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Easy Listening/Standards

N

newguy16

Can someone explain to me how a station playing a mix of 50’s to early 70’s Easy Listening/Beautiful Music and Standards is supposed to work in 2026? Those formats targeted people in their 30’s-50’s back then. If you were 40 in 1970, you’re in your 90’s now, and, unlike classic Top 40 and rock, this music has no timeless appeal to younger people. Not even necessarily talking about how a format like this can work from a financial standpoint (the station in question airs tons of brokered programming and gets revenue from that)… I’m more questioning how they manage to have any measurable listenership (they probably don’t).
 
newguy16 said:
Can someone explain to me how a station playing a mix of 50’s to early 70’s Easy Listening/Beautiful Music and Standards is supposed to work in 2026? Those formats targeted people in their 30’s-50’s back then. If you were 40 in 1970, you’re in your 90’s now, and, unlike classic Top 40 and rock, this music has no timeless appeal to younger people. Not even necessarily talking about how a format like this can work from a financial standpoint (the station in question airs tons of brokered programming and gets revenue from that)… I’m more questioning how they manage to have any measurable listenership (they probably don’t).
Click to expand...

some possibilities:

1) The owner is rich and is putting on the format for his/her personal gratification.

2) The owner has other stations that bill more in this market and is using those stations to support this format.

3) The station is either located in the non-commercial portion of the FM band or is being run as a non-profit operation on the AM band (see #1).

You can pick your answers, maybe pick all three. As for me, I'm glad *that* someone is still running this format, even though it doesn't attract younger listeners.
 
Sounds very similar to WPON Walled Lake, MI (Detroit). They are Talk N' Rare Oldies from the 50's/60's that includes standards. All the programming including the music is brokered. They are owned by Birach Broadcasting, a radio station owner that has brokered programming as a business model on all of their owned stations.
 
newguy16 said:
"this music has no timeless appeal to younger people."
Click to expand...
Many Beautiful Music recordings were covers of standards from the Great American Song Book of songs (Porter, Kern, Gershwin, Cahn, Berlin, Mercer etc...).

Perhaps those BM versions aren't timeless, but the melodies are; that's why they are called "standards."

Many pop/rock artists have recorded standards and continue to do so. More recently Lady Gaga recorded Cheek to Cheek and Love for Sale. Michael Buble recorded many standards. Other artists include Samara Joy, Stella Cole etc.

Many of the songs by MOR composers such as Jimmy Webb and Burt Bacharach have probably made it into the standards lexicon and continue to be covered and are sampled in mixes.
 
WPON...a very interesting animal indeed. Their oldies playlist spans everything from the '40s to the '90s and includes a heavy amount of album cuts that were never released as singles (think the Stevie Wonder version of "Respect" - I didn't even know he had recorded that song until I heard it on WPON). The other night I literally heard Billie Holiday and Aerosmith in the same hour. They almost remind me of what KBRD in Washington might sound like if they updated the music. Here's a sample playlist from yesterday evening...

Shirley Bassey - Jezahel
Paul McCartney & Wings - Jet
Beach Boys - Wild Honey
Guess Who - Orly (just missed Top 20 in Canada, didn't even Bubble Under in the States)
BTO - Hey You
Foghat - Stone Blue
Amen Corner - Bend Me, Shape Me (live version; they had a #3 with this song in the UK, while the US hit version was by The American Breed)
Neil Young - Wonderin' (non-charting single from 1983)
Donna Summer - State of Independence
Jane Wiedlin - Rush Hour
Carolyn Crawford - Until You Came Along (Detroit artist)
Kate Smith - God Bless America (plays at midnight just after the TOH ID)
 


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