CHR in Chicago?

[skippertthomas]

Good observation from a 20 year old with some 'smarts', I'd say! Again, what zip codes does you Hot/AC-Adult/CHR going after determines the 'spin' on the musical content....

 

[mcmannors]

Chicago is a rhythmic town.

Back in the mid 80's, I would have said, "are you crazy???"

Back then, the CHR's (B-96, WLS-AM and FM, and G-106) leaned much more towards rock, especially when compared to markets like New York or Philadelphia at that time.

If what you say is true, then Chicago seems to be the only major market that has changed so drastically in the last 24 years.

 

[rcreighton]

In Chicago, it makes the most sense for a CHR station based in and targeting the city to be rhythmic based. There's just a lot more potential listeners who are interested in rhythmic music--than rock. In the suburbs, a more balanced or rock leaning format works better. I'm not even sure it's so much that rhythmic music isn't popular there, it's just the stations need to sound adult for potential advertisers. Rhythmic music in a lot of "local" advertisers minds = kids music or kids station. (And you can show them ratings to say it isn't true, but it won't get them to buy!)

On a side note, give www.reactradio.com a listen. We've put a new spin on CHR.

 

[Marv-L.A.]

The CHR/Pop format has been blowing off millions adults and baby-boomers for almost twenty years, and has essentially abandoned its mass-appeal roots dating back to the AM Top 40 powerhouses of the mid-sixties, starting with KHJ-LA under Bill Drake and PD Ron Jacobs, and you can certainly include WFYR & WLS in that category.

There are TONS of artists out there who used to be VERY welcome at CHR/Pop radio who are no longer welcome at the format (everybody from REM to Roxette to Huey Lewis to Don Henley and TONS of other onetime format staples); when CHR/Rhythmic stations from coast to coast have adults 18-34 as their #1 target demo, and CHR/Pop stations from coast to coast share MUCH of the same songs judging by taking a peek at any CHR/Pop and CHR/Rhythmic charts in BB/R&R.

Such is essentially the case at most of the major market CHR/Pop ststions out there, and especially those owned by Clear Channel, with only a handful of exceptions among the nation's twenty largest cities and/or markets.

Hot AC and AC stations have a MUCH wider range of music/artists on their respective playlists and within their respective music libraries than CHR/Pop stations do, a fact which is readily evident when perusing the weekly and/or year-end charts at BB/R&R.

 

[beefjerky]

Music changes. I remember when many in the music industry got mad because of the British Invasion taking over in the 60s. Suddenly many artists were blown off the charts. Today, Beyonce, Akon and Mims are stone mass appeal, 12-34. In Chicago and everywhere else in American, and in many other countries too.

As people get older they are blown off by top 40. It is targeted at 12-34 year olds.

"Mass Appeal" used to mean, the white people. Today, "Mass Appeal" means, the Hispanic, Black and Anglo people. That's a big reason why rhythmic is #1 in contemporary music today. It reaches all kinds of people.

What broadcast operation and what business can afford to NOT target the 17% Hispanic part of the audience, or the 18% Black part of the audience. Total? 35%!!!

Much of today's business, broadcast and otherwise, operates on very small percentages. 35% can not be blown off! It's not like the old days anymore. All consumers are valuable to business, including broadcasters.

 

[skippertthomas]

Good point on the last two statements.. I can add that the market you're in makes a difference... We've heard of the suburban CHR and urban CHR based on zips and zones... It should work in the same way as we break down the individual market and its ethnic breakdown.... I can remember rural markets with lower minority populations were more pop to rock leaning... If you go back to localized CHR/Top-40 stations that were willing to go against 'just playing 90% of the Billboard/R&R/Gavin Report charts', then look how WAKY in Louisville did it with AM up until the 80's.... They actually had a hour clock that would have a catagory split of Rock, Pop, Country Leaning, R&B... R&B and Pop were top in the rotation, but the Rock was kicker (Zep, Free, Skynard, hot stuff!) and the Country leaning stuff (Charlie Rich, Daniels, crossover stuff!)....It was a killer format.. WAKY should have moved over to 106.9, but Easy/Soft AC was a big sell in those days.....And, just one AM and one FM per company...

