While scrolling down the Top 500 songs for this year's Memorial Weekend countdown, noticed one thing. It's the same as the one aired over New Year's weekend, same order. You'd think a PD would come up with something more original for a holiday weekend, instead of repeating a re-shuffle of your everyday songs. Oh well.
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KRTH Top 500 Countdown
- Thread starter oldies76
- Start date
oldies76 said:
I blame it on the economy.
oldies76 said:
Welcome to big market radio 2009. You can't just pay for this kind of stuff, that's why they give it away for free!
scooty430 said:
Yet in 25-54, April was as high as any month since the rather out-of-range October. In other words, as good as they have been in the last 7 books.
I switched from playing KRTH to streaming WCBS 101 at work. Huge difference. WCBS' playlist stems from some pre-beatles oldies (Dion, Beach Boys, etc.. that KRTH doesn't really touch anymore) to well into the 80s (Pat Benetar, Bon Jovi...) as well as more disco than you hear on KRTH. The variety of CBS-FM makes it a better station to listen to at work while KRTH gets too repetitive too fast. But I guess NY and LA are different. I wonder how WCBS's playlist would do in LA.
Quote from: scooty430
It's been many months since K-Earth did anything remotely interesting. Sad.
About a year and a half ago we had the top 1001, and then the great A to Z. Since then, nada..... Snoozeville.
What do you expect from them? It's an Oldies/Classic Hits station. There's only so much they can do since it's already been done over and over for years. They' still sound better now than they did before 2005. You guys sure complain a lot. Before the programming change all anyone did was grouse about the lack of variety and a super small library. Now that the music was improved and the station's direction was focused, now that it sounds better than it has in years and enjoys good numbers in the PPM everyone is complaining that it's boring. Hate to tell you but one of the main traits of a Jhani Kaye programmed station is consistency. It's very focused on the formatics and very tightly controlled.
As for the constant comparison that is made on these boards between KRTH and WCBS it's really apples & oranges. New York is NOT Los Angeles. Nothing proves that out more than when KODJ & later KCBS-FM was made to play New York oldies. Even with The Real Don Steele, Charlie Tuna, MG Kelly and Humble Harve they couldn't beat KRTH. Perhaps WCBS seems to play a wider variety of songs and goes back further in time, but the markets are just very different from each other.
It's been many months since K-Earth did anything remotely interesting. Sad.
About a year and a half ago we had the top 1001, and then the great A to Z. Since then, nada..... Snoozeville.
What do you expect from them? It's an Oldies/Classic Hits station. There's only so much they can do since it's already been done over and over for years. They' still sound better now than they did before 2005. You guys sure complain a lot. Before the programming change all anyone did was grouse about the lack of variety and a super small library. Now that the music was improved and the station's direction was focused, now that it sounds better than it has in years and enjoys good numbers in the PPM everyone is complaining that it's boring. Hate to tell you but one of the main traits of a Jhani Kaye programmed station is consistency. It's very focused on the formatics and very tightly controlled.
As for the constant comparison that is made on these boards between KRTH and WCBS it's really apples & oranges. New York is NOT Los Angeles. Nothing proves that out more than when KODJ & later KCBS-FM was made to play New York oldies. Even with The Real Don Steele, Charlie Tuna, MG Kelly and Humble Harve they couldn't beat KRTH. Perhaps WCBS seems to play a wider variety of songs and goes back further in time, but the markets are just very different from each other.
C
classic_rocker
Guest
You guys are forgetting one thing.....WLS-FM blows away both stations. Especially Dick Biondi 5-9 p.m. LA LA time. Heavy late 50S-LATE 60S.
Calguy, so LA and new York are different, so would it be safe to say Creedence Clearwater didnt hold up very well in the big apple in say the year 1970, would it be safe to say that being a bay area group (CCR) their music wouldnt do so well in new york, its not so much the music, its the DJs,, they play a huge role in radio,, Would Cousin Brucie do well at KFRC? Would the legendary John Mack Flanagan do well @ WCBS? Kenny in Concord
Hunkey Snarkey said:
Actually the New York oldies I was speaking of were first and foremost doo-wop songs & such. I've read enough posts to know that you worship at the altar of KFRC and JMF. Having grown up in Northern California I love them both, but I have no idea how John Mack Flanagan would have done in Ney York, or how the great Cousin Brucie would have done here in the west. We can only speculate. My guess is that JMF would have been a better fit in NY than CB would have been here. I think that Brucie would have fared better in LA than SF. For some reason I can't wrap my head around John Mack Flanagan working at WCBS-FM, but he certainly would've fit in at WXLO where more than a few KFRC jocks toiled. Mike Phillips worked there, as did Rick Shaw, Terry Nelson and Harry Nelson. My post was more about the music and promotions and the way people always want to compare the current incarnations of CBS-FM to KRTH and that no matter how much KRTH has improved, it never seems to be enough for some of those who post here. I do feel that the deejays play a huge role but I know that my views are contrary to those of the suits who currently control radio.
calguy said:
Remember though, what Scooty and myself have been saying for a while now, is that KRTH plays great music, no doubt. The difference is that...that's all they play..the same songs over and over with no variations and specials. It's the same stuff again and again, just in a different order. This applies to the daily rotations and what few specials they do manage to spring to the audience.
