, relentlessly, in those 6+ beauty pageants. I sometimes refer to such facilities as 'the station everyone at work can agree is better than nothing'. But they seem to be doing fine.
Agree with your suspicion that nostalgia stations have to update the music to newer material in order to survive. But reiterating: I think that Classic Hits is better-suited for modernization than the even younger-skewing Classic Rock is.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the teens who flocked big time to those AoR stations in the mid 70's are now nearing 60 themselves. Three gals I dated from the 1974-or-so era of AoR are now past 60 themslves.
Yes, certainly there are many people age 35 or so who get off on Aerosmith and Ed Zeppelin. I doubt a nationwide format largely depends on their allegiance to fill the seats, though.
However: congrats to WOGL and WCBS-FM for finishing high, relentlessly, in those 6+ beauty pageants. I sometimes refer to such facilities as 'the station everyone at work can agree is better than nothing'. But they seem to be doing fine.
Agree with your suspicion that nostalgia stations have to update the music to newer material in order to survive. But reiterating: I think that Classic Hits is better-suited for modernization than the even younger-skewing Classic Rock is.
I think a considerable number of people who were heavily into Top 40 radio in the late '60s and early '70s but moved on during the disco boom that started around 1974 came back to the format around 1982-83, when the rock influence came back and even the pure pop was bouncy and fun with killer hooks on just about every song. Those listeners would have been in their 30s or even 40s, which made them older than average Top 40 listeners were in the late '60s, especially on stations that didn't daypart with MOR crossover material.
So now classic hits has a problem in that a lot of people who liked MTV-era staples liked Cyndi Lauper and Huey Lewis when they were pumping out hits are now well into their 60s instead of in their late 40s and early 50s, where you'd expect them to be. Those are the listeners, though, who abandoned CHR for country, classic rock or even oldies once rap and grunge started to dominate radio playlists in the late '80s. So maybe you're right that stations like WOGL need to start playing more '90s and even '00s right now to get their demographics more in line with what advertisers want to buy. The 6+ number will most likely drop, but the agencies will be overjoyed to see the geezers exit.
Until fairly recently, WOGL seemed to be leading the charge in resisting the need to "move forward" in time--and when they did, they only went so far as making themselves an '80s station; barely scratching the surface of the early '90s. But WOGL is hardly alone. Classic Hits seems to be having an identity crisis. (Admittedly, this is generalization, as I'm aware that some stations have already added a fair amount '90s titles.) I know there's a perception that it will be difficult for the format to move into the '90s as Pop music fractured pretty wildly in that decade. But I really never believed that obstacle to be quite as large as many say. (Variety/Jack-FM/Adult Hits stations have been playing Guns N' Roses and Ton Loc side-by-side for quite some time and as far as I know, nobody started a petition.)
If I were programming Classic Hits, I'd be super-selective about songs from the early '80s because (as much as I hate to admit it), a lot of that is simply too old. But on the flip side, I'd also be super-selective while adding songs that were hits as recently as maybe 1994. I mean, that was 25 years ago, well within the range of what Classic Hits "should" be playing right now. (For example: A 20-year-old consumer of Pop in 1994 is now 45 years old.)
When WOGL does move forward--and it's not like they have a choice; at some point, they have to--it'll be interesting to see what becomes of BEN-FM.
Great discussion stuff, folks.
Social conditions also played a big part in these various 'older' generations. The U.S. Military Draft and the end of the Vietnam War were important occurrences, both within a year or so of each other. Those results, to some extent, overlapped and affected both the Top 40 and the AoR generations of youth. The music of both those young heydays were shaped largely by the national conditions and how that climate affected people 19-20. And their, uh, bunkmates.
I daresay that the average 35-40 listener today didn't go through that turmoil.
Not saying that we older demos went through a 'better' time, or had 'better' music ...... merely that we went through a different era than the younger pups have since experienced.
* * * *
Heck. Just give me hooks in my music. Lol. I'm 71.
Social conditions also played a big part in these various 'older' generations. The U.S. Military Draft and the end of the Vietnam War were important occurrences, both within a year or so of each other. Those results, to some extent, overlapped and affected both the Top 40 and the AoR generations of youth. The music of both those young heydays were shaped largely by the national conditions and how that climate affected people 19-20. And their, uh, bunkmates.
I daresay that the average 35-40 listener today didn't go through that turmoil.
Not saying that we older demos went through a 'better' time, or had 'better' music ...... merely that we went through a different era than the younger pups have since experienced.
* * * *
Heck. Just give me hooks in my music. Lol. I'm 71.
We had a long period after Vietnam when we were pretty much between wars (not that things like the Beirut bombing didn't happen). There weren't the conditions that the generation that grew up in the late 60s experienced.
At some point the music becomes a different format. So the challenge becomes finding ways to monetize the format as it is.
But that's not a new problem, is it? I mean, tastes are cyclical and tech is ever-expanding...so music has been evolving since the before the first record was even pressed. I would think Classic Hits (and Oldies before that) has been having to evolve and adapt from square one, right?
New classic hits?
Retro classic?
Gen Y hits?
Millennial memories?
Don’t know or care what it ends up being called, but sure, there may be some new term a la the emergence of classic hits.
Retro classic?
Gen Y hits?
Millennial memories?
Don’t know or care what it ends up being called, but sure, there may be some new term a la the emergence of classic hits.
I hope I'm not in peril of over-posting here.
Up our way in PA, a wonderful station called Hanna-FM comes in pretty well. It's out of Danville/Riverside.
They're owned by some group in Central PA which owns a half-dozen stations in their region.
