BAD YEARS FOR MUSIC THAT WCBS-FM PLAYS

[andreajesus]

All this discussion is fun, but from a male point of view.

Top 40, especially from the 70s on has been a FEMALE leaning format.
So, our male opinion only counts for about 35%.

Many women would disagree with with most of you about the mellow and
wimpy songs which they probably like/liked, along with some Rock.

I wouldn't want any of you to program MY Oldies station.

Pardon me? First of all, Top 40 (70's style, especially) IS a female-leaning format - in the 70's, you dudes had rock, hard rock, stadium rock, and EVERY kind of rock in between - we females (I was born in 1959, brought up in the 70's, and DARN PROUD OF IT!!) pretty much have the dibs on EVERYTHING ELSE!! (oh, and by the way, I don't count myself in among the "any of you" quote...I ain't like ANYBODY else who has EVER posted in this thread or on this Board!!) (one more thing - if RadioTruth or ANYONE ELSE on this Board or in this thread wants to call me a "groupie", you know what? That's fine - I AM A CHILD OF THE 70'S, A GROUPIE, PROUD OF IT - BUT I will ALWAYS say the "straight up" on EVERYTHING and I will say it FROM MY HEART!!)

Andrea

 

[RADIO TRUTH]

I wanted to cover a number of related topics. When I started working in radio in the late 60s/early 70s, I thought it would be the same as the way radio and music was in the mid 60s. Unfortunately, that was not the case. By the early 70s, the music stunk and radio programming stunk even more. After growing up hearing WABC, WMCA, WINS and WMGM, plus various out of town stations such as WCFL and WLS, the sound of those stations and djs in the mid 60s made me want to work in the business. It was a big let down for radio, in the early 70s, to be going away from personality and compared to the 1955-1971 era, the music from 72 on just stunk. I had the misfortune of playing all of those records at various radio stations where I was employed. Some of the worst 70s songs have already been mentioned in other posts but, my vote for the worst 70s top twenty hit was "The Lords Prayer" by Sister Janet Mead. What a piece of crap!!! One of the reasons that radio and music got worse after 72 is because society got worse also. In the mid 60s, there was a feeling of hopefulness in the country that was reflected in the music and radio. Remember music always reflects the attitudes of society. After the kids got shot at Kent State, that feeling of hopefulness was gone and we had an idiot, crook President Nixon and the Vietnam war which did nothing but, kill innocent U. S. soldiers. By 1980, I owned a few radio stations that were top forty, music and society were even worse by 1980 (and we had another moron President Reagan), it was very hard to sound top forty with all of the Christopher Cross and Barbara Streisand garbage. My best remedy, at the time, was to play a lot of cutting edge, punk stuff to counter balance the adult contemporary pablum. Because of that, we played songs like Rock Lobster and Private Idaho by the B52s and Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads. We had a 375% rating increase in one year. As the years went on, personality radio continued down hill as all the stations wanted to run cheaper and cheaper. WCBS-FM, at the beginning, was basically a station for pre 1964 music but, with a very bland personality approach. WCBS-FM today mirrors the erosion of personality radio and is nothing more than a cheap imitation of what radio once was. Who would ever think that a New York City radio station would be running with three mediocre full time djs, each doing a five hour shift and automation all night? If you want to know why I feel like I feel, this is why.

 

[oldies76]

If that's the way you feel about post '71 music..then great..have fun!! :

 

[surfdude]

"Pardon me? First of all, Top 40 (70's style, especially) IS a female-leaning format "

Huh?...that's what I said! We agree. Women control the radio the majority of the time.
You have program to them to win. Most, not all, top ranked stations lean to female listeners.
Z100 and Lite are two good examples.

 

[lalumia]

My best remedy, at the time, was to play a lot of cutting edge, punk stuff to counter balance the adult contemporary pablum. Because of that, we played songs like Rock Lobster and Private Idaho by the B52s and Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads. We had a 375% rating increase in one year.

BINGO! Radio seemed to think that females wanted to sit in a easy chair all day, crying to Manilow and Newton John sob stories; females ROCK! and radio giving the cold shoulder to early 70s glitter/glam ,mid 70s punk and early 80s new wave is what drove the boys AND GIRLS away from radio and over to MTV,who knew what time it was

 

[BACKnUSSR]

My best remedy, at the time, was to play a lot of cutting edge, punk stuff to counter balance the adult contemporary pablum. Because of that, we played songs like Rock Lobster and Private Idaho by the B52s and Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads. We had a 375% rating increase in one year.

