I will give KWRP some listening time over the weekend so as not to jump to any hasty conclusions, if you don't mind. I'll get back to you early next week with my thoughts.
And here they are, after several hours' listening and some time spent organizing and focusing my thoughts.
Divorcing myself as much as possible from the fact that I am a programmer, from a listener standpoint this would probably appeal to a 45+ audience (although the vast majority of listeners would still likely be 55 and older) if it were tweaked to better emphasize the familiar and the most recent titles in the library.
How I would tweak it would be category-based:
1950s (defined for this purpose as everything from Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock" to the first hits by the Beatles) would consist only of the most-popular and memorable titles. I'd say any song from this era that was still getting airplay on Oldies station prior to the "mass purges" would qualify. But I would play them only once or twice an hour, and I would showcase them with special intro imaging as "Classics".
1960s (Beatles through around 1973-74, when the "bubblegum" influence finally died out) would be a category with "hot" and "secondary" sub-categories. The "hot" titles would be the best-testing ones and would play three or four times more often than the "secondary" titles. Note that this makes lots of room for songs that "feel" right even though the test neutral or slightly negative, because none of them play often enough to be irritating. There is a condition to that, which I will discuss a little farther on.
1970s (up to the point around 1978 where softer AC titles started dominating the airwaves) would similarly be sub-categorized along the same lines as 1960s.
1980s would be a relative handful of songs that sound good amidst the other categories. I'm thinking songs by artists like Huey Lewis & The News, Chicago, and Hall & Oates. This category would require a lot of selectivity and would likely play the least of any of the categories other than 1950s.
So, six categories in total. Now, construct a clock where you never play the same decade back-to-back, and alternate the hot/secondary sub-categories for their two decades so that every third or fourth time that decade comes up in the mix you're playing an accent. Never play two secondaries in a row ... in fact, keep them separated from each other by as many songs as possible. (Less familiar surrounded by very familiar reduces tune-out factor.) Never begin or end a sweep with a secondary song.
For a market the size of Pueblo (or Colorado Springs) that is probably how you would draw the maximum number of listeners who wanted a true Oldies format. Bear in mind, I still don't know how many potential listeners there are, which would directly affect profitability regardless of how the format was programmed.
One of the two things I would change would be the imaging. They should take what few spare dollars they have and buy a jingle package that sounds the part (I'm thinking something along the lines of what KODJ here in L.A. did in the late 1980s/early 1990s) plus some
short produced liners from a voice guy like the Rev. Charlie Van Dyke. Their imaging is overdone and there are so few of them in rotation they become tiring very quickly.
The other thing is the faux afternoon drive guy who is obviously generic voicetracked. If he's not going to be live giving song information and interacting with callers, the automation is better off running more clutter-free.
I'm sure that isn't entirely what you hoped to hear -- you probably wanted no cuts to the oldest stuff and more plays of the secondaries -- but it's also probably better than you expected from me.
Too bad they can't afford to have me consult them.
