He would have called it “Yesterdayland”
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Do kids really like oldies?
- Thread starter vchimpanzee
- Start date
To be fair RD's budget was tiny compared to other movie, animation, TV broadcast, and theme parks. That's a big reason it was allowed to hang around for so long. That, and a couple of family members who used to be involved in Disney's radio holdings via Shamrock that started RD somewhat protected it with the hope that it might catch on eventually. Once those members left the Board or no longer protected RD, talk of the disposal began.
Do kids really like oldies? No. As an example, when I was in high school we had an all school assembly to watch a concert of a 1950s-early 1960s cover band that tried to replicate the 1950s image. Yep the songs piqued my interest and I bought a couple of greatest hits LPs covering the era. In about 2 weeks I was done. Not my music. Novelty worn off.
When I was in junior high school albums of 50s music were advertised and I liked it and I never stopped liking it.
When I was in high school the band did a concert and it wasn't just the classical or marching band type music. They did big band too. The students liked it.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Perhaps this doesn't apply to you, Chimp -- you are marvelously unique -- but it is very common for people's musical tastes to change after high school.
If I may use myself as an example: My favorite decade is the 80s (as if no one has already figured that out) yet I graduated high school in 1974. Yet I am very selective about which songs from before my high school years I would call "absolute favorites" and a lot of those were the big R&B/Soul crossover hits. And I am very ambivalent about the 90s and beyond.
On the other hand, people keep saying what people liked in high school determines what they are listening to now and therefore what radio stations should be playing to reach that audience now.
These same kids liked "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I think you misunderstood what "people" (by which I presume you mean the professionals here) meant when they said that, or you somehow missed the mitigating context.
Yes, there is a tendency for people to have formed their basic likes/dislikes about music by the time they graduate high school. But in the years afterwards, a lot of those songs become nostalgia ... good for playing at the class reunions every five years but not ones that are worthy of heavy airplay. In fact, a lot of them fade from memory over time and are only vaguely familiar when heard a few decades later.
That's why Classic Hits stations do research: To play the songs that today's listeners identify as memorable and desirable. It has been proven, time and again, that a song that was a hit "back in the day" is not necessarily so now.
Example: KRKE carries the classic American Top 40 programs from the 80s on Sunday morning and I normally monitor the broadcast in case any glitches occur (so that I can react in real time). This past Sunday's program was from September 24, 1983 and I did not recognize about a half dozen of the songs ... including the #12 song for that week! And this is an era when I was active both as a programmer and air talent, so if I don't recognize them, what chance does the average listener have?
i grew up listening to the 50s 60s and 70s.. and i still like it (im 40, its what my parents played on the radio)
but that stuff is just.. old sounding now..... im a fan of 70s 80s oldies and 80s 90s country now
I discovered the music of the 40s, 50s and (softer) 60s later and like it even better now than when I first discovered it.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
As I said, Chimp, you are marvelously unique. But that distinction also means you are what David E. calls an "outlier" and not anyone to base a format on the tastes of.
Good observation. Some of us still love the music of our teen years, others of us continue to listen to... and adopt as ours... music of the next generation or generations of out lives.
Like you, I love 70's and 80's oldies and those 80's and 90's country songs. And in my case, add in a dose of Cumbia, Salsa, Ranchera and other things I picked up in my Latin American odyssey.
As a pre-teen I listened to rock ´n´ roll and DJs like Alan Freed, Pete "Mad Daddy" Myers, Joe Finan and others that sprang out of Cleveland. But I was also a DXer and learned to like a variety of "stuff" ranging from country to Latin American genres. And then I started part-timing at an AM/FM that was R&B and Jazz and got very involved with both. And while doing homework, I'd listen to a very early Beautiful Music station, WDBN or tapes I had made of HJED's trucker overnight show.
A discovery that I would apply later in my radio career: I liked lots of kinds of music and I picked different ones to listen to depending on my mood. And if I bought records, it was on impulse; imagine a 12-year-old in a record store humming a bit of a movement from Swan Lake to see if he could buy the album! And a week or two later, I'd be picking up the latest Buddy Holly song. Mood, not age nor gender or whatever.
Part way through high school, I became so obsessed with radio that I dropped out of the formal education process that bored me beyond belief and interned at a station group that had five stations and each had a different all-music format. I realized that the owners were not programming for themselves but for different people in different moods. The high school drop-out had figured out format radio all by himself.
So, I thought, it must be that you have to find out what different "kinds" of people like and deliver, to their liking and not mine, the best group of songs. Gee, now I was qualified to be a program director.
What I would learn over the next decade or so was that people stop liking songs, too. K.M. has mentioned that listening to old 80's AT 40 editions he does not even remember all the songs. And, I'm sure, some of the ones he remembers he would just as soon forget. People's tastes don't fully change but they go through a slow metamorphosis; not a rapid, overnight Kafka style change, but an evolutionary one.
So, SRG, we both had different backgrounds but, still, they brought us to our rather similar musical preferences today!
marvelously unique and an outlier is an understatement for vchimp, but i mean that in a nice way. he thinks because he likes it others will.. not always true
my tastes evolved.. because as new music came out, the stuff i had been listening started to sound too old against the hipper newer stuff
Often perceived "outliers" become a significant group.
