Please Explain The Logic to "No Soft Music on AC Anymore"

[joshzz]

This is not my favorite station but it may be what you are looking for . Easy 93.1 FM.

It's probably the best station for EASY AC. All you need to do now is to book a hotel for a week in Cape May, NJ where this station originates from and enjoy the great beaches of nJ while listening to your Easy Favorites.

I don't own this station but own an Christian AC Station in the Market.

joshzz

 

[carolinaradio]

As for the positive posts about WSB-FM, keep in mind radio geeks get really excited at bright ACs (as well as adult leaning CHRs). They don't like soft music and they hate hip hop. The new WSB-FM is exactly how they want ACs to sound.

But listeners don't especially like the ACs that have become bright. AC does poorly in several markets these days outside of the holiday season. WSB-FM does just OK but not nearly as good as #1 rated KODA/Houston. I would argue if you put a KODA or a WLYF in a market like Atlanta (among many others) that only have a bright AC not only would the softer AC win in women 25-54...the pre-exisiting AC would do so poorly that they would have to change formats..they would stand for nothing and serve no purpose.

B-98.5 used to be an extremely conservative AC station that rarely added anything new and included soft music in its playlist, up until last year. It was around the level it's at now, so they changed to their current direction. It doesn't look like it's hurt them, but it hasn't helped them. Atlanta is a unique market, and it's tough to call what would work there.

I don't think the AC format has the strength it had even a couple of years ago. It seems like there's less and less "new" music for it. More of them are getting lower numbers, and that includes bright and soft ones. Detroit used to support 2 mainstream AC's, but now just has one (that is quite soft leaning) and its numbers aren't impressive. Kansas City and Minneapolis lost traditional AC's last year and they haven't been replaced. After years of less than impressive numbers, outside of the holidays, WLIT in Chicago has picked up the tempo. CBS has been trying to re-invent some of its sagging AC's with mixed results. The midwest seems to be a problem area. Here in SC, the AC format isn't doing as well anywhere as it was just a couple of years ago. One of the AC stations here in Greenville that was soft changed towards Hot AC in 2011.
Keep in mind, these 'bright' AC's weren't necessarily always that way, there was a reason they changed.

KODA in Houston is interesting. It looks like Houston is a big AC market. I just think the approach that needs to be taken with AC varies by market. From the looks of things, it seems as if there may not be much room for it in some markets now, for whatever reason.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

As for the positive posts about WSB-FM, keep in mind radio geeks get really excited at bright ACs (as well as adult leaning CHRs). They don't like soft music and they hate hip hop. The new WSB-FM is exactly how they want ACs to sound.

But listeners don't especially like the ACs that have become bright. AC does poorly in several markets these days outside of the holiday season. WSB-FM does just OK but not nearly as good as #1 rated KODA/Houston. I would argue if you put a KODA or a WLYF in a market like Atlanta (among many others) that only have a bright AC not only would the softer AC win in women 25-54...the pre-exisiting AC would do so poorly that they would have to change formats..they would stand for nothing and serve no purpose.

Any examples of this? Because I have a counter-example.

In Indianapolis, WYXB 105.7 became the only AC station in town after their competitor went to an 80s format in September '07. WYXB has always been a "bright" AC, to use your phrasing. Soft Rock 107.9 was, well, softer before Entercom flipped it.

After Cumulus bought Susquehanna, Jan Jeffries decided it was a good time to flip their class A station at 93.3 to soft AC as "Warm 93.9." Under Susquehanna the station had a christian AC format as "The Song" and did pretty well in the ratings. As Warm, well, response was tepid. WRWM's 12+ ratings almost always came back between 0.5 and 1.0 and I was told that Warm never melted the top 10 ice in any demo. Warm flipped to Adult CHR after about 18 months, which has done a little better for them.

 

[carolinaradio]

Columbus, OH is another example....Saga's Sunny 95 has been a bright AC for the past couple of years, and CC tried to compete with them for 7 or 8 years with a softer AC (most of the time) called "Lite 93.3" then eventually "Soft Rock 93.3." 93.3 never took off, and Clear eventually flipped it to classic hits, which is doing much better.

Here in Greenville SC, WMYI which was a softer, older-leaning AC (they sounded stuck in the past) got where they could no longer keep up with Entercom's WSPA, which was more uptempo. WMYI segued in to some strange hybrid of AC and Hot AC last year, which really doesn't make much musical sense. The funny thing is, WMYI was sort of the market's "Heritage" AC but could no longer compete with WSPA 25-54.

