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Fewer 80s and 90s and more recurrents/currents on AC

TheBigA said:
You've obviously done a lot of research, so I commend you on that. But there is no quota system in the creation of formats. The goal isn't to present a certain balance of eras, but to attract a certain demographic. So it's possible for older songs to resonate with younger people, and younger songs to resonate with older people. They shouldn't be playing songs from certain decades strictly based on the years the songs were released.
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Total agreement.

Where the year or era generally comes into play is scheduling the songs so that the different eras within the playlist are balanced... not too many older or too many newer in a row, but, rather a variety of eras or ages in every sweep and every hour.

For those with MusicMaster or the RCS products, this is pretty easy to set up in the rules.
 
DavidEduardo said:
not too many older or too many newer in a row, but, rather a variety of eras or ages in every sweep and every hour.
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Similar strategy in not scheduling two female artists back-to-back. The goal is to spread them evenly throughout an hour. But when women's groups heard about it, all they could focus on was it was discrimination. I've watched programmers attempt to explain the concept to female artists or sociologists, and they can't grasp it at all. They're speaking in two completely different languages.
 
andrewduong77 said:
Uh... Don't you mean "Higher Love" by Steve Winwood? The "Higher Love" by Kygo & Whitney Houston is a 2019 new single cover version of the 1986 song by Winwood.
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Oh, THAT's why I never heard of it.

I saw that she recorded it by herself earlier, though, so I assumed that was the date of the recording WEZV seems absolutely obsessed with, not even bothering with Winwood any more.
 
vchimpanzee said:
Oh, THAT's why I never heard of it.

I saw that she recorded it by herself earlier, though, so I assumed that was the date of the recording WEZV seems absolutely obsessed with, not even bothering with Winwood any more.
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WLTW plays both Steve's version and Kygo's cover with Whitney at the same rate nowadays. I think I remembered WLTW spun Kygo's cover around 2-3 times per day at the beginning of this year and they still play Steve's version once everyday or two at the time. WLTW would more likely play Steve's version on their "Best of the 80's Weekend".
 
KMGL dropped their "90's at Noon" right after Christmas 2017 after running it since the beginning of 2016. Then KMGL also dropped their "Awesome 80's Weekend" in August 2018 after running it since the early 00s. During that month, they also released an update to their KMGL app on both iOS and Android that reflected their new banner with the new slogan "Today's Magic 104.1". Previously, their slogan was "More Variety from the 80s, 90s, and Now". Since that month, their formula had been 1-2 80s an hour, 1-2 90s an hour, 1-2 00s an hour, 4-7 10s an hour, 1-3 recurrents/currents an hour.

WRRM has a very similar formula for the past four years as well, 1-3 80s an hour, 1-2 90s an hour, 1-3 00s an hour, 4-5 10s an hour, 1-2 recurrents/currents an hour.
 
https://radioinsight.com/ross/188939/why-hit-songs-become-lost/

Here is a cool editorial on songs that were once labeled hits or promoted as hits on radio and how it fades over time. In this case the article talks about how 80's and 90's hits fade over time and to a certain extent this is true for the early 2000's too.


Time Wounds All Hits, Then Heals Some Wounds: The passage of time, and particularly the movement of listeners through radio’s 25-to-54-year-old audience target, explains a lot. Top 40 programmers decided they were done with the Bee Gees by 1981. Adult Contemporary programmers brought them back in the mid-‘90s, but even then they played 4-5 songs, rather than an entire catalog. “Stayin’ Alive” was reanimated. “Tragedy” and “Nights on Broadway” were not.

There’s a similar pattern now with mid-to-late ‘90s teen pop. Most stations wouldn’t have even put Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” in their audience research five years ago. Now it’s a song that people love, bolstered by anybody who was 12 years old in 1996 and 36 now. I’ve even heard it on Top 40 stations a few times in recent weeks. But it’s not a deep pool of songs that are heard again. “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” by the Backstreet Boys is back. “I Want You Back” by ‘N Sync is not.

