I don't have time today to research format wide over a period of years, but in the September 2019 book (six months before COVID) KRTH was #2 with a 5.6. So they were strong well before the pandemic.
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It's not just KRTH, and not just Los Angeles.
- Thread starter michael hagerty
- Start date
Tall_Guy1, I don't know what it's going to take to get you to grasp a very simple concept:
Successful Classic Hits stations are successful because of research to find the songs their target audience has in common as songs they like, love or (at the absolute worst) won't push the button if it comes on.
They're not playing anything that new currently because no song that new fits the above at the moment. It may never. Or it may next month.
If you want to talk "most classic hits", go to the formats section and post in the Classic Hits board. This is the Los Angeles board, and we're talking KRTH.
I am not sure that this is the thread to be throwing around topic discipline.
Solid point.
I can remember oldies stations with short current playlists but that was decades ago.
🙁 I’m sad, because this was a fun, productive, interesting discussion about music and radio; and now it’s about to get derailed. It was fun while it lasted. It provided the intellectual nourishment I was seeking when I joined here.
But maybe it is time to close it or move Covid/ vaxx topics to the politics board.
But maybe it is time to close it or move Covid/ vaxx topics to the politics board.
I have deleted many political posts from this thread. Everyone should know the rules by now.
Are we to run the board based on what makes you sad? A little selfish on your part I would say.
And look, Tall_Guy1, to be clear, I'm not telling you to get the hell off the Los Angeles board. I just want you to understand that Los Angeles is literally like no other market in America and observations of what Classic Hits stations are like in other markets are irrelevant.
If you dropped KRTH whole, as it is today, into---Kansas City---it wouldn't work as well as it does in Los Angeles. It might not work at all.
The reverse is true. Anything any other market is doing with Classic Hits would not work as well as what KRTH is doing in Los Angeles. And it might not work at all.
And, as usual, Sean Ross explains it quite well:
How (and When) to Modernize a Classic Hits Station
WROR Boston is playing “Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots. Should you? KLOL (Kool 108) Minneapolis is playing “Interstate Love Song”
radioinsight.com
To support and amplify Michael's point:
LA is now about 80% Hispanic, Black, Asian and first generation "other" immigrants from areas like Lebanon, Persia, Armenia and Russia to name a few.
In 18-49 (the target for ethnic stations such as Black and Hispanic) and 25-54, the percentages are even higher. LA is over 50% Hispanic in 18-49, for example.
Some think that "assimilation" means that one's tastes change. They do not. I've been "back in the USA" for 30 years... last night as I was recovering from surgery I made myself a concert that lasted about three hours. It was Carlos Vives, Alfredo Gutiérrez, Shakira, Maluma, Oreja de Van Gogh, Juan Luis Guerra, La Zimbabwe, Glup, Fórmula Quinta, Camilo Sesto, Juan Erasmo Mochi, Puerto Rican Power, Willie Colón, Rubén Blades, La Sonora Santanera, Jonathan Moly, Adriana Lucia, Silvestre Dangond and a few dozen more. Oh, and "Go Your Own Way" some how wedged its way in there, too.
What that example means is that, even when immigrants learn English and become part of our amazing amalgamation of cultures, they keep loving the music they grew up on. And stations like KRTH have to live with what fits the biggest group´of listeners who will listen to English language radio if they want to survive.
One vote for "not at all" unless you move about a million Angelinos out to the midwest.
(That sounds like an amazing plot for a SciFi movie... replace half the population of a big city with people who are very, very different in tastes and customs and social behaviour... maybe you and I can do an on-line writer's room and put it together!)
Just think about how many "northern" formats have gone to die in Miami!
An Sean, often my hero in these discussions, has the ability to find the simple facts in formats and music that drive listeners.And, as usual, Sean Ross explains it quite well:
How (and When) to Modernize a Classic Hits Station
WROR Boston is playing “Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots. Should you? KLOL (Kool 108) Minneapolis is playing “Interstate Love Song”
There are a lot of songs for which we know the "white" versions but not the "Black" versions. In Myrtle Beach there is this one oldies station that is supposedly very popular, where most of the songs played are the Black versions, whether the songs are familiar to most of us or not. And some of the songs are familiar but it's not the "white" version being played in many cases, The DJs are mostly if not all white, and the same goes for the listeners.
It would seem now, for whoever is old enough to be familiar, even the whitest of the white would listen to Little Richard over Pat Boone.
That's because we know his songs. Many of the songs on the Myrtle Beach station are songs where I'm guessing a lot of people don't realize there was a Black version.
Chimp, are they playing Pat Boone's covers of Little Richard's and Fats Domino's songs ? That was a project that did not turn out well. Are you hearing that on that station? As the kids say, that is cringe. Really cringe.
It's kind of a challenge to post what is played on the station since they only show what's playing now. and they have a special show on Sunday, so I can't say what's normal right now. I don't listen to that station because I don't really like it.Chimp, are they playing Pat Boone's covers of Little Richard's and Fats Domino's songs ? That was a project that did not turn out well. Are you hearing that on that station? As the kids say, that is cringe. Really cringe.
Also, you got it backwards. They would definitely be playing Little Richard and Fats Domino.
For clarification.........which version are they playing? Little Richard/ Fats Domino, or the Pat Boone version? Thank you.
The way I have described the station, and from what I have heard when listening and seen online, they're unlikely to play Pat Boone at all.
Fats Domino and Little Richard would surely be played. I can make a list of songs somewhere this afternoon to give you an idea of what the station is like.
The Boone covers had a reason to exist when they were current, but I can't imagine any oldies station, even one in an unrated market, playing them now. Even the ones that concentrate on softer oldies would simply not play songs like "Tutti Frutti" at all rather than play Boone.
I'd love to, David, but it would end up being awfully close to 1999's Brendan Fraser comedy "Blast from the Past" (boy raised in a bomb shelter underneath the San Fernando Valley since 1962 comes out into the real world 25 years later):
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