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Power 106’s 40th Anniversary is approaching.

K.M. Richards said:
As has been said many times, Flipper (by me, David, and others) you belong to a sub-class of listeners called "outliers". Your preferences are outside those of the mass audience we have to program to in order to be commercially viable.

Okay, we get it. You can stop using that "burned to a crisp" line anytime now. It does not apply to the vast majority of listeners' POV.

Just because you don't want to hear those songs again doesn't mean everyone doesn't. Quite the opposite, as it turns out. We're going to continue to make them happy, at the expense of losing the relative handful of listeners like yourself.

All you do by occasionally dredging that up is irritate the professionals here. Is that the image you want for yourself?
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I am totally confident with my self-image. My wife provides all the outside validation I need, which thankfully isn't that much.

I would like to remind you that outliers are people too. And if my posts irritate you (and you seem to be speaking for ALL of the professionals after chastising another poster for doing the same on this very thread) you are welcome to ignore my posts, either by not reading them or using the ignore feature the board offers.
 
ChannelFlipper said:
And if my posts irritate you (and you seem to be speaking for ALL of the professionals after chastising another poster for doing the same on this very thread) you are welcome to ignore my posts, either by not reading them or using the ignore feature the board offers.
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It's more fun to use them as an excuse to explain how programming works, TBH.
 
michael hagerty said:
Bill Drake told me that he hated the weekly countdown of the "Boss 30" or "Big 30" on the RKO stations. "I'm going to spend an hour every Wednesday night playing the least popular half of the playlist back-to-back?". But both Ron Jacobs at KHJ and Tom Rounds at KFRC insisted on the value of a countdown.
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Rounds ended up not being a huge Drake fan. Rounds understood some broad aspects of entertainment, while Drake was all about very precise and tight mechanics.

Rounds knew the same thing as Letterman and his producers did: Americans love lists. They introduce competition to all kinds of areas, from dog food brands to songs. The build-up to the top songs on AT40 is like the rounds of elimination on American Idol and the rest. Or the Indianapolis 500 where a bunch of cars go in circles for hours to see who, finally wins and who flips and crashes.

Rounds left KFRC as Drake did not see the importance of things he did at the station, starting with the Fantasy Faire and Magic Mountain Music Festival. Jacobs was quick to follow when Rounds came up with the AT40 ides.
michael hagerty said:
And, of course, years later, they formed Watermark and launched American Top 40, which proved their point.
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And in the process, they invented advertiser supported syndicated shows.
michael hagerty said:
Still, a lot of people I knew tuned in for the last hour or two of AT40 because hour number one was filled with songs they didn't know yet and songs they were sick to death of.
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But one of the purposes of AT40 was to fill four hours of Sunday morning or evening wasteland where the option was having your worst part timer on the market's #1 station.
 
ChannelFlipper said:
I am totally confident with my self-image. My wife provides all the outside validation I need, which thankfully isn't that much.

I would like to remind you that outliers are people too. And if my posts irritate you (and you seem to be speaking for ALL of the professionals after chastising another poster for doing the same on this very thread) you are welcome to ignore my posts, either by not reading them or using the ignore feature the board offers.
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As I mentioned, probably too often, in music tests we get "outliers" who deviate significantly from the usual fairly narrow range of scores for a station's songs and possible adds. When we see one, we eliminate that person from the sample and reprocess. It's the equivalent of pulling the chain in the WC.
 
K.M. Richards said:
KRKE runs the classic American Top 40: The 80s shows on Sundays, and (naturally) I listen to it on the stream, often with the cue sheet open in my PDF reader. Even today, the songs that have remained viable for the Classic Hits format are largely the ones in the last half of the show, although now those first two hours contain the debuts of songs that went on to be big hits ... although there were a lot of stiffs in there, too.
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Keyword: "lot". What should be evident looking at all those station charts is that most PDs were wrong with about half of the songs they picked as new adds. Maybe more than half. I did not do much better, so it was just confirmation that hits can't always be predicted.

Of course, there are songs that just scream "hit" when you hear them. "Where did our Love Go" comes to mind as one of the first that gave me that goose bump feeling when I had my first Top 40 PD position in '64. (thump, thump, thump, Baby, Baby, Baby don't leave me...). Add in Holland-Dozier-Holland and that one could be added as soon as you could run it to the studio.
 
davideduardo said:
Rounds ended up not being a huge Drake fan. Rounds understood some broad aspects of entertainment, while Drake was all about very precise and tight mechanics.
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Drake also was the world's squarest Southern boy who never did, never could and never would understand San Francisco. KYA continued to be viable for as long as it did partly because Drake wouldn't let Rounds do what he knew the market needed at KFRC, and then replaced him with a series of by-the-book Drake PDs (Les Turpin, Ted Atkins, Paul Drew).

