80s music presence on the radio in the '90s

[Kent]

While you are correct as far as you go, the replaying of hits basically 20 years (or more) after they were hits started during the 1970s. In fact, during the 1960s, there was no mass desire to play 1940s hits again; nor did that desire come into play during the 1950s to replay the hits of the 1930s. The fact that the 20-year nostalgia boom began in the 1970s suggests to me that the nostalgia booms from that decade on were, at least in part, manufactured by the music industry to encourage people to purchase more of its older products.

I don’t necessarily think you're seeing the full picture. The notion that there was no mass desire to play the 40’s during the 60’s wouldn’t seem to be supported by the data. I'll grant you that I wasn’t around in the 60’s and finding format data from that time is a bit tough for a variety of reasons, but MOR existed. Every station that existed in the 60’s wasn’t playing rock and popular music. MOR was still in the money demo until at least 1980. My grandfathers were born in 1914 and 1924, and they listened to MOR and big band music almost their entire lives. The older grandfather lived to 85 and had access to a satellite standards station until he died. That's a mass desire to play and hear 40’s music. You just didn’t hear it on the stations you liked. That standards station, by the way, ambled on another few years after the older grandfather died, but it didn’t quite make it long enough to survive the other one.

I grew up mostly during the 80’s, and I generally didn’t hear 60’s music on my stations. When my favorite Top-40/CHR in junior high “sifted through its old record collection for more variety,” I started spending more time with the competitor across town.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Ted's recollection is the closest to what actually happened in the '90s. Songs from the 80's that had gone through recurrent status would be added to a station's gold library as appropriate. There was some "gut instinct" talent required of MDs, since which gold titles you played really depended on what "flavor" of CHR you were doing.

For the record, the first documented all-80s station was WXXY/103.1 in Chicago, which launched on August 6, 1999. I continue to pay homage to them by using the same positioner -- The Eighties Channel™ -- for my format. (Besides, I couldn't improve on the perfection of it.)

Their original MD/APD/night jock, Jeffrey T. Mason, has maintained a tribute site to WXXY:

The 80's Channel: 10 Year Anniversary!

 

[ted chittenden]

The rock era, and mass commercialization and formatting of music as we know it, didn't begin until the mid-50s, so there really wasn't a solid history for nostalgia to draw upon until those first rock-n-rollers started feeling out of touch with the music of the 70s.
Nostalgia has always had its place though - the Grand Ole Opry began with fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson, who would play "old time music" - the old standards and folk tunes from the 19th century - that the older folks of the 1920s gravitated toward.

I think David Eduardo's reply throws the most cold water on my record industry promotion theory. And I do think that Huff's response is partially correct as well. I'll put in a couple of additional factors.

1) During the 1930s and 1940s, radio was more than just music and news. It hosted dramas, comedies, mysteries--the kinds of shows you find on television (or on cable or satellite TV or even streaming) now. Playing music had to take a back seat to these shows, especially if the local radio stations were on one of the three major networks back then (which most were).

2) The other thing to consider is the musicians' unions and their rules. As Mr. Eduardo and others have noted on other threads, the musicians' unions at the time wanted radio stations to hire orchestras to play the music live and pay musicians high fees (for the time) for the opportunity to perform. It wasn't until the late 1940s or early 1950s (if memory serves) that most radio stations were able to get out of those contracts.

Finally a response to Kent. I was born in 1963 and started playing with radio receivers around 1970/1971. I was living in Tujunga (a Los Angeles suburb) at the time and I certainly do not remember any all big band/crooner stations in the area. The primary MOR stations, KMPC and KFI, while they did play some older material, mainly focused on current recordings from 1950s crooners. When I moved to Phoenix in 1972, I found the MOR stations, KOY and KOOL, were basically doing the same thing.

The first radio station I ever heard that took a whack at playing pre-rock and roll all of the time (or nearly all of the time) was KWAO, a Class A station licensed to Sun City, AZ, that had (if I remember correctly) a total output of 3kW. It first went on the air in 1975 (again by memory) and didn't change formats until 1983. KWAO focused primarily on 1950s crooners with the occasional big band number thrown in.

I have only heard two all 1940s stations during my entire life. One was in Salt Lake City on, if memory serves, the 94.1 frequency. I heard the station as we were returning to Phoenix by truck and camper from a visit to my father's brother in Maple Valley (near Seattle), Washington in early January of 1980. I never did get the callsign for that outlet.