 

[Seltzer]

It has to do with the new listeners coming into the demo on the younger end. Again specifically talking females because that's who A/C's target: A 40 year old female was 10 in 1982. Her formitive years for music would be the 80s and early 90s. And not the "AC music----L Richie, Streisand, N Diamond, P Collins, or Miami Sound Machine stuff....it would be CHR music..the hair bands..Bon Jovi, Poison, Def Leppard, R&B crossovers..Michael & Janet Jackson, etc, the songs from the movie soundtracks, etc and into the early 90s. That's her gold and its much more uptempo in nature than even 10 years ago. Since she grew up on uptempo music, she is far more likely to be accepting of it today..and listens to Katy Perry with her kids. And the format that targets a 40 year old female is AC...the soft 70s and 80s tunes that test well with the 50 plus crowd has moved to the "Greatest Hits stations" like CBS-FM.

Is there a market for a very soft gold based AC today.....I don't think so.

 

[carolinaradio]

It has to do with the new listeners coming into the demo on the younger end. Again specifically talking females because that's who A/C's target: A 40 year old female was 10 in 1982. Her formitive years for music would be the 80s and early 90s. And not the "AC music----L Richie, Streisand, N Diamond, P Collins, or Miami Sound Machine stuff....it would be CHR music..the hair bands..Bon Jovi, Poison, Def Leppard, R&B crossovers..Michael & Janet Jackson, etc, the songs from the movie soundtracks, etc and into the early 90s. That's her gold and its much more uptempo in nature than even 10 years ago. Since she grew up on uptempo music, she is far more likely to be accepting of it today..and listens to Katy Perry with her kids. And the format that targets a 40 year old female is AC...the soft 70s and 80s tunes that test well with the 50 plus crowd has moved to the "Greatest Hits stations" like CBS-FM.

Is there a market for a very soft gold based AC today.....I don't think so.

Agree. However, in select markets, I think there is a market for a "very soft gold based AC", like Tampa and Miami. However, those stations don't bill as well as one would think due to the demographics.

I'd like to know what's hurting so many AC stations in the numbers. There are plenty that still do well, but there are more and more that don't. Like I said, I've gotten sick of the format and rarely listen to it anymore...the "currents" seem to burn much more now and less new music is added. So many of these AC's hang on to the same "currents" forever and the chart is so slow to change. I wonder if a lot of younger females in the target are still listening to CHR (I've read on here that it is doing better 25-54 females) or Hot AC, and the older end has gone to classic hits. I wonder if as the older listeners "age out" of the demo, the AC's are having trouble attracting new listeners at the lower end of the target?

 

[andrewduong77]

Don't forget to mention that Tulsa lost an AC two years ago. Renda dropped their AC KBEZ for a Bob FM (Adult Hits) format in June 2010. KBEZ sounded similar to what other Renda AC's sounded like at the time it was still AC. It was similar to it's sister KMGL in it's neighboring city, Oklahoma City, although KBEZ was a little more mainstream than KMGL. KBEZ couldn't hold up against Cox's Hot AC KRAV in the past few years before they flipped to Bob FM. KRAV is the only Hot AC in Tulsa that actually have some Soft AC lean in it with utempo 80s, 90s, and Now and some soft 80s songs which makes it sound like it's AC sister WSB-FM from Atlanta as of now, I thought KRAV should have called themselves AC rather than Hot AC.

 

[Seltzer]

It has to do with the new listeners coming into the demo on the younger end. Again specifically talking females because that's who A/C's target: A 40 year old female was 10 in 1982. Her formitive years for music would be the 80s and early 90s. And not the "AC music----L Richie, Streisand, N Diamond, P Collins, or Miami Sound Machine stuff....it would be CHR music..the hair bands..Bon Jovi, Poison, Def Leppard, R&B crossovers..Michael & Janet Jackson, etc, the songs from the movie soundtracks, etc and into the early 90s. That's her gold and its much more uptempo in nature than even 10 years ago. Since she grew up on uptempo music, she is far more likely to be accepting of it today..and listens to Katy Perry with her kids. And the format that targets a 40 year old female is AC...the soft 70s and 80s tunes that test well with the 50 plus crowd has moved to the "Greatest Hits stations" like CBS-FM.

Is there a market for a very soft gold based AC today.....I don't think so.

Agree. However, in select markets, I think there is a market for a "very soft gold based AC", like Tampa and Miami.

However, those stations don't bill as well as one would think due to the demographics.

I'd like to know what's hurting so many AC stations in the numbers. There are plenty that still do well, but there are more and more that don't. Like I said, I've gotten sick of the format and rarely listen to it anymore...the "currents" seem to burn much more now and less new music is added. So many of these AC's hang on to the same "currents" forever and the chart is so slow to change. I wonder if a lot of younger females in the target are still listening to CHR (I've read on here that it is doing better 25-54 females) or Hot AC, and the older end has gone to classic hits. I wonder if as the older listeners "age out" of the demo, the AC's are having trouble attracting new listeners at the lower end of the target?