 

[Marv-L.A.]

A station focused on 12-34 year olds (which the overwhelming majority of CHR/Rhythmic and CHR/Pop stations out there have as their #1 target, and certainly those in our twenty largest cities) is NOT a mass-appeal format.

A station with superb 12-17 and 18-34 numbers is NOT a mass-appeal station either.

Those are the top two targets for the vast majority of CHR/Pop and CHR/Rhythmic stations out there since the beancounting consolidators and incessant micromanagers at CC and the other conglomerates took over and started destroying radio stations from coast to coast in format after format.

 

[davideduardo]

A station with superb 12-17 and 18-34 numbers is NOT a mass-appeal station either.

Those are the top two targets for the vast majority of CHR/Pop and CHR/Rhythmic stations out there since the beancounting consolidators and incessant micromanagers at CC and the other conglomerates took over and started destroying radio stations from coast to coast in format after format.

Since the 50's Top 40's target has been 12-34. Consolidation has nothing to do with the course of CHR.

 

[Hamp]

A station with superb 12-17 and 18-34 numbers is NOT a mass-appeal station either.

Those are the top two targets for the vast majority of CHR/Pop and CHR/Rhythmic stations out there since the beancounting consolidators and incessant micromanagers at CC and the other conglomerates took over and started destroying radio stations from coast to coast in format after format.

Since the 50's Top 40's target has been 12-34. Consolidation has nothing to do with the course of CHR.

I don't know about that. Granted Top 40 has always been a tight format in terms of song rotation, but it seems like now they (the stations) are less willing to give different genres of music that could fit into the format a chance and I think that does have to do with radio consolidation. If a corporation owns the majority of stations around the country and has a monopoly in the market, they will not take those risks since the "competition" is owned by them as well.

 

[beefjerky]

I think it has more to do with audience research and the ability of a song to reach Hispanic, Black and Anglo young people. You need all three to win and Hip Hop/Rhythmic does that. 12-34 has always been the target for top 40. You can't use the trade magazines (Billboard, Radio & Records) to tell you what format a song is, the trades work for the record labels. Their job is to give every new song a "honeymoon" where the song is presented as a good choice for airplay on a variety of formats. It's an attempt to set up songs for future sales (hopefully), it is not the voice of authority or a report by experts. It's hype, hype that is bought and paid for. They use the words "Adult Top 40" but it's really "Hot Adult Contemporary."

 

[skippertthomas]

Yes.. You said it right on how they promote the song as Adult CHR to the trades and audience and Hot A/C to the ad people... And as the jock produced rotations of the 50's started to give way to full time hit stations of the 60's, the primary target in the early days were 12 to 24, not 18 to 34... Most Top-40's had a very AC sound in the middays, working on the young housewife and career women of the 18 to 34 demo, but the mornings, afternoons and nights were geared at the drive-ins, theaters, record and stereo/hi-fi shops.. Clothing and 'Tackle' (Before Clearasil and Mudd)....Send that self address stamped envalope to "Tackle" c/o Dick Biondi at WLS radio, Chicago '6', Illinois.. They would give you, in return, a healthy starter supply of "Tackle", Young Man! We grew up and now we call the '800' number for our month's supply and trial of 'Enzyte' and free 'Enzyte Topical Solution', Old Man... I say with the choices we have in politics... "Smilin' Bob" for President.. Huey Long wanted a 'Chicken in every pot'... We want free 'Enzyte in every mailbox'.... ;D ;D ;D

 

[Marv-L.A.]

CHR/Pop stations in the sixties were definitely NOT AC-oriented during the midday period, since the local MOR (Middle-Of-The Road) station had that genre by the throat.