No matter how much Taylor Swift struggles at contemporary radio now, it is inevitable that her catalog will be a fixture on the radio again in a decade or so. Her music is a part of too many lives, and eventually the audience that grew up with her won’t care if their kids are still interested or not (and their kids won’t have any input, as they do at today’s CHR). It won’t be every song; probably a half-dozen. But radio and Taylor are almost certainly getting back together.
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TheBigA said:
Similar strategy in not scheduling two female artists back-to-back. The goal is to spread them evenly throughout an hour. But when women's groups heard about it, all they could focus on was it was discrimination. I've watched programmers attempt to explain the concept to female artists or sociologists, and they can't grasp it at all. They're speaking in two completely different languages.
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It's pretty common to hear two female artists, especially on female-skewing stations like Hot AC and AC, so long as they are current/recurrent or current/gold.
 
tall_guy1 said:
It's pretty common to hear two female artists, especially on female-skewing stations like Hot AC and AC, so long as they are current/recurrent or current/gold.
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It didn't used to be. It used to be a big no-no to play female artists back to back. The reason I was given was because women didn't like to hear other women. This was a long time ago and things have changed. This was also a time when older women DIDN'T WANT EQUAL RIGHTS!
 
Not really the right topic for it but I don't have time to see what other stations in other markets are doing, and the Myrtle Beach stations that list last songs played don't list many, which means it would be a lot of work.

But unless you like beach music and possibly country or classic rock, you're not going to find a lot of 70s and even fewer songs older than that in Myrtle Beach.
 
semoochie said:
It didn't used to be. It used to be a big no-no to play female artists back to back. The reason I was given was because women didn't like to hear other women. This was a long time ago and things have changed. This was also a time when older women DIDN'T WANT EQUAL RIGHTS!
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I never heard that explanation... it was simply that there were always less female artist hits, so to balance the hour it was important that they should be separated in proportion to their presence in the library. I even know stations that also made sure male and male group songs did not cluster in 4 or 5 song sweeps without a female song in the sequence. The idea was to balance the hits based on things like tempo, age/era, "sound" and gender so that every set covered a spectrum, rather than being too many songs with common similarities.

I never heard that women did not like two female vocals in a row.
 
TheBigA said:
More importantly I've never seen any documentation on that either.
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In fact, in a number of AMTs that was one of the sidebar questions... no objection. But it can be dangerous to ask listeners questions that have behavioural implications because they will often give the "right" answer and not the real one.
 
vchimpanzee said:
I've been following what has been going on in Myrtle Beach on WEZV. That station was soft AC but was starting to evolve into an AC, and then a drastic change took place, but the station plays a lot of 80s.
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This sounds very similar to what went on with WLYF in Miami. I had noticed something about WFEZ and WLYF at least. They're the only Soft AC and Mainstream AC in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale market for the past six years. WFEZ had gradually filled in the gap between Soft AC and Mainstream AC over the past decade as WLYF had quietly became a Mainstream AC completely over the last half of the previous decade. WLYF used to be a Soft AC / Mainstream AC hybrid back when I started streaming it in November 2011.

I think WLYF had evolved in a similar fashion to WEZV, except WLYF done it quietly. WLYF had slowly dropped a lot of the Soft AC tracks between 2014 and 2018 that it used to lean heavily on up till 2014. Since 2017, they had been adding more recurrents and currents than they ever did. Around late 2018, they dropped their "Refreshing" slogan in favor of their current "Real Music Variety" slogan. They still kept the same branding and logo.
 
andrewduong77 said:
This sounds very similar to what went on with WLYF in Miami. I had noticed something about WFEZ and WLYF at least. They're the only Soft AC and Mainstream AC in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale market for the past six years. WFEZ had gradually filled in the gap between Soft AC and Mainstream AC over the past decade as WLYF had quietly became a Mainstream AC completely over the last half of the previous decade. WLYF used to be a Soft AC / Mainstream AC hybrid back when I started streaming it in November 2011.

I think WLYF had evolved in a similar fashion to WEZV, except WLYF done it quietly. WLYF had slowly dropped a lot of the Soft AC tracks between 2014 and 2018 that it used to lean heavily on up till 2014. Since 2017, they had been adding more recurrents and currents than they ever did. Around late 2018, they dropped their "Refreshing" slogan in favor of their current "Real Music Variety" slogan. They still kept the same branding and logo.
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I forget where I posted about it, but I looked at WLYF's last songs played and compared to WFEZ's list and there were a lot more similarities than I would have expected. WLYF had not gone as far as WEZV.

Actually, now I'm looking at WLYF's last songs played and it is quite similar to WEZV. And lots of 80s. Their HD2 channel is really good, though.

