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MOR to Adult Contemporary
- Thread starter e-dawg
- Start date
"Full Service/Adult Contemporary" evolved from "Middle-of-the-Road", which was said to be halfway between Mantovani and Rock-n-Roll. In the early 1970s, it was called "Progressive MOR" for a time. Shortly thereafter, it became known as "Adult Contemporary" or "AC". Not long after that, some Top 40 stations, looking for more adult appeal, took off the hard edges and became another form of "AC", the one most of us are familiar with now.
Billboard actually used the term "Adult Contemporary" on its chart formerly known as "Easy Listening" in the late 60s. The Gavin Report (a highly-respected trade publication) followed suit. In an attempt to distinguish itself, Radio & Records renamed its Adult Contemporary chart and editorial section "Pop/Adult" in the middle 70s, but "Adult Contemporary" was the name that stuck.
As far as the format itself, the first AC stations started surfacing in the late 60s...differentiated from MOR stations by playing current hit singles (as opposed to the blend of singles and album cuts played by most MORs) along with a significant percentage (33-50%) of pop oldies dating back to the mid-50s. Most MORs played only one or two older records per hour, and rarely went back more than 5 years.
AC also had more of Top 40's structure and pacing, with considerably less talk from the personalities (some MORs were down to six records an hour).
Back issues of Billboard on Google Books indicate that as early as 1966, MOR was in trouble, largely because its core artists weren't selling anywhere near the number of 45s or albums pop and rock acts were.
By 1972, the handwriting was on the wall and from there until 1975, virtually every MOR station morphed into AC. And by the late 70s, AM AC stations were giving Top 40 competitors fits because there was maybe a six-song difference in their playlists.
AC was re-invented in the early 80s when KOST-FM in Los Angeles became a huge success. For the next 20+ years, the term "Adult Contemporary" was virtually synonymous with "Continuous Soft Hits".
As far as the format itself, the first AC stations started surfacing in the late 60s...differentiated from MOR stations by playing current hit singles (as opposed to the blend of singles and album cuts played by most MORs) along with a significant percentage (33-50%) of pop oldies dating back to the mid-50s. Most MORs played only one or two older records per hour, and rarely went back more than 5 years.
AC also had more of Top 40's structure and pacing, with considerably less talk from the personalities (some MORs were down to six records an hour).
Back issues of Billboard on Google Books indicate that as early as 1966, MOR was in trouble, largely because its core artists weren't selling anywhere near the number of 45s or albums pop and rock acts were.
By 1972, the handwriting was on the wall and from there until 1975, virtually every MOR station morphed into AC. And by the late 70s, AM AC stations were giving Top 40 competitors fits because there was maybe a six-song difference in their playlists.
AC was re-invented in the early 80s when KOST-FM in Los Angeles became a huge success. For the next 20+ years, the term "Adult Contemporary" was virtually synonymous with "Continuous Soft Hits".
Billboard did not rename its adult singles chart "Adult Contemporary" until 1979, which in retrospect seems quite a bit later than they should have done it. The chart went by a number of names in the '60s, including Easy Listening, Middle-Road, and Pop-Standard, but it was the name "Easy Listening" that finally stuck.
If you read through the "Radio Response Rating" station profiles from the mid-'60s in old issues of Billboard, you notice that the adult formats are broken down into several categories. The stations that played the closest thing to what we know today as AC seemed to be classified under "Pop-Standard." You also had "Standard" (I assume this was the traditional MOR album format with few if any hit records played, a la WJR, WLW, WCCO, WGN, etc. in the 1960s) and "Conservative" (I assume this was Beautiful Music).
For what it's worth, there were stations which tried a variety of AC as early as the late 1950s. The first example I know of in metro Detroit was WQTE 560 (now WRDT) in 1959. WKMH 1310 did a variant of contemporary MOR under the name "Flagship Radio" in 1962-63, prior to becoming WKNR "Keener 13" in October '63. WJBK 1500 attempted perhaps Detroit's first true AC format (even referred to as a 'soft rock' format in a Billboard article) in 1966, and WXYZ 1270 was sort of a Hot AC from roughly 1967 to 1978, while Dick Purtan was doing the morning show.