Top 40 radio was a mass-appeal format (at least as Bill Drake designed KHJ which played all types of music when he launched it in 1965), something that almost NO CHR/Pop station today does.

But the format became less-and-less mass appeal starting in the late eighties and early nineties, a trend started by KIIS-FM here in LA due to its wretched overreaction to Power 106 replacing them at #1 in the ratings in 1987, and eventially copied by TONS of CHR/Pop powerhouses from coast to coast.

That led to disastrous results ratings-wise, as well as in roughly HALF of R&R's/BB's CHR/Pop reporters twenty years ago bailing out of the format.

I grew up listening to THREE top 40 radio stations here in LA (KHJ, KFWB & KRLA) in the sixties, and NONE of them became AC during the middays; they didn't have to, because they played EVERYTHING, as KIIS did for most of the eighties and early nineties.

I'm sure that neither WLS nor WFYR ever stopped playing the Beatles, Stones, The Seeds, The Music Machine, The Leaves & Jimi Hendrix after 10 AM in 1966 or 1967 to start playing Sinatra, Perry Como, Dean Martin, Herb Alpert and Jack Jones; that would have been preposterous, and suicidal ratings-wise.

 

[skippertthomas]

Well, Drake DID stay away from heavy dayparting, BUT WLS lived on it with Clark Webber and back to Sam Holman's days starting Personality 8-9-0... New Christy Minstrels...A lot of country crossover and Perry Como, Steve Lawrence, and the such WERE on WLS in the middays in the first dispensation and some of the second of the Pop years of WLS.. I do stand corrected on one thing.. They didn't call it AC then.. It was a leaning to add mass appeal MOR hits and we called it "Chicken Rock"... Many new FM's in the late 60's through the mid 70's had their own mix of "Hit Parade" daytime and hotter Top-40 from late afternoon through the night.. Mostly automated stations with 25hz tones and big reels with cart-tubs and machines with spots...Old automation.. Anyone for an Orange Julius???? Had that spot stick and play seven times in a row, once, before we caught it from monitoring from the Top-40 AM studio.. ;D No Hendrix, heavy Cream, as that stuff didn't fly until at least 3m... 'CFL in it's transition played into that, as well for a few years and then Rook pushed them, like he did at 'LS to play the hits with some post school dayparting, but by then, 80% of what you heard at noon was in at 3 and 7 m's... But, in the east and midwest and south, it was common.. I always amazed by KLIF in Dallas, as McLeandon's station were never as 'rocky' or as tightly structured as Drake stations... You were in the Valley of KFWB and KNX that had HUGE numbers doing the pre-ac days as variety/MOR stations that played POPular hits of the adult generation, who would bite at some rock-pop that was trendy for the hipsters of the day (on the west coast)...Herb Alpert was huge on 'LS, KLIF and CKLW as an example...I really always enjoyed going west as a kid and listening to the KHJ's and KFRC's... More consistant in music and sound, around the clock... KAAY in Little Rock was really dayparted, as alot of the south Top-40's were.. I would say the most daring I heard (in the day) were WAPE(Jax), WHBQ(Memphis), WNOE(New Orleans), WAKY(Louisville), WLCY(Tampa-St.Pete), KILT(Houston), WQXI(Hot-Lanta)...... :

 

[Jay F]

I recently heard a standards station play "It's Impossible" by Perry Como. I enjoyed it and decided to look up what year it was released. I expected it to be from around 1960, was I ever shocked when I discovered it was a top 10 pop hit from 1970. I had no idea that Top 40 was mixing in those type of MOR songs. I was under the wrong impression that Top 40 was always a very young format, but I can't imagine teens or even anyone under 25 was into Perry Como in 1970.

I started listening to the radio and becoming musically aware two years latter in 1972. When I heard top 40 stations, including WLS, I don't remember anything nearly as MOR as Perry Como. I suppose there was "The Candy Man" by Sammy Davis Jr but that seemed mass appeal. I heard a lot of Carpenters, but they had a young following. So mixing in or dayparting MOR must have have been a 60s thing, "It's Impossible" may have been the end of the era? Of course I also remember when Top 40 became very adult in 1980-81.