The first real post-Drake PD at KFRC, and the turning point for the station, was when Sebastian Stone, who Drake had known and trusted for years, replaced Drew in 1971 and began breaking a lot of Drake rules in pursuit of being a San Francisco radio station instead of a Drake station in San Francisco.

Michael Spears accelerated that when he arrived in the summer of 1973 (immediately post-Drake) and Dr. Don Rose' arrival for mornings that fall pretty well ended the competition.
 
davideduardo said:
Keyword: "lot". What should be evident looking at all those station charts is that most PDs were wrong with about half of the songs they picked as new adds. Maybe more than half. I did not do much better, so it was just confirmation that hits can't always be predicted.
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A further problem for AT40, relying as it did on the Billboard Hot 100: In the earliest years of AT40, the chart was a sales chart (Billboard announced the "addition" of airplay at least three times that I recall) based not on retail, but on wholesale. So, for anything outside the Top 20 that wasn't on its way down, it was really more a barometer of rack-jobber and large retailer confidence in a record than it was an indication of what people were actually paying for and taking home.
 
And speaking of AT40, look what Sean Ross published just today:

radioinsight.com

Fresh Listen: American Top 40

After 55 years, American Top 40 is still appointment listening for me, and I’m not alone. For several years, listeners, mostly those who grew up with Casey Kasem, have been gathering on social media at Noon ET on Saturday when SiriusXM plays vintage shows from the ’70s on its ’70s on 7 channel...
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com
 
michael hagerty said:
Drake also was the world's squarest Southern boy who never did, never could and never would understand San Francisco. KYA continued to be viable for as long as it did partly because Drake wouldn't let Rounds do what he knew the market needed at KFRC, and then replaced him with a series of by-the-book Drake PDs (Les Turpin, Ted Atkins, Paul Drew).

The first real post-Drake PD at KFRC, and the turning point for the station, was when Sebastian Stone, who Drake had known and trusted for years, replaced Drew in 1971 and began breaking a lot of Drake rules in pursuit of being a San Francisco radio station instead of a Drake station in San Francisco.

Michael Spears accelerated that when he arrived in the summer of 1973 (immediately post-Drake) and Dr. Don Rose' arrival for mornings that fall pretty well ended the competition.
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I had quite a few conversations with TR about that era in the two decades I worked with him. We were an interesting pair of couples, as Barbara Rounds had been with TR since Hawai'i; she shared with my wife her years in Mexico. And TR always loved the feel of being on the air and my wife (former Univision LA news anchor, KTNQ music DJ and talk host and PD of the Recuerdo network) and Tom could share "mike moments" that neither Barbara nor I could feel like they did.

Long preamble, but those two, when talking about radio, showed how they had something "inside" that they were born with. Not everyone has that, and it can't be tought.
 
K.M. Richards said:
KRKE runs the classic American Top 40: The 80s shows on Sundays, and (naturally) I listen to it on the stream, often with the cue sheet open in my PDF reader. Even today, the songs that have remained viable for the Classic Hits format are largely the ones in the last half of the show, although now those first two hours contain the debuts of songs that went on to be big hits ... although there were a lot of stiffs in there, too.

But even some of the big charters (including more than a few #1s) are poison to the format now.
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Your post reminded me of something I read/heard (I can't remember which) years ago that noted that most classic hits stations' primary target audience was white males. For that reason, many of the songs heard on classic hits stations actually were not always the biggest hits in Billboard or other charts; but they tested well with white males. It also explains why, outside of a handful of name artists (Michael Jackson, Prince, Donna Summer [specifically her big hit from 1983], Earth, Wind and Fire, and the Pointer Sisters), these stations tended to focus on white R&R acts.

Another thing I remember hearing more recently (I think it may have been on one of the NPR news shows) was the question of what classic hits stations would do when it came to the 90s. During that decade especially after the magazine began relying on SoundScan for its hot 100 listings, R&R actually took a back seat as rap and slow R&B tended to create greater sales and therefore reach higher chart positions. The question was: would classic hits stations follow the pop charts and become more rap-oriented?

I think we now have the answer and that answer is a definite "No." While a few rap artists are getting on 90s-based classic hits outlets (I'm thinking of MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This,"), these stations appear to be sticking with more R&R songs preferred by white males.

However (and I think that the OP may appreciate this), what we are seeing, especially in cities with large minority populations, is the growth of classic hip-hop stations that play both R&B and hip-hop from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. In Los Angeles, the simulcasting service of KDAY/KDEY is a prime example of this format. In Phoenix, the station at 101.1 mHz (whose callsign eludes me right now and whose transmitter is up by Crown King) is also running the same type of format.
 
ted chittenden said:
Your post reminded me of something I read/heard (I can't remember which) years ago that noted that most classic hits stations' primary target audience was white males. For that reason, many of the songs heard on classic hits stations actually were not always the biggest hits in Billboard or other charts; but they tested well with white males. It also explains why, outside of a handful of name artists (Michael Jackson, Prince, Donna Summer [specifically her big hit from 1983], Earth, Wind and Fire, and the Pointer Sisters), these stations tended to focus on white R&R acts.