It's true that the traditional MOR format was becoming an endangered species by the mid-1970s except for WJR, WCCO and a couple of other holdouts. But even by 1980, WCCO was playing Michael Jackson's "Rock With You," a song they probably never would have played had it been released even five years earlier. Another example is WHAS 840 Louisville, which started to modernize its music about 1970 or '71. Listening to airchecks from April 3, 1974 (the day of the Super Tornado Outbreak), by then they called the format "Good and Gold" and were playing a mix of current AC hits with rock and roll oldies. WHAS even carried American Top 40 with Casey Kasem for a few years in the '80s.
One also can't forget the various FM "mellow rock" stations of the '70s, like WMGK Philadelphia, KNX-FM L.A., WBBM-FM Chicago (pre-B96), WCCO-FM Minneapolis, WEEI-FM Boston, etc. Although I suppose their approach was more similar to what we would today call Adult Alternative.
If you read through the "Radio Response Rating" station profiles from the mid-'60s in old issues of Billboard, you notice that the adult formats are broken down into several categories. The stations that played the closest thing to what we know today as AC seemed to be classified under "Pop-Standard." You also had "Standard" (I assume this was the traditional MOR album format with few if any hit records played, a la WJR, WLW, WCCO, WGN, etc. in the 1960s) and "Conservative" (I assume this was Beautiful Music).
For what it's worth, there were stations which tried a variety of AC as early as the late 1950s. The first example I know of in metro Detroit was WQTE 560 (now WRDT) in 1959. WKMH 1310 did a variant of contemporary MOR under the name "Flagship Radio" in 1962-63, prior to becoming WKNR "Keener 13" in October '63. WJBK 1500 attempted perhaps Detroit's first true AC format (even referred to as a 'soft rock' format in a Billboard article) in 1966, and WXYZ 1270 was sort of a Hot AC from roughly 1967 to 1978, while Dick Purtan was doing the morning show.
It's true that the traditional MOR format was becoming an endangered species by the mid-1970s except for WJR, WCCO and a couple of other holdouts. But even by 1980, WCCO was playing Michael Jackson's "Rock With You," a song they probably never would have played had it been released even five years earlier. Another example is WHAS 840 Louisville, which started to modernize its music about 1970 or '71. Listening to airchecks from April 3, 1974 (the day of the Super Tornado Outbreak), by then they called the format "Good and Gold" and were playing a mix of current AC hits with rock and roll oldies. WHAS even carried American Top 40 with Casey Kasem for a few years in the '80s.
One also can't forget the various FM "mellow rock" stations of the '70s, like WMGK Philadelphia, KNX-FM L.A., WBBM-FM Chicago (pre-B96), WCCO-FM Minneapolis, WEEI-FM Boston, etc. Although I suppose their approach was more similar to what we would today call Adult Alternative.
ChrisInMI said:
You're right. Brain cramp. My apologies.
Interesting that MOR stations played a lot of album cuts by its core artists. For stations doing that, what % was album cuts (roughly speaking)? It's hard to imagine a terrestrial radio station playing lots of album cuts back then. Incidentally, I remember hearing an MOR station out of Boston in the early '80s where I heard Judy Collins album cuts like "Where Or When". I only had small exposure to this station but I'd guess they were one of the ones that went into album cuts more than most stations. I wish I could remember the call letters. It started with a W obviously, and I think E was the next letter but not sure. Anybody know what station this would be?
I think it really varied by station and market Some probably stuck to the singles on the Billboard Easy Listening chart.
But in Los Angeles, the big four MORs of the 60s, KMPC, KFI, KGIL and (off and on) KLAC were very big on finding their own favorites (quite possibly with a little help from the record labels, which were all in town).
Makes sense, really. The MOR audience was more likely to buy an album than singles.
But in Los Angeles, the big four MORs of the 60s, KMPC, KFI, KGIL and (off and on) KLAC were very big on finding their own favorites (quite possibly with a little help from the record labels, which were all in town).
Makes sense, really. The MOR audience was more likely to buy an album than singles.
C
cd637299
Guest
EdisonLite said:
I visited a relative outside of Boston in the 70s up to 1980.
Could the station have been WEZE AM 1260? There was also WEEI-FM at 103.3 in the 70s, which played soft-rock by more rock-like artists.
As far as full-service MOR, I'd say that the music was---if not secondary---hand-in-hand with news & features. The music was more of a "BTW" or filler. I loved the format, but I don't think that its core listeners got antsy for whatever the next song was to come, or even "analyzed" what was really playing, like we do here!
cd
Cd: True. At KMPC, it was 6-8 records an hour, tops. People listened for the personalities, news and traffic. Though, when they switched to hit singles in '73, a lot of traditional listeners left.