 

[Marv-L.A.]

JayF---Top 40 powerhouses such as KHJ and WLS played Perry Como, the Partridge Family, CCR, and ALL types of music back then, which is why they had listeners of all ages, and their 25-54 numbers were WELL up in the stratosphere.

When Casey Kasem left KRLA here in LA (actually Pasadena) to launch American Top 40 in July of 1970, the first #1 single on that survey was 'Mama Told Me (Not To Come) by Three Dog Night.

Among the biggest singles of the year included 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head', 'Close To You', 'Make It With You', 'Cracklin' Rosie' and TONS of other tunes that were staples at AC/MOR radio for many years aftewards.

Throw is some of Elvis's VERY best songs (such as 1970's 'Kentucky Rain' with country legend-to-be Ronnie Milsap playing the piano), and adults and their teenage kids had no problem listening to top 40 radio until the late eighties/early nineties.

WKSC's current PD was quoted in last week's issue of Radio & Records as saying 'Our objective is to dominate the 18-34 demo', which is NOT the target demo of a mass-appeal CHR/Pop station.

The same can be said for most of CC's CHR/Pop stations from coast to coast, at least in our twenty largest cities.

If WKSC started playing Carrie Underwood, Don Henley, Sheryl Crow or Elton John, wouldn't that be an absolute SCREAM??????????

 

[skippertthomas]

Great point Marv.... To totally dominate 18 to 34's in top twenty metros, that's why you get the sound that is CHR in today's metro standard.. When South Central bought the 100kw CHR powerhouse in our regional market, it was a laugh that the old school WSTO listener was having a hard time with the new sound that was really 18 to 34 in the day and 12 to 25 at night.. South Central needed to do that to push WSTO's high end off the target core of WIKY (their flagship A/C) and help the corporate picture... The old STO' had no direct competiton for many years, lived off high cume and a real Hot A/C sound in the day and CHR at night.. They'd promote to the on air audience that they were CHR/HIT radio and to the sales clients Hot A/C with youth at night... Then came along a little 6kw CHR with a hotter vent and more urban content in the daytime... For about three or four books Kiss-106 took a Tonya Harding Baseball Bat to the ankles and lower demos of WSTO in the metro... Results were not suprising to me, at the time...Kiss won the CHR battle in the metro, even though they couldn't touch 96/STO in the ADI....Then CC sold to Regent and Kiss has never really regained it's winning edge... The Sales Department hated the sound and said they couldn't sell the numbers! They pressured the station to other variables and thus, with South Central's energy CHR format on 'STO, the positioning, the KW's and the promotional moneies put them back into the top four stations..

 

[Jay F]

Can CHR/Pop get away with playing all of those adult artists and songs in this day and age? I would say no, things are too fragmented. For example in 1970 there was no such thing as Hot AC stations. Each market had one or two Top 40 powerhouses, they could be wide.

Today there are a ton of stations trying to get a piece of the 25-54 pie. In this fragmented landscape it makes sense for CHR to target 18-34. In fact many CHRs seem to try to dominate 18-24 females wih the intention of getting good overall 18-34 numbers, this strategy makes sense to me.. I would say CHR moved from being mass appeal to a young niche as a survival mechanism.

 

[skippertthomas]

I must agree with that new day theory....

 

[Marv-L.A.]

Props to both of you--I'm REALLY enjoying this discussion.

While I still do stand by my earlier remarks that KIIS's overreaction to KPWR replacing them at #1 in LA in 1987 after barely a year in existence changed the course of the format forever, as it became less mass-appeal and more focused on 12-24 and 18-34 audiences, there's no doubt in my mind that as a mid-fifties baby-boomer today who had ZERO problem listening to KIIS for most of the decade, KIIS's decision to go after those same teens changed the musical direction of Top 40 radio forever, and for the worse from what I remember listening to KHJ, KFWB, KRLA while growing up in LA in the sixties & seventies.