The only other station that I ever heard play all 1940s music all of the time was San Fernando's KGIL-FM between (again, if memory serves) 1982 and 1983? (I know it was sometime during the period of 1981-1985 when I attended LMU but I don't remember exactly what year and how long the format actually lasted.)

 

[vchimpanzee]

The rock era, and mass commercialization and formatting of music as we know it, didn't begin until the mid-50s, so there really wasn't a solid history for nostalgia to draw upon until those first rock-n-rollers started feeling out of touch with the music of the 70s.

I remember commercials for albums with 50 music in the 70s. "Happy Days" may have played a role in that.

WEND, the alternative tock station in Charlotte NC, played 80s alternative at lunchtime. Those were songs I never thought would be "gold".

 

[vchimpanzee]

Finally a response to Kent. I was born in 1963 and started playing with radio receivers around 1970/1971. I was living in Tujunga (a Los Angeles suburb) at the time and I certainly do not remember any all big band/crooner stations in the area. The primary MOR stations, KMPC and KFI, while they did play some older material, mainly focused on current recordings from 1950s crooners. When I moved to Phoenix in 1972, I found the MOR stations, KOY and KOOL, were basically doing the same thing.

About that time I remember hearing Sinatra sing "High Hopes" but don't remember what station did it. I only remember an AC (before there was such a thing, but it didn't have the harder Top 40) and a country station. There was a third station we would listen to but I don't know what the format was. I have read that, while we didn't live there at the time, Charlotte had a station that was still playing some music by big band era artists. Then it went Top 40 or AC, depending on who is describing it. The fans of the older music probably considered it Top 40.

The first radio station I ever heard that took a whack at playing pre-rock and roll all of the time (or nearly all of the time) was KWAO, a Class A station licensed to Sun City, AZ, that had (if I remember correctly) a total output of 3kW. It first went on the air in 1975 (again by memory) and didn't change formats until 1983. KWAO focused primarily on 1950s crooners with the occasional big band number thrown in.

A local station in the town where I lived switched to big band in 1978 or so. Whether this was related or not I don't know, but my high school band played big band in a concert and the kids liked it. Then again, I get the impression our favorite song was "Free Bird". Wasn't mine.

Two years later an all-news station in Charlotte had the format that came to be called adult standards. It lasted only a few years, but that mix of music made a comeback in the late 80s nationwide.

 

[vchimpanzee]

MOR was still in the money demo until at least 1980. My grandfathers were born in 1914 and 1924, and they listened to MOR and big band music almost their entire lives. The older grandfather lived to 85 and had access to a satellite standards station until he died. That's a mass desire to play and hear 40’s music. You just didn’t hear it on the stations you liked. That standards station, by the way, ambled on another few years after the older grandfather died, but it didn’t quite make it long enough to survive the other one.

I grew up mostly during the 80’s, and I generally didn’t hear 60’s music on my stations. When my favorite Top-40/CHR in junior high “sifted through its old record collection for more variety,” I started spending more time with the competitor across town.

I have read that a Top 40 station in the Greensboro NC market switched to big band about that time, and the Stardust satellite format when that began a few years later. I remember being surprised at how much 40s music there was. And it sounded good. It was actually new to me, but I had been hearing some form of big band music all my life because that's what so many TV series did, especially the variety shows. Asheville NC was a popular place to retire and their former Top 40 AM did that format when the beautiful music station changed to Top 40. I think Greensboro NC had its own big band station since the other one may not have had a good signal in Greensboro. And I heard a big band station in Durham on a cable channel when I was there in 1985.

 

[K.M. Richards]

The only other station that I ever heard play all 1940s music all of the time was San Fernando's KGIL-FM between (again, if memory serves) 1982 and 1983? (I know it was sometime during the period of 1981-1985 when I attended LMU but I don't remember exactly what year and how long the format actually lasted.)

That would have been right after KGIL acquired the then-KVFM in 1976 and simulcast Chuck Southcott's "Ballads, Blues and Big Bands Too" which had been on AM 1260 for a few years by then. They subsequently bought a Schafer 903 automation system and ran Jay Stevens' syndicated AC format as KMGX (Magic 94.3) until they were sold to Art Astor to simulcast KIKF on same frequency from Orange County.