Classic Hits: Evolution or Revolution?

[CTListener]

I know what the problem is for my generation. We came of age during disco, and to some extent, radio is still reluctant to play disco. The artists of my generation were (and in some cases, still are) blacklisted. BeeGees, KC & the Sunshine Band,

Come up to Connecticut and DRC-FM will give you all you want of those two acts -- only four or five songs deep, of course, but they're all in power rotation.

 

[michael hagerty]

There seems to be a contention that Classic Hits is centered on the 45 year old female. This is not AC. My understanding was that Classic Hits skews 45-54. The music is way too old to drag a 35-40 year old from their Katy Perry fix. Let's put our hypothetical listener at age 50, born in 1963 and go from there.

The target is 35-54, but the actual delivery is more like 35-64.

In NY, CBS-FM has 25% of its audience in 45-54, about 45% over 55, and the rest under 45. That's 30% under 45.

The median target age for research would likely be about 43. Since the key issue with classic hits is getting people into the format when they reach their late 30's, then such a station would likely research against 37 to 49 year olds, a nice 12-year core leaning towards the young side.

Since the station can't "use" its 55+ numbers for sales, we are effectively dealing with, in standard demos, 35-54. The mid point, as was suggested, is 45.

A couple of other things to keep in mind as well, Semoochie:

You're not "dragging" the listener away from anything. At 40, 45 or 50, she most likely listens to both the Classic Hits and the AC station as part of the 6-9 stations among which she divides her listening in the course of a week. The objective is to be playing what she wants to hear when she tunes in and to keep meeting that expectation for as long as possible, while understanding that her life and listening patterns mean she's probably only there for 12 minutes this time.

Focusing on 50 in testing instead of 45 means you're constantly tailoring your format to an audience that has only 5 more years of advertiser appeal left. Target 45, you'll get 50...but more importantly, you'll get 40...and you need that to survive age-out at the other end.

And, while that detail is important, 50 wouldn't turn back the clock on where the format's music begins. Most of the music would still not be something experienced first-hand as a Top 40 listener back in the day. She went to high school from 1977-1981 so college would be 1981-1985.

Her Peak Musical Awareness years would be 1979-1985, so the downslide of Top 40, the dawn of MTV, the rebirth of CHR. She'd be much more likely to have been an AOR listener (especially until '83-'84) than a woman five years younger.

Life stuff? Married for 25 years, oldest child 23, likely to be a grandmother in 4 years if not already. Second and third children college age. Concerned about her own health and her husband's as well as her parents who are pushing 80.

And five years further removed by all that stuff from having music matter other than whether she likes it or not than the 45 year old.

 

[firepoint525]

I always kinda figured AC to be both mothers and daughters listening, although not necessarily at the same time. How else do you explain the '70s on there, along with Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Adele, and others? 40 years (span of AC) is more than one generation. It is two generations.

 

[michael hagerty]

There seems to be a contention that Classic Hits is centered on the 45 year old female. This is not AC. My understanding was that Classic Hits skews 45-54. The music is way too old to drag a 35-40 year old from their Katy Perry fix. Let's put our hypothetical listener at age 50, born in 1963 and go from there.

You have (nearly) described me. I was born in 1963, and will hit the big 5-0 on my next birthday. And you have seen how they (David and Michael, among others) have tried to marginalize me in this thread as being "too old."

I know what the problem is for my generation. We came of age during disco, and to some extent, radio is still reluctant to play disco. The artists of my generation were (and in some cases, still are) blacklisted. BeeGees, KC & the Sunshine Band, Barry Manilow, and in the '80s, Air Supply. At least the country crossovers are, for the most part, also blacklisted, so maybe there is hope after all.

The rock groups from my day, like Boston, Kansas (it helped to be named for where you were from back then!), Steve Miller Band, and others have held up a bit better.

As I have read it here, about the only difference between classic hits and AC is the absence of Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Adele, Kelly Clarkson and others from classic hits. Meanwhile, the AC here still occasionally plays the studio version of "Maybe I'm Amazed" by Paul McCartney (hence my other thread elsewhere on this site) and that one was from 1970, well before the musical awareness of that 45 year-old female. So I'm flummoxed! ???

Firepoint:

I'm not trying to marginalize you, and I don't ever recall saying your age was an issue. I have said the way you use the radio and your expectations of a Classic Hits station at different from the bulk of the core target of 45-year old females, and that's true.

I'm just giving you the clearest possible picture of how it really works and why. It's not personal.

It's also tougher because it sounds like your market blurs the lines a bit when it comes to format description and the players change fairly often.

