• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Comprehensive List Of Stations Still Airing the Soft AC/Easy Listening Format?

Chad-Stevens said:
It's funny that they still display the call letters prominently on their website, maybe just for old times sake or an old-timey audience?

XEQR from Mexico City had a Spanish language adult standards/nostalgia format that bordered on easy listening at times, dropped the format, and then returned to in in 2023.
Click to expand...
But that is "música ligada a su recuerdo" or, in English, "memorable music". It is very Mexican popular class (not "pop") music, not beautiful music or easy listening. Key music types are ranchera and bolero music, which is pure Latin and Mexican working class music... more akin to country in the US than easy listening.
 
DavidEduardo said:
But that is "música ligada a su recuerdo" or, in English, "memorable music". It is very Mexican popular class (not "pop") music, not beautiful music or easy listening. Key music types are ranchera and bolero music, which is pure Latin and Mexican working class music... more akin to country in the US than easy listening.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the clarification. I just love formats like this. That is, music that radio left behind and has become very hard to find on the airwaves.
I was just pleasantly surprised to find that the El Fonografo format had returned in all but name.
 
Chad-Stevens said:
It's funny that they still display the call letters prominently on their website, maybe just for old times sake or an old-timey audience?

XEQR from Mexico City had a Spanish language adult standards/nostalgia format that bordered on easy listening at times, dropped the format, and then returned to in in 2023.
ERTU Al-Moseeka 98.8 from Cairo, Egypt also has an old-school easy listening format. Unfortunately, I can't find a working stream for it, but here's 15 hours recorded OTA from 2022.
Click to expand...

Yes, CMBQ is exactly that, with "Radio Enciclopedia" underneath, on its website. So there's one holdout in Cuba for branding purposes. And after a few days on the blink, their audio stream is back up. Great for dozing off to at night if 530 can't be received (and mind-boggling to hear instrumental covers of 70s-80s American music).
 
Judging from their playlists on OnlineRadioBox, WCMY 1430 (93.5) and WTLO 1480 (97.7) have both dropped the LRN Standards format for Oldies. The LRN format itself is still streaming on KWXS and WPTX.
 
Hello...

I got a tip that Local Radio Networks has discontinued their Adult Standards format...can anyone confirm...this would be a huge loss if true.
 
meteorob said:
Hello...

I got a tip that Local Radio Networks has discontinued their Adult Standards format...can anyone confirm...this would be a huge loss if true.
Click to expand...
For the actual standards that format did play, that is true. I was not willing to deal with an even more AC sound than America's Best Music had to get to those songs. For the most part I wouldn't object to America's Best Music--for oldies.
 
The adult standards format that Local Radio Networks had was very good...lots of Sinatra, deep Nat King Cole tracks, Steve and Eydie, the soft 60s stuff like Gerry & the Pacemakers as well as 70s-today standards. The DJ's were ok but the programming was fantastic. I work mornings so driving to work at 2:30 in the morning and hearing "Around the world" by Nat King Cole or "Dedicated to the one I love" by the Mamas and the Papas was perfect...nice and mellow.

My question to the group is this...I was a big listener online to WDEA...before that it was KCEE...KAAM and WJAS...all of those have now fallen by the wayside...what stations do you know of that are like these?...all music...streaming with little to no other programming other than the music 24/7...bonus if the station has top of the hour news. I've checked out some of the stations in the previous pages, but it's just not what I'm looking for

Not interested in classic hits or anything like that...just a true Standards/nostalgia format. I've heard that WERT is good but their stream does not appear to be working.

Like many of you, I'm also surprised Sirius does not have this type of format anywhere on their platform. I wish I could get a copy of the playlist for the Adult Standards from Local Radio Networks and just make my own playlist.
 
meteorob said:
Not interested in classic hits or anything like that...just a true Standards/nostalgia format. I've heard that WERT is good but their stream does not appear to be working.
Click to expand...
WERT was good, except for the AC that they would occasionally play. But they had quite a lot of standards.

Serenade Radio | The Best in Easy Listening has what I believe you are looking for from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. and 5 P.M. to 7 P.M. Eastern on weekdays and 4 to 6 P.M. Saturdays and Sundays. And possibly 8 P.M. to 10 P.M. though I've never listened at that time. And the weekday shows are repeated 12 hours later, I believe. I think some weekend shows have the same styles of music but I don't listen at those times. Unlike WERT, this station has DJs and the ones on weekdays are all British. The one American DJ has that weekend show. The man who runs the station is on weekdays 2 to 4 P.M. and he likes to complain. From 5 to 7 you hear somewhat more of the "America's Best Music" style songs but it's still very much a standards format, and the DJ tells you "stuff you didn't know you didn't know".

