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It's not just KRTH, and not just Los Angeles.

michael hagerty said:
No way of knowing---only a smattering of charts from Boise stations (and none from "WOLD"'s chart run) on Arsa-Las Solanas, which shows the first station on it was WDRC in Hartford, Conn.
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No surprise there. DRC was first on a bunch of records, several of which were major hits. Of course, they were also suckers for acts with local ties, like NRBQ ("Ridin' in My Car") and the Wildweeds ("No Good to Cry") -- both of which featured Windsor, CT, native Al Anderson -- and as an oldies station decades later kept those songs in rotation, along with a bunch of Gene Pitney (from Rockville) titles almost all other stations had put out to pasture. But I've always assumed that radio people kept an ear pointed toward Hartford for advance warning on hits-in-the-making.
 
michael hagerty said:
No way of knowing---only a smattering of charts from Boise stations (and none from "WOLD"'s chart run) on Arsa-Las Solanas, which shows the first station on it was WDRC in Hartford, Conn.

"WOLD" did worse than "Taxi"---peaking at #36 on the Hot 100.

Another case of scattered airplay, with the earliest stations on it the last week of December, 1973, and some stations still playing it in May. KHJ in Los Angeles didn't add it until late March.

Gotta remember that chart numbers aren't cumulative (a surprising number of people forget this). A record doesn't pile on sales as it climbs the chart---it's a snapshot of that one week in time in relation to all the other records. So "WOLD" did worse than 35 other records on its best week on the chart.

If you could have gotten all those stations on the record within four to six weeks and had the sales from the earliest markets tallied in the same weeks as the sales from the later markets, the chart peak would have been higher.
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But Isn't "WOLD" a microcosim for this entire thread?
 
CTListener said:
No surprise there. DRC was first on a bunch of records, several of which were major hits. Of course, they were also suckers for acts with local ties, like NRBQ ("Ridin' in My Car") and the Wildweeds ("No Good to Cry") -- both of which featured Windsor, CT, native Al Anderson -- and as an oldies station decades later kept those songs in rotation, along with a bunch of Gene Pitney (from Rockville) titles almost all other stations had put out to pasture. But I've always assumed that radio people kept an ear pointed toward Hartford for advance warning on hits-in-the-making.
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I actually wonder if Boise might have resisted "WOLD". It's not flattering:

The drinking I did on my last big gig
It made my voice go low
They said that they like the young sounds
(Sounds, sounds, sounds)
When they let me go
So I drifted on down to Tulsa, Oklahoma
To do me a late-night talk show
Now I've worked my way down home again
Here to Boise, Idaho
That's how this business goes

I was the morning DJ and Music Director at KSLY, San Luis Obispo when "WOLD" was on the charts, and I was pretty ambivalent about the record.

I vaguely recall back-announcing it one morning with something like "I am the morning DJ on KSLY. I'm eighteen years old, don't smoke, don't drink, never been married and I love San Luis Obispo. My request line number is 563-84-hundred...."
 
CTListener said:
No surprise there. DRC was first on a bunch of records, several of which were major hits. Of course, they were also suckers for acts with local ties, like NRBQ ("Ridin' in My Car") and the Wildweeds ("No Good to Cry") -- both of which featured Windsor, CT, native Al Anderson -- and as an oldies station decades later kept those songs in rotation, along with a bunch of Gene Pitney (from Rockville) titles almost all other stations had put out to pasture. But I've always assumed that radio people kept an ear pointed toward Hartford for advance warning on hits-in-the-making.
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I think, when we started out, most of us baby MDs and PDs kept an eye on certain stations, but eventually, you realize that's them, not you---a record being on a station doesn't tell you how it's doing, and a record doing well on a station doesn't guarantee the same result elsewhere.

I got to the point where I watched the stations that could be heard in my market (both Bishop and Ukiah had significant out-of-market listening to Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively). I wanted to know what those stations were playing, but a lot of the time, I was every bit as interested in why I shouldn't play it (or how I could counter it---there were songs KFRC played that, as an AC, KUKI couldn't) as why I should.
 
