KRTH playing 2004 music!

[K.M. Richards]

In the last 7 days only 8 songs newer than 1990 were played, amounting to 11 spins or less than 1% of total spins for the week.

Or in plain English, overreaction on the part of everyone who thinks that 2004 song is the end of radio as we know it.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

I disagree. Little Ceasar and the Romans' "Those Oldies But Goodies Remind Me Of You" (#9, 1961) put the term into circulation among baby boomers...and I doubt they made it up. Art Laboe's "Oldies But Goodies" series cemented the term in most people's minds. By the time I got my first gig as a jock, in 1971, if someone was calling in to request a song that wasn't current, many of them would say "it's an oldie".

I was thinking about the lingua franca of 2007, not 1971. I don't doubt you, but I believe that in the late 2000s "Oldies" was no more a term used by a 35 year old dad than "Adult Contemporary."

That said, we might still have a radio format called "Oldies" if it wasn't for some consultant who needed a brand name for a classic music station that had a presentation distinct from "Oldies" (no PAMS jingle resings, no throwback "Boss Jocks", no pre-Beatles music) and also distinct from Classic Rock and Variety Hits.

 

[AM FM listener]

I recall Classic Hits originally being a format that was musically in between Oldies and Classic Rock. For example, the former Arrow 93 was originally considered Classic Hits, musically in between then-Oldies KRTH and then-Classic Rock KLSX. Now, Classic Rock is more hit-oriented, more like the origanal Classic Hits, and Classic Hits has become the new mainstream pop Oldies.

 

[TheBigA]

I know one of those pre-1970 songs was Brown Eyed Girl. I bet that when KRTH's playlist eventually has only one '60s song remaining, it will be that one.

Amazingly that song has zero burn. Everywhere I go, when that song comes on, everyone sings the chorus. I sure hope Van Morrison still owns the publishing on it. La De Da.

 

[davideduardo]

I recall Classic Hits originally being a format that was musically in between Oldies and Classic Rock.

Not really.

Oldies stations found that with the turn of the Century that the term "oldies" at the agency level meant "out of demo" for nearly every ad campaign coming up. Buyers shunned the format without even looking at individual station performance... if you were "oldies" you were "out".

So stations decided to change the program focus from pop (Top 40) hits predominantly of the 60's to pop hits predominantly of the 70's. And with this came a new name: Classic Hits. The new format and the new demographics were presented to agencies as different from oldies, and that was true: the appeal was mostly to 35-54, not 50-70.

But just as the format was different in age appeal, it was the same in its music base being those songs from the Top 40 charts that were still broadly appealing to 35-54 audiences today.

The reason that 60's based oldies stations did not play crossover classic rock is that there is not a great deal of classic rock from the 60's, with progressive or hard rock being a product of the last few years of that decade.

 

[davideduardo]

That said, we might still have a radio format called "Oldies" if it wasn't for some consultant who needed a brand name for a classic music station that had a presentation distinct from "Oldies"

The new name for a new approach (70's based vs.60's based Top 40 hits) was just about 100% sales based. Station managers and sales staffs and their reps needed to distance themselves from the "oldies" perception of 55+ listeners and lost buys. They demanded that programming refresh the format to appeal to under-55's and then they started looking for a name to use in agency presentations that did not smell of "AARP" all over. They came up with "classic hits" and as more stations used the term, Arbitron accepted it as a format descriptor.

"Oh, no. We are not oldies. We are a 35-54 targeted "classic hits" station. Look at our demos... we should be on the buy!"

As I said, all about sales.

 

[davideduardo]

And that leads to an interesting question: Who decided that songs of the 1950s-60s are "oldies" and songs of the 1970s-80s are "classic hits"? And what cute lil' name can we use to describe the music of the 1990s-2000s? I agree with Michael: To me, an oldie is any song that has been off the Hot 100 chart for at least a year. Don't most people still refer to old songs as "oldies"? I seldom hear anyone outside of the radio industry call them "classic hits."

Oldies is a listener driven name, which was also used for the format that played 60's based oldies. Classic hits is a sales driven name, used to describe a format that plays 70's and 80's based oldies.

"Oldies" is mostly associated with Top 40 gold. In other genres we have names ranging from throwbacks to dusties to classics to recuerdos.

 

[semoochie]

Yes but if you go back 20 years or so, "Classic Hits" was Rock based hits. Where I live, we had at least three such stations(at different times). One such station killed off an All 70s Oldies station!

 

[davideduardo]

Yes but if you go back 20 years or so, "Classic Hits" was Rock based hits. Where I live, we had at least three such stations(at different times). One such station killed off an All 70s Oldies station!