BINGO! Radio seemed to think that females wanted to sit in a easy chair all day, crying to Manilow and Newton John sob stories; females ROCK! and radio giving the cold shoulder to early 70s glitter/glam ,mid 70s punk and early 80s new wave is what drove the boys AND GIRLS away from radio and over to MTV,who knew what time it was

You are aware that Top 40 radio listenership GREW in the 80's with the advent of MTV....very few listeners were driven away from radio to MTV.

 

[lalumia]

as I recall, Top 40 radio was in the toilet by the end of the 70s, beginning of the 80s,and the results were felt by the record industry(I managed Sam Goody in Smithhaven Mall in the late 70s);
it had devolved to Urban Cowboy, Kenny & Dolly duets,and kiddie records(Strawberry Shortcake) paying the bills;
THEN MTV came along,playing the acts that radio had passed on(Duran Duran,Adam Ant,LoverBoy,Tommy Tutone,etc) and the popularity created by MTV FORCED the MOR leaning wimpsters into playing these artists, and of course they benefited from it,the way a drought drenched lawn benefits from two days of rain;
radio got lucky that MTV happened when it did,and forced them to play what they should have been playing all along

 

[firepoint525]

Today and since the 90's, look how R&B and Rap have taken over.

The biggest factor in that was the "Soundscan-ization" of Billboard beginning in late 1991. Since they've been using Soundscan chart data, rap and r&b acts (look at BoyzIIMen, for example) have ruled the charts! And radio airplay is irrelevant for many rap groups because they have never even needed radio to reach their fans!

And MTV was completely irrelevant by this time because they had sold out to politically correct "reality" TV, like the so-called "Real World" and other similar b.s.! :

 

[andreajesus]

Funny thing - i get the impression that this thread has drifted away a bit from what RadioTruth was saying AT THE BEGINNING!! Talking about his feeling that ANYTHING from 1972 and on WAS CONSIDERED bad years for the music that WCBS-FM plays...Here is what it is, in a nutshell:

1) In 1972 (actually, this started even in 1970), the music scene AS A WHOLE was changing cos' you had all the songs about the war, love, and peace, and the rockers were starting to come into their own - the forces were also coming together to birth what would become disco ONE year later with the release of "Can't Get Enough" by Barry White - considered by MANY to be the FIRST disco record....

2) Radio AS A WHOLE was changing as well - the FM stations (WNEW-FM here) were beginning to come into prominence, playing all those songs which didn't end after two-and-a-half minutes or three minutes...we STILL had the Top 40s like WABC MusicRadio 77 in New York, but forces were starting to come into place here where by the end of the decade, R&B and disco would DOMINATE on the radio (here, we would have guys like G. Keith Alexander and Paco on WKTU, and Frankie Crocker on WBLS, as well as the SURPRISING dominance of WWRL Super16 Radio...)

3) Plus, you gotta remember - EVERYBODY on this thread has DIFFERENT opinions about the music that WCBS-FM (or ANY "greatest hits" station) plays - based on their personality, their individual make-up, and their preferences - me, for those who don't know - I like my doowopps and my early R&B music, I like my sixties Beach Boys and Four Seasons, but lately I'm starting to embrace (or re-embrace) the music of my growing up years - 70's and 80's - disco, pop - I was at the CBSFM 35th Anniversary Concert at Jones Beach on June 27 with Chicago and the Doobie Brothers (my "doowopp people" were making faces on me on that one, but I don't care!) And you know what? I HAD A BLAST!! My point - why knock ANYONE ELSE for WHAT they like - to paraphrase Popeye the Sailor, they like what they like and that's ALL that they like!!

Andrea

 

[adma]

Though with a sobering bow to the present state of everything, perhaps a little bigger-picture revisionism is at hand, from two POVs:

(1) that, perhaps, it wasn't a matter of the post-1972 Top 40 scene being hijacked by MOR schlock, but of the pre-1972 Top 40 scene being hijacked by teenage rock. That is, the later AC-leaning state of affairs actually comes closer to the "natural condition" for what, after all, has been conveyed in these radio-board contexts as a "mass appeal" format. The former was but a cultural fluke--but unfortunately, so compelling and effective a fluke that its champions, high on "rock era" mythology and perhaps a touch of Warholian Pop/pop worship, have hijacked the narrative with the notion that Top 40 has to center about rock-loving teens to such an extent that even non-rock ringers like Sinatra and even a lot of 70s schlock benefit by proxy.