"I'll Be" Edwin McCain
"Paparazzi" Lady Gaga
"Karma Chameleon" Culture Club
"Don't Start Now" Dua Lipa
"Waiting for a Girl Like You" Foreigner
"Can't Stop the Feeling" Justin Timberlake
"Sweetest Taboo" Sade
"Cake by the Ocean" DNCE
"Oh Sherrie" Steve Perry
"Halo" Beyonce
"True Colors" Cyndi Lauper
"I Don't Care" Ed Sheeran
"Holiday" Madonna
"Don't Wanna Know" Maroon 5
"Careless Whisper" George Michael
"Hips Don't Lie" Shakira
"Hungry Eyes" Eric Carmen
"Someone Like You" Adele

Here's the list for WLYF-HD-2:
"Yesterday Once More" Carpenters
"Have You Seen Her" Chi-Lites
"What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted" Paul Young
"Cherish" Association
"Best of My Love" Eagles
"Carolina in My Mind" James Taylor
"Slow Hand" Pointer Sisters
"Hello It's Me" Todd Rundgren
"Let Me Love You Tonight" Pure Prairie League
"Make it with You" Bread
"First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" Roberta flack
"This Is It" Kenny Loggins
"To Sir with Love" Lulu
"Somewhere Down the Road" Barry Manilow
"Teach Your Children" Crosby Stills Nash & Young
"Ebony and Ivory" Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder
"Summer Breeze" Seals & Crofts
"All My Life" Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville
"Africa" Toto
"Wichita Lineman" Glen Campbell
"Time in a Bottle" Jim Croce
 
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I'm wondering if this is the same case with WEZI in Jacksonville as well. It's also a Cox station. I'm not sure if I remember hearing about WEZI in the past. Maybe, I just found out now Cox had flipped its Urban AC WHJX (Hot 106.5) in Jacksonville to Soft AC as WEZI (Easy 106.5) back in September 2015. Cox swapped WEZI's frequency with WXXJ in November 2017, so WEZI became Easy 102.9. It looks like WEZI had morphed into a Mainstream AC some time ago, so it doesn't even sound like either of its sister WFEZ or WDUV.

WEZI Playlist

Alannah Myles - Black Velvet
Prince - 1999
Uncle Kracker - Follow Me
U2 - With Or Without You
Des'ree - You Gotta Be
Toni Basil - Mickey
Phil Collins - True Colors
Big Mountain - Baby, I Love Your Way
Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes
Vanessa Carlton - A Thousand Miles
Toto - Africa
Jimmy Cliff - I Can See Clearly Now
Ellie Goulding - Love Me Like You Do
Hall & Oates - Out Of Touch
4 Non Blondes - What's Up?
Steve Winwood - Higher Love
John Mayer - Say
Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - I Love Rock 'N Roll
Natalie Imbruglia - Torn
UB40 - Red Red Wine
Melissa Etheridge - I'm The Only One
Kings Of Leon - Use Somebody
Club Nouveau - Lean On Me
Tal Bachman - She's So High
Adele - Rolling In The Deep

Jacksonville has an established AC WEJZ owned by Renda Broadcasting. The irony is Renda also used to operate a Soft AC WSOS-FM in Jacksonville from 2005 to 2011. They flipped WSOS-FM to Classic Rock in 2011 and then they eventually sold it along with one of its other station in 2014.

WEJZ Playlist

Survivor - Eye Of The Tiger
James Bay - Let It Go
D.H.T. - Listen To Your Heart
Joan Jett - I Love Rock N Roll
Meghan Trainor feat. John Legend - Like I'm Gonna Lose You
Goo Goo Dolls - Iris
Jon Parr - St. Elmo's Fire
TLC - No Scrubs
Belinda Carlisle - Heaven Is A Place On Earth
Aerosmith - I Don't Want To Miss A Thing
Weezer - Africa
Billy Joel - Uptown Girl
Lifehouse - Hanging By A Moment
The Fray - How To Save A Life
Berlin - Take My Breath Away
P!nk - So What
Daniel Powter - Bad Day
Lionel Richie - Say You Say Me
Justin Timberlake - Can't Stop The Feeling!
Matchbox 20 - Unwell
Tears For Fears - Shout
Avril Lavigne - Complicated
The Outfield - Your Love
Bruno Mars - When I Was Your Man
Ed Sheeran - Shape Of You
Bon Jovi - Livin' On A Prayer
Adele - Set Fire To The Rain
Prince - Kiss
Christina Perri - Jar Of Hearts

Jacksonville doesn't have a Hot AC on Analog FM/HD1.
 
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WEZI looks like it is on the soft side of mainstream AC compared to other stations I've seen. WEJZ seems to be about right.

Wrong thread unless you're also pointing out how old their songs are.
 
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