Old Top 40 Music that isn't played anymore

[davideduardo]

It's probably KFRC that I am thinking of. Reception was very intermittent in Marin County.

KFRC intermittant in Marin County? KFRC, now KEAR, has a 10 mV/m signal over all but a tiny corner of Marin County.

The SF top 40 stations that were signal challenged to the north would have been:

KYA, first due to the high-band frequency and second due to the power cut at night.
KOBY. Lousy frequency, directional.
KEWB. Approaching usable daytime but not at night.

KFRC with a site (if it indeed was the same one in the 60's) near Emeryville and 5 kw non-directional day and night on 610 is a terrific facility. Remember, 1 kw on 550 covers about the same as 50 kw on 1500, so that low dial position and decent power make KFRC better than probably 95% or more of all US AM radio stations.

 

[michael hagerty]

KGO-FM stopped simulcasting KGO-AM sometime in 1967, but I can't find an exact date.

KGO-FM may have begun as an AM simulcast but the aircheck I have of KGO-FM is not a simulcast of the AM side. It is an automated and dedicated Rock genre. You can listen to it at the Bay Area radio site. They had their own calls and jingles. I don't think any of the jocks were live but may be mistaken.

I've heard that aircheck. KGO was an AM/FM simulcast until sometime in 1967 before that was recorded. The music reels and back announces were recorded at ABC in New York and sent to all the ABC O&O FMs. It lasted until the "Love" format (more of an Album Rock format) was launched in 1969.

David: What I took Landtuna to mean was that most signals were so spotty in Marin, he almost certainly was listening to KFRC because it came in well.

 

[Bongwater]

Back to the tunes......

"What I Like About You" got a HUGE amount of airplay in many parts of the country on it's initial release. And for a few weeks, it seemed like The Romantics really were The Next Big Thing.

Then they disappeared.

I'm not sure what you'd call it, but by this time if you remember, we were also recovering from Knack-mania. It seemed to me there was a certain wariness, especially in radio (and especially given The Knack's public image problems in 1980) to any band with an instantly catchy power pop song back then. This was an industry that was still reeling from the collapse of disco and changing station imaging (to say nothing of formats) isn't that easy or cheap - especially to former disco outlets.

They didn't want to have to go through THAT again - especially over some perceived "flash in the pan" music fad. The programmers became very conservative in the early '80s and the pop playlists of 1980, 1981 and most of 1982 reflected that.

Even though The Knack and The Romantics were NOTHING alike aside from being power pop bands with incredibly catchy, hook filled debut singles. And while The Knack eventually disintegrated a year later, The Romantics held on and scored an even bigger hit a few years later ("Talking In Your Sleep" - ironically, you have a harder time trying to find this song on the radio than their "nowhere" debut single. And "Talking In Your Sleep" went Top 10.)

Both The Knack and The Romantics found redemption with radio before the end of the '80s because - let's face it - everybody MISSED those great old power pop party tunes.

 

[landtuna]

KFRC intermittant in Marin County? KFRC, now KEAR, has a 10 mV/m signal over all but a tiny corner of Marin County.

The SF top 40 stations that were signal challenged to the north would have been:

KYA, first due to the high-band frequency and second due to the power cut at night.
KOBY. Lousy frequency, directional.
KEWB. Approaching usable daytime but not at night.

KFRC with a site (if it indeed was the same one in the 60's) near Emeryville and 5 kw non-directional day and night on 610 is a terrific facility. Remember, 1 kw on 550 covers about the same as 50 kw on 1500, so that low dial position and decent power make KFRC better than probably 95% or more of all US AM radio stations.

I'm not a engineer, just a listener, but I remember what we could receive.

Daytime in northern Marin (vicinity of the Civic Center) we could get KYA and KEWB very strong, KFRC a little bit weaker, KLOK a lot weaker and KROY from Sacramento listenable but not good quality. At night everything except KEWB went away. I put an aircheck on the Bay Area site of Casey Kasem's program from KEWB which was on in the 9-10PM time frame (I think).

