Oldies

[charles1234]

Will oldies music come back on the radio besides HD? Music from the 50’s and 60’s?

 

[davecollett]

We have a place in Madill OK and I loved listening to 107.1 out of Ardmore. Truly 60's 70's and 80's classic hits. Which that format is doing well in many major cities.

 

[TheBigA]

This question comes up a lot. It takes an owner who believes in the format and is willing to make the investment in local talent and local sales. When that happens, the format attracts an audience. But getting advertisers to pay for it is the main issue.

 

[LibertyNT]

Highly unlikely in DFW.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

Will oldies music come back on the radio besides HD? Music from the 50’s and 60’s?

No, it is often times not commercially viable .. you need other stations to combo sell it with or somesuch.. and the format needs to compliment another format you have musically or audience demographics wise.. neither of which oldies usually does

 

[Koolmotor]

MeTV-FM 87.7 (WRME-FM) is doing pretty well in the Chicago ratings, just missing the top 10 for December.

 

[CTListener]

MeTV-FM 87.7 (WRME-FM) is doing pretty well in the Chicago ratings, just missing the top 10 for December.

But it's there to promote MeTV and its baby boomer television programming. If it ever had to depend on agency advertising business in Chicago to survive, it would be flipped to something more contemporary in a very short time.

Also, '50s oldies are dead pretty much everywhere, as are, sadly, many of the people who loved them when they were current. In another decade or two, doo-wop and girl-group pop will be dusty museum pieces.

 

[Gopher]

With XM moving 60s on 6 to channel 73, it makes you wonder if the 60s stuff will go the way of 40s and 50s music.

 

[Kent]

Will oldies music come back on the radio besides HD? Music from the 50’s and 60’s?

Highly unlikely. Someone who turned 18 in 1969 is over 70 today. There's not much of an advertising demand for people in that age group. Until you solve that problem, you won’t have very many 50’s and 60’s oldies stations, especially not on 100,000 watt FM signals.

 

[tested]

I remember when oldies on KLUV meant stuff from the 50s and 60s. Now it's from the 80s. Assuming it's around a decade from now, it'll be 90s music. It's not that I don't think there's some kind of an audience for music like that, I just think it's small and getting smaller every year.

 

[neosolbrudda]

I remember when oldies on KLUV meant stuff from the 50s and 60s. Now it's from the 80s. Assuming it's around a decade from now, it'll be 90s music. It's not that I don't think there's some kind of an audience for music like that, I just think it's small and getting smaller every year.

The only Oldies on the radio here is KLUV HD2.

 

[ZantennaG1]

Will oldies music come back on the radio besides HD? Music from the 50’s and 60’s?

Not likely in DFW, but here in Cheyenne I've got 1480 KRAE, running mostly 50's/60's standards plus a few 80's. (Yes it is commercial, running local ads).

 

[Mediafrog+]

Just stream KONO (AM), WDJO, or WECK. All have a nice mix of oldies. Or get an HD radio for KLUV HD-2 which also has a good selection of music, from what I've sampled while in DFW. Houston actually has two oldies stations on HD subchannels.

 

[semoochie]

Highly unlikely. Someone who turned 18 in 1969 is over 70 today. There's not much of an advertising demand for people in that age group. Until you solve that problem, you won’t have very many 50’s and 60’s oldies stations, especially not on 100,000 watt FM signals.

There's something diametrically different about the "rock era" in that people outside the demographic still cling to much of the music and accept it as their own. My local Classic Hits station continues to air some '60s songs and many from the early '70s, despite them being older than most of the base audience. This has never happened before. In 1964, stations didn't routinely play songs from 1904 or even 1924!

 

[ZantennaG1]

In 1964, stations didn't routinely play songs from 1904 or even 1924!

The Average American, much like myself, probably wondered what in the world would even count as a hit in 1924. (Apparently, some variant of jazz/country was the king in the 1910's). Fortunately, there are stations like yours as well as those on SiriusXM that is opening the current generation up to a wide variety of good music from the 1940's onward.

 

[ZantennaG1]

Random article of interest: Crucible Of Empire : The Spanish-American War - PBS Online
This talks about patriotic music from the 1890's and pianos.

 

[TheBigA]

The Average American, much like myself, probably wondered what in the world would even count as a hit in 1924.

Keep in mind there was no "mass media" as we know it prior to 1926, other than traveling shows. Radio changed that in the late 20s. But before that, people's idea of hit music was based on what they heard around the house, when they went out to shows, or in schools and other public places. The measurement of hit songs was based on sales of sheet music and piano rolls.

 

[ZantennaG1]

Keep in mind there was no "mass media" as we know it prior to 1926, other than traveling shows. Radio changed that in the late 20s. But before that, people's idea of hit music was based on what they heard around the house, when they went out to shows, or in schools and other public places. The measurement of hit songs was based on sales of sheet music and piano rolls.

Definitely a good point, and a unique one that radio boosted music's ability to travel

 

[Kent]

There's something diametrically different about the "rock era" in that people outside the demographic still cling to much of the music and accept it as their own. My local Classic Hits station continues to air some '60s songs and many from the early '70s, despite them being older than most of the base audience.

If you were referring to classic rock, I would agree with you. I don’t think the divide on classic rock is as big as some people think since it mostly plays songs from 1968 and later. Hearing a late 60’s rock song doesn’t have the same tune out factor that most late 60’s pop songs have. I was an underclassman in high school when I started to discover acts like Hendrix, Steppenwolf, and The Doors. Seems like people younger than I, sometimes much younger than I, still discovered those artists around the same time.

I frequently listen to classic hits, though I have to stream it as the college town where I live doesn’t have a classic hits station with a reliable signal unless you count the Jack FM from the next county over. My favorites for at work listening tend to be CBS-FM and Q105 out of Tampa, and I can’t remember the last time I heard a 60’s pop song on either. If one were to air, I might or might not listen to it depending on what it was, but I generally consider 60’s pop to be my parents' music. That doesn’t have the stigma it once did, but it’s not something that brings the same level of enjoyment as music I listened to when spending time with my friends while growing up. It’s not that much different than when my nieces ask me to put SiriusXM Hits 1 on in the car. I don’t necessarily think it’s bad music, and it's generally about the same topics the music I grew up listening to. There's just not much familiarity with the artists nor the sound.

 

[K.M. Richards]

I just finished looking this up using the airplay monitoring database I subscribe to, and the median year for Classic Hits is 1984 (with the biggest number of high-rotation titles across 75 stations nationwide). 1983 and 1982 are second and third.

No 1950s titles in high rotation. The same number of 1960s titles (the entire decade) is equal to 1984. 1970s titles total is 56% of the number of 1980s titles total.

That pretty much says everything about the Oldies format coming back to more than the relative handful of stations and HD2s that are still doing it.