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ADULT TOP 40, NO?

W

Wildstyle K

With the sea of chr's leaning rhythmic and rhythmic's leaning chr, I wonder why we don't have an adult top 40 station in Phoenix? KMXP is way too far adult to be adult top 40. KMVA is somewhat close, but seems to strictly follow the top 40 charts and obviously isn't adult top 40. The closest KZZP ever gets to not leaning rhythmic is when they do The Fab 30 hits Countdown with Perez Hilton. Quite a bit of what is featured in that hits countdown is not played on KZZP.

Would an adult top 40 station work in Phoenix? After all, look at how well KMXP is doing, and look at how well chr itself normally does as well. Could one of the big hits stations try a mixture and make it work as adult top 40 in Phoenix? I just noticed that NOBODY in Phoenix even touched the new Nickelback song, which was on the Fab 30 hits Countdown along with other decent pop rock material....
 
I just noticed that NOBODY in Phoenix even touched the new Nickelback song, which was on the Fab 30 hits Countdown along with other decent pop rock material....

I'm pretty sure I've heard new Nickelback on KDKB...
 
If I remember correctly, "Adult Top 40" was a creation of early 90's consultants who were trying to reach the upper end of the 18-34 demo in an era where the "Top 40" was dominated by Seattle-inspired grungy rock on the one hand, and West Coast rap on the other. I believe the positioning statement was usually something like "We Play the Hits Without the Hard Rock and Rap," and if you tuned in the edgiest thing you might hear would be a cleaned up version of TLC "Ain't Too Proud To Beg" with Left Eye's rap removed.

I also remember it kinda sucked.
 
Ford said:
If I remember correctly, "Adult Top 40" was a creation of early 90's consultants who were trying to reach the upper end of the 18-34 demo in an era where the "Top 40" was dominated by Seattle-inspired grungy rock on the one hand, and West Coast rap on the other. I believe the positioning statement was usually something like "We Play the Hits Without the Hard Rock and Rap," and if you tuned in the edgiest thing you might hear would be a cleaned up version of TLC "Ain't Too Proud To Beg" with Left Eye's rap removed.

I also remember it kinda sucked.
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Adult Top 40 goes back earlier than that. Y-95 launched as Adult Top 40 under Michael St. John IIRC. It became less adult over time. CHR in the 80's and early 90's was always under pressure to get some 25-54 numbers from sales. It's not like you could have a cluster strategy back then with only 1 AM and 1 FM in house. I don't remember what made the station so "adult" when it signed on (my memories of early Y-95 was they played a lot of Lisa Lisa & Whitney Houston, but that's the 80's for you.)

KZZP shot itself in the foot trying to shift to adult CHR back in the day: 10.2 - 2.9 in one book. At 8:00 at night, you'd find Me So Horny playing on Y-95 and Power 92 while KZZP was playing Phil Collins. Not too hard, not too soft, not too good.

Today, the line between mainstream CHR and Hot AC is pretty blurry, as moms & teens both like Katy Perry and songs don't take a year to cross from CHR to AC anymore. About the only real difference between the two is that the adult station will still wait for the CHR to break the record first before going for the add.

I really liked the Hot AC sound that Doug Harvill at EZ had created at Magic 101 before they screwed it up and flipped it to Mix. Most of those songs and artists have pretty much disappeared from the radio. Maybe someday those songs will end up at Classic Hits. Maybe those songs will be completely forgotten. But I liked it.
 
I guess today's Black Eyed Peas "boom boom pow" and Gym Class Heroes's "Stereo Hearts" would be the Tone Loc "Wild thang" or Marky Mark "good vibrations" of today, And Rihanna would somewhat be like the Ce Ce Peniston of today.

By the way, KMXP is also playing "Airplanes" by BOB. I'm sure an Adult top 40 would not sound today as it did in the 90's and before because it's almost a sure thing that you'd have to play whatever is or was hot in the recent years (which will indeed include some amount of music with rap in it).

An adult top 40 today would surely be more "fun & upbeat" than they were known to be during the previous two decades. I'm sure the format couldn't be any less exciting musically than people here consider KMXP to be. You could either call Adult Top 40 a "boring chr", or a "more hip hot ac".

It would be interesting if someone adopted the Cumulus style 'Journey' format.
 
KDM 7000 said:
An adult top 40 today would surely be more "fun & upbeat" than they were known to be during the previous two decades.
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What does "fun & upbeat" mean?

That sounds like a positioning statement: "Hey, We're the Fun & Upbeat Station You Can Listen to at Work!"

This is no different than the way "Adult Top 40" was sold in the previous two decades, but instead of being "fun & upbeat," it was actually vanilla and boring.

Anyone can play "fun & upbeat" music, but the failure of "Adult Top 40" is/was in my opinion the lack of actual fun between the songs.
 
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