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It's 2015! Time to get rid of the '70s.

In the 90's era of boy-bands, some of my favorites were from the UK.

A lot of this has to do with the way the music business operates. Yes, these are international record labels, but a British label has to hand a project off to the American office in order for that artist to get American airplay. That's what held up The Beatles in 1962. They ended up making deals with smaller US labels before Capitol Records picked them up.
 
He's talking about the comedians he knows. I'm talking about the ones I know. Two different groups. The ones I know quit the road to get married, stay at home, and do morning radio every day. But I also know stations that use celebrity fill-ins for a week.

Again, an example of how there are many ways to do good radio. BigA's experience differs from mine, and likely is just as successful; there is no single way to run radio stations.

My experience has been with A-list stand-up comedians, people whose name is known in every household of the constituencies I work with. They generally don't want to stop doing club and theater performances but do like to perform for a few days on a radio show in a large market. Or, perhaps, contribute bits on an ongoing basis. But they never seem to have more than a few day's radio-usable content.

On the other hand, outside the US mainland, I do have some similar experiences to those of BigA where comedians liked the stability of radio and use the medium as their base, doing clubs and TV more occasionally. Of course, most who tried this transition did not make it as doing radio is more than just telling a few jokes.
 
The few times I've heard a station that I actually liked, it was something I stumbled on by accident when traveling outside the range of the preset buttons on my car radio, or something a friend told me about.

One of my favorite soft AC's was one my family stumbled upon during a beach trip in the late 80's. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom Of The Opera musical was popular around that time. This soft AC included some songs from that on their playlist. The station became country in 2000. Now it's the K-Love Christian format.
 
AMany of them will actually be around longer than some big city hot shots than seem to change formats every few years. Look what happened to KTWV and KBIG recently.

Huh?

While it has definitely evolved over the decades, KBIG has occupied the same "space" since the 60's. It was a Beutiful Music station that evolved into a more vocal based format and then into a soft AC and then to a Hot AC. It's one of the most consistent stations in the country, in fact... rivaled only by stations like WDVR/WBEB in Philadelphia.

KTWV was the first "real" New Age / Smooth Jazz station when it began in 1987, and when smooth jazz no longer could deliver 25-54 audiences, they began a transition that still includes some SJ cuts and a music library that sounds more "smooth jazz" than other market's AC offerings. Despite the fact that the changes have not improved the 25-54 performance, the station is still very linked to its heritage.

Firepoint, add Hippie and Dubuque's 106 to your list of long-lasting small classic hits stations. There's also KFXM in the California desert. They're out there.

Hippie has only been around a couple of years, having adopted the format in Spring of 2012. It is hardly long-lasting.

KFXM is an LPFM, covering a tiny part of a smaller market. It is one of the older LPFMs in continuous operation, but it only dates back to about 2007 or thereabouts. Hardly long-lasting, although it's a pretty amazing LPFM as it is still broadcasting daily with consistent quality.

KIYX in Dubuque was AC until early 2010, when it switched to 70's and 80's hits in Spring of 2010. Again, hardly a long-lasting station.
 
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I've noticed that some of these old-school soft adult contemporary stations are set up on HD channels. What is an HD channel?

This station is an example. It's currently love songs 24/7.

http://tunein.com/radio/KQID-HD2-931-s227589/
http://www.streamlicensing.com/play/player.php?sid=3076&stream_id=5579
http://www.streamlicensing.com/directory/index.cgi?sid=3076
http://s4.streammonster.com:8471/played.html

The only thing I'm hesitant about with getting hooked on this HD channel is that it will probably flip to a different format. Another HD station I was enjoying just did that recently. It flipped from soft AC to hip hop. Ugh!
 
One of my favorite soft AC's was one my family stumbled upon during a beach trip in the late 80's. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom Of The Opera musical was popular around that time. This soft AC included some songs from that on their playlist. The station became country in 2000. Now it's the K-Love Christian format.
I saw that movie the other day. The title song, to me, is garbage (that 80s sound that was all over movies of that era), but I like the other romantic songs.
 
I don't see "Music Enthusiasts" anywhere in the board organization hierarchy string at the top of the page. I see:

Forum > Radio Topics > Radio Formats > Adult Contemporary > It's 2015! Time to get rid of the '70s.

