• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

90's Music on CBS-FM

I work at a hot a/c, top 25 mkt...we go by 80s,90s,2k and today...typical, everybody's doing it. We play Nirvana " Come as you are" with no parting at all.
 
Tony Santiago said:
Let's face it (like it or not)...90's music now qualifies as "classic hits". And honestly I don't know how you're all going to react when Nirvana eventually makes CBS' playlist.

Some can argue that the sounds of grunge could be "timeless" especially for the fans of Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder, etc. And that would actually fit into the demos of what 'CBS is (and I NOTE that because even though hip-hop was ALSO a strong 90's staple, it doesn't fit to what the 'CBS listener is). In that sense, you can't stay stuck between the 60's and 80's either.

If it hadn't happened already, get set for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" :)

I would disagree tha 90s music qualifies as Classic Hits with the exception of perhaps some spillover hits from artists who were big in the 70s and 80s. Billy Joel, Elton, Whitney come to mind. Perhaps Mariah Carey's Vision of Love which was her first hit.
 
Tony Santiago said:
Let's face it (like it or not)...90's music now qualifies as "classic hits". And honestly I don't know how you're all going to react when Nirvana eventually makes CBS' playlist.

Well, I've already reacted. The ONLY local station that I now listen to when I'm in the New York area is WBGO, which plays some excellent jazz during the week and some nice early R&B on Saturdays. Otherwise, I have switched to Sirius XM, where I can still hear some real oldies, not 90s throwaway dreck.

And, yes, "oldies" is now a curse word in the world of terrestrial radio. Can't have anything "old", now, can you, whether it be the music or the people listening to it?
 
20 years ago, CBS-FM played the TOP-40 hits from 20-30 years ago. Fast forward 20 years later, and now songs from 1992 are 20 years old and songs from 1982 are 30 years old. If they were wide appeal Top-40 hits, such as Mariah Carey, Wilson Phillips or similar, why not mix them in on CBS-FM? In fact, they have to keep moving the goal posts to keep the station successful.

On a lesser signal, in a lesser market, where a lot less money is at stake, sure you can have your "oldies" station, playing 1955-1975. But that can't exist in NYC today, as much as WNEW-AM can't exist either.

What I'm surprised nobody has tried yet is an oldies format with a large playlist, heavy on the roots of rock n' roll, on a noncomm frequency and have it be listener supported.

I can't hear "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on CBS-FM anymore than I can hear Iron Butterfly or Ozzy on CBS-FM. Grunge, stylistically, will not sit well with the other songs around it. Look for more of the Hot-AC acts on CBS-FM than Pearl Jam or Nirvana. If you look at what they're playing, it's mainly a Hot-AC/classic hits without the "hard rock, rap or sleepy elevator music" as Scott Shannon used to say on WPLJ.
 
The best stations that play 60s and 70s music are on the internet. Off the top of my head there is Pop Gold Radio, Rewound Radio, and Hy Lit Radio. These 3 have deep playlists, but also seem to minimize the 50s.

Bruce
 
Seltzer said:
I would disagree tha 90s music qualifies as Classic Hits with the exception of perhaps some spillover hits from artists who were big in the 70s and 80s. Billy Joel, Elton, Whitney come to mind. Perhaps Mariah Carey's Vision of Love which was her first hit.

Thanks to my incredible math skills, I was able to determine that music that came out in the early '90s is now 20 years old. That sounds like it might qualify as "classic" to me.

On a more serious note, Classic Rock stations around the country are already playing early- to mid-'90s material like Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana and Soundgarden. They're (correctly) aging down to keep current as new listeners age into their demo. Given that Pearl Jam's Ten and Nirvana's Nevermind came out in 1991, someone who was in high school at the time those albums were released is now aging into -- or is already in -- the 35-54 demo targeted by Classic Rock and Classic Hits stations. If Classic Hits stations ignore this material (as well as other early '90s hits), they risk alienating the lower end of their target demo at a time when they should be cultivating the beginnings of a long-term relationship with these listeners.
 
Tony Santiago said:
If it hadn't happened already, get set for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" :)

No way, NOT A CHANCE!

Grunge for the 90's, would be like acid or metal from the 60's and 70's....it just doesn't get played on classic hits / oldies radio.

If anything, real old school rap will be played before Nirvana on CBS-FM...I can see CBS-FM playing "Whoomp There It Is" or "It Was A Good Day" eventually.
 
RockTheGlobe said:
If Classic Hits stations ignore this material (as well as other early '90s hits), they risk alienating the lower end of their target demo at a time when they should be cultivating the beginnings of a long-term relationship with these listeners.

1990 to 1993 music does not offer as much, compared to say, 1999 music.

