60's Music Dead as far as B101 goes...

[mistermicrophone]

What I find interesting in all this is, at nearly every wedding I been to in the past few years, whenever songs like "Runaround Sue," "Shout" (the Isley Brothers version), "Do You Love Me," or really any 50s Elvis gets played, everyone goes nuts. I don't know how exactly translates to the mass-appeal classic hits station, but I'm sure if B101 played "Runaround Sue" every once in a while, no one would change the station.

There are too many "focus groups" and narrow parameters as to what goes on particular formats these days. It wouldn't hurt to play something because it feels right and sounds good every once in a while.

Jacko

But a majority of the people who dance to Runaround Sue will also stay on the floor for Gangnam Style. A dance floor at a wedding or bar or club is just as narrow of a focus as said focus groups.

It's actually just the opposite. A well-run focus group or music test is going to be made up of people in the sales demo who either listen or are open to listening to your station.

A dance floor, especially at a wedding, is a jumble of people of different ages and preferences who are in a mood to celebrate. Even when that mood wears off a bit, the last thing they want is for anybody to think they're not having a good time. They don't want to be rude, don't want to be the downer, so they dance.

You've got people who only listen to newstalk, only listen to country, only listen to jazz, up on the floor for "Shout!", "YMCA" and "Gangam Style" not because it's their favorite music, but because they're with their favorite people in a party atmosphere. That's very different from being alone at home, work or in the car.

I guess I didn't phrase my point the way I should have. I just meant that a dance floor at a wedding, while varied in it's participants demographics, is a group of people who are a captive audience and are listening (and using) the product differently than when they're listening to the radio on an average day. That's why I called it too narrow of a focus group.

 

[Jacko]

I suppose the wedding example wasn't great, but the point is that certain pre-'64 songs are still well known to several generations. Perhaps sprinkling these in sometimes wouldn't be a bad thing.

Jacko

 

[CTListener]

I do realize times are changing and they have to roll with the demos I do realize sooner or later maybe 3 years from now B101 will playing early 90's.Someone posted that a "Classic Hit's Station" has already started.Not sure how many have broken the barrier but what 90's songs are being played on whatever station or stations are doing it?

Santana's "Smooth" is showing up on quite a few. KRTH in Los Angeles has been playing it for years.

Today's 40-year-old (the center of the 25-54 demo) was in high school from 1987-1991 and college from 1991-1995, so the time for this is really already here.

A sampling of '90s titles from DRC-FM:
Fly -- Sugar Ray
Two Princes -- Spin Doctors
Emotions -- Mariah Carey
Something About You -- Level 42
Just a Girl -- No Doubt
Waterfalls -- TLC
Name -- Goo Goo Dolls
I'm the Only One -- Melissa Etheridge

I wonder why more of the more melodic '90s hits -- "Runaway Train," "Save Tonight," "Till I Hear It From You," "Hey Jealousy," etc. -- haven't been added. Seems to me that they'd be an easier-to-take transition to '90s music for listeners who gave up on CHR when grunge and rap emerged than stuff like "Waterfalls." Doesn't DRC-FM risk driving off the upper reaches of 35-54 completely with its current '90s playlist, or isn't that a concern at radio anymore?

 

[michael hagerty]

I do realize times are changing and they have to roll with the demos I do realize sooner or later maybe 3 years from now B101 will playing early 90's.Someone posted that a "Classic Hit's Station" has already started.Not sure how many have broken the barrier but what 90's songs are being played on whatever station or stations are doing it?

Santana's "Smooth" is showing up on quite a few. KRTH in Los Angeles has been playing it for years.

Today's 40-year-old (the center of the 25-54 demo) was in high school from 1987-1991 and college from 1991-1995, so the time for this is really already here.

A sampling of '90s titles from DRC-FM:
Fly -- Sugar Ray
Two Princes -- Spin Doctors
Emotions -- Mariah Carey
Something About You -- Level 42
Just a Girl -- No Doubt
Waterfalls -- TLC
Name -- Goo Goo Dolls
I'm the Only One -- Melissa Etheridge

I wonder why more of the more melodic '90s hits -- "Runaway Train," "Save Tonight," "Till I Hear It From You," "Hey Jealousy," etc. -- haven't been added. Seems to me that they'd be an easier-to-take transition to '90s music for listeners who gave up on CHR when grunge and rap emerged than stuff like "Waterfalls." Doesn't DRC-FM risk driving off the upper reaches of 35-54 completely with its current '90s playlist, or isn't that a concern at radio anymore?