Not necessarily. Mix 92.9 plays the Loggins and Messina version of "Danny's Song," but it was actually Anne Murray's version which was the hit back in the '70s.semoochie said:
Another example of a song where the non-hit-single version has endured better than the hit version is Bruce Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac." Natalie Cole had the hit version in 1988, but it's rarely heard outside of some scattered airplay on Classic Hits stations.
A number of the Fab Four's songs that they never released as singles did become big hits for other artists. Two particularly big examples were Anne Murray's "You Won't See Me" (praised by John Lennon as the best cover of a Beatles tune he had ever heard, a comment which floored Murray, who is a big Beatles fan) and Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66's "The Fool on the Hill." You're probably more likely to hear the original versions of both songs today than the covers, except possibly on adult standards stations. "Big Yellow Taxi" was a bigger hit for the Neighborhood than for Joni Mitchell (not counting Joni's live version from 1974), and even today it's the godawful remake by Counting Crows and Vanessa Carlton which endures on AC; you won't hear Joni's original played except on oldies radio in Canada.
FWIW, Neil Sedaka's "Stairway to Heaven" is a totally different song from Led Zeppelin's. Sedaka's song is uptempo pre-Beatles pop. The Zep song did make the charts in 1986 courtesy of a group called Far Corporation.
A number of the Fab Four's songs that they never released as singles did become big hits for other artists. Two particularly big examples were Anne Murray's "You Won't See Me" (praised by John Lennon as the best cover of a Beatles tune he had ever heard, a comment which floored Murray, who is a big Beatles fan) and Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66's "The Fool on the Hill." You're probably more likely to hear the original versions of both songs today than the covers, except possibly on adult standards stations. "Big Yellow Taxi" was a bigger hit for the Neighborhood than for Joni Mitchell (not counting Joni's live version from 1974), and even today it's the godawful remake by Counting Crows and Vanessa Carlton which endures on AC; you won't hear Joni's original played except on oldies radio in Canada.
FWIW, Neil Sedaka's "Stairway to Heaven" is a totally different song from Led Zeppelin's. Sedaka's song is uptempo pre-Beatles pop. The Zep song did make the charts in 1986 courtesy of a group called Far Corporation.
I prefer Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac", which is one of the few songs he does that I like. I like the Brasil 66 "Fool on the Hill" and Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi". I like the fact that even in an environmentally aware song, she's willing to be silly.ChrisInMI said:
ChrisInMI said:
Unless you work for a retail store in the USA. During my shift, I could hear Joni's, or Counting Crows, or Amy Grant's version of "Big Yellow Taxi". My store also plays both versions of "Pink Cadillac".
ChrisInMI said:
Springsteen got a lot of airplay with that song long before Natalie Cole remade it.
Back in the day when Born In The USA was blowing up, CHR was not afraid to play that B-side. It made the top 30 on its own, so it's not like no one ever heard the song before the remake.
Today, it holds up well, as does the rest of his work from the era. Natalie Cole's version sounds dated by comparison.
The Beatles had the definitive version of "Here Comes the Sun" and still do, although Havens did better with it, by virtue of having it as a single. (The Beatles never put it on a 45.) He actually charted with it, hitting #16 in 1971.semoochie said:
I recall it (the Bruce version) getting quite a bit of airplay on top 40 stations, although not on the backwards station in the town where I lived at the time, so I listened to it on competing stations in neighboring counties. But I don't recall Bruce's version (which is my fave, by the way) ever charting, so which survey are you citing here? It was rare for b-sides to chart independently on Billboard after their policy change in 1969.johndavis said:
It was odder still for Lennon to praise a (primarily) McCartney-written Beatles song.ChrisInMI said:
EdisonLite recalled: said:
CD637299 responded: said:
WEZE-1260 was an early example of Adult Album Alternative, but on the softer side.
It only programmed the format for about fifteen months, from February, 1977 until May, 1978 when it was acquired by Salem Communications and flipped to religious programming.
If this was after the Spring of 1978, the station you recall may have been the old WEEI-FM, which went "soft rock" around 1972 and continued to program the format until it flipped to Top-40 in late 1982 (and taking the call letters WHTT early the next year).
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