There were other AM's coming in to Marin but they were not T-40. I remember KSFO, KOIT, KABL, KCBS, KGO and KNBR from time to time.

 

[RADIO TRUTH]

I read what people said about 1980 being the best year ever for top forty music. I thought 1980 was the worst year ever for top forty music. I owned and ran two radio stations at the time. All the hits in 1980 were adult crap and there were almost no high energy rock or soul hits. Most of the hits were Christopher Cross type crap. I used to talk to all of the record company promo people about it. They knew it but, could do nothing about it. The lack of uptempo hits made me play a lot of new wave/punk non hits by the Ramones, B-52s and Talking Heads. I even played Psycho Chicken. The best years for top forty music on radio would be any year between 1964-67. Second place goes to 1968, 1960-62. Third place goes to 1963, 1969. Fourth place goes to 1970-71.

 

[Groove1670]

What I haven't said in previous posts: Testing can also tell you not to play that record just because it was #1 (sparing us "Honey", "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" and "You Light Up My Life" today)

Add "Batdance" by Prince to the list. I think it made it to #1 ;D

 

[Groove1670]

I read what people said about 1980 being the best year ever for top forty music. I thought 1980 was the worst year ever for top forty music.

Not a great year for the guys. The ladies would probably would say it wasn't bad.

It was a year of ballads and mid tempo songs.

 

[michael hagerty]

I read what people said about 1980 being the best year ever for top forty music. I thought 1980 was the worst year ever for top forty music.

Not a great year for the guys. The ladies would probably would say it wasn't bad.

It was a year of ballads and mid tempo songs.

Which hastened the departure of men to AOR and made it very easy for AC stations (this was before "Continuous Soft Hits") to steal some Top 40 listening. There were very few songs Top 40 was playing in 1980 that an aggressive AC wouldn't.

 

[liradioisbad]

What I haven't said in previous posts: Testing can also tell you not to play that record just because it was #1 (sparing us "Honey", "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" and "You Light Up My Life" today)

Add "Batdance" by Prince to the list. I think it made it to #1 ;D

It did.

Also, "One Sweet Day" I believe still has the record for longest run at #1. Yet I don't think any stations play it. And yet I still hear a lot of Mariah's follow-up ("Always Be My Baby"). And Billy Joel had 3 #1's, yet his signature song didn't come anywhere close to the top.

And as for 1980, it seemed better in terms of classic rock (Back In Black, The Wall (released late in 1979), Rush's Permanent Waves, The Police's Zenyatta Mondatta).

 

[landtuna]

We're focusing upon the music as the primary reason people quit listening but it may have been something else - The Walkman. Introduced about 1980 in the States it was a very popular method of listening to one's personal music library and was pretty much the first time a device like that had existed in mobile form. I remember my boys, who were in their early teens then, each had one and seemed to listen to it more than radio.

 

[davideduardo]

We're focusing upon the music as the primary reason people quit listening but it may have been something else - The Walkman. Introduced about 1980 in the States it was a very popular method of listening to one's personal music library and was pretty much the first time a device like that had existed in mobile form. I remember my boys, who were in their early teens then, each had one and seemed to listen to it more than radio.

The Walkman was not revolutionary, but evolutionary.

We had portable cassette players since the mid-late 60's. I had a Panasonic portable cassette player and recorder with a radio that I used to aircheck KHJ the year it went Top 40... it was patterned after the Norelco Carrycorder and because Phillips decided to allow free use of the cassette technology, was one of many such units available already in '65.

The first "Walkman"-like cassette player debuted in 1972. Previous portable devices were the ones that looked like an old phone answering machine with a handle... but they were very portable for the time. The 1972 device was a true pocket player... so much so that Sony later had to pay royalties in some countries for use of the concept.

The Walkman began as a cassette player around 1978 and then the CD version debuted in around 1984, but was very expensive. It was not until the late 80's that portable CD players broke the $100 price point, in fact.