One last thing on Harry Chapin (remember, this thread is about Classic Hits stations adding newer songs):

Harry had the misfortune of being innovative when Elektra signed him—-a singer/songwriter who told stories—-but up against a far more commercial group of guys who also fit that description (Paul Simon goes solo, Jim Croce arrives) by the time he actually starts trying to get airplay and sales.
 
michael hagerty said:
One last thing on Harry Chapin (remember, this thread is about Classic Hits stations adding newer songs):

Harry had the misfortune of being innovative when Elektra signed him—-a singer/songwriter who told stories—-but up against a far more commercial group of guys who also fit that description (Paul Simon goes solo, Jim Croce arrives) by the time he actually starts trying to get airplay and sales.
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But Simon and Croce wrote uplifting and fun songs in additon to the sad stories. Every hit in Chapin's career is downer story. Who wants to buy an album full of sad stories in minor keys for repeated listening? Even Gilbert O'Sullivan didn't fall into that trap.
 
ChannelFlipper said:
But Simon and Croce wrote uplifting and fun songs in additon to the sad stories. Every hit in Chapin's career is downer story. Who wants to buy an album full of sad stories in minor keys for repeated listening? Even Gilbert O'Sullivan didn't fall into that trap.
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That was the “far more commercial “ part.
 
DavidEduardo said:
And some people live in remote mountains with an outhouse and a stack of dried leaves. That does not mean that the practice is widely preferred or acceptable.

For all practical purposes, the format is dead and has been for well over thirty years.

You keep bringing up "obscure" stations that are obviously either a hobby of an owner or part of the half of all stations that lose money and stay on the air due to a profitable sister station or, as I just said, they are run as a hobby.

Beautiful Music, as a format, is at least 2/3 instrumental. Some were all instrumental. Most, in the late 60's to mid-80's peak period, did quarter hours of three to four instrumentals and one vocal placed in the middle of the set.

"Beautiful Music" with more than 4 vocals an hour is not "Beautiful Music".
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The one in the mountains is in an affluent resort area and seems to make money. But it would not be considered beautiful by your definition. Maybe the others wouldn't either. I don't know how many vocals KAHM plays and I didn't like it the last time it was free.

If I bring up stations that are "obscure" or "a hobby", blame my Facebook group which treats all streaming stations as equals, as long as access is free and a stream is dependable. And believe me, those people have a different attitude than people here about whether music is outdated or whether anyone should be bothering to play it. Many of the stations they talk about exist only online.
 
DavidEduardo said:
No, an evolutionary process.

As many "oldies stations" started dropping the 60's stuff and moving more deeply into the 80's, the station sales managers and general managers found that they were being thought of as stations for people over 55 and it made for a tough sale. In particular, stations selling to national accounts and out of market agencies met with demographic rejection.

So the more progressive oldies stations simply started calling themselves "classic hits" so that buyers would not think they were still playing Bobby Rydell and Chubby Checker.
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Okay, that was true then. The first time I ever heard "Classic hits", though, the station using the name played "Chantilly Lace" by The Big Bopper. A few years later, the term was used by stations playing just old rock songs, and then the term came to be used for stations playing older songs that included other styles of music besides rock.
DavidEduardo said:
In other words, they marginalized themselves from the stations that still played a lot of Beach Boys and Motown by simply using a different term in sales presentations. They even got Arbitron to use "classic hits" as a separate format descriptor... but there was never a rule anywhere as to what was "oldies" and what was "classic hits". The main reason for calling the updated format "classic hits"" was for sales, not for the audience.

In fact, lots of classic hits stations kept calling themselves "oldies" on the air well after they moved to that "mostly 80's songs" version of the format. A good example is the station in Philadelphia which only recently... and finally... erased its listener connection with the "oldies" term.