It's important to understand what I said yesterday about the 45-year old female and the format:

She doesn't remember most of the songs played on Classic Hits as currents on Top 40 radio. She may not remember Top 40 radio, at least of the WABC/KHJ/WLS/WFIL/KCBQ variety. She was starting high school in 1982...just as the FM CHR thing was starting. And those stations rarely played anything more than a year old, so she didn't hear them as oldies. And by the time she transitioned to AC in the 90s, 70s music was gone from most of those playlists.

The Classic Hits format isn't about memories. It's about a mood from a time. And without the point of reference first-hand memories give, the songs have to be treated nearly the same as current hits. The only criteria is does she like them today or not.

 

[michael hagerty]

I always kinda figured AC to be both mothers and daughters listening, although not necessarily at the same time. How else do you explain the '70s on there, along with Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Adele, and others? 40 years (span of AC) is more than one generation. It is two generations.

You're right some of the time about the mother/daughter thing. Pop music goes in cycles. Guy Zapolean, one of the best programmers out there has written a piece on the cycles and how they repeat like clockwork. I'll try to find it and post a link to it.

Anyway, when CHR is in a phase like we just went through with hip-hop, moms and daughters share AC listening. Daughter's not totally happy, but it's mostly songs she likes. And she'll listen to CHR without Mom.

But in phases like we're in right now, where CHR is extremely accessible, they'll listen to CHR together. AC is playing Katy and Gaga because their listener has discovered them via CHR and likes them, and AC has to defend against the loss of listening time.

40 year old women don't want to think of themselves as being out of touch. If you make CHR accessible and fun for them, they'll embrace it. But CHR has to be careful and maintain some sort of an edge that separates them from AC, which gets harder and harder when AC will play a lot of the same music.

It was a period like this that pretty much killed off Top 40 in the 70s. Helen Reddy, John Denver, Olivia Newton-John, The Carpenters...the AC stations I programmed played 20 of their Top 30 around '75.

By '77, we were finding that Mom (our listener) was hearing Queen and Steely Dan and liking them, too. We couldn't play "Bohemian Rhapsody", but "You're My Best Friend"? Sure. "Peg" or "Deacon Blues" from Steely Dan? Hell, yeah.

What happened was that we wound up playing 26 of their Top 30. And making the other four songs they hadn't gotten to yet (yes, as a 21 year old PD, I took chances on records). To protect against us, they played the Sex Pistols.

Game over. Mom came back to us fulltime.

It happened with different details in different markets, but Top 40 in the 70s let AOR take their males...all they had left was moms and daughters...and an AC station willing to be aggressive could defend against it very nicely and end up damaging the Top 40 station.

You didn't see it much in the 80s and 90s because most ACs were doing great with Jhani Kaye's "Continuous Soft Hits" approach. But now, it's a different generation of women and AC is adapting.

As for how they can play a 40 year old record: The same way Classic Hits does. There is no memory from the time. It's simply a song they like.

 

[CTListener]

As for how they can play a 40 year old record: The same way Classic Hits does. There is no memory from the time. It's simply a song they like.

I just checked out the last six hours on WRCH in Hartford and was surprised at some of the '70s titles I saw. Elton John's "Your Song," which isn't even played on WDRC-FM anymore, got a spin. So did Rita Coolidge's "We're All Alone," which I thought was only being played on supermarket audio services these days. "Boogie Shoes"! "Smoke From a Distant Fire"! I wouldn't think these songs would fit in with "Love Story" and "Dynamite," but apparently they do, whether most of the target audience has any memory of them as current hits or not.

 

[semoochie]

If my local Clear Channel station is any indication of the norm, they're just now phasing out the 60s and adding mostly early 80s. That's too old for the center to be 45. That's more like the beginning and way too old for someone who's 35! If this isn't true then eight years ago, we had no business dismantling the Oldies format by removing everything before 1964!

 

[davideduardo]

A hit in 1977, a classic today is the correct statement.

The keyword is "was".

Some songs that were hits then are not hits now. Folks liked them then, don't like them now.

Most songs don't stand up to the passage of time. Many really were not hits when they were new, many had a fleeting visit with fame, and some are as well liked now as they were back then.

 

[michael hagerty]

If my local Clear Channel station is any indication of the norm, they're just now phasing out the 60s and adding mostly early 80s. That's too old for the center to be 45. That's more like the beginning and way too old for someone who's 35! If this isn't true then eight years ago, we had no business dismantling the Oldies format by removing everything before 1964!

Oldies was dismantled when too much of the audience was over 55 and it became increasingly difficult to make the agency buy lists.

The music on Classic Hits now works for 45 year olds because it's based on their like of the song today, without consideration of memory or what other songs came from that era.

You basically have to approach it as a clean sheet of paper, realize that it's a mood rather than a memory service, and relentlessly meet the expectations.