But we have had portable devices now for about 46 or 47 years.

Radio's period of peak hours-per-person in the TV era (post-Freeze) was in the late 80's and early to mid 90's.... about 21 hours per person per week. I'd conclude, as many have, that people have personal music collections and they have used them for many decades. Radio is a separate thing, and the two coexisted. What has changed the game is streaming, not portable music players.

 

[landtuna]

What has changed the game is streaming, not portable music players.

Streaming is a relatively new technology. I was addressing the earlier subject of listening drop off related to the music circa 1980.

 

[michael hagerty]

What has changed the game is streaming, not portable music players.

Streaming is a relatively new technology. I was addressing the earlier subject of listening drop off related to the music circa 1980.

Landtuna, I don't think there was a drop off of listening to radio as a whole around 1980, it was just Top 40 that was in trouble. A chunk of it was that the teens and males had defected during the latter part of the 70s to FM album rock stations and to keep the female audience they had, the Top 40s went softer...which sent them right up against adult contemporary, which is what I was programming back then. It didn't sound like we think of AC today...it was generally up-tempo, oldies-intensive (I ran 40% gold), with a lot of jocks who had Top 40 backgrounds. In some cases, a good AC was more lively than the Top 40 down the street.


It was interesting at the time...I didn't so much go after the Top 40 station, as I watched them, once disco died, come toward me...to the point where if their listeners tuned around during a commercial break, they were likely to hear the same music on our air.

 

[davideduardo]

What has changed the game is streaming, not portable music players.

Streaming is a relatively new technology. I was addressing the earlier subject of listening drop off related to the music circa 1980.

There was no listening drop-off around 1980. None. The Average Hours Per Person was no different in the 80's than it was in 1950, as a matter of fact (see some 1950 usage data in Garay's scholarly biography of Gordon McLendon) and in all the Arbitron data going back to 1965.

I said that no form of portable music playing device, since their invention, has affected radio usage. Not even MP3s... Only streaming (maybe combined with smartphones) has had an obvious effect on total listening hours per person.

As Mr Hagarty says, in 1980 and the surrounding years, some formats went up, others went down. Beautiful music was on the decline in 25-54, and AC was becoming the big adult format and not the ridiculed "chicken rock" of the early 70's. MOR was waning, and fading with AM in general, which went from half the audience in 1978 to less than 40% of it in 1982. Country became acceptable and well rated in most large metros...

In other words, some formats were up, some were down. But radio listening was relatively stable during all the 70's and 80's.

 

[landtuna]

I was referring specifically to Michael Haggerty's statement "Which hastened the departure of men to AOR and made it very easy for AC stations (this was before "Continuous Soft Hits") to steal some Top 40 listening."

 

[Bongwater]

I read what people said about 1980 being the best year ever for top forty music. I thought 1980 was the worst year ever for top forty music. I owned and ran two radio stations at the time. All the hits in 1980 were adult crap and there were almost no high energy rock or soul hits. Most of the hits were Christopher Cross type crap. I used to talk to all of the record company promo people about it. They knew it but, could do nothing about it. The lack of uptempo hits made me play a lot of new wave/punk non hits by the Ramones, B-52s and Talking Heads. I even played Psycho Chicken. The best years for top forty music on radio would be any year between 1964-67. Second place goes to 1968, 1960-62. Third place goes to 1963, 1969. Fourth place goes to 1970-71.

1980 brought a sea change. And not entirely a good one. New Wave was coming into it's own. But as I said, programmers were very conservative and a lot of that had to do with the disco backlash. They wanted to play it safe - even if it meant putting the fun loving people to sleep.

It benefited some people (I don't think Christopher Cross, Kim Carnes and Robbie Dupree would have had their biggest hits without it.) But it left everybody else looking for something to fill the void. Most found it in the "Arena Rock" stuff of Loverboy, Foreigner, Journey and REO Speedwagon. Others found it in New Wave. Some in the emerging heavy metal scene. Others even defected to country.