CBS-FM plays everything KRTH plays, and more. This includes daily themes (Hall of Fame) and weekend shows and countdowns and a touch of 50's. Besides the excuse of NY is not L.A., what other ideas can you come up with as to why KRTH cannot sound like a true oldies/classic hits station. I find CBS-FM to be entertaining with it's variety and songs. KRTH is boring, not because of the songs themselves, because of the presentation of the music and lack of creativity with them. (ie..specials). Like I've said before and long-time KRTH listeners will agree, KRTH sounded much better in the 80's than it does today. KRTH has improved since Kaye took over, but has not reached the caliber of a CBS-FM and its immense library.
Calguy, I think you could agree to as well. I just don't understand how people could be satisfied with 400 songs and only 400 songs and not be more flexible to new ideas and songs. It's not the way a station should be presented, in my opinion.
oldies76 said:
Haven't we seen this movie before already?
With all due respect, its a BUSINESS, dammit!!! You could have a playlist of FOUR songs and not be flexible to anything outside of 2:57 to 3:00 minutes in length if that's what those paying the freight (advertisers) are buying. Advertisers DON'T WANT the demo that a deep playlist 50s-60s format delivers. We can debate the wisdom of this (or lack thereof) until the cows come home....but the people writing the checks for terrestial radio don't want the demo. Period, end of story.
KRTH? I happen to think they're doing a lot of things right with that monster signal and well-established brand of theirs. Miss what they were doing a year and a half ago....or ten years ago....or twenty years ago? Try KRTH-HD2. All robots all the time, but there's your late 50s-60s stuff. (Or at least the safe, inoffensive version thereof).
Don't have an HD radio? Then stream it. Play it through your stereo. Get an FM modulator, open a cold beer, and crank up the boom box in the back yard. Buy an I phone or I-touch along with an audio jack and listen to it in your car....sounds great! I did exactly that today on a drive from Austin to San Antonio. (And if KRTH HD-2 is too "tame", there's a gazillion other well- programmed, great sounding "deeper" streams out there. WRLL, Hy Lit, Radio Bop, RichBro to name just a few).
Its all good!
oldies76 said:
Well to start with, most radio station libraries now days don’t usually go beyond 500 songs. To be honest it’s around 400+, but if maintained properly by bicycling your songs and doing specialty weekends and such you can sneak songs in that aren’t in your current on-air library thereby giving the station more flavor and the illusion of a much wider playlist. As pointed out in another post by cyberdad, it is a business and sales departments are very sensitive to the demos they use to sell, so going back for a of lot 50’s and early 60’s songs is not what they want as those older demos are hard to sell. Research has certainly played its part in how stations are programmed as well. That and the fact that Mike Phillips believed in playing less songs and a tighter playlist contributed to the place that KRTH found itself when he retired in 2001. Mr. Phillips was a great programmer and in his defense that was the way to win in the 70’s and 80’s when programming Top 40/CHR. It served him well for many years and while it was a sound way to program in those era’s it was eventually what made KRTH, an oldies station, sound so stale. A lack of currents and re-currents made the tight playlist an eventual mistake by the 2000’s. Now KRTH plays a wider variety, but still sounds as if it’s behind WCBS in the amount of songs it plays. I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s the specialty features and weekends that give CBS-FM the illusion of a greater playlist, but I may be wrong.
Since Jhani Kaye took over the KRTH programming in 2005 he has come up with a steady stream of special weekends that seem to go far beyond anything KHJ or the old KRTH ever did. From the posts here on this thread and others it’s obviously not enough for some die-hard fans of oldies radio. As I recall KRTH in the 80’s played a small rotation of currents. This was not out of the ordinary as a majority of oldies stations did this until somewhere in the late 80’s and early 90’s when oldies became a much more rigid niche and abandoned currents altogether. I guess it just can’t be everything to everyone. That wouldn’t be a problem if these stations had competition, but with consolidation most markets don’t have more than one of any given format with very few actually having head to head competition which breeds a more stale less risk taking sound. Kaye also as I’ve pointed out is a very focused PD. He’s a bit of a control freak, actually a huge one and scripts out his formatics and liners more than most PD’s would ever consider doing. While this ensures a very focused, consistent sound, it also means that he’ll play it safe 99 percent of the time and that means somewhat less creativity than you’ll hear at a station like WCBS. Good lord I’ve been wordy here. I think I’ll stop typing now and go watch the rest of Letterman.
You'd swear that with all of the complaints about KRTH, people would rather have it go away like KFRC...Then we would have no Oldies/Classic hits station in LA.
I, for one, like hearing the hits on a focused station.
I, for one, like hearing the hits on a focused station.
calguy said:
I agree - John Mack Flanagan's style would fit in any major market. My only exposure to Cousin Brucie (other than his voice appearances in Dirty Dancing, etc.) is hearing him on WCBS-FM in the early 90s for a few weeks. He kept blabbing on about the most trivial subjects. I have to say - I kept wondering when he was going to shut-up and play a record. Maybe's he's a taste I would have acquired if I'd grown up in NYC.
I gather Ron Parker's doing fine at WCBS-FM. His morning drive act at KFRC was wearing very thin by the time he baled.
Finally, I have to say that I've really enjoyed the Jhani Kaye version of KRTH when I visit SoCal. No - it's not WCBS but it strikes a good balance without a lot of repetition...at least, not repetition you pick up in a two week visit. I occasionally stream the station on the weekends to hear Charlie Tuna. IMO, the new KRTH is far superior to the Mike Phillips version, which got mind-numbingly repetitious in about a day and a half.
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