(2) that, in the end, Top 40 wasn't even the best or most flattering context for a lot of the music played; and this became especially clear in the 70s, and not just through clumsy single edits. For instance, the net effect of token Top 40 airplay on the likes of Van Morrison or Joni Mitchell was to trivialize them, even if it made the programmers look "cool"--and the same went, unfortunately, for a lot of those now-loathed cornerstones of late 70s Top-40-becometh-AC, from Fleetwood Mac to the Eagles to the Doobies to Billy Joel to Steely Dan to Al Stewart to Supertramp who, lest we forget, went into this as serious "FM album artists" and an antidote to the Helen Reddys and Olivia Neutron-Bombs of the world. Likewise, re disco, a big reason why it came to "suck" wasn't because of crappy music, it was because of crappy context, i.e. on trad Top 40, it sounded like inane Leisure Suit Larry Muzak, purged of all the energy which gave "Saturday Night Fever", the movie, its poignant buzz--an pancultural/pansexual energy which WKTU, the "disco" station which dethrones WABC, possessed, and which the urban-radio revolution it spawned possessed as well.

Oh, sure, adding exotica like "Rock Lobster" would have been a good quick-fix solution (even I would have admitted as much at the time), and the MTV era was something of an Indian Summer for the pre-72-style Top 40/CHR energy (though, face it: cornerstone artists like Huey Lewis have become their own era's version of Helen Reddy/John Denver-style punchlines). But by and large, the structural flaws apparent to music fans in 70s-style Top 40 seem now like a foreshadowing of the iPod/iTunes-era's "post-radio" self-controlled-consumption ethos--a modern-day Fleetwood Doobie equivalent such as, say, Leslie Feist comes across far more happily benign as a result. Meanwhile, what led such music radio to actually suck in the late 70s was more an anticipation of the dominance of curdled white-trash-populism of conservative talk or Delilah, i.e. commercial radio audiences getting self-evidently uglier, stupider, and more tasteless than the norm...

 

[oldies76]

And MTV was completely irrelevant by this time because they had sold out to politically correct "reality" TV, like the so-called "Real World" and other similar b.s.! :

Your right..when was the LAST time MTV actually played a music video?? The videos of the 80's really influenced record buying and popularity of the music during that time. BET could be for Rap singles.

 

[RADIO TRUTH]