We would see this kind of music splintering again 10 years later after '80s style pop imploded with the arrival of alternative and gangsta rap.

But overall, the pop playlists of 1980-81-82 were very bland and genteel, absolutely FILLED with ballads and rock-by-numbers.

Then came MTV. And no matter what was said about it when it first came on (or what it has become since), at that time it was EXACTLY what the doctor ordered.

It not only SAVED Top 40 radio from ITSELF, it resurrected it.

There's an article here about the major record label conglomerates bemoaning few AC-only hits (Ironically, I would have thought this would be something they'd be dancing naked in the streets over.) But there's a change in the wind and all it takes is one viral MEGA bombshell of a hit to suddenly change pop music's course (think "Billie Jean" or "Smells Like Teen Spirit".)

I think we're LONG overdue for one......

 

[michael hagerty]

I read what people said about 1980 being the best year ever for top forty music. I thought 1980 was the worst year ever for top forty music. I owned and ran two radio stations at the time. All the hits in 1980 were adult crap and there were almost no high energy rock or soul hits. Most of the hits were Christopher Cross type crap. I used to talk to all of the record company promo people about it. They knew it but, could do nothing about it. The lack of uptempo hits made me play a lot of new wave/punk non hits by the Ramones, B-52s and Talking Heads. I even played Psycho Chicken. The best years for top forty music on radio would be any year between 1964-67. Second place goes to 1968, 1960-62. Third place goes to 1963, 1969. Fourth place goes to 1970-71.

1980 brought a sea change. And not entirely a good one. New Wave was coming into it's own. But as I said, programmers were very conservative and a lot of that had to do with the disco backlash. They wanted to play it safe - even if it meant putting the fun loving people to sleep.

It benefited some people (I don't think Christopher Cross, Kim Carnes and Robbie Dupree would have had their biggest hits without it.) But it left everybody else looking for something to fill the void. Most found it in the "Arena Rock" stuff of Loverboy, Foreigner, Journey and REO Speedwagon. Others found it in New Wave. Some in the emerging heavy metal scene. Others even defected to country.

We would see this kind of music splintering again 10 years later after '80s style pop imploded with the arrival of alternative and gangsta rap.

But overall, the pop playlists of 1980-81-82 were very bland and genteel, absolutely FILLED with ballads and rock-by-numbers.

Then came MTV. And no matter what was said about it when it first came on (or what it has become since), at that time it was EXACTLY what the doctor ordered.

It not only SAVED Top 40 radio from ITSELF, it resurrected it.

There's an article here about the major record label conglomerates bemoaning few AC-only hits (Ironically, I would have thought this would be something they'd be dancing naked in the streets over.) But there's a change in the wind and all it takes is one viral MEGA bombshell of a hit to suddenly change pop music's course (think "Billie Jean" or "Smells Like Teen Spirit".)

I think we're LONG overdue for one......

All very good points. In fact, the only AM Top 40 station that did well during the downer years of 1980-82 was KFRC, San Francisco. In 1980, it almost went into the doldrums, too...but late that year PD Les Garland left for Atlantic Records and Gerry Cagle took over.

It took Cagle a few months to figure out what would work, but by mid-1981, the Air Supply and Juice Newton records were either ignored or heavily dayparted and he was playing a damn-the-charts blend of rock, new wave and R&B. There really wasn't anything else like it on the air and he pounded the right records (which may have been as few as 180 total...30 currents, 50 recurrents and 100 goldens) mercilessly while exhorting his jock staff to be as "good as the music"...and as energetic, as well.

By 1983 and MTV (programmed by Les Garland), Cagle had legitimate pop hits to work with again...and in a strange way, it took a bit of the edge off KFRC. By early '84, he was out and Mike Phillips took over with a by-the-book hit approach that offered nothing that two or three competing FMs weren't also doing. And that was the beginning of the end.