It's the upper reaches of 35-54 that make you top-heavy demographically.

 

[KFodor]

What I find interesting in all this is, at nearly every wedding I been to in the past few years, whenever songs like "Runaround Sue," "Shout" (the Isley Brothers version), "Do You Love Me," or really any 50s Elvis gets played, everyone goes nuts. I don't know how exactly translates to the mass-appeal classic hits station, but I'm sure if B101 played "Runaround Sue" every once in a while, no one would change the station.

There are too many "focus groups" and narrow parameters as to what goes on particular formats these days. It wouldn't hurt to play something because it feels right and sounds good every once in a while.

Jacko

Jacko...if you've never seen the research done, if you've never read a report, you offer no more than anecdotal musings...

"Everyone goes nuts" when Elvis plays. Sure, if I'm in a room with people largely in their 50's to 70's. Teens stare at you, largely, like you're from another planet and want to know when you're gonna play some rap.

In addition to being in radio, I'm a DJ at private events, so I know what I'm talking about.

Now, if you're DJ-ing a "sock hop", sure...everyone will enjoy the music. They've come there to hear it. But you can't translate that into suggesting that that music will automatically draw teens and young adults to a radio station.

As to the research, I've seen it done. It's not done with a "focus group", but with a panel of listeners who are "pre-qualified" to be there by telling the inviter that they listen to the station that plays that music.

Take a class on statistical research and you might understand it better. What I know is: it works. And what's going now is the natural progress of time which neither you, nor I can stop...

 

[CTListener]

I think baby boomers were the first generation to grow up thinking there was something more than just catchy tunes and danceable rhythms going on with their generation's music. Look at how oldies stations promoted '60s/'70s hits: the greatest hits of all time. DRC-FM, during their Oldies 102.9 days, had a promo with this as a selling point: "It's the music you grew up with ... and now your kids can, too!" The idea being that this music is so meaningful and universal that it transcends generational barriers, even transcends the standard conception of "popular music," that it's the music your kids ought to be listening to instead of music made by (and for) others in their own generation. It gave baby boomers like myself a warm, fuzzy feeling, but the premise was absurd. There's a sea change in popular music roughly once every 15-25 years, and it's already happened twice since the baby boom generation.

 

[michael hagerty]

I think baby boomers were the first generation to grow up thinking there was something more than just catchy tunes and danceable rhythms going on with their generation's music. Look at how oldies stations promoted '60s/'70s hits: the greatest hits of all time. DRC-FM, during their Oldies 102.9 days, had a promo with this as a selling point: "It's the music you grew up with ... and now your kids can, too!" The idea being that this music is so meaningful and universal that it transcends generational barriers, even transcends the standard conception of "popular music," that it's the music your kids ought to be listening to instead of music made by (and for) others in their own generation. It gave baby boomers like myself a warm, fuzzy feeling, but the premise was absurd. There's a sea change in popular music roughly once every 15-25 years, and it's already happened twice since the baby boom generation.

Exactly. A real eye-opener for me the past 15 years or so was to listen to some unscoped MOR stations from the 1950s and 60s and find that they spent very little time with old music. Two or three songs an hour seemed to be the max for "oldies" then...and rarely did they go back more than 10 years. The vast majority of the music was current, and a lot of it was album cuts, not hit singles. It really wasn't until "Music of Your Life" that the WWII generation started going back to 1930s and 40s hits and latching on to them, by which point those people were well into their 50s and 60s and little that appealed to them was being played anywhere else (or produced, for that matter).

Boomers locked themselves into an oldies/classic hits/classic rock bunker 30-some years ago.

In another thread, someone posted a listener poll for WABC from 1981. It was 200 songs. In the Top 60, there was only one song from the 1950s (only 3 in the entire 200)...from 1956....which, I pointed out, was as old then as a song from 1988 is today.

32 years later, we're surprised when an oldies station is finally rolling off the 60s?