Hanna -- WHNA-FM, 92.3 -- plays hit, up-tempo singles ranging from Neil Diamond to Badfinger to Van Halen to the Disco era to Jay and The Americans to Lou Gramm and even 'sunshine pop' like the Sunshine Company. Terrific listening they are, to this driver who admittedly is a few weeks older than 55+. They do ... not .... miss. They are not locked in to any demo dogma. Calling themselves 'The Susquehanna's Greatest Hits', to me they have a real clue. The ratings for Sunbury-Selinsgrove-Lewisburg have them nicely succeeding, in the same book as the market leader 94 KX. WQKX Sunbury has a huge signal; they're sort of a Hot A/C / CHR and have 17 times the power that WHNA runs.
It might've been the Big A who tried to fix a positioning on what Hanna-FM's actual format would be called. Whatever it is probably can most actually be described as toe-tapping pop hits from four different decades.
Well, okay. I'm more like 800 weeks over 55. Still, though ......
Up our way in PA, a wonderful station called Hanna-FM comes in pretty well. It's out of Danville/Riverside.
They're owned by some group in Central PA which owns a half-dozen stations in their region.
Hanna -- WHNA-FM, 92.3 -- plays hit, up-tempo singles ranging from Neil Diamond to Badfinger to Van Halen to the Disco era to Jay and The Americans to Lou Gramm and even 'sunshine pop' like the Sunshine Company. Terrific listening they are, to this driver who admittedly is a few weeks older than 55+. They do ... not .... miss. They are not locked in to any demo dogma. Calling themselves 'The Susquehanna's Greatest Hits', to me they have a real clue. The ratings for Sunbury-Selinsgrove-Lewisburg have them nicely succeeding, in the same book as the market leader 94 KX. WQKX Sunbury has a huge signal; they're sort of a Hot A/C / CHR and have 17 times the power that WHNA runs.
It might've been the Big A who tried to fix a positioning on what Hanna-FM's actual format would be called. Whatever it is probably can most actually be described as toe-tapping pop hits from four different decades.
Well, okay. I'm more like 800 weeks over 55. Still, though ......
If you travel around the country, you're likely to find quite a few small radio stations like this. I call them hobby stations, but that's probably not accurate. They are stations that play whatever the owner wants. You might call it Jack or Ben, but it's more likely "Kristin," who's now the owner. Not as catchy. They are really playing whatever they want. And yes the audience is a lot older than the normal target. But these are stations that aren't looking to appeal to advertising agencies, but rather get by with all local money. The reason stations like WOGL try to keep the demo under 55 is to get the big ad agency money. But if you're in such a small market that the agencies don't know you exist, you have to come up with other ways to pay the utility bill. That's what this station is doing. I looked at their coverage map, and couldn't come up with a familiar town. With a screaming 930 watts, they're not much of a threat to the bigger stations. But they have a repeater, so that helps.
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I’d put a station like WCTG Chincoteague VA into something like that category. Discovered it passing through Virginia (at least it was something aside from country or preaching on a long drive). Kind of an 80s centric but variety that tends to be far wider than a Ben or Jack or Joe or whoever. Heavy personality, local features, hourly “news” (like a minute, but still). It seemingly works fine for where and what it is, but let’s not pretend it would work in a major market.
Ah, when WCTG signed on 2004 from Chincoteague, it was a Mom 'n' Pop blues-rock play-whatever-they want station. The fidelity and tenor of the broadcast was subpar, but it was a great listen driving through the area and via stream. Since flipping to Classic/Adult Hits and first instituting the Pocomoke simulcast, and now having moved the main signal to where the population is - receivable in Salisbury - by comparison, they're formatted and focused!
This is the problem Classic Hits stations face. Melodic music gave way to what I call "strum 'n' whine" in the early 90s. "Alternative" Rock gone mainstream and AAA both moved from melodic to rhythmic in nature. Hooks became a secondary consideration. Classic Hits is going to have to either mine those years carefully for consensus songs, or skip over them altogether and move on to the later 90s when some balance was reestablished.
For example: Crash Test Dummies
That's interesting. I understood how "Oldies" was a bad idea for a format name--because it literally made the listeners take note of their mortality--and I always thought "Classic Hits" was a good way to solve that problem forever. But now that you mention it, Gen X-ers or Millennials may take offense to the "Classic" part of the moniker. Damn whiny kids always looking for things to complain about. haha.
I can't imagine "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" would test well enough to warrant being played anyway. Actually, I can't imagine anyone even bothering to test it. The song was out when I was 19 so pretty much at the height of my pop music fandom...and even though we were listening with much interest, I can assure you we thought of it as a novelty record (at best) and/or a really awful song (at worst). Memories.
I liked that one. 
Still on my personal playlist.
Still on my personal playlist.
Same as I thought of "Play That Funky Music" when it came out when I was 20. Apparently I and the people I knew who shared my opinion were outliers, because the song became a classic hits staple 25 years later and still is OK for airplay today even as stations in the format are ditching '70s titles. I don't believe for a second that the Dummies' hit was only being appreciated by older pop listeners when it was current. It's not rap, it's not grunge ... it sounds to me like the sort of song that would do well in testing for stations looking to add '90s songs with none of the negatives that grunge and rap often bring with them.
I caught 95.7 The Ride (WXRC, a 100,000 watter licensed to Hickory NC) traveling from Knoxville to Charleston this week. First time through I was thinking Adult Album Alternative, but a longer listen on the way back revealed mostly recognizable Classic Hits with a few oddball selections. It was listenable to both my wife and I.
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