While 1988-1991 were still good years for the CHR/Pop format, even as stations such as KIIS started loading up on hard-core rap stuff to try and get those teens back from KPWR (did B96 do the same to your market's dominant CHR/Pop station during this same late eighties/early nineties timeframe?), CHR/Pop had become a rather poor imitator of the local rhythmic competitors by 1992, and that's been pretty much the same result in most majaor markets since then.

However, I also have to add that Hot AC (or Adult Top 40) stations today are getting SCREWED by research and having very tiny libraries (250-300 songs tops); since CHR/Pop, CHR/Rhythmic and Urban stations (whether in LA Chicago, NYC or anywhere else) are all hotly pursuing 12-17, 12-24 and 18-34 year olds with outright fanaticism, Hot AC SHOULD be as mass-appeal as KIIS was until the very late eighties or 1991 at the latest.

Using LA as an example, CBS's oldies powerhouse KRTH has freshened its library to include more titles from the early eighties, such as 'I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)' from 1982.

Consequently, that SHOULD leave Hot AC stations plenty of room to play 95% of the stuff that KIIS, WNCI (Columbus, Oh.), WZPL (Indianapolis) and other eighties CHR/pop powerhouses with double-digit share numbers galore used to play in the eighties, alongside the cream of the crop CHR/Pop hits of the mid-to-late eighties and early nineties, as well as the current tunes which you see on the Hot AC charts.

Hot AC should be THE mass-appeal format these days, but that's just not the case; there is a TON of music from the eighties and nineties that SHOULD be in the libraries of all Hot AC stations in America, but an overreliance on consultants and research, as well as the much dreaded 'clusterization' disease, has made Hot AC much less listenable than it should be.

If any oldies station such as KRTH can play tons of music from the sixties, seventies and early eighties, there's no reason why a Hot AC station can't play TONS of eighties product which Oldies stations haven't (or can't) touch, and even a late seventies tune which fits the format such as 'Whip It', as well as early eighties hitmakers such as the Police, the Pretenders and TONS of others.

Insofar as 'could a Top 40 station be a mass appeal station today as it was during the 60s/70s/80s?', I'm inclined to think that the suits at CBS and Infinity have decided that 'niche radio' and 'defensive programming' are the way to go, which is why we're stuck with the schlocky sounding radio in Chicago, LA, and just about everywhere else.

Finally, did I misinterpret your post in saying that CC sold WKSC (butt-kicking signal and all!!!) to 'Regent' Broadcasting, which I've never heard of?

 

[skippertthomas]

Great comments.....

Hot A/C should be the mass appeal... Yes, it is missing its mark...
On the other end.... I was driving back throught the micropolitan and regional metropolitan markets in South Missouri this week... Joplin has TWO CHR/Urban dominated stations going against each other in a city of 45,000 and a dominate area of 140,500... Springfield had a great CHR that really shines, bright and fun to listen too.. Seems to have a balance that fits a rural/regional area with 307,500 in the metro (KSPW)..In fact, the market sounded fresher in ALL formats than any market I commonly listen to in markets 100 to 175... More LIVE air people in the mix and automation is kept as local as they can make it... KADI, a Hit Christian CHR was really enjoyable at it's commercial Class "A" setting of 99.5.... the True a/c's and chr's in the market (not including the the super light and cheesy a/c that really is way out of date), Almost 21 shares are in the pop relm and Country in several different niches has about 24% of the AQH... Rock about 16 and Classic Hits and Oldies had about 4.5.... General in genre' that puts Pop/Rock/Classic/Oldies with approx. 41 to 42 percent of the market and Country 24% of the listening time and Sports/News/Other 10.5%.. Nice growing market... Would mind settling in a place like that...