There are also a lot of really good recordings that were obscured by the Psychedelic Era, and the lack of promotion by and eventual demise of many independent record labels. You can see it in the "Regional Hits", by looking at ARSA Surveys. Now there are very few record labels, and radio formats and playlists are dictated centrally by huge broadcasting conglomerates. But a Rick Sklar thumbs down could also take a potential #1 down to #61, just by losing airplay on those 7 AM and 7 FM ABC owned stations in the 1970s. I really miss locally programmed stations. But those college stations that are day-parted into those 15 minute DJ "shifts" aren't that good either. But looking at some Carrier Current station charts from the 1960s and 1970s, they are more imaginative than many stations today.
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Why are big hits "lost?"
- Thread starter tall_guy1
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Well, not 7 AMs...KXYZ, KGO and KABC weren't gonna play 'em anyway.
Yeah. We've discussed "Honey" in this thread. That was '68.
You could very easily make up a list of regrettable records that hit the top ten in every decade. The only reason the 70s might look a bit worse was buying habits had shifted to albums for the quality stuff, so singles that sold heavily were quite often material from one-shot artists or singles bands that could, with the right writers and producers, work up three hook-laden minutes that worked on the radio.
Here's an example:
There are chart freaks who still are ticked that Olivia Newton-John's "Physical" sat at #1 on the Hot 100 and Foreigner's "Waiting For A Girl Like You" stalled out behind it, peaking at #2.
Again---#1 is a statistic, not an award. There's nothing to be mad about.
But beyond that---while Olivia sold more singles than Foreigner each one of those weeks, the "Physical" album was double platinum.
"Foreigner 4" was SIX times platinum.
So WAY more people bought the Foreigner song than the Olivia song---but they bought the album, which didn't show up on the singles chart.
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A few observations.
"Waiting For A Girl Like You" was mellower than "Physical".
Foreigner had its biggest hits when they went to mellower material. Those appealed to more Women than the other songs.
The Chi Lites widened their popularity when they moved to mellower material that appealed to more than the R & B audience.
The Parliaments/Parliament/Funkadelic only started to get noticed nationally when they recorded the mellower "I Wanna Testify".
Grand Funk Railroad broke up when Mark Farner wanted to go to a mellower sound, beginning with "Bad Time", and the rest of the group wanted to play hard Rock.
You sell more records with "Honey" than Vinegar.
You sell more records when you widen your appeal.
Albums were more successful when they had more single releases, which gave the albums more exposure.
Single edits and remixing with more hooks are often better than album versions.
Album versions often have a lot of filler that is often just adding outtakes, and are too long and boring for much of the audience.
"Waiting For A Girl Like You" was mellower than "Physical".
Foreigner had its biggest hits when they went to mellower material. Those appealed to more Women than the other songs.
The Chi Lites widened their popularity when they moved to mellower material that appealed to more than the R & B audience.
The Parliaments/Parliament/Funkadelic only started to get noticed nationally when they recorded the mellower "I Wanna Testify".
Grand Funk Railroad broke up when Mark Farner wanted to go to a mellower sound, beginning with "Bad Time", and the rest of the group wanted to play hard Rock.
You sell more records with "Honey" than Vinegar.
You sell more records when you widen your appeal.
Albums were more successful when they had more single releases, which gave the albums more exposure.
Single edits and remixing with more hooks are often better than album versions.
Album versions often have a lot of filler that is often just adding outtakes, and are too long and boring for much of the audience.
A fan gives a passionate defense of why Dr. Hook should get more radio airplay:
There are lots of them out there. It's just that they have no impact. If a single station in a small or medium is playing the crap out of some off-beat song, nobody knows. Unless one of the trades notices and writes an article about it. Here's an example with a country song that's #1 on the streaming chart, but #32 on the airplay chart:
What’s The Future For Zach Bryan And ‘Something In The Orange’ At Country Radio?