In the business side of radio, "classic hits" is unambiguous. It's Top 40 hits of the past centered on the 70's and 80's.

On the air, some classic hits stations still call themselves "oldies". Few use the "classic hits" name, which was created mostly to set 70's based stations apart from the sales stigma attached to "oldies" at the business level.

"Classic Rock" is what many AOR stations morphed into. In this case, a name that can be used on the air as well as for sales. But some classic rock stations may have called themselves by other names. But, from the Arbitron "acceptable format names" list ond down, at the sales level these "heritage of AOR" stations have always been sold as "Classic ROck" and never as "classic hits".

 

[oldies76]

85% of the spins on KRTH are from 1976 to 1985. The rest is just flavor, no doubt under a criterion based on "does it sound like it fits" or a statistical analysis process to determine "fit".

In the last 7 days only 8 songs newer than 1990 were played, amounting to 11 spins or less than 1% of total spins for the week. Pre-1970 songs amounted to 14 titles and about 5% of all spins.

No Doubt makes sense based on this......I think that Sheryl Crow song "All I Wanna Do" would be another great contender for KRTH and that "fit" it's looking for.

 

[K.M. Richards]

That said, we might still have a radio format called "Oldies" if it wasn't for some consultant who needed a brand name for a classic music station that had a presentation distinct from "Oldies"

(most of David's explanation trimmed, except for the conclusion)

As I said, all about sales.

To PTBoardOp (and everyone else with a similar mindset): Stop blaming consultants for everything you think is wrong with radio. If we weren't around to keep radio viable in the changing face of media and the biases of the advertising community, everything would have devolved to religious and ethnic programming by now.

 

[Carlos Santana's Guitar]

To PTBoardOp...

Don't recall if was here or elsewhere, but I'll always remember reading the classic PTBoardOp94 reply when he/she'd used the term "P1" and was asked by someone else to explain what "P1" meant. PTBoardOp's reply? "P1" means the first preset on a car radio. "P2" would be the second preset. "P3" would be the third. And so on...

 

[ChannelFlipper]

To PTBoardOp (and everyone else with a similar mindset): Stop blaming consultants for everything you think is wrong with radio. If we weren't around to keep radio viable in the changing face of media and the biases of the advertising community, everything would have devolved to religious and ethnic programming by now.

Simply not true. Hyperbole is a poor argument strategy and has failed you again. All major formats would be viable and exist just fine. Consultants, when used appropriately, assist a station to reach the maximum value that can be attained from a given format; they are not saviors of major formats (because major formats don't need saving).

 

[oldies76]

(because major formats don't need saving).

They need fine tuning!

 

[TheBigA]

All major formats would be viable and exist just fine.

Depends on what you mean by "viable."

You want what you want when you want it, and for free. You're no different than anyone else, including the consultants and the owners.

 

[oldies76]

You want what you want when you want it, and for free. You're no different than anyone else, including the consultants and the owners.

You are exactly right...we want what WE want, not what others want. Each person wants what they want. Everyone is different. If we were all the same....the world would be a boring place, in this case...radio.

 

[TheBigA]

You are exactly right...we want what WE want, not what others want.

Then you should be the ones who pay for it.

 

[Thomps2525]

Twenty years ago, the word "oldies" referred to the 1950s-60s hits which we heard on the radio. Now that we are no longer in KRTH's target demo, the word "oldies" refers to us!

In 1986, when KRLA dropped the current hits from its playlist, its jingle was "Oldies, all oldies---KRLA." For many years, KRTH's jingles included the words "Oldies radio." Those words also appear on the cover of the KRTH Greatest Hits CD which Rhino released in 1999. Most of the songs on it can be found on at least ten thousand other compilation CDs. I have a copy. Who else?

http://www.amazon.com/K-Earth-101-Greatest-Hits/dp/B00000IQ13

 

[TheBigA]

Most of the songs on it can be found on at least ten thousand other compilation CDs. I have a copy.

At one time there were companies that put those things together. They'd handle the licensing with the record labels, and put your call letters and logo on the cover. Boom, instant promo piece that you could hawk on the air and sell to listeners as yet another revenue stream.

Nobody buys music anymore. They now want everything for free.

 

[K.M. Richards]

You are exactly right...we want what WE want, not what others want. Each person wants what they want. Everyone is different.

And yet you want stations to be fine-tuned for your particular tastes, rather than the broader approach necessary for a station's programming to be "viable", to use Flipper's choice of terminology.

"The station that YOU want ... never mind the rest of the listeners."

Here we go again, headed for another of your circular discussions and arguments, oldies ...