WLML This is also good. It has a lot of more recent recordings. And DJs. The traffic man during afternoon drive is a great sidekick for the DJ.

I've heard this station does the same type of music. 107.3 Mod FM | Alpha Media Player
 
Last edited:
meteorob said:
Like many of you, I'm also surprised Sirius does not have this type of format anywhere on their platform. I wish I could get a copy of the playlist for the Adult Standards from Local Radio Networks and just make my own playlist.
Click to expand...
I know. I told Sirius about WAVO Charlotte and said they needed a channel like that. Actually, it was more standards than AC but the station did play Simon & Garfunkel, The Association, The Carpenters, Neil Diamond and Bread. I said they weren't using their music collection any more and it needed to go somewhere. They did put it on WHVN for a while before selling it so it wouldn't be off the air longer than the rules allowed, but last I heard the new owners had switched it to some kind of Christian format.
 
lanceventa said:
Confirmed. Their affiliates were moved to one of their Oldies formats.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately this is true; I found out after being away in Alaska for 2 weeks, when I returned home last Thursday and turned on WDEA 1370 Ellsworth ME, it was obvious. too bad. I loved the old format.
 
While in Alaska I did have a chance to listen to, and enjoy "Alaska Gold Rush Radio" KHAR 590 AM/96.7 FM. Good variety, not quite as many standards as on LRN, but still a good variety of 70s/80s oldies/soft AC. At 590 AM with 5000 watts they cover all of south-central Alaska, even getting as far north as Denali National Park. Their FM translator covers most of the Anchorage Bowl region. KHAR does stream. "Gold Rush Radio"
 
Last edited:
This thread is, in my professional opinion, an exercise in futility.

Because of the long-held position by the advertising agencies, no station with over half its audience older than age 55 is ever again going to get national buys. Those businesses marketing to older demos have either switched entirely to television -- including virtually every new pharmaceutical companies' "wonder drug" -- or to direct response/per inquiry, where the station only gets paid when someone calls the toll-free number and orders (and I guarantee you that no radio station, in any size market, can survive on just that business).

In smaller markets, there are still local businesses catering to older customers, but operate on such a small profit margin that selling them radio advertising is a non-starter 90% of the time.

And then we have the problem of the audience literally dying off. I know that sounds a bit callous, but it is a fact.

The mostly-instrumental Easy Listening format is all but dead itself. It has been on life support since the 1980s (although the "Smooth Jazz" variant -- itself an endangered species now -- did keep it alive longer than it would have survived otherwise). Adult Standards had its last renaissance as a format in that same decade and was already being abandoned left and right by the late-1990s. Oldies has hung on, but these days it's by a mere thread as stations motivated by being able to pay the bills move into the Classic Hits format. And even what 60s and 70s titles manage to remain playable under that format are quickly aging out; by the end of this decade I doubt anyone will be playing anything older than 1978 (and even then, the songs from 1978-79 will be ones that listeners erroneously perceive as being from the 1980s).

As has been discussed here, the syndicators are leading the retreat from both Oldies and Standards. SiriusXM is right behind them. Local stations will either follow the trend or go permanently silent ... the net result for the fans of those genres being the same either way.

And I say this as a programmer who has had the most success programming 80s-based Classic Hits, but whose personal MP3 collection goes far enough back to include Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman. My advice to you all is to invest in MP3s of the music you so obviously love (and obviously, I don't blame you) and have them ready to play when your local station sees the financial realities and stops playing same.

Complaining about the situation on a message board is not going to change anything. You need to take matters into your own hands and ensure that you can keep hearing your favorites when we no longer find it viable to air them.
 
Last edited:
WIOZ in the Fayetteville NC area is still America's Best Music. I did hear one actual standard and it was Linda Ronstadt and during a commercial break.

It is a community station for the county it is in, so that should help. The soft oldies are good but I want to hear standards and I do that online. Not in the car.
 
K.M. Richards said:
And I say this as a programmer who has had the most success programming 80s-based Classic Hits, but whose personal MP3 collection goes far enough back to include Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman. My advice to you all is to invest in MP3s of the music you so obviously love (and obviously, I don't blame you) and have them ready to play when your local station sees the financial realities and stops playing same.
Click to expand...
Serenade Radio (online only) and WERT (no longer streaming outside its immediate area) are the exceptions, but those artists disappeared from most radio stations long ago.
 


Back
Top Bottom