Before I respond to any posts above, I wanted to say that this was one of the more intelligent, well thought out threads that I have seen. I, obviously, don't agree with everyone's opinion but, there is some really well thought out writing on this thread. I look at all of this from four points of view.....1-as a preteen in the 1955-1963 era, 2-as a teen in the mid to late 60s, 3-as a disc jockey from the late 60s onward, 4-as a radio station owner and manager in the early 80s As a preteen, I thought the music and top forty radio were very cool whether it was Ted Brown and the redhead on WMGM, Jack Lacy on WINS, B. Mitchell Reed on WMCA, or Dan Ingram on WABC. I found just as much validity in prebeatle music as I did in the 1964-1971 era. One of my best friend's father, in West Orange, New Jersey, was the bass singer in the Four Seasons and Carole King lived one mile from where I grew up. The teen years were great also.
Top forty radio reached its zenith in the 1964-1967 era and the music was still great, although different because of the British Invasion. Those were, by far, the best four years for radio, never to be duplicated, as it turned out. All of this set me up to be bummed out by the time I got into radio as a disc jockey. Things were beginning to change and not for the better. Stations were going away from personality and the quality of the music was beginning to head south by the early 70s. Everything that I had heard between 1955-1969 and especially between 1964-1967 got me psyched up for the business of radio. Unfortunately, for me and others like me, by 1972 it was gone from a radio and music point of view. Stations like WABC were not the same in the 70s as they were in the mid 60s. The energy, fire and passion were gone. WABC sounded like a formula radio station in the 70s rather than a station with fire and passion that it had been in the mid 60s. The same thing happened to the music. While it was happening, it was hard to notice because it happened gradually over a period of about five years. Cousin Brucie once said that the last good year for radio and music was 1966. I would say 1967.
All I know is that working in radio by 1972, it was all gone both from a radio and music point of view. There was one person above who said 60s music was a fluke.
That is like saying that 60s attitudes were a fluke. The mid 60s was a period of hopefulness, fire and passion that was long gone by 1972. From a disc jockey perspective, radio and the music both bit the big one in the 70s. Now let's go to 1980 as a station owner. I owned a top forty station in an era with almost no top forty music other than maybe Whip It by Devo or Take Your Time Do It Right by the SOS Band. There was so much adult contemporary crap that I had to do something
to keep the audience awake. Punk rock turned out to be a good answer. Most of the better punk that I could play was on Warner Brothers Records and Sire. Our local Warner Brothers promotion person would have done anything for me because she was having a hard time getting other top forty stations to play the Ramones, B-52s, Talking Heads and Plastic Bertrand Band. This punk stuff reminded me of the energy of the mid 60s musically. I got the same feeling from Ca Plane Por Moi (not sure about spelling) by the Plastic Bertrand Band that I got from Surfin' Bird by the Trashmen. Because we would play all this punk stuff on Warner Brothers and Sire, the Warner Brothers promotion person for the area would give me tons of albums as prize giveaways. She gave me anything that I wanted or needed. The point is that without the punk stuff, the rest of the 1980 music was adult contemporary crap. All I know is that the ratings went way up over the next year. How does all of this apply to today. It applies this way. If any classic hits station such as WCBS-FM has to depend upon about 50% of their music being from 1972 on, the handwriting is on the wall (Adam Wade). Just as all the adult contemporary crap lowered the energy level of any top forty station in 1980, WCBS-FM playing this crap today will have the same effect. Then there is the other part.....Sorry Andrea.....WCBS-FM and all other classic hits stations are just a cheap imitation of the 1964-1967 era of radio. CBS, the corporation, is unwilling to spend money. I had a long talk in person with another program director in another major market of a CBS owned classic hits station. He told me that they have to have disc jockeys working five hour shifts and they are very limited in what they can pay. This is true for all markets. They also have no money for any real contests or promotions. Did you ever notice that there are no big contests and no big prizes anymore. Those days are over. I know some of these djs and I know that they are working for chump change. From a listeners perspective, I and many like me, will not put up with 50% 1972 and up music just to hear a trickling of earlier, overplayed songs. There are those of us who after remembering the 1964-1967 era of radio will not put up with a group of mediocre disc jockeys. I would say they are under paid but, they are paid on a level with their talent. The constant shilling for today's WCBS-FM is just kind of pathetic especially considering the fact that the CBS Corporation doesn't care enough to spend the money or get top notch talent.

 

[TheBigA]

And MTV was completely irrelevant by this time because they had sold out to politically correct "reality" TV, like the so-called "Real World" and other similar b.s.! :

Interesting. What was happening at the time was the MTV audience was breaking apart as music genres were becoming way more divisive. You had the pop fans who wanted more Backstreet Boys fighting with the rock fans who wanted more grunge fighting with rap fans. It became a huge mess. In the midst of this, MTV spun off the older viewers to VH-1. But it really was difficult to program a music channel when there was no real tolerance for different genres.

At about the same time, MTV discovered their reality game shows and lifestyle shows were as popular as the music shows. Some were even more popular. They figured they could keep the audience happy by playing less divisive music and replacing it with reality TV. Was it "politically correct?" I don't know. But it was a way of handling the complete splintering of music. MTV could no longer operate as a unified music channel.

This very same problem has played itself out in rock radio during the past ten or so years, to the point where rock almost doesn't exist as a radio format, except for classic rock. All this will make radio formats like WCBS-FM difficult to sustain in about 5 years. I doubt we'll see stations that can play music from the 90s along with the 70s. Those two audiences are probably not very similar, while folks from the 60s seem to like music from the 80s.

Music has become even more splintered in the last five years, with very few artists fitting into a format that a large audience can enjoy. It's become very individual, with everyone having their own list of favorites, and very few of those lists are limited by genre. It's not unusual to see rock fans who like some country acts, or country fans who like some pop acts, and on and on. I really wonder what the "oldies" radio station of the future will sound like.

 

[mjb1124]

I guess I see the station from a different perspective since I am only 23, and my only exposure to Musicradio WABC has been through airchecks and the annual "Rewound" feature. So I can really only judge WCBS-FM on its own merits, and for the most part, I like what I hear. Yes, I can tell that the station is rather cheaply run, but I feel that they've made the most of what they've spent. Their playlist could probably stand to be deeper, but they do seem to take more chances than a lot of other "Classic Hits" stations, including sister stations like WOGL, KRTH, WODS, and so forth. I would agree that a lot of the 70s artists pointed out in this thread are rather dull, but there's still a good deal of 70s-80s music they play that I enjoy, plus where else am I going to get my fix of Motown, Beach Boys, Four Seasons, and other great 60s pop? As for the personalties being mediocre - if you're talking about Ron Parker, Sue O'Neal, and the overnighters, I might agree, but I find the rest of them to be very engaging. Maybe they aren't quite Dan Ingram or Cousin Brucie in their primes, but their talents are nothing to sneeze at. I'm a college radio DJ myself and I can only hope one day I'll sound half as good as they do.

