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Is AC no longer the family friendly/at work format?

You mean the station you constantly talk about and compare every other station in the format to? Don’t know, didn’t listen to it back then, but judging from research and from your posts, a hybrid of standards and some soft oldies.

WMNI is the modern soft AC.

Soft oldies and soft AC are virtually the same thing, just tweak the playlist slightly to local tastes and emphasize a certain period and you’re set. (As a former programmer, format lines and descriptions blur so much.) Also, the modern soft AC has to be somewhat mainstream enough and get somewhat edgy. You can’t expect songs like “Hold On” to not be on the playlist because of personal opinion or whatever. Sonically, it fits, and it was a staple on AC stations when it was first released and many years afterward because it tested well.
WMNI is borderline standards and, no, "Hold On" does not fit. Part of the song does sound consistent with the rest of the format, but toward the end someone is pounding on drums.

WEZV was borderline standards prior to 2017. Now it is somewhat softer than WDUV and WFEZ but definitely not what it was.
 
WMNI is borderline standards and, no, "Hold On" does not fit. Part of the song does sound consistent with the rest of the format, but toward the end someone is pounding on drums.

WEZV was borderline standards prior to 2017. Now it is somewhat softer than WDUV and WFEZ but definitely not what it was.

The only standards I see on WMNI are played in evenings. Daytime is all soft AC.

And did you not listen to AC radio growing up? I heard “Hold On” MANY times on my local AC, which fit what was basically what the format sounded like at the time (late 90s/early to mid 2000s). The drums are not that distracting.
 
Hold On is too hard? Seriously? Is this a joke?

MOR stations in the '60s and '70s would have been just right for vchimp, and maybe some of the softest of the first wave of soft-rock stations in the '70s, but by the '80s, songs with prominent electric guitars, bass, and drums were being played on those stations and AC stations as well. One can't expect America's Best Music and similar formats to sound like some sleepy MOR station from 1969 when it's not 50 years later. Many of the old MOR listeners are dead, as is Music of Your Life. The mix of music offered by ABM is, to me, a very well put-together sampling of the songs and song styles that listeners to AC enjoyed from the '70s to the '90s.
 
vchimp is the guy who claims to have complained to store managers about the music being too loud. Definitely stay off his lawn.


MOR stations in the '60s and '70s would have been just right for vchimp, and maybe some of the softest of the first wave of soft-rock stations in the '70s, but by the '80s, songs with prominent electric guitars, bass, and drums were being played on those stations and AC stations as well. One can't expect America's Best Music and similar formats to sound like some sleepy MOR station from 1969 when it's not 50 years later. Many of the old MOR listeners are dead, as is Music of Your Life. The mix of music offered by ABM is, to me, a very well put-together sampling of the songs and song styles that listeners to AC enjoyed from the '70s to the '90s.
 
MOR stations in the '60s and '70s would have been just right for vchimp, and maybe some of the softest of the first wave of soft-rock stations in the '70s, but by the '80s, songs with prominent electric guitars, bass, and drums were being played on those stations and AC stations as well. One can't expect America's Best Music and similar formats to sound like some sleepy MOR station from 1969 when it's not 50 years later. Many of the old MOR listeners are dead, as is Music of Your Life. The mix of music offered by ABM is, to me, a very well put-together sampling of the songs and song styles that listeners to AC enjoyed from the '70s to the '90s.
It's pretty good, and some days really good, but there are some songs that don't fit.

Nothing by Mariah Carey should be played there. Also "waiting for a Girl Like You", "Almost Paradise", and "I Won't Hold You Back" just don't sound like they belong.

And "I'm Not in Love". That one's too spacey, new age sounding.
 
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Hold On is too hard? Seriously? Is this a joke?
You can argue that later in the song that the part with the drums doesn't last long, but they are really bad.

The girls have nice voices but that's the only good thing I can say about the song. Well, that and positive lyrics, but I don't make a point of listening to lyrics.
 