 

[Runrigger]

Scanning around in the car today, I heard The House Of The Rising Sun on B101 so I don't think the major 60's hits have completely gone away.

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

It may only be a matter of time---and maybe not much time---before music prior to 1978 is eliminated from WWBB-101.5 (and many other oldies/classic hits stations), with an emphasis from 1978 to the mid 1990's.

 

[Kenny Atkinson]

Scanning around in the car today, I heard The House Of The Rising Sun on B101 so I don't think the major 60's hits have completely gone away.

I'm sure they still have about 10 songs from 68 to 70....

 

[CTListener]

32 years later, we're surprised when an oldies station is finally rolling off the 60s?

"It's the music you grew up with ... and now your grandkids can, too!"

 

[Jacko]

What I find interesting in all this is, at nearly every wedding I been to in the past few years, whenever songs like "Runaround Sue," "Shout" (the Isley Brothers version), "Do You Love Me," or really any 50s Elvis gets played, everyone goes nuts. I don't know how exactly translates to the mass-appeal classic hits station, but I'm sure if B101 played "Runaround Sue" every once in a while, no one would change the station.

There are too many "focus groups" and narrow parameters as to what goes on particular formats these days. It wouldn't hurt to play something because it feels right and sounds good every once in a while.

Jacko

Jacko...if you've never seen the research done, if you've never read a report, you offer no more than anecdotal musings...

"Everyone goes nuts" when Elvis plays. Sure, if I'm in a room with people largely in their 50's to 70's. Teens stare at you, largely, like you're from another planet and want to know when you're gonna play some rap.

In addition to being in radio, I'm a DJ at private events, so I know what I'm talking about.

Now, if you're DJ-ing a "sock hop", sure...everyone will enjoy the music. They've come there to hear it. But you can't translate that into suggesting that that music will automatically draw teens and young adults to a radio station.

As to the research, I've seen it done. It's not done with a "focus group", but with a panel of listeners who are "pre-qualified" to be there by telling the inviter that they listen to the station that plays that music.

Take a class on statistical research and you might understand it better. What I know is: it works. And what's going now is the natural progress of time which neither you, nor I can stop...

Thank you, Jason, for your intel. You're right, I am not in the radio business but I do the occasional DJing of a school dance or family event. I am an avid music fan with a vast music library, albeit more of the rock/alternative genre. I guess I have a bit more of an AOR mindset when it comes to my personal feelings of how a station should be programmed. But then again, top 40 and oldies aren't necessarily in my wheelhouse. And I am well aware that the "typical" music listener may only listen to a station for a short time and is certainly more passive than me (and many others on this board) about music, so a station needs to play the "hits." I guess my argument is more the fact that a station that keeps itself to a playlist of 500 songs could play a song outside of that once in a while, with it still being familiar to its audience. In the case of the oldies or classic hits station, perhaps they shelved the Contours "Do You Love Me" back in 2009, for example, but that particular song is still recognizable to a longtime listener of said classic hits station, and anyone who has seen the movie Dirty Dancing. Throw it in once a week, no one will change the station.

One final anecdote: When I DJ a school dance, when it's over I play a "clear the room" song, usually one that I know the kids would not recognize and perhaps despise. Typically, Rush's "Tom Sawyer" works. At one particular middle school dance, after playing the "last song," the lights coming up and I announce "have a great night," I played Ray Charles' "Hit the Road Jack" as the room-clearing song. All the kids knew it and they stayed the extra two minutes, lights on, singing along and dancing. A bunch of 13 year olds enjoying a song that's over 50 years old - where does that figure into your research?

Jacko

 

[michael hagerty]

What I find interesting in all this is, at nearly every wedding I been to in the past few years, whenever songs like "Runaround Sue," "Shout" (the Isley Brothers version), "Do You Love Me," or really any 50s Elvis gets played, everyone goes nuts. I don't know how exactly translates to the mass-appeal classic hits station, but I'm sure if B101 played "Runaround Sue" every once in a while, no one would change the station.

There are too many "focus groups" and narrow parameters as to what goes on particular formats these days. It wouldn't hurt to play something because it feels right and sounds good every once in a while.

Jacko

Jacko...if you've never seen the research done, if you've never read a report, you offer no more than anecdotal musings...

