Or Hot AC, depending on percentages. Everyone is looking for whatever works. Ten years ago, classic hits was more pop. Now its more rock.
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Let's watch everyone lose their minds. KRTH is playing...
- Thread starter michael hagerty
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Or Hot AC, depending on percentages. Everyone is looking for whatever works. Ten years ago, classic hits was more pop. Now its more rock.
I'm surprised a format like this hasn't popped up somewhere, as I theoretically think it would be great at delivering 25-44 year olds. However, AC seems to have that lane covered, and it seems like that audience likes hearing the older tracks alongside the 5-20 year old hits, along with the few currents and recurrents AC stations play.
And the 5 most recent records on KRTH:
Simple Minds -- Don't You -- 1985
Robert Palmer -- Simply Irresistable -- 1988
B-52s -- Love Shack -- 1989
Katrina & The Waves -- Walking on Sunshine -- 1983
Depeche Mode -- Personal Jesus -- 1989
The average is 37 years old. I agree with Michael, on paper this music should be too old.
But, KRTH rates well among all the demos, including #1 25-54, so even though the prime consumer of this music should be in their mid 50s based on what was popular when someone that age was in HS/college, that rule of thumb really doesn't seem to apply.
Here is where we can learn from radio formats in other nations.
If you look at "memory" stations in much of Europe and Latin America, the US obsession with "decades" is absent. Songs are simply defined by how well specific age groups like them.
And there is far less obsession with naming and segregating music by somewhat artificial generations, starting with trying to consider Boomers born in 1946 with ones born in 1964 as being at all similar.
In most cases, programmers recognize that most listeners have heard songs that are older than they are. Some of this is due to current hit based stations playing lots of songs that are 10, 15 even 20 years older than the current playlist. So a teen listening to such a station hears songs that may be older than they are.
And back to the "decades" thing: elsewhere the social and cultural meanings and implications of decades are far less emphatic. It's recognized that someone born at the beginning of a decade is nothing like someone born at the end of the same decade. Programmers look at "eras" or "windows" and not arbitrary year ranges.
Sirius/XM figured out that early 60's pop has nothing in common with late 60's "flower power" music. But they still have decade based channels instead of "feeling" based ones. I could have a lot of programming fun creating pop "feel" based formats from the music of, let's say, 1967 to 1990; most would at least touch three whole decades, with the core being the sound and feel, not the year.
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You misread that list. Those are the Top 5 most played songs, not the most recent. The Top 15 are all from the 80s.
The most recent song is the aforementioned Uptown Funk from 2014. There are a couple dozen songs from the 2000s, including Jimmy Eat World.
True. 80s music has value to people, even youngsters, and skewing classic hits as a whole much further along [hits 5 years ago] would essentially eliminate it as a format as we know it. KIIS spins a 24 year old Britney Spears song, and that should be off radio completely in his view. Nothing on the radio should exceed 2003.
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Robert Douglas
Banned
I just pray that the rest of the country will never start putting the word "the" in front of the highway numbers. You don't know how silly that sounds to the rest of us.
The practice is very useful. We don't generally use the names of freeways, but the numbers. there are so many in SoCal that it is much, much easier to know the numbers.
I don't know the names of many of the freeways despite living here for over 30 years and having worked here off an on for 51 years.
I go to other markets and don't understand which is the Dolphin and which is the Van Wyck. But in CA, I can even draw a map from memory.
That's really only a Southern California thing. In Sacramento or the Bay Area, you never hear it. It's "Northbound 101" or "Southbound 5" or "Eastbound 80".
There's speculation that SoCal uses "the" because they were late to use numbers. They preferred "The San Diego", "The Santa Monica", "The Ventura"---and so when the shift to numbers came, the "the" stuck.
But---the Bay Area used names before too. "The Bayshore", "The Nimitz"---but when numbers became a more common way to refer to the freeways, the Bay Area dumped "the".
In fact, during the transition period, Tom Campbell used to do spots for a waterbed place in Fremont that included as part of the directions---"17, the Nimitz".
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I think that 80’s music is special, because it stands the test of time and is popular among a wide range of listeners. PTBoardOp posted the last five songs played on KRTH. Those songs would definitely keep me listening without tuning away.
I can’t disagree that some newer songs need to be added. If the listener doesn’t like it, they can always flip away. I’d be cautious about which songs get tossed in, though. Uptown Funk, while not my favourite, is not the worst song they could be playing. I’ve never liked CHR, so a song “sounding retro” isn’t really enough to round out a playlist from my perspective.
