It's been my casual observation that a lot of the music you find on an Adult Standards station has a decent following among Baby Boomers. That’s not to say they like the way it is usually presented on the radio. I am beginning to think that radio’s pre-conceived notion of this format is its biggest problem.
Most of us in the Baby Boomer age group grew up watching Ed Sullivan, Dinah Shore, Perry Como, Dean Martin and a lot of others on TV. During high school and college, we listened to many of these people on the radio, and probably even owned some of their records. There certainly were a lot of non-rock hits that got tons of radio air play in the 50s and 60s. It's true, we wanted to party with the Rolling Stones, but we actually listened to a lot of other music as well. For some reason we sort of forgot about it. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.
For the last 35-40 years, radio has assumed that people of my age group wanted a steady diet of Beatles, Stones, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. That's fine, but eventually it becomes very predictable. How many times in a day can you listen to "Stairway to Heaven?" Speaking for myself, I got tired of it. About the mid 1990's curent pop music left me. It no longer had any appeal. Somebody my age isn't supposed to like Rap and Hip-Hop. It worked. I can't handle it.
I tried Smooth Jazz for a while, but it also got very predictable. I even got on a Classical Music kick for a while. In fact, still listen to WRR a bit when I'm in Dallas. It's good stuff, but not very high energy.
One day I rediscovered a lot of what user to be called "Middle of the Road" (MOR) music. It struck a chord with me. I already knew all the songs, but I hadn't heard them in a long time. It was a little like finding an old friend. I have noticed that I'm not at all alone. While it's not for everyone, there ought to be enough fans that someone could make a decent living out of it.
It’s curious that even though the music has a lot of appeal, it isn’t well represented on the radio. I think that has a lot to do with the way many broadcasters think it should be presented. If you make your radio station sound like “only old farts need tune in,” then that’s who you’ll get for listeners. I don’t claim to have any answers, but I’m fairly certain that to succeed, Adult Standards needs a fresh approach. The music has a following, so broadcasters need to figure out how to take advantage of that if they want to be successful with the format.
As a leading edge Baby Boomer, I can tell you that I have not stopped spending money. In fact, I think I spend way more at age 59 than I ever have at any other point in my life. At least in the community I live in, that seems fairly normal. You probably won't get me to switch from Diet Coke to Pepsi, but there are lots of other marketing opportunities pitched to people over 50. It just takes the right people to understand that. I think they are leaving money on the table by ignoring that demographic.
