Believe me I remember KHJ. Mr. Drake was one savvy Georgia boy. If a programmer had told the Big Kahuna that he was going to win 5 to 9 years of female numbers instead of 12 to death he would have been fired. By programming the hits format to such a narrow group it makes it impossible to be a mass appeal station like the founders of top 40 envisioned. Why not play all of the songs that are selling without regard for gender?
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In 1965, there were only about 8 viable LA signals... the major AMs. 570, 640, 710, 790, 930, 980, 1070... with 1230, 1580 and 1330 close to viable given the market dimensions. The big stations could get double digit shares. Each vable station could expect an 8 to 12 share! Spanish stations did not even have a 1 share... today they have over 30 shares.
Today, there are 30 viable FMs, plus the first group of AMs... 37 viable signals sharing the 87 commercial shares in LA. That comes out to just a tad more than 2 shares per station on average.
With that much competiton, each station has to specialize. And with ad buys far more targeted to very specific demos, no station can be a generalist and no kind of music or talk format is broad enough to get wide ranges like Top 40 did in the 60's.
Most stations could not care less what is selling, as the 25+ listener which advertisers want is not a music buying group as a whole. And there is not a reliable way of getting single song sales data by consumer group so as to identify which songs one station's listeners like. Again, tastes have fragmented, and radio has specialized in each of these taste groups as appropriate... radio did not fragment tastes, listeners did.
When hard or progressive rock came out of late 60's Top 40, the Top 40's did not play anything but the very commercial cuts. So other stations, especially new independent FMs, took up that kind of music and created a new format... which evolved into AOR. Those who liked more familiar songs opened the way to oldies stations, and those who did not like harder stuff gave a base for AC. Top 40 spawned a half-dozen formats, and most of the listeners left Top 40 for good, making it a teen proposition... not the easiest thing to sell as ad buys went more and more after 25-54 and not 12-17 and 12-24.
When everyone liked the same music to a greater extent, stations could research singles sales and jukebox plays. Today, we have to find listeners to our station or to its direct competitors, and talk to them individually, as record sales are meaningless. In fact, many stations do not play currents and the listeners to them don't want to hear new music.
"The founders of Top 40" hit on the format by serendipity. The story of Todd Storz and Bill Stewart watching a juke box in Omaha are mostly true... and the first Top 40 went on the air in August of 1952 in that city on KOWH. I talked with Mr. Storz in Miami shortly before his death, and I can say that there was no "intent" in designing anything but a format for the moment that attracted listeners. In 1952, playing the hits meant gogi Grant and Perry Como and such... and almost all Americans liked the same music. Today, there are so many different taste groups that radio is challenged by iPods and such to serve each listener with their personal favorite music.
And I'd bet that Ron Jacobs, the mastermind behind KHJ, would superserve a niche today and not try to recreate the impossible.
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