I would also be cautious with the notion that ushering in a list of more recent CHR hits will automatically be the solution to aging demographics. You’ve got people like my parents, who would put up with a more recent song now and then, but don’t want to listen to a playlist that leans too heavily on newer songs. If it’s supposed to appeal to me (at 27 years old) it also doesn’t work, because I also don’t want to listen to any of the CHR songs that were out when I was growing up, nor songs that were popular in more recent years. I’m sure that some millennials or gen Z will listen, but I don’t see it being the same slam dunk that KRTH is right now.
There is a reason why so many stations concentrate so heavily on the 80’s. When I was a kid in the early to mid 2000’s, a 30 year old song was made around 1970 to 1975. Now, a 30 year old song falls between 1990 and 1995. In theory, classic hits radio stations should be playing 90’s music exclusively, but they simply can’t, as they don’t have enough music to play from that decade (and there’s still lots of demand for 80’s).
It seems like in decades past, music would shift to less desirable radio stations when it “aged” out. My grandparents could easily find standards (and other music they liked) on the AM dial. I don’t think we’ll see many markets (if any whatsoever), where we’ll see the same thing happen with 80’s hits.
I can’t disagree that some newer songs need to be added. If the listener doesn’t like it, they can always flip away. I’d be cautious about which songs get tossed in, though. Uptown Funk, while not my favourite, is not the worst song they could be playing. I’ve never liked CHR, so a song “sounding retro” isn’t really enough to round out a playlist from my perspective.
I would also be cautious with the notion that ushering in a list of more recent CHR hits will automatically be the solution to aging demographics. You’ve got people like my parents, who would put up with a more recent song now and then, but don’t want to listen to a playlist that leans too heavily on newer songs. If it’s supposed to appeal to me (at 27 years old) it also doesn’t work, because I also don’t want to listen to any of the CHR songs that were out when I was growing up, nor songs that were popular in more recent years. I’m sure that some millennials or gen Z will listen, but I don’t see it being the same slam dunk that KRTH is right now.
There is a reason why so many stations concentrate so heavily on the 80’s. When I was a kid in the early to mid 2000’s, a 30 year old song was made around 1970 to 1975. Now, a 30 year old song falls between 1990 and 1995. In theory, classic hits radio stations should be playing 90’s music exclusively, but they simply can’t, as they don’t have enough music to play from that decade (and there’s still lots of demand for 80’s).
It seems like in decades past, music would shift to less desirable radio stations when it “aged” out. My grandparents could easily find standards (and other music they liked) on the AM dial. I don’t think we’ll see many markets (if any whatsoever), where we’ll see the same thing happen with 80’s hits.
Some SFBA roads go with either designation ("880" vs "the Nimitz", or "101" vs "the Bayshore"). Other roads just use the numbers (eg: 13, 24, 280, 380, 580, 680, 237). Three syllables each, except the first and last. But then "the Bayshore" or "the Nimitz" are also, like their names, three syllables when spoken, and pretty unambiguous. However, in L.A., "the San Diego Freeway" is seven syllables, as opposed to "the 405" (four), or "the San Bernardino" (six without the suffix "Freeway" and eight with it). And if you leave off "Freeway", it can be ambiguous to people listening only superficially. Since these names or designations get spoken on the air multiple times each day, it makes more sense to do it the way it's currently being done, even though it will never sound right to my ear, even 50 years after my first visit to El Lay.
I don't know why 90s don't start being the focus of classic hits soon. There could be a station that mixes Matchbox 20, Wilson Phillips and Journey (from the 80s) quite well. To me, that is the next "stop" for classic hits.
No, her reference to her father being a teenager in the '50s shows that she's off by about 25 years!
Her “okay, boomer” response was after being told her dad was born in 1967.
Go back ten years on this very board and you’ll find several people saying exactly that about 60’s music.
I was responding to a post about Britney Spears. The post I couldn't find said there will come a time when classic hits stations no longer play Madonna or Prince. Though I don't like anything by Prince and there are only a few Madonna songs I like: "Borderline", "Take a Bow", and the one from "Evita" are the only ones that come to mind. WERT plays "Live to Tell" which I find annoying.
Why my America's Best Music affiliate played this one when it went local is a mystery. Local DJs always treated the format like it was oldies, although the owner of the station usually did the morning show and still leaned in a standards direction. With this as an exception.
I wish I knew where the post was saying America's Best Music would be gone by now.
Still going, though "standards" are very much the exception to the rule unless you count all those songs that made it to standards radio by the early 90s.
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