 

[davideduardo]

The music on Classic Hits now works for 45 year olds because it's based on their like of the song today, without consideration of memory or what other songs came from that era.

Most of the 60's and early 70's music still heard on Classic Hits stations is "relevant" because CHRs played those songs as "gold" in the late 70's and early 80's. In fact, during the disco years, many CHRs that did not dive too deep into disco played lots of gold pop material to make up for the shortage of current pop that was neither rock not disco.

While even the Drake consulted stations played gold back in the 60's, the earliest FM Top 40's like the Bartell operations in '72, were very current based: that gradually change going into the decade as more gold was added to broaden the appeal.

Thus, that gold behaved as light rotation currents for the youngest listeners. But the depth of gold play on those CHRs was very limited, thus the "memories" of people entering their teen years in the mid-70's were restricted to just a short list of late 60's and early 70's titles.

 

[bigtom101]

You basically have to approach it as a clean sheet of paper, realize that it's a mood rather than a memory service, and relentlessly meet the expectations.

I was going thru my jingle collection last night, and the 1st incarnations of K-Earth 101, CBS-FM and 95PEN had a very memories/nostalgia vibe to them. The later wave of oldies stations (WOGL, WODS, etc) were framed as "The Greatest Hits Of All Time" rather than memories/nostalgia machine. Just an observation.

One of the best stations I worked at was when I did weekends at NJ101.5 - classic hits, but with lots of news, traffic & weather. We talked about what the listeners wanted to hear - what's going on in NJ, if it was going to be nasty outside, and if you should avoid the Turnpike. The rotation is tight, but it works - people listened for those 15/20 minute blocks in and out of the car and just want to hear what they know and like, and get the info they need.

I'm always reminded of the Twilight Zone...one of the recurring themes Serling loved was our nature to get lost in nostalgia and be sentimental (usually with disastrous results). Or to borrow a line from Gladys Knight: "These will be the good old days for our kids"...

 

[michael hagerty]

The music on Classic Hits now works for 45 year olds because it's based on their like of the song today, without consideration of memory or what other songs came from that era.

Most of the 60's and early 70's music still heard on Classic Hits stations is "relevant" because CHRs played those songs as "gold" in the late 70's and early 80's. In fact, during the disco years, many CHRs that did not dive too deep into disco played lots of gold pop material to make up for the shortage of current pop that was neither rock not disco.

While even the Drake consulted stations played gold back in the 60's, the earliest FM Top 40's like the Bartell operations in '72, were very current based: that gradually change going into the decade as more gold was added to broaden the appeal.

Thus, that gold behaved as light rotation currents for the youngest listeners. But the depth of gold play on those CHRs was very limited, thus the "memories" of people entering their teen years in the mid-70's were restricted to just a short list of late 60's and early 70's titles.

True...and I'm sure that markets varied on this, but KIIS-FM played very little gold when they went CHR in 1981, KKHR I don't think played any, and the Mike Joseph "Hot Hits" operations were predicated on only currents and only what was selling...very tight lists. Teens in the 80s heard a very different mix with far less gold than those of us who grew up listening to 60s/70s AM Top 40 with 30% gold as a given and "Million Dollar Weekends" that were 50% or more gold every Friday afternoon through Sunday.

 

[firepoint525]

It's also tougher because it sounds like your market blurs the lines a bit when it comes to format description and the players change fairly often.

What we have here in Nashville now is Hippie Radio. http://www.hippieradio945.com They came on the air in February 2012, so just recently celebrated a one-year anniversary. Meanwhile, the much-maligned 97.1 (the true classic hits station here in Nashville) was sold by Come-in-last to K-Love around July or August 2012, so there was about a six-month period in which these two were direct competitors with each other.

Not sure what you would call Hippie Radio. They are not quite classic hits, but they are definitely not "oldies." They are sort of in-between. It is my understanding that there is also a Hippie Radio station in Chattanooga.

97.1 and Hippie play(ed) a lot of the same music, covering the same years, but 97.1 went deeper into the '80s, playing even late '80s titles like Fine Young Cannibals.

 

[michael hagerty]

My apologies for the typo...I know how to spell "Zapoleon". Anyway, here's an FMQB article from two years ago in which guy explains the 10 year music cycle and how it repeats over the decades:

http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=2091694

 

[landtuna]

My apologies for the typo...I know how to spell "Zapoleon". Anyway, here's an FMQB article from two years ago in which guy explains the 10 year music cycle and how it repeats over the decades:

He has a couple "interesting" listings of performers outside their normal genres. John Denver & Anne Murray = country? James Taylor = soft rock?