And if you can't sell soft AC in Florida with all the retirees....it's as dead a format as 50s-60s oldies and nostalgia is these days.

Yes, my point of the 40 year old moms listening to Hot AC and CHR stations is true.

I do think that AC's need to re-think their Current music strategy a bit. A slow moving chart has been the case for years. At one time, it worked. Does the format need to move to more currents/recurrents an hour, heavy on the 2000 decade, 90s (that would now include songs that Hot AC;s used to play) and maybe no more than 2-3 80s songs? 3 currents (2 powers and a secondary). 2 recurrents two 00s. 2 90s, and 2-3 80s to round out your typical hour.

 

[andrewduong77]

It has to do with the new listeners coming into the demo on the younger end. Again specifically talking females because that's who A/C's target: A 40 year old female was 10 in 1982. Her formitive years for music would be the 80s and early 90s. And not the "AC music----L Richie, Streisand, N Diamond, P Collins, or Miami Sound Machine stuff....it would be CHR music..the hair bands..Bon Jovi, Poison, Def Leppard, R&B crossovers..Michael & Janet Jackson, etc, the songs from the movie soundtracks, etc and into the early 90s. That's her gold and its much more uptempo in nature than even 10 years ago. Since she grew up on uptempo music, she is far more likely to be accepting of it today..and listens to Katy Perry with her kids. And the format that targets a 40 year old female is AC...the soft 70s and 80s tunes that test well with the 50 plus crowd has moved to the "Greatest Hits stations" like CBS-FM.

Is there a market for a very soft gold based AC today.....I don't think so.

Agree. However, in select markets, I think there is a market for a "very soft gold based AC", like Tampa and Miami. However, those stations don't bill as well as one would think due to the demographics.

I'd like to know what's hurting so many AC stations in the numbers. There are plenty that still do well, but there are more and more that don't. Like I said, I've gotten sick of the format and rarely listen to it anymore...the "currents" seem to burn much more now and less new music is added. So many of these AC's hang on to the same "currents" forever and the chart is so slow to change. I wonder if a lot of younger females in the target are still listening to CHR (I've read on here that it is doing better 25-54 females) or Hot AC, and the older end has gone to classic hits. I wonder if as the older listeners "age out" of the demo, the AC's are having trouble attracting new listeners at the lower end of the target?

I agree, the format should add new music faster. I don't think it's a bad idea to throw in Neon Trees' "Animal" at all and such. A long time ago I read an article, they said sooner or later, the AC format is going to suffer aging demographics like oldies stations as there may be as little as one that may listen to the AC format in the future because less and less newer music are soft and most younger audiences aren't interested in "soft" music anymore. Yeah, sure The Carpenters, Barbra Streisand, Norah Jones, Michael Buble, and Josh Groban got some hits, but it looks like the interest in this type of music among younger audiences are fading away.

 

[carolinaradio]

And if you can't sell soft AC in Florida with all the retirees....it's as dead a format as 50s-60s oldies and nostalgia is these days.

Yes, my point of the 40 year old moms listening to Hot AC and CHR stations is true.

I do think that AC's need to re-think their Current music strategy a bit. A slow moving chart has been the case for years. At one time, it worked. Does the format need to move to more currents/recurrents an hour, heavy on the 2000 decade, 90s (that would now include songs that Hot AC;s used to play) and maybe no more than 2-3 80s songs? 3 currents (2 powers and a secondary). 2 recurrents two 00s. 2 90s, and 2-3 80s to round out your typical hour.

I think AC is going to hit a major roadblock if they continue to push away the 90s except for the "staples" which are mainly slow pop songs or country crossovers. What happens when the format ages out of the 80s, or is forced to cut back on that era? I think that AC should absolutely pick up the upbeat 80s (if they already haven't) and especially the 90s that Hot AC has evolved out of. There are a lot of AC's still around that play 70s. IMO, it's time for that decade to go. The classic/greatest hits stations fully embrace that era now.

My gripe with the "currents" - these songs like "Good Life", "Someone Like You", "Moves Like Jagger" (which a lot of these conservative AC's are afraid of), "Just a Kiss", "If I Die Young", etc. is that they have literally been around forever - there are good tracks below the surface that seem very AC friendly..."Drive By", "Without You", "Domino", "We Found Love", "A Thousand Years"... but they'll take forever to make iif they even come near the top 10. I think your suggestion seems very viable. I just don't think the AC format can continue forever with the mindset it's had for the past 5-10 years. There's good material on the chart, but so many of the stations are afraid of it for such a long time.

I agree with the above ^ post as well. That's exactly my point. The mindset at a lot of these stations needs to evolve.

 

[imhomerjay]

It's not about stations' mindset, it's about what resonates with the target demo.