 

[firepoint525]

Also, a dirty little secret Casey Kasem never fessed up to: A top 40 record isn't a hit. Anything outside the Top 15 (and some years, Top 10) didn't move a lot of copies in comparison to the real hits at the top of the charts. And this guy's got a lot of stiffs on his list. "Gimme Some Lovin" peaked at #18. "Sequel" stalled at #23. "Voices" at #32. "Without Your Love" at #20. "Think About Me" at #20.

I'd be very careful about judging a record solely by its peak position. "What I Like About You" by the Romantics stalled at #49 back in 1980, yet probably gets far more airplay now than it ever did back then. I don't even remember ever hearing it at all back then!

Fact is, except in smaller markets, most Top 40 stations wouldn't touch a record unless it was Top 15 or a sure thing to get there. WABC in New York was infamous for waiting until the record hit the Top 10 in Billboard before playing it. A lot of these songs were only heard by American Top 40 listeners once a week on Sundays.

My experience was almost the exact opposite. I grew up in a very small town a couple of hours north of Memphis, and the small station there was often loath to touch any new material. I often heard new songs on Memphis stations a good month or more before I heard them over my own local top 40 station.

Quite often, use in commercials or movies ("What I Like About You" had had both) will make a record more popular years later than it was initially. That should be taken into consideration when programming a station.

I don't recall ever hearing it at all until the cover version by Michael Morales surfaced in 1989, when it hit #28, I think. I don't remember it in any commercial or movie, at least not before the Michael Morales cover version (which I think is better than the original!) (re)-popularized it. Before that, I had never heard it. I do however, recall "I Melt With You" being (re)-popularized from use in Burger King and Taco Bell commercials, among others. But it, too, was one that I NEVER heard during its supposedly "heyday" as a "hit." A lot of revisionist history in these so-called "retro" programs.

The basic point of my post, though is: Just because a record hit #40 or above in Billboard 32 years ago does not mean it should be played today and is not "proof enough that it tests well today".

Maybe not in general rotation, but what about specialty programs? Let's say you were playing the tunes from 1980. What (from this list) would you play? If you were playing specifically for the class of 1980 (or maybe 1981, since some of these were from fall, 1980), what would you play? Maybe you would (also) play some that are not on this list, but that isn't the question. You could probably get away with playing "What I Like About You" or "I Melt With You," but they would have no high school memories associated with those.

 

[firepoint525]

What I haven't said in previous posts: Testing can also tell you not to play that record just because it was #1 (sparing us "Honey", "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" and "You Light Up My Life" today)

Add "Batdance" by Prince to the list. I think it made it to #1 ;D

The deal with Prince was that he had so many hits during that time that it was very easy for a few of them to "fall through the cracks." Fortunately, that one did. I also don't ever hear "Sign O' the Times" anymore, but I don't miss it.

Also Madonna. She had so many hits during the '80s that many of hers have been "forgotten" as well. I about fell out of my chair when I heard "La Isla Bonita" the other day. And when was the last time you heard "Causing a Commotion"?

 

[firepoint525]

Back to the tunes......
"What I Like About You" got a HUGE amount of airplay in many parts of the country on it's initial release.

They did? Where?

I'm not sure what you'd call it, but by this time if you remember, we were also recovering from Knack-mania. It seemed to me there was a certain wariness, especially in radio (and especially given The Knack's public image problems in 1980) to any band with an instantly catchy power pop song back then. This was an industry that was still reeling from the collapse of disco and changing station imaging (to say nothing of formats) isn't that easy or cheap - especially to former disco outlets.

I won't argue with the Knack being a flash in the pan, but you've got to remember that they were about the ONLY antidote to all the disco that had totally invaded the airwaves in 1979. (And disco itself turned out to be a fad!) They happened to be in the right place at the right time. The mistake was marketing them as "the new Beatles." They didn't learn from similar mistakes with the Monkees and Bay City Rollers, and within a couple of years, would make the same mistake again with Duran Duran! : The Knack couldn't possibly live up to that much hype!