In many markets, there was no listener resistance to the "oldies" term but stations wanted to erase the usage of the word as much as possible for sales reasons as the buying community saw it as a growing negative.
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But the difference now is we are debating whether "classic hits" stations should be playing songs newer than 2000. And the stations I am calling oldies aren't playing anything newer than 1990 and many of the songs are from the 70s or even 60s. I haven't talked to anyone to confirm this because they say leave a message and no one calls back, but the successful station outside Charlotte that uses Good Time Oldies seems to play its own songs during commercial breaks and some are from the 50s. It may be that Good Time Oldies has those 50s songs but I kind of doubt it. If the station is not playing its own songs, somehow the satellite format is letting the station play some commercials then a song then another commercial or a weather forecast. This would also explain two songs by the same band or artist played right together.

Two other stations that actually use the term oldies don't seem to go beyond 1970 and definitely play 50s songs. One is owned by a man who likes the music and has a classic rock FM that seems successful, and both are in the Charlotte market even if the oldies station can't be heard in Charlotte at night. The other is in Asheville and is an HD-3 with a translator which people on this site say is based on a Milwaukee station.

I mentioned Greensboro and Raleigh, also in NC. I'm not sure what each station calls itself but I think the Raleigh station uses "oldies" and it's a strong station. Both have translators. The Raleigh station has to distinguish itself from a classic hits FM which is playing lots of newer songs.
 
vchimpanzee said:
But the difference now is we are debating whether "classic hits" stations should be playing songs newer than 2000. And the stations I am calling oldies aren't playing anything newer than 1990 and many of the songs are from the 70s or even 60s.
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There is no czar of radio and there are no rules for what constitutes a format that only plays old music.

As Jack always says, we're just playing what we want.
 
TheBigA said:
There is no czar of radio and there are no rules for what constitutes a format that only plays old music.
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Well, then we can have one group of stations where some play 60s, 70s and 80s, some play 70s, 80s and 90s, and some play 80s, 90s and newer.

And then we have WKQC Charlotte playing 70s, 80s and 90s and calling itself AC. Ironically, it was doing well before it added the 70s, according to a post on this site.
 
michael hagerty said:
One last thing on Harry Chapin (remember, this thread is about Classic Hits stations adding newer songs):

Harry had the misfortune of being innovative when Elektra signed him—-a singer/songwriter who told stories—-but up against a far more commercial group of guys who also fit that description (Paul Simon goes solo, Jim Croce arrives) by the time he actually starts trying to get airplay and sales.
Click to expand...
I think that innovation has been a good thing for him in retrospect, because in my opinion, his style of storytelling and instrumentation is rather unique and his songs, sad though they may be, as a result tend to have a fresher, more interesting sound that sets them apart from most of his contemporaries. As a result, he doesn't really blend in like most of the other major artists of the time.

I would say that because of this, perhaps he was a bit ahead of his time, and thus somewhat under-appreciated during his (tragically short) lifetime.

c
 
cc333 said:
I think that innovation has been a good thing for him in retrospect, because in my opinion, his style of storytelling and instrumentation is rather unique and his songs, sad though they may be, as a result tend to have a fresher, more interesting sound that sets them apart from most of his contemporaries. As a result, he doesn't really blend in like most of the other major artists of the time.

I would say that because of this, perhaps he was a bit ahead of his time, and thus somewhat under-appreciated during his (tragically short) lifetime.

c
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Harry's an acquired taste. Elektra wanted him to be a big star, but who knows (and now we can't ask) if that's what Harry wanted?

I'm gonna guess he didn't. He didn't seem to bend his approach to chase chart hits.

In my book, the closest thing to commercial (again, "Cat's In The Cradle" just touched a nerve) he ever did was "Sunday Morning Sunshine" (his third single, which peaked at #75 in 1972)---and it still is a full minute before he suggests the idea of happiness. The fact that it came from an album called "Sniper and Other Love Songs" just illustrates the problem.

 
TheBigA said:
That's my take. His TV appearances at the time showed him playing acoustic alone, or with string quartets.

This was at a time when disco was king.
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I mean, you could be a singer-songwriter and survive disco---Paul Simon, James Taylor, Jackson Browne---but again---those guys were way more commercial and radio-friendly than Harry.
 
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