So you let other stations take the new artists' releases for a spin rather than gamble on anything but established stars? You must have been last one to the dinner table on an awful lot of British acts in 1964!
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KCKC FM - Large Playlist Success ?
- Thread starter kfbkfb
- Start date
Fortunately, TR and Jacobs saw something in Casey that could be made into a listener magnet. He had been one of the loose, 50's and early 60's style Top 40 jocks who sounded "old" next to KHJ... but given really good production and writing, he sounded both authoritative in listing the hits and warm and personal with the features and dedications.
Prime Country on SiriusXM does the same think with '80s and '90s country. Even a good number of top 10 hits don't register with me, and I listened to a lot of country radio in those decades.
We were the first in the market to play new Beatles, Stones and other British acts. We just played the new artists elsewhere in day and not, immediately, in the countdown.
There was one hour at night where we had over a 90 share. It was the first and only Top 40 in the market.
My bugbear at present is stations that seemed to do their playlist once, years ago, and haven't touched it since. We have an Indie/Alternative station nearby which plays all the classic artists you might expect to hear in that format and in that location - Stone Roses, Oasis, Bowie, Primal Scream, Kaiser Chiefs etc - but also plays a bunch of tracks that fizzled about ten years ago from artists who no longer have any kind of profile, like Jake Bugg (who?) and The Twang (who?). It's as if they researched and tested and put together a playlist of new and old music a decade ago when they flipped the station and haven't bothered to update it.
The station has a 0.6 share, down from 2.6 immediately before the pandemic, so listeners evidently agree with me.
The station has a 0.6 share, down from 2.6 immediately before the pandemic, so listeners evidently agree with me.
If you're basing that agreement on 6+ ratings, you're probably wrong.
The most extreme example of this is KFRC-FM HD-2 in San Francisco. When a simulcast of KCBS replaced the then-recently-revived Classic Hits KFRC on 106.9 in 2008, they moved the format, minus jocks, to the HD-2.
It's the 70s-era hits people associate with KFRC in its 1973-79 glory days (heavy on Fleetwood Mac, Steve Miller Band, Boz Scaggs, Eagles and Boston) with the "You" series jingles and legal ID:
That's from a month ago. KFRC.com hasn't existed in YEARS. Like...nine or ten years. But nobody's re-voiced that. This is literally a server in a rack at 855 Battery that apart from one or two commercial spots an hour (no doubt bonuses for clients of the FMs) has not been touched in 14 years. It just keeps playing.
PD problem? IT problem? Engineering problem? Traffic problem?
Turn it off for a week to see just how many are listening to it.
I don't think it's a problem. I think it's totally intentional. It doesn't show up in the ratings at all---but for those of us who are longtime NorCal folks, it's kind of a kick. I dialed it in one night in SF in the car without telling my wife (who grew up on 70s KFRC) first---just before the station ID. She was stunned.PD problem? IT problem? Engineering problem? Traffic problem?
Turn it off for a week to see just how many are listening to it.
I mean, seriously---what's going to do any better on an HD-2 and take as little or less effort? This is basically Audacy saying HD-2 doesn't matter, but if you're going to give them one...
Movies/Radio/TV is and has always been an egotistic platform from the beginning. Ego’s actually run the format. Some come from a big ego but others come from a shy person who wants to be heard. Which tends to determine the mix of personalities. Over my 40 year career I have definitely seen both. And frankly one isn’t it better than the other.
Well.choose rad From Citizen Kane to today it is simply is an overwhelming platform that will likely be around for atleast the rest of our lifetimes.
Well.choose rad From Citizen Kane to today it is simply is an overwhelming platform that will likely be around for atleast the rest of our lifetimes.
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AOR? Does that format label still exist? What was played on AOR back in the day is now considered Classic Rock.
Any rock station that plays currents that aren't singles could still be called AOR, but rock has splintered so badly in its twilight years that the stations that play its various fragments are labeled Alternative, Active Rock, or just plain Rock. I remember seeing Modern Rock as a label, but don't think it's currently used.
As I understand it the AOR format was developed to offer listeners album cuts . This slowly became a losing proposition and many of these stations became classic rock stations. But that format has also evolved with more 90’s and 2000-2010 rock hits. Very few obscure album cuts.
Actually, AOR was one of various format names invented by R&R around 1980 to differentiate its charts and sections from those in Billboard and the traditional Tip Sheets like Gavin and FMQB.
It was just a change in name for what other trades called "rock". Prominent among rock stations were Lee Abrams' "SuperStars" stations which were tightly programmed but tried to have the album image.
Thanks, David. I think you are mostly correct. However, Classic rock today feeds on familiarity. Show me a classic rock station that plays a song that never charted. Yes, there may be few, but not common.
Well, a lot of Classic Rock tracks were never released as singles—“Stairway to Heaven” for starters—-so how are we defining “never charted”? Album charts? In that case, it’s a low bar, not cracking the Billboard 200.
It feeds on familiarity to the point of making folks sick of their favorite songs and artists, thanks to gross overplay.
Our local Classic Rock station in Phoenix, KSLX 100.7, has an absolute obsession with Ozzie (with and without Black Sabbath), AC/DC, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd. They don't necessarily repeat the same songs from those artists over and over, but those five acts account for a good percentage of their broadcast day. After 40 years, I'm finally sick and tired of Pink Floyd The Wall, and I was never an Ozzie or AC/DC fan to begin with.
Their slogan should be "KSLX: Making you sick of your favorite songs since 1986."
Of course there are examples of classic hits playing non-hits but this is not the norm.
But stations need to be attractive to 34-49 . So where does this leave us? The preferred demo is now 80’s. However, these formats are quickly aging out. Will 90’s be the next format winner? My instinct is a big no. 90’s radio was the most part horrid,
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Not to the generation that grew up with it.
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