Zach Bryan had one of country music’s best streaming years in 2022, but his rise at radio has only begun. Bryan’s raw and haunting “Something in the Orange” had 432.1
The PD they interview runs KUZZ in Bakersfield CA, a non-corporate station owned and run by the family of Buck Owens. So you have outliers who champion songs. But the goal is to have an impact, which is why you have group PDs. Radio companies have been doing that since the 70s, and it wasn't just Sklar. Any group that owned 5 stations had someone trying to game the system and show they could deliver spins and hits to record labels. It didn't matter if it's iHeart or Malrite.
Well, WXYZ and KQV were not really Top 40 in that era either, they had gone to "Chicken Rock" by circa 1970, so mainly it was WABC and WLS. WXYZ may have given up too early, considering that WKNR Keener 13 went to WNIC Beautiful Music by 1972. But the days of AM Top 40 were nearly over. The nonduplication format rules may have caused WABC-FM, WXYZ-FM, and WABC-FM to lose out on potential Top 40 dominance in the early 1970s, and actually SLOWED the dominance of FM, due to unruly inexperienced DJs in many day parts, on Underground/Progressive/"Unformatted"/Free Form/early AOR stations.
Just because ABC didn't put Top 40 on it's FMs didn't mean other companies couldn't. So in NYC, RKO launched WOR-FM that became WXLO (99X) and listeners had an alternative to AM Top 40. As far as talent, a lot of the big name DJs of 60s Top 40 grew tired of small playlists. So you had Scott Muni, Murray The K, Big Tom Donohue and more jump to FM stations where the presentation was more subdued and the music was far broader. Murray was able to extend his career by moving to WHFS in DC.
A lot of that is written in the present tense. Some of it applied 45 years ago, some of it didn't. Almost none of it does now.
It also ignores that, from 1974 on, singles sales were in freefall while album sales were building to historic levels. And that, from roughly 1977 on, record-buying audiences were increasingly listening to stations that weren't singles-focused and those that were increasingly played the album versions of hits, because that's what people were buying.
"Testify" made #20, but didn't go gold or move albums. "Tear The Roof Off The Sucker" and "Flashlight" both went gold and delivered platinum albums.
Grand Funk hit #4 with "Bad Time" and had their lowest-charting album in five years. "We're An American Band" and "The Loco-Motion" both hit #1 and had top 5 albums (the "We're An American Band" album went platinum).
Gotta ask, Schroedinger---were you around at the time or is this just stuff you've read?
I was able to listen to many of those stations. Early AOR/whatever, at least from the nonduplication rules to the early 1970s, was a train wreck. The biggest things that attracted "audiences" was when they played uncensored songs, bad mouthed the managers, and said forbidden words. That was followed by a lot of the DJs disappearing overnight. Not the well disciplined ones like Arthur Penhallow, but the lesser and Night arirshifts. You have to realize too that a big part of pushing albums was selling much more expensive records, pushed by the record companies for greater profits. Not that profits are bad, but most albums have a lot of unmarketable tracks. You were paying for those.
If you want, if you don't like other viewpoints, I will leave this thread.
If you want, if you don't like other viewpoints, I will leave this thread.
Nobody's asking you to leave.
The reason I asked what I did was that ABC's FM group was among the tightest-programmed of the album rockers. They out-Draked Drake and did it with the albums people were actually buying. By the way, Allen Shaw ran the FM group. Rick Sklar had zero input.
And the theory that continuing simulcasts would have made Top 40 dominant on FM is contradicted by facts. The receivers were available. The rush to buy them came when FM offered something different from what people could hear on AM.
Not really. Trends in music are cyclical. There's a reason in the Top 40 years (60s/70s) the vast majority of oldies played were between three and five years old (not counting special "Golden Weekends", where they'd go back further).