 

[Seltzer]

It's not about stations' mindset, it's about what resonates with the target demo.

Exactly! And if soft music doesn't resonate with the target listeners mindset anymore, it's done except for the occasional ballad.

 

[carolinaradio]

Here's another issue I see with AC: with AC sharing more F25-54 listeners with CHR, aren't those listeners going to already be burned on the AC "hits" (which are many times CHR hits that have already peaked, burned, and gone to recurrent on that format) by the time they get near the top of the AC chart and are put in heavy rotation for several months? Great examples would be "Moves Like Jagger" (which a lot of conservative AC's are afraid of), 'Stronger', "If I Die Young", "Someone Like You", "Good Life", etc

With more and more Hot AC's sounding like CHR (playing a lot of rhythmic and even rap, lots of currents, not many older hits), it only makes sense to me that AC should evolve to fill the void left by Hot AC....faster on new songs, more of them, and not burning them so.
For example, I think songs like "Domino", "Drive By", "We Found Love" should already be near the top of the AC chart, not songs from last year.

There are some, but the AC format seems to struggle with finding its own material that can get high enough up the charts to get any attention.

 

[Seltzer]

Here's another issue I see with AC: with AC sharing more F25-54 listeners with CHR, aren't those listeners going to already be burned on the AC "hits" (which are many times CHR hits that have already peaked, burned, and gone to recurrent on that format) by the time they get near the top of the AC chart and are put in heavy rotation for several months? Great examples would be "Moves Like Jagger" (which a lot of conservative AC's are afraid of), 'Stronger', "If I Die Young", "Someone Like You", "Good Life", etc

With more and more Hot AC's sounding like CHR (playing a lot of rhythmic and even rap, lots of currents, not many older hits), it only makes sense to me that AC should evolve to fill the void left by Hot AC....faster on new songs, more of them, and not burning them so.
For example, I think songs like "Domino", "Drive By", "We Found Love" should already be near the top of the AC chart, not songs from last year.

There are some, but the AC format seems to struggle with finding its own material that can get high enough up the charts to get any attention.

Again, changing the mindset. If you're a station that is able to do any kind of research and some of those CHR hits are testing with your target demo, put them on the air. I wouldn't even look at the AC Chart.

 

[Gregg]

OK, getting back to my original post, I understand the demo story. Women who make up a large part of AC's demographic, have been listening to uptempo music on Top 40 stations and so you say, they don't want soft music on their AC station.

So I guess my question is more about psychology than demographics. Why is this generation the first generation that doesn't want soft music in their lives? Lots of people in past generations who grew up with uptempo Top 40 radio in their teens moved to Soft AC as they got older. Why not this generation?

And what happened to this generation that they also can't make the transition to Smooth Jazz or Classical music either? When past generations got a little older, they found new musical genres to explore that were not as uptempo as the music they liked in their teens. There were commercial Classical stations in all the big cities (two in NYC, Chicago and SF) that have died over the last few years. Our parents were happy to have big orchestras re-interpret the hits in a softer fashion, and that was the Easy Listening or Beautiful format that also had many successful stations in each market till about 20 years ago.

How did Smooth Jazz die? I don't think many of those people born in the 50s and 60s grew up with any special affinity for Jazz, yet they embraced the Smooth Jazz format in many markets. So why are those born in the 70s and later not interested as they get older in trying a musical style different from what they were listening to in their teens?

Easy Listening, Classical, Jazz... why did past generations switch to these stations as they aged but today's Generation X won't do it?



Gregg
[email protected]

 

[Seltzer]

http://ukradioplayer.magic.co.uk/console/


This is a link to a pretty soft AC...in Great Britain. Enjoy.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

There is a place for "soft" music today, but it doesn't blend well with Elton John.

Try this for a sample playlist of a "mostly-acoustic AC":
Somebody that I Used to Know -- gotye (currently #6 on Billboard's Hot 100)
Black Horse and the Cherry Tree -- k.t. tunstall
Bubble Toes -- Jack Johnson
The Scientist -- Coldplay
Video Games -- Lana Del Rey (even though this was a massive flop on Billboard Hot 100, not cracking the top 90, after Ms. Del Rey's disastrous SNL appearance in January)

I've heard a couple of these titles on "Timeless Cool," but the sound would probably be more reminiscent of AAA than anything else.

 

[semoochie]

Beautiful Music's downfall was Adult Contemporary stealing its bottom end. After a few years, it took the top as well!

 

[semoochie]

It just occurred to me that I worded my last statement backwards.

 

[new_friends_gr]

This is not my favorite station but it may be what you are looking for. Easy 93.1 FM.

It's probably the best station for EASY AC.

I LOVE this station... mainly because so few stations play soft music like it anymore. I stream it online almost every day.