Another thing I remember hearing more recently (I think it may have been on one of the NPR news shows) was the question of what classic hits stations would do when it came to the 90s. During that decade especially after the magazine began relying on SoundScan for its hot 100 listings, R&R actually took a back seat as rap and slow R&B tended to create greater sales and therefore reach higher chart positions. The question was: would classic hits stations follow the pop charts and become more rap-oriented?

I think we now have the answer and that answer is a definite "No." While a few rap artists are getting on 90s-based classic hits outlets (I'm thinking of MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This,"), these stations appear to be sticking with more R&R songs preferred by white males.

However (and I think that the OP may appreciate this), what we are seeing, especially in cities with large minority populations, is the growth of classic hip-hop stations that play both R&B and hip-hop from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. In Los Angeles, the simulcasting service of KDAY/KDEY is a prime example of this format. In Phoenix, the station at 101.1 mHz (whose callsign eludes me right now and whose transmitter is up by Crown King) is also running the same type of format.
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To your point, Ted...yeah, Classic Hits tends to avoid R&B, but that doesn't mean radio does. They just live on different stations and not necessarily what are perceived as ethnic stations like KDAY.

Here's the (constantly updating) "recently played" page for KCBS-FM (Jack) in L.A.:


And here's the KTWV page:


While both sexes listen to both stations, I think Jack absolutely skews more male and The Wave skews more female. Both stations have a 4 share right now (6+).

I know some people call The Wave "black" because the preponderance of its artists are, but in a metro with a 6.5% Black population, their numbers suggest that they are very much a mass-appeal station. There's hip-hop influence, but it's very much not a hip-hop station.

Our old labels and borders are insufficient for today's adult listeners and their music. I made a post last night in the "MOYL Format 2025" thread:

 
ted chittenden said:
Your post reminded me of something I read/heard (I can't remember which) years ago that noted that most classic hits stations' primary target audience was white males. For that reason, many of the songs heard on classic hits stations actually were not always the biggest hits in Billboard or other charts; but they tested well with white males. It also explains why, outside of a handful of name artists (Michael Jackson, Prince, Donna Summer [specifically her big hit from 1983], Earth, Wind and Fire, and the Pointer Sisters), these stations tended to focus on white R&R acts.

Another thing I remember hearing more recently (I think it may have been on one of the NPR news shows) was the question of what classic hits stations would do when it came to the 90s. During that decade especially after the magazine began relying on SoundScan for its hot 100 listings, R&R actually took a back seat as rap and slow R&B tended to create greater sales and therefore reach higher chart positions. The question was: would classic hits stations follow the pop charts and become more rap-oriented?

I think we now have the answer and that answer is a definite "No." While a few rap artists are getting on 90s-based classic hits outlets (I'm thinking of MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This,"), these stations appear to be sticking with more R&R songs preferred by white males.

However (and I think that the OP may appreciate this), what we are seeing, especially in cities with large minority populations, is the growth of classic hip-hop stations that play both R&B and hip-hop from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. In Los Angeles, the simulcasting service of KDAY/KDEY is a prime example of this format. In Phoenix, the station at 101.1 mHz (whose callsign eludes me right now and whose transmitter is up by Crown King) is also running the same type of format.
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Yeah KDAY 93.5 is the originator of the classic hip hop format. I remember in 2014-15, there were a bunch of classic hip hop stations showing up in some markets. Even New York has an old school hip hop station now.
 
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Of course, individual programmers have different takes. The Eighties Channel™ was deliberately designed not to rely exclusively on the mix Ted described. We play more of the R&B hits of the 80's than most Classic Hits formats ... we just don't go much deeper toward rap/hip-hop than "Bust A Move" and "Funky Cold Medina". I have a lot of classic R&B in the Forgotten 45s category.

And the second station I program in Albuquerque, with what I call a "smooth AC" format has, as its core, a high percentage of the songs KTWV (The Wave) plays.

Does anyone program the exact same way as I do? No, but I don't program exactly the way any other programmer does. It's that instinct again (see the thread on "I Want To Learn To Program").
 
cer1992 said:
It would be nice if they did something special for the 40th anniversary.
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This comes up every time a station hits a milestone anniversary. The problem is, what fans think would be "something special" would be an interruption of what people tune to the station for today.

It works, when it does, on stations with a high service profile. KNX can get away with 100 year anniversary pieces as they did in 2021 because they can peg it to the whole "depend on us" thing. Stevie Wonder's KJLH has had such a high profile in the Black community that I think they could do it.
 


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