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Music from 1996 on Classic Rock station

txchipk said:
Old radio airchecks, history, and musings...
overtheair.substack.com

Over The Air | Chip Kelley | Substack

I'm just an old radio and TV nerd...I used to love hearing and recording radio stations around the country, looking at radio and TV logos and coverage maps, and, at one point, ran one of the most popular online radio and TV directories back in the day. Click to read Over The Air, by Chip Kelley...
overtheair.substack.com overtheair.substack.com
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Great substack, just checked it out. Detailed radio history with accompanying airchecks; paradise for radiogeeks and music historians.

Enjoyed the segment on Minneapolis Adult Alternative stations of the mid 2000s (89.3 The Current, Cities 97, Drive 105). A link for anyone interested: Radio This Week Back Then #25: July 7-13
 
txchipk said:
The classic rock format largely began in the early 1980s and was primarily AOR gold from the 1970s (Pink Floyd, Foreigner, AC/DC, Heart, Aerosmith, Boston, etc.).
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What I remember is that WROQ in Charlotte was "Rock of the 80s". I don't think anyone was talking about "classic rock" at that time. Greensboro didn't even have an album rock station that I am aware of, though in looking at information about Greensboro's Top 40 stations, some of them played a lot of rock. Somehow I wasn't aware of the "Rock 'n Gold" format of WRQK when I was a college freshman. Everyone listened to WKZL. Or Z-93.

Then WROQ went Top 40. WKZL became a full-blown rock station and then returned to Top 40, but at some point people missed the rock, and the rock they missed was "classic rock", so WKZL did a special weekend classic rock show. Z-93 went rock, and it was louder and newer as I recall. One of the ACs got a stronger signal and became classic rock "Rock 92" and that station is still around. But it wouldn't play metal or alternative. That eventually changed and I don't remember when grunge first showed up there.

In Charlotte the only rock station wasn't strong enough to cover the area, then a daytime only AM became very popular switching from oldies to classic rock (didn't last once FMs came along), then one FM station switched to rock. The Fox was a new station, previously Top 40, which leaned classic but wasn't quite like Rock 92. The other rock station leaned toward harder rock for a while.
txchipk said:
Most songs were on average a decade old. So, the fact that most classic rock stations in 2024 are spinning mostly songs that are 25-50 years old now is quite a bit different from what it used to be. Of course, the same is true of classic hits. In the 80s, most of them started the decade with 50s-60s-early 70s oldies, i.e. songs that were 10-25 years old. If that were the same pattern today, the equivalent time period for a classic hits station today would be 1999-2014 hits.
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Which if you ask me doesn't sound any different from today's hits, so what's the point?
 
Saladressing said:
Great substack, just checked it out. Detailed radio history with accompanying airchecks; paradise for radiogeeks and music historians.

Enjoyed the segment on Minneapolis Adult Alternative stations of the mid 2000s (89.3 The Current, Cities 97, Drive 105). A link for anyone interested: Radio This Week Back Then #25: July 7-13
Click to expand...

Thanks for reading it. I have thousands of airchecks...hundreds and hundreds on cassette tapes that I've been saying for years I need to digitize since the tapes are deteriorating. As well, I have binders of old radio magazines and newsletters and my own notes from running 1000000watts . com many years ago. So, making it a project by writing about them is forcing me to finally digitize those old airchecks.
 
98.1 the Bear in northwest Michigan played "Blue on Black" by Kenny Wayne Shepherd, which came out in 1997/98, in the early 2010s when they didn't play anything else past 1985 or so.
 
Even the most conservative Classic Rock stations that haven't switched things up in decades typically have a few of those 'safe' 90s titles like Blue On Black, Hard To Handle, Mary Jane's Last Dance and Shine in regular rotation.
 
There are things id play on a station that you might not hear elsewhere on a similarly formatted station if i was at a rural station or in a small to medium market with no direct or near format competition. It all depends.

On a classic country station thats 80s and 90s, i might play a real upbeat 2000s or 2010s hit if its got a real classic/traditional country feel to it.

If i was running a 70s and 80s classic hits station, i might play some bigger, older beatles tunes.. and maybe slip in some older AC Gold.

Instead of sharp line distingushing the format, it'd be like a blurred mark drawn by someone whos a bit buzzed.
 


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