The only standards I see on WMNI are played in evenings. Daytime is all soft AC.
"Something" Beatles
"A Blossom Fell" Nat King Cole
"Only Yesterday" Carpenters
"Under the Boardwalk" Drifters
"Looks Like We Made It" Barry Manilow
"Against All Odds" Phil Collins
"Song Sung Blue" Neil Diamond
"The Look of Love" Dusty Springfield
"Knock Three Times" Tony Orlando and Dawn
"Baby I'm Yours" Barbara Lewis
"Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" Jim Croce
"Cherish" The Association"
"Brandy" Looking Glass
"Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" Crystal Gayle
"Vincent" Don McLean
"I Just Can't Help Believin'" B.J. Thomas

Standards. At least the way the format is currently defined. They even have the America's Best Music theme music. Sometimes, America's Best Music plays a few more actual standards than this, though.

If you think this is soft AC ("A Blossom Fell" by Nat King Cole! That is WAY over the line, not just sort of a standards song), what do you call WFEZ and WDUV?

I went back and checked again, and they've played "Broken Hearted Me" by Anne Murray since then and … oops. "Waiting for a Girl Like You".

And after the news and before I leave for the day:

"Put Your Head on My Shoulder" Lettermen (Excellent!)

And did you not listen to AC radio growing up?
I did, in fact, and sometimes I wanted something softer. When even softer formats came along in the 80s to replace beautiful music, I liked those. I liked beautiful music from time to time, too.
 
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vchimp is the guy who claims to have complained to store managers about the music being too loud. Definitely stay off his lawn.



I’ll take your advice. I’m out. Again, I personally know what I’m talking about, as I literally played this music in question for a living, but according to chimp, Foreigner is just too hard for the dying America’s Best Music format (even though you practically have to evolve to survive!) and gets caught up in semantics, and thinks he knows it down to a science. I’m not willing to continue with it. Have fun.
 
I’ll take your advice. I’m out. Again, I personally know what I’m talking about, as I literally played this music in question for a living, but according to chimp, Foreigner is just too hard for the dying America’s Best Music format (even though you practically have to evolve to survive!) and gets caught up in semantics, and thinks he knows it down to a science. I’m not willing to continue with it. Have fun.
I don't think my opinion is going to change, but I have noticed that some songs on America's Best Music that bothered me before don't bother me now. The ones added in recent years that didn't seem to fit haven't been played as much, so that's good. I don't even consider Michael Bolton to be as annoying as I did.

I've also noticed that on oldies stations some of the Motown and early rock and roll I might have once considered too loud doesn't bother me. Rock from the hippie and protest era, I'm not accepting. Creedence Clearwater Revival is an exception, maybe because of the John Fogerty solo hits of the 80s. I'm even more accepting of Beatles music, except for the really loud stuff that people thought was better quality than the bubble gum pop from when they appeared on Ed Sullivan. My acceptance of Elton John and Billy Joel has evolved but a few songs by both of them I will never like. I've always liked most of the Doobie Brothers' stuff and Bob Seger is pretty good as well.

It's not that my taste hasn't evolved but there are just some songs that aren't going to fit in my opinion.

We got way off topic here. All of this is worth discussing but not here.
 
Kenny Loggins. That's someone else whose recent additions to America's Best Music I actually like.

His "Meet Me Halfway" got added to Timeless Favorites, which didn't turn out as well as America's Best Music. I'm not willing to meet him halfway on that one.

On oldies radio I actually like "I'm Alright" and "Footloose".
 
Not to you, for some odd reason, but I've conceded as much as I'm going to. That one part of the song is absolutely, positively not soft.

It doesn't matter anyway. "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "Lonesome Loser" just in the time I've been listening. I need another station besides WMNI for the times when WNAM is airing baseball.

Anyway, WMNI is a long way from sounding like WFEZ, WDUV and the others.
 
I'm not sure whether Q100.5 in Florence SC could still be considered Hot AC, even though it is shown in sources as Hot AC.

I heard a number of older songs which would make it more of an AC. And nothing really loud.

And Ed Sheeran is considered an AC artist. But the lyrics of "Shape of You" are borderline, in my opinion, if you want AC to be family friendly.
 
Not about AC, but it was funny to watch Ken Burns' latest documentary and hear how decadent jazz was in the 1920s, and even to learn a country singer from that era had to have a warning put on his song "Everybody Does It in Hawaii".
 
And Ed Sheeran is considered an AC artist. But the lyrics of "Shape of You" are borderline, in my opinion, if you want AC to be family friendly.
Meh. At least around here, the AC stations are playing "Uptown Funk", "Sexyback", and Pink's "Blow Me (One Last Kiss)" with barely edited S-bombs.
 
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