 

[fang39]

While it's true that segmentation has ruled radio since the late 70's, that doesn't mean that a "Classic Hits" format like CBS-FM will be overladen with 80's AC "pap" (as Cousin Brucie liked to refer to it). They've effectively mixed in New Wave tunes like Human League's "Don't You Want Me" and "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell with Pop/Dance hits like Lipps Inc.'s "Funkytown", "Into The Groove" by Madonna and Prince's "Little Red Corvette" and Rockers like John Cafferty's "On The Dark Side", "Summer of 69" by Bryan Adams and Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac". They continue to maintain an uptempo mix of music and rarely do you hear a ballad played, except when they feature "Love Songs" in their daily "Hall of Fame". There's virtually no chance that you'll hear any mellow 80's AC songs by the likes of Kenny Rogers, Air Supply or Anne Murray played in regular rotation. Face it. The music will continue to move forward as time progresses, because the advertising demographics dictate they do so. For people who were 18-24 in the early '80's, 1982-4 was their 1967-9!

 

[lalumia]

For people who were 18-24 in the early '80's, 1982-4 was their 1967-9!
they may be, but those years are not held in the same musical /memories regard as 67-69, nor do they deserve to be..........more MARVELETTES!

 

[andreajesus]

For people who were 18-24 in the early '80's, 1982-4 was their 1967-9!

I beg to differ... I was 24 years old in 1983 and TRUST ME, the music that I was listening to had absolutely NOTHING to do with 1982-1984 (funny thing, NOW it's beginning to...) but had EVERYTHING to do with the 60's, the 70's, and the 80's (the 50's would start in a year later - around August....)

Andrea

 

[fang39]

For people who were 18-24 in the early '80's, 1982-4 was their 1967-9!

I beg to differ... I was 24 years old in 1983 and TRUST ME, the music that I was listening to had absolutely NOTHING to do with 1982-1984 (funny thing, NOW it's beginning to...)
Andrea

Thank you Andrea! You just made my point! You're now beginning to recall the hits of those years as fondly as a 40-something year old person viewed 67-9 in 1982 (and still does today). I was 23 in 1983 and while I still loved the 60's and 70's hits I grew up with, I enjoyed the 80's hits that I was spinning in clubs and private parties all around the NYC/Long Island area. And while I hate the thought of having them considered "oldies"--uh, excuse me, "classic hits", I'm glad to have them being played on the radio again!

 

[andreajesus]

[/quote]
I was 23 in 1983 and while I still loved the 60's and 70's hits I grew up with, I enjoyed the 80's hits that I was spinning in clubs and private parties all around the NYC/Long Island area. And while I hate the thought of having them considered "oldies"--uh, excuse me, "classic hits", I'm glad to have them being played on the radio again!
[/quote]

I second that emotion...I, too, am SO GLAD that the "oldies" (and it's OKAY to use the term "oldies", kiddies - it's NOT gonna bite back!! ) are being played on the radio again!!

 

[BACKnUSSR]

I was 23 in 1983 and while I still loved the 60's and 70's hits I grew up with, I enjoyed the 80's hits that I was spinning in clubs and private parties all around the NYC/Long Island area. And while I hate the thought of having them considered "oldies"--uh, excuse me, "classic hits", I'm glad to have them being played on the radio again!
[/quote]

I second that emotion...I, too, am SO GLAD that the "oldies" (and it's OKAY to use the term "oldies", kiddies - it's NOT gonna bite back!! ) are being played on the radio again!!
[/quote]

Actually, the use of the term "oldies" for the common radio listener equals 60's and 70's pop....Beatles, Motown, Elvis, Little Richard etc...not that its a bad thing.....but simply that is been the dfinition for nearly 30 years now.
Just as "Classic Rock" tends to bring images of Pink Floyd, Led Zep, Queen, and the Stones.

Sure, "oldies" could also mean Human League, Culture Club and Huey Lewis....just as "classic rock" could mean
Def Leppard, Bon Jovi and Poison....but somehow thats not whta MOST people think of.

So it would "bite" the ratings a bit.