"Everyone goes nuts" when Elvis plays. Sure, if I'm in a room with people largely in their 50's to 70's. Teens stare at you, largely, like you're from another planet and want to know when you're gonna play some rap.

In addition to being in radio, I'm a DJ at private events, so I know what I'm talking about.

Now, if you're DJ-ing a "sock hop", sure...everyone will enjoy the music. They've come there to hear it. But you can't translate that into suggesting that that music will automatically draw teens and young adults to a radio station.

As to the research, I've seen it done. It's not done with a "focus group", but with a panel of listeners who are "pre-qualified" to be there by telling the inviter that they listen to the station that plays that music.

Take a class on statistical research and you might understand it better. What I know is: it works. And what's going now is the natural progress of time which neither you, nor I can stop...

Thank you, Jason, for your intel. You're right, I am not in the radio business but I do the occasional DJing of a school dance or family event. I am an avid music fan with a vast music library, albeit more of the rock/alternative genre. I guess I have a bit more of an AOR mindset when it comes to my personal feelings of how a station should be programmed. But then again, top 40 and oldies aren't necessarily in my wheelhouse. And I am well aware that the "typical" music listener may only listen to a station for a short time and is certainly more passive than me (and many others on this board) about music, so a station needs to play the "hits." I guess my argument is more the fact that a station that keeps itself to a playlist of 500 songs could play a song outside of that once in a while, with it still being familiar to its audience. In the case of the oldies or classic hits station, perhaps they shelved the Contours "Do You Love Me" back in 2009, for example, but that particular song is still recognizable to a longtime listener of said classic hits station, and anyone who has seen the movie Dirty Dancing. Throw it in once a week, no one will change the station.

One final anecdote: When I DJ a school dance, when it's over I play a "clear the room" song, usually one that I know the kids would not recognize and perhaps despise. Typically, Rush's "Tom Sawyer" works. At one particular middle school dance, after playing the "last song," the lights coming up and I announce "have a great night," I played Ray Charles' "Hit the Road Jack" as the room-clearing song. All the kids knew it and they stayed the extra two minutes, lights on, singing along and dancing. A bunch of 13 year olds enjoying a song that's over 50 years old - where does that figure into your research?

Jacko

Jacko: Familiarity is only part of the puzzle. Songs also have to have extremely high favorability ratings. A 75 sounds good until you realize that you could lose a quarter of your audience on top of your normal churn if you play it.

It's really about consensus...playing the songs that the greatest number of your listeners have in common as favorites.

I used this analogy in another thread more than a year ago (I'll update it a bit). Let's say you've invited 10 friends over to watch "Breaking Bad" this Sunday. Two of them like sushi, one likes hotdogs, three like chicken, two like tacos and two like burgers....but they all like pizza.

What are you going to order?

Pizza.

 

[mistermicrophone]

So by your deduction, PRO-FM should be playing Hit The Road Jack, correct?

 

[mistermicrophone]

One final anecdote: When I DJ a school dance, when it's over I play a "clear the room" song, usually one that I know the kids would not recognize and perhaps despise. Typically, Rush's "Tom Sawyer" works. At one particular middle school dance, after playing the "last song," the lights coming up and I announce "have a great night," I played Ray Charles' "Hit the Road Jack" as the room-clearing song. All the kids knew it and they stayed the extra two minutes, lights on, singing along and dancing. A bunch of 13 year olds enjoying a song that's over 50 years old - where does that figure into your research?

So by your deduction, PRO-FM should be playing Hit The Road Jack, correct?

 

[CTListener]

You hear "Hit the Road, Jack" at ballparks when a pitcher is removed from the game. It's almost as much of a staple as "YMCA" as a between-innings crowd-participation piece -- or, in the case of Fenway Park, another oldie, "Sweet Caroline." That puts it more in the category of "Shout" and "The Twist" than the Rush track you cleared the room with. (By the way, I'm 58 and can't stand pretentious prog-rock like Rush. I'd be racing the kids for the exit!)

Speaking of which, in a previous life (30-something years ago), I covered high school basketball for a small newspaper in the South. One of the schools I covered had a PA announcer who'd punch up Jackson Browne's "The Load Out/Stay" after every game. Stick around after the game and you'd actually hear "the sound of slammin' doors and foldin' chairs" before that song ended!