R
radiophile
Guest
(KFRC is an Infinity station)
Radio's KFRC dropping oldies
STATION'S NEW FOCUS: 38- TO 49-YEAR-OLDS
By Brad Kava
San Jose Mercury News
At noon today (Sept. 2), Bay Area oldies radio station KFRC-FM (99.7) will drop the format it has had for a dozen years and start focusing on an audience it says has been ignored for too long: the people some are calling Generation Jones, 38- to 49-year-olds who were too young to be Baby Boomers and too old to be Generation Xers.
With its first song, ``One of These Nights,'' by the Eagles, the San Francisco-based station will leave behind most of the music of the 1950s and 1960s, in favor of what was big from 1975 through the '80s.
``That's right in the center of the audience,'' said Infinity Broadcasting vice president and market manager Doug Harvill, who is overseeing the change. ``If you are 45 today, you were born in 1960 and you were 15 in 1975. That's the age when kids are typically getting into music.''
Harvill said the move is ``a logical progression of what this station is about.''
Oldies formats have been withering nationwide, the most visible of which was the country's largest market in New York City, where Infinity's WCBS-FM stopped playing the music of the 1960s and got rid of highly visible deejays including Bruce ``Cousin Brucie'' Morrow.
It wasn't that the format was doing badly -- it was in the market's Top 10 -- but advertisers thought its listeners were too old and didn't want to invest in them.
That station took on a format that is sweeping the country called ``Jack,'' a supposedly free-form format where listeners might hear unexpected songs from different eras. The trouble with it, say some listeners, is that it really isn't the free-form that launched FM radio in the 1960s, during which deejays played what they wanted. Rather, it is mostly a tried and true playlist of recognizable hits from a mix of generations.
Harvill is staking a different claim, trying to play much of what KFRC would have played in 1975, with a list that includes Fleetwood Mac, the Commodores, Elton John, Billy Joel, and also ventures back to the Beatles and Marvin Gaye, and forward to Huey Lewis, Eurythmics and Cyndi Lauper.
``This won't be nostalgia,'' Harvill said. ``It will be a fun station, bright and upbeat. This is a generation that still lives for today.''
The station had been a famous Top 40 outlet until 1986, when it switched to a format called ``Magic 61,'' offering standards such as Frank Sinatra. Although it was fourth in the market in number of listeners, the format was killed off in 1992 because advertisers wanted a younger audience.
It has been oldies, mostly of the 1960s, since then.
Radio's KFRC dropping oldies
STATION'S NEW FOCUS: 38- TO 49-YEAR-OLDS
By Brad Kava
San Jose Mercury News
At noon today (Sept. 2), Bay Area oldies radio station KFRC-FM (99.7) will drop the format it has had for a dozen years and start focusing on an audience it says has been ignored for too long: the people some are calling Generation Jones, 38- to 49-year-olds who were too young to be Baby Boomers and too old to be Generation Xers.
With its first song, ``One of These Nights,'' by the Eagles, the San Francisco-based station will leave behind most of the music of the 1950s and 1960s, in favor of what was big from 1975 through the '80s.
``That's right in the center of the audience,'' said Infinity Broadcasting vice president and market manager Doug Harvill, who is overseeing the change. ``If you are 45 today, you were born in 1960 and you were 15 in 1975. That's the age when kids are typically getting into music.''
Harvill said the move is ``a logical progression of what this station is about.''
Oldies formats have been withering nationwide, the most visible of which was the country's largest market in New York City, where Infinity's WCBS-FM stopped playing the music of the 1960s and got rid of highly visible deejays including Bruce ``Cousin Brucie'' Morrow.
It wasn't that the format was doing badly -- it was in the market's Top 10 -- but advertisers thought its listeners were too old and didn't want to invest in them.
That station took on a format that is sweeping the country called ``Jack,'' a supposedly free-form format where listeners might hear unexpected songs from different eras. The trouble with it, say some listeners, is that it really isn't the free-form that launched FM radio in the 1960s, during which deejays played what they wanted. Rather, it is mostly a tried and true playlist of recognizable hits from a mix of generations.
Harvill is staking a different claim, trying to play much of what KFRC would have played in 1975, with a list that includes Fleetwood Mac, the Commodores, Elton John, Billy Joel, and also ventures back to the Beatles and Marvin Gaye, and forward to Huey Lewis, Eurythmics and Cyndi Lauper.
``This won't be nostalgia,'' Harvill said. ``It will be a fun station, bright and upbeat. This is a generation that still lives for today.''
The station had been a famous Top 40 outlet until 1986, when it switched to a format called ``Magic 61,'' offering standards such as Frank Sinatra. Although it was fourth in the market in number of listeners, the format was killed off in 1992 because advertisers wanted a younger audience.
It has been oldies, mostly of the 1960s, since then.