I was looking at the main menu page. I just happen to miss the word "radio pros". Click Forum near the top and you'll get the main menu screen and look under the word Radio Topics, just above Radio Formats. :)

Okay, just so long as you've noticed that the board isn't for "music enthusiasts" as you claimed in your latest failed attempt to make me go away. Has it occurred to you yet that isn't going to happen?
 


Start with the fact that "Happy" is one of the very crispy-est songs right now, and the Groban and Swift and other "recurrents" balance the flavor way to much towards the present, that is not going to work. The Enya crowd is not the BSB crowd in most cases.

Of course, if you are targeting 25-54 because you actually want some revenue, things like Carpenters are real negatives.

What you have is a list that seems to sound nice, but is not actually appealing to any significant segment of the audience.


And as far as the third list is concerned, it appeals to people who want to hear something relaxing and be able to listen with their kids without worrying about foul language or suggestive lyrics. It's "old-school" soft adult contemporary brought forward in time like my first board friend here, PassTheWord, has done with his online station:

Thanks for the mention, Musiclover! Glad to hear you're enjoying Lite 99. As you said, we do play the original version of the soft AC format. WLTB-DB is based on the original WLTB, Lite 99 FM here in Birmingham, which was on the air from 1985-88 at 99.5 (which is now country WZRR "Nash Icon 99-5"). We've brought WLTB-FM's format forward in time and added tracks that were "grafted"into the soft AC format in the early to mid 90's, as well as incorporating newer material. As many of you who listen to "old school" soft adult contemporary may remember, the format was primarily older-based soft rock ballads, with a few currents thrown in per hour to keep the format fresh, so we are adopting that same structure for WLTB Digital Radio. For example, we play John Legends "All of Me" "You and I" by One Direction and "A Thousand Years" by Christina Perri, just to name a few.

Quote came from this discussion: http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?671221-Why-did-AC-stop-being-soft

When I was in college in the late 90's, the soft AC's I listened to would play slow and mid-tempo songs by Backstreet Boys alongside The Supremes, The Carpenters, Enya and Kenny G. I don't remember them dropping anything to appeal to specific age demographics until the late 00's, when they became more upbeat.
 
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I saw that movie the other day. The title song, to me, is garbage (that 80s sound that was all over movies of that era), but I like the other romantic songs.

Agree to disagree about the title song being "garbage".
 
Remember that the next time someone mentions anything other than tight little playlists.

Not valid logic. There are many way to do things successfully. But there are also certain things that don't work, such as playing weak songs to improve "variety".
 
But there are also certain things that don't work, such as playing weak songs to improve "variety"

Your absolutely right...it won't work, in the largest markets that is. I actually agree with you for once!!

But on the other hand, in some rural town just over the hills.....
 
But on the other hand, in some rural town just over the hills.....

It's not working there either. The examples you give are being killed by better run stations in those small towns. The only advantage is the losses aren't as fatal. But as I've said in other threads, at some point these stations are going to have to shut down their web streams, because they're eating up any money they make. It's all expense and no revenue.
 
Not valid logic. There are many way to do things successfully. But there are also certain things that don't work, such as playing weak songs to improve "variety".

You just don't get it, do you? It's not a question of all songs being in a binary division between "weak" on one side and "strong" on the other, as if those two polar opposites were the only absolute choices. If the songs are tested properly, the results will rate them on a long continuum, from absolutely total strength on one end and totally weak losers on the other, and everything else spread across the middle. So, if you test 10,000 songs you can rank them all from number 1 at the bottom to number 10,000 at the top. You keep claiming that only songs numbered 9,600 through 10,000 can be played or else you'll lose your audience, your ratings will drop to zero, you'll lose your job, your wife will divorce you, they'll repossess your car, and you'll have to live in a cardboard box under a bridge. I submit that, to the contrary, out of those 10,000 songs, you can also play songs numbered 9,200 through 9,599 without risk of disaster. But your response is always to pretend that I'm suggesting that you play songs 1 through 1000, which I am not suggesting. And when I reject your errant answers, I'm accused of not showing you proper respect, since you've been working in radio forever.

I'll also suggest that if you test those 10,000 songs after numbers 9,600 through 10,000 have been played over and over and over and over, those songs will end up further down the list because you will have burned them out.

You suits do test at least 10,000 songs, right?
 
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