His recollection of the Rock/Disco era is very different than mine. When Disco erupted it was another genre, separate and apart from Rock. Rock stations may have played Disco tunes in the beginning but it wasn't very long before "hate Disco" programming came along and Disco was relegated to the Urban stations and nightclubs.

Can't comment on music post-1984 because it is just too crappy.

 

[davideduardo]

Not sure what you would call Hippie Radio. They are not quite classic hits, but they are definitely not "oldies." They are sort of in-between.

They are not in-between in ratings. They're 20th in 25-54 on average, and only slightly better, 18th, in 35-64.

Having a ratty signal does not help. The 65 dbu covers only about 20% of the market, so it would be reasonable to project this into a 3 to 4 share on a full signal... so obviously there is passion for any variation on the oldies and classic hits format.

The name sucks in an oh-so-embarrassing way.

 

[davideduardo]

His recollection of the Rock/Disco era is very different than mine. When Disco erupted it was another genre, separate and apart from Rock.

Remember, in the 60's and 70's we often called Top 40 stations "rockers" while we called album rock stations "progressive" or "AOR".

Disco was definitely a part of Top 40. Only in a few markets did we see KTU-like stations. In most, the CHRs played a lot of disco if the market was a rhythmic-oriented one, and disco was just a subset of the format... just look at the R&R CHR charts from that period.

Rock stations may have played Disco tunes in the beginning but it wasn't very long before "hate Disco" programming came along and Disco was relegated to the Urban stations and nightclubs.

Disco had pretty much no Urban appeal. Just consider what the appeal of Village People might have been to the Urban / African American core.

And, while many consider "Funkytown" the last disco song, consider how the character and mood was preserved in so many songs ranging from "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" to PSB's "Always on My Mind" and so many more.

 

[michael hagerty]

My apologies for the typo...I know how to spell "Zapoleon". Anyway, here's an FMQB article from two years ago in which guy explains the 10 year music cycle and how it repeats over the decades:

He has a couple "interesting" listings of performers outside their normal genres. John Denver & Anne Murray = country? James Taylor = soft rock?

His recollection of the Rock/Disco era is very different than mine. When Disco erupted it was another genre, separate and apart from Rock. Rock stations may have played Disco tunes in the beginning but it wasn't very long before "hate Disco" programming came along and Disco was relegated to the Urban stations and nightclubs.

Can't comment on music post-1984 because it is just too crappy.

From "Annie's Song" for about a year, Denver's singles were Top 10 on the Country chart. Three went to #1. The streak was broken, ironically, by his duet with another artist who had Country chart success, Olivia Newton-John. "Fly Away" was #12 Country.

Anne Murray was successful on the Country charts from the beginning of her career. If Top 40 had decided to take more of a rock edge and defend against AOR, Anne and John's airplay would have been limited to Country and AC.

How would you classify early 70s James Taylor if not as "soft rock"?

As for Disco, very few Top 40 stations were able to resist it. As Guy's chart shows, it fell in the shortest part of the cycle and was over in two years. The stations that didn't buy in we're belatedly protecting their flanks against AOR, which was peaking, but which had already eaten their lunch 2-6 years before, depending on the market.

 

[oldies76]

The name sucks in an oh-so-embarrassing way.

Such negativity. : A very good station that obviously does not appeal to you.

Give them kudos for throwing out the lost hits, something YOU despise otherwise.

 

[landtuna]

From "Annie's Song" for about a year, Denver's singles were Top 10 on the Country chart. Three went to #1. The streak was broken, ironically, by his duet with another artist who had Country chart success, Olivia Newton-John. "Fly Away" was #12 Country.

We've already established that a song appearing on Billboard in one genre doesn't necessarily mean the song belonged to that genre. "Annie's Song" is not Country although he did make several pure Country records. I would have called Denver a Folk artist more than anything else.

And ONJ was also not a Country artist but rather Pop.

Anne Murray was successful on the Country charts from the beginning of her career. If Top 40 had decided to take more of a rock edge and defend against AOR, Anne and John's airplay would have been limited to Country and AC.

Back in those days I would have classified ONJ, Denver and Murray as MOR. Definitely not Country. Perhaps AC as we know it now.

How would you classify early 70s James Taylor if not as "soft rock"?

Folk. He was a very polished version of Dylan.

As for Disco, very few Top 40 stations were able to resist it. As Guy's chart shows, it fell in the shortest part of the cycle and was over in two years. The stations that didn't buy in we're belatedly protecting their flanks against AOR, which was peaking, but which had already eaten their lunch 2-6 years before, depending on the market.

I moved to Phoenix in '79 and remember Disco being huge in the nightclubs but not necessarily on T-40 radio. They may have played some Disco from acts like the BeeGee's who were then known more for their pop hits. There was at least one station in the metro area that staged "down with Disco" events.