From the early 90's CBS-FM could play Mariah Carey (Vision of Love), Seal (Crazy), Jade (Don't Walk Away), Elton John (Circle of Life, The One, Sacrifice, Club at the End of the Street), Suzanne Vega (Tom's Diner), Madonna (Vogue), George Michael (Praying For Time), EMF (Unbelievable) or Vanessa Williams (Save the Best For Last).....etc....etc...
 
oldies76 said:
1990 to 1993 music does not offer as much, compared to say, 1999 music.

From the early 90's CBS-FM could play Mariah Carey (Vision of Love), Seal (Crazy), Jade (Don't Walk Away), Elton John (Circle of Life, The One, Sacrifice, Club at the End of the Street), Suzanne Vega (Tom's Diner), Madonna (Vogue), George Michael (Praying For Time), EMF (Unbelievable) or Vanessa Williams (Save the Best For Last).....etc....etc...

That's an awfully narrow view of music from the early '90s, there is a ton of other stuff that could be played. 1991 alone saw the release of Sting's The Soul Cages; hits from Bryan Adams, The Divinyls, Mr. Big, Jesus Jones and Gerardo; debut albums from Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch, P.M. Dawn, The Spin Doctors, Enigma, Boyz II Men and Marc Cohn; R.E.M.'s Out of Time; DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince's Homebase; Bonnie Raitt's Luck of the Draw; Roxette's Joyride; Luther Vandross' Power of Love; Paula Abdul's Spellbound; Tom Petty's Into the Great Wide Open; Toad the Wet Sprocket's Fear; Tom Cochrane's solo debut; and U2's Achtung Baby... just to name a few, and I feel that all of those albums offer up at least 1 if not more tracks that CBS-FM could spin.
 
CBS-FM will add in 90s tunes eventually. But for now, songs from artists of the 70s and 80s who also hit in the early 90s. I'm not playing Jesus Jones Hot AC type songs on CBS just yet.for now
 
WNTIRadio said:
What I'm surprised nobody has tried yet is an oldies format with a large playlist, heavy on the roots of rock n' roll, on a noncomm frequency and have it be listener supported.

WGVU-AM in Grand Rapids, owned by the local junior college who also owns an FM NPR news-talker and a PBS station, does oldies with a very, very deep playlist:

http://www.wgvu.org/realoldies/
 
RockTheGlobe said:
oldies76 said:
1990 to 1993 music does not offer as much, compared to say, 1999 music.

From the early 90's CBS-FM could play Mariah Carey (Vision of Love), Seal (Crazy), Jade (Don't Walk Away), Elton John (Circle of Life, The One, Sacrifice, Club at the End of the Street), Suzanne Vega (Tom's Diner), Madonna (Vogue), George Michael (Praying For Time), EMF (Unbelievable) or Vanessa Williams (Save the Best For Last).....etc....etc...

That's an awfully narrow view of music from the early '90s, there is a ton of other stuff that could be played. 1991 alone saw the release of Sting's The Soul Cages; hits from Bryan Adams, The Divinyls, Mr. Big, Jesus Jones and Gerardo; debut albums from Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch, P.M. Dawn, The Spin Doctors, Enigma, Boyz II Men and Marc Cohn; R.E.M.'s Out of Time; DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince's Homebase; Bonnie Raitt's Luck of the Draw; Roxette's Joyride; Luther Vandross' Power of Love; Paula Abdul's Spellbound; Tom Petty's Into the Great Wide Open; Toad the Wet Sprocket's Fear; Tom Cochrane's solo debut; and U2's Achtung Baby... just to name a few, and I feel that all of those albums offer up at least 1 if not more tracks that CBS-FM could spin.

Not yet on most of these. 90s music generally has tested horribly and does not hold up well as a decade. Of your list, in 2012, I would consider Sting, Bryan Adams, Bonnie Raitt, Luther Vandross, and Roxette..Joy Ride is a fun pop song. And a solid music test of all of these songs would need to be done before I'd put any of them on...although my gut says these would do pretty well.
 
Seltzer said:
And a solid music test of all of these songs would need to be done before I'd put any of them on...although my gut says these would do pretty well.

Just go by your instincts! Forget the music tests....Why rely on someone elses "lack" of music knowledge?
 
oldies76 said:
Just go by your instincts! Forget the music tests....Why rely on someone elses "lack" of music knowledge?

Listener "knowledge" of music consists of knowing what they like and what they dislike. That is exactly what a music test shows... songs that are generally accepted and those that will annoy a significant percentage of listeners and thus hurt a station, particularly in the PPM.
 
CBS-FM is playing Jon Secada "Just Another Day" right now (12:43 PM on May 7, 2014). That's from 1992!
 
At 9:14 PM 5/7 "Its My Life" Bon Jovi from 2000. They are adding more 90s and even a few 2000s on a very limited basis. The adds seem to blend in well with the overall current upbeat sound of CBS FM. They no longer image as the greatest hits of the 60s, 70s and 80s just simply as "New York's Greatest Hits". I think the overall music mix, imaging and presentation has improved a lot in the past few months. Scott S show is a good listen as well, as long as the banter doesn't get out of control.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom