The Bay Area had 960 KABL (pronounced "cable"), a standards station with which Michael Hagerty was undoubtedly familiar. After the Oakland station changed formats, KABL Radio was streamed on the internet. Perhaps owing to dwindling interest, however, even the stream has run dry. It seems the audience for standards has petered out.
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The ideal adult standards format
- Thread starter vchimpanzee
- Start date
America's Best Music plays it.
Here's the highest and best use I know of: KKJZ in Long Beach is a public radio station, owned by Cal State Long Beach and managed by Saul Levine. They do jazz and mix in a little bit of standards---maybe a track or two an hour.
On Saturdays and Sundays, from 7:00-9:00 a.m., they have a show called "Swing Time" that focuses on the core music of The Great American Songbook. It's hosted by Johnny Magnus, who, apart from a couple of years in Las Vegas in the 1970s, has been on the radio in L.A. since 1957.
Two hours, early weekend mornings on a non-comm. That's it. And you have to understand Saul Levine LOVES the format. He has tried several times to make it fly on a commercial signal in Los Angeles over the last 28 years.
It's just been too long. We're too far down the road.
A couple of non-comms here in Connecticut have standards shows on weekend nights: Dick Robinson, well-known DJ on WDRC during its Top 40 days and founder of the Connecticut School of Broadcasting, has a show on WJMJ 88.9 Hartford, the Catholic Archdiocese's station; and H. William Stine, a retiree from audio and video production work for the American Cancer Society, who hosts "Turntable for One" at WMNR 88.1 Monroe (classical during the week and on weekend days), owned by the town. Both of these gentlemen are up there in years and I assume their audiences are, as well.
If there's one thing that the march of time has proven about Tin Pan Alley's golden era, it's that the music being produced there was not "the greatest music of all time," as so many fans proclaim, any more than the rock and pop of the '50s and '60s were. It's a conceit common to all generations that the music popular during their youth and early adulthood was the best ever made and would be broadly popular forever, when actually just about all popular music is disposable and forgettable after the people it first appealed to start to die off.
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Yes, Love Me Tender, Crying In The Chapel, Can't Help Falling In Love, It's Now Or Never, Are You Lonesome Tonight, Memories & My Way. Possibly, The Wonder Of You, Kentucky Rain & Suspicious Minds. Its been almost 30 years for me trying to remember the MOYL core library.
Direction to Music Director about Ben: Beat It!
You may have the right number. KOY finally changed format at least ten years ago, when the average age was 82!
America's Best Music also plays "Return to Sender", "Teddy Bear" and "All Shook Up". I'm not sure about "My Way" but I know they play Sinatra's version.
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I was 35 when adult standards was being called a format for a 35-plus audience.Direction to Music Director about Ben: Beat It!
You may have the right number. KOY finally changed format at least ten years ago, when the average age was 82!
It would be fun if they played David Frye's version.
They called it a format for a 35+ audience, but it never delivered. In truth, it was a 50+ audience on day one in 1978, and it’s been going up a year at a time since then.
I'm not likely to say it about the rock, but a lot of pop music from the 60s does sound like it belongs in the "greatest music of all time" category. At least they are finding their way into the current version of adult standards.
And of course I'm not going to say a lot of the older songs are forgettable. There are many, many songs recorded before I was born that sound great.
Adult Standards wasn't intended to reach from 35 to death. Its 35 numbers looked better than its 18-34, 25-54 or total audiences ones did. On the other hand, someone who turned 35 in 1978 was 12 in 1955 and absent the dawn of rock 'n' roll, that would be a memorable time in one's musical life! You pretty much have to add another six years though, bringing it up to a 40+ format. In its original form, it would now be an 82+ format!
The way to do the math on these is to realize that 35+ means 35 to literally however old the oldest listener in the market is.
When you had a station billed as a "35+ format" and you could not find them performing well even in the 35-64 demographic, that meant the 35+ was really 65+, and after the early 1990s, that was the story for these---hence KFRC flipping to oldies, KMPC to sports and WQEW (the re-born WNEW) to Radio Disney.
An 80-year-old now was born in 1940---making them 16 when the first wave of rock and roll (Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard) hit. Which is why oldies is no longer a viable commercial radio format, either. And at 80, they're too young for Standards in any significant numbers.
That's another thing: The 35-64 Committee was created to promote sales inside that demographic but it was soon discovered that it wasn't enough to attain the desired effect and was changed to 35+!
Right. But everyone extrapolates. And the moment you see a station that has a 6.0 35+ but an aggregate 0.6 in every demo breakout, you know that what they have is a 5.4 in 65+.
And, as I've been saying for----10 years on this board?---longer?---whatever the oldest-appealing radio station on the dial is, it's going to attract 100 year-olds. It becomes their least-objectionable alternative. Which is how KOY a decade ago had an average listener age of 82.
I didn't even say standards would be exactly as originally defined, or a commercial format or even on the radio. Although there is WLML in the Palm Beach area of Florida, and I think the idea is the man likes the music.
You’ve just described individual users’ playlists.
But there must be some Internet radio stations, and a few actual radio stations, maybe even some that stream. I keep hearing about Internet easy listening stations because I am in a Facebook group where people like that music.
I just want to know how people can enjoy this music so much at Christmas and as soon as Christmas is over they don't like it again. I really like how the radio sounds these days. It's not even like America's Best Music during the other 11 months which is more adult contemporary than standards.
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