That situation was really shortlived. John Kluge at Metromedia realized in about 1974 that his FMs were under delivering the money that they could be making. He specifically told his PDs to tighten the playlists and cut the crap on the air. Several well known DJs were dropped, rock consultants (Burkhart Abrams) were hired, and ultimately he flipped the format of KMET to KTWV. By the 80s, FM stations were delivering audience and profits to the point where the music they played has become today's Adult Hits and Classic Rock.
Anyone who hasn't should really read the Radio & Records AOR Story supplement from 1978. Thanks to David's WorldRadioHistory site, it's available, in its entirety, in color:
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Ratings-Directories/RandR-AOR/R&R-AOR-Story-1978.pdf
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Ratings-Directories/RandR-AOR/R&R-AOR-Story-1978.pdf
From most of my posts, you will see that my area of expertise is improving reception and technical consulting. I will concentrate on that.
Like you say, 1974 is approximately when things became really tight format wise. They continued to position themselves for awhile like the early years. But 1968-1974 was very hit and miss.
The thing I liked most about FM was the wide areas that the old stations covered, and with good receivers and antennas, some for 100 miles or more on a regular basis, even Class As. DX, both AM and FM, is how I followed radio over a big area of the country.
Receivers were much better by the late 1960s, but now they have jammed the band up completely, with Docket 80-90 and subsequent drop in stations, translators, LPFMs, thousands of new NCE-FMs, and IBOC. You can't rely on FM signals now more than 40 miles away in most cases without being blotted out one way or another.
Like you say, 1974 is approximately when things became really tight format wise. They continued to position themselves for awhile like the early years. But 1968-1974 was very hit and miss.
The thing I liked most about FM was the wide areas that the old stations covered, and with good receivers and antennas, some for 100 miles or more on a regular basis, even Class As. DX, both AM and FM, is how I followed radio over a big area of the country.
Receivers were much better by the late 1960s, but now they have jammed the band up completely, with Docket 80-90 and subsequent drop in stations, translators, LPFMs, thousands of new NCE-FMs, and IBOC. You can't rely on FM signals now more than 40 miles away in most cases without being blotted out one way or another.
Schröedinger, Metromedia tightened up in 1974, but the ABC FM group, which is how we got here (7AM, 7FM, Rick Sklar), tightened up in 1971. The Rock N' Stereo format on the ABC FM stations was essentially Top 40 with cuts from albums that were selling with a laid-back but controlled presentation. By 1972, KLOS was beating KHJ in evenings.
The whole KMET story is fascinating.
First, you can't argue with the brilliance of creating a new format that maybe started off on the wrong foot by being a little off on the focus, but once it found it's place as smooth jazz and not the initial new age trendy mid 80s weirdness in the rhelm of those jazzisizers lol, it's rightfully focused progression resulted in a well billing affluent adults targeted radio station and format.
The story of a Chicago woman who was just a participant focus group listener coining that perfect "Smooth jazz" branding is awesome.
BUT...KMET should've evolved into Classic Rock a few years prior when their heritage still had positive perception, they should've been aware of how that pivot would bring about a jackpot.
When KLSX came on the scene with the Classic Rock format it was an instant winner with the adult male Demos and completely finished off KMET.
If KMET evolved to the format just a few years before 1986, they would've been able to do even better with it and I bet they would still be a viable Classic Rock station. Then again, would it today be billing as well as the Wave? What about the money it could've made? Would it have been the Stern home in LA?
This actual topic? Oh yeah....
It's about what gold songs are hits today, not about the gold songs that were hits when they were new. You want to program to the people listening today, not program in 2023 what people in 1978 we're in to. There.... that's it.... nothing more to it. Hope I could help.
The question is---and I don't have an easy answer for this---how early is too early?
Part of what dragged AOR down in the early 80s was a perception that it was stale. By 1985, there was an audience that was missing the 60s/70s music that became Classic Rock. But I'm not sure that appetite was there as early as '82, which is when KMET's fortunes began to slip.
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