My experience with Emmis was the creation of a classic rock station in Buenos Aires that only played Spanish language rock by Argentine artists. People "in the biz" that we talked to said "nobody today wants to hear that old stuff from 30 years ago".
Research showed a big passion for the music. The "experts" said that the songs would be fun to hear once or twice, but not permanently.
The station debuted with the largest share of any FM ever. Today, almost 25 years later, it is still in the Top 5 stations in a market bigger than New York.
So don't discount outliers. The collective effect of time and extreme focus of other stations may open a window or even a big double-wide door for a format aimed at that group of them!
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I refuse to pay retail for them!
Here? We can get them for you wholesale.
There is an outlet center for them in South Carolina, I am told. "Savings Simian" I think it is called.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Do they also sell the automation software of the same name?
Everyone goes bananas for their prices!
To everyone above in general: I guess I'm an outlier too, then. My musical tastes today are still inclusive of everything I enjoyed during my youngest years through high school and beyond. That includes endless finds taken from the music my parents and grandparents enjoyed (1920s-1960s), and that older friends in my youth consistently exposed me to (1970s).
I always enjoyed exploring every style and era I could in search of songs that might end up resonating with me enough to become keepers on my personal list. While I have favorite genres, music as a whole basically appeals to me by the song, rather than by the style, period, or demographic -- and these days, I'm as likely to discover new keepers while exploring new releases (mainstream or otherwise) as while rummaging through the assorted musical history bins. I've also always had a great love of exploring eccentric sources of music. Before the internet, college radio, Dr. Demento, musically eccentric shows like Northern Exposure, and other oddball sources were of great value to me, discovery-wise. International music in languages I don't understand even leads me to occasional new keepers. I remember finding and adding to my list some strangely melodic Greek ballads thanks to a shortwave broadcaster in Greece once. Couldn't understand a word, but loved the melodies, the instrumentation, and the overall sound. Foreign internet streams are to me what David said DXing was to him in that regard. And David, your sensibilities as far as choosing what to listen to based on mood describes me as well. Even the way you described yourself in record stores was me on Napster (impulsive exploration), and although I never used beautiful music to help me with my homework, I did use my PRO-2006 in my early teens to listen in on Muzak's 900 MHz FM transmitter network quite often. I guess I was doing the "LoFi Girl" Youtube thing before there was a Youtube ... and without being a girl.
My tastes also don't really evolve in the sense of new music making the old stuff sound dated. I like the charm of songs that now sound dated. The only ones I ever became sick of were songs that others, rather than myself, burned to a crisp. Thanks to KRTH, for example, I can't even take the first bar of "Hotel California" today, whereas it was a teen favorite when I discovered The Eagles. And I tend to avoid stations that research which songs people still like, confining their playlists to just those. I understand why those stations do that, and don't fault them -- it draws the largest numbers and leads to the greatest success. I just can't listen to them for very long because they will burn me out on too many things I like.
In conclusion, I'm another Chimp. And definitely one of the kids who really liked oldies.
By the way:
I always enjoyed exploring every style and era I could in search of songs that might end up resonating with me enough to become keepers on my personal list. While I have favorite genres, music as a whole basically appeals to me by the song, rather than by the style, period, or demographic -- and these days, I'm as likely to discover new keepers while exploring new releases (mainstream or otherwise) as while rummaging through the assorted musical history bins. I've also always had a great love of exploring eccentric sources of music. Before the internet, college radio, Dr. Demento, musically eccentric shows like Northern Exposure, and other oddball sources were of great value to me, discovery-wise. International music in languages I don't understand even leads me to occasional new keepers. I remember finding and adding to my list some strangely melodic Greek ballads thanks to a shortwave broadcaster in Greece once. Couldn't understand a word, but loved the melodies, the instrumentation, and the overall sound. Foreign internet streams are to me what David said DXing was to him in that regard. And David, your sensibilities as far as choosing what to listen to based on mood describes me as well. Even the way you described yourself in record stores was me on Napster (impulsive exploration), and although I never used beautiful music to help me with my homework, I did use my PRO-2006 in my early teens to listen in on Muzak's 900 MHz FM transmitter network quite often. I guess I was doing the "LoFi Girl" Youtube thing before there was a Youtube ... and without being a girl.
My tastes also don't really evolve in the sense of new music making the old stuff sound dated. I like the charm of songs that now sound dated. The only ones I ever became sick of were songs that others, rather than myself, burned to a crisp. Thanks to KRTH, for example, I can't even take the first bar of "Hotel California" today, whereas it was a teen favorite when I discovered The Eagles. And I tend to avoid stations that research which songs people still like, confining their playlists to just those. I understand why those stations do that, and don't fault them -- it draws the largest numbers and leads to the greatest success. I just can't listen to them for very long because they will burn me out on too many things I like.
In conclusion, I'm another Chimp. And definitely one of the kids who really liked oldies.
By the way:
Speaking of Emmis Communications and outlier tastes blowing up big, do you know Emmanuel Coquia, KPWR's PD? Tell him there's an outlier here who thinks KPWR HD3 should be a faithful 24/7 recreation of Power 106's 1986-1991 era, complete with all the imaging in the same way KROQ HD2 is a faithful 24/7 recreation of its former, '80s self. I would absolutely love to see that come to pass and in fact have been wondering since the dawn of KROQ HD2 why it hasn't! There has to be an audience out there at least as large as KROQ HD2's who would go ape for this.
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