Jason Roberts said:
The problem with the format is, in fact, as you mention, that it is stale.
With regard to Q, the fact that they've brought back music that neither they nor anyone else has played locally for years -- like "Pinball Wizard" or "Space Cowboy" -- has *freshened* their sound. Those songs have been off the air so long locally (talking big signals only here) that by definition they're not stale -- yet, anyway. That's actually an advantage to playing the songs; the question is the degree to which it could be outweighed by disadvantages.
Jason Roberts said:
Classic Rock is moving forward. It is no longer a 60's format...or even early 70's, unless
you want to attract aging hippies.
What's happening to the format is exactly what happened to the original oldies format, and
for the same reasons.
First off, despite adding back a good dollop of late 60s and early 70's tunes that are still played by many CR's currently making a mint (e.g., Hubbard's Drive in Chicago), on the Q those tunes are still very outnumbered by later stuff. And have you noticed how, over the last year, the Brew ("The Next Generation of Classic Rock," "Not Your Father's") has actually moved their average era *backwards* some? A year ago the only Pink Floyd they would touch is "Another Brick In The Wall" but now they play aging hippie standard "Comfortably Numb."
In a similar vein, how do you explain so many of today's supposedly "un-staled" oldies stations -- including CC Premium Choice (WODC and a zillion others) actually moving their musical center significantly BACKWARDS in time over the last year or two? 80's have been completely banished from CC Oldies PC, and the proportion of 60's went UP. This backtracking constituted an even more-jolting backtracking for more-established CC Classic Hits/Oldies like KJR Seattle than it did for 93.3. So what's their strategy? Are they just getting aging hippies? Are they making money off them? Then you have others like the True Oldies Channel moving in both directions at once, e.g., they play 80's but at the same time they also play some pre-Beatles doo-wopy stuff that CC PC avoids.
(And on a related note, why do hippies-turned-angry-Rush-fans do the trick for talk stations? Or do they? Is that format nearing the end of its life-cycle, despite absurd/wishful thinking notions that simply migrating to FM will attract --
and retain -- significant new blood without a corresponding revision of content?)