The old KRTH

[davideduardo]

And then factor in attrition---how many people in the upper demos have changed their habits, their listening preferences, and (sorry to bring it up, but always a factor in upper demos)...died.

76 million Americans were born during the Baby Boom (1946-1964). By 2012 (the latest numbers available), 11 million of them had died. It's been offset by immigrants born in the same years who've come here, but as you've pointed out, David, that doesn't equate to the same musical tastes.

Another good point. There are many boomers whose tastes have migrated over the years, and to whom the 60's and 70's pop / CHR oldies are just no longer relevant.

I went to the Pitbull concert this Saturday and was amazed at how many younger boomers were there. There is a stereotype that if I once liked "At the Hop" and "Peggy Sue" I should like to hear them today. I'll take "Messin' Around" and "International Love" many times over the older stuff.

 

[John Gallagher]

i've said it before and i'll say it again. i'm 57, out of the target demo, and i'd rather hear "Cant Stop The Feeling" or "Me Too" than a lot of songs from the 70s. And, i was addicted to that music for years. Now, most of it sounds dated.

 

[John Gallagher]

I just realized this thread was begun in 2014 and was resurrected within the last week or so. Is KRTH the hottest topic on these discussions?

I was browsing the KRTH playlist. The 90's tracks they are spinning have very strong appeal (e.g. Green Day - Good Riddance) and target the younger end of the demo nicely.
When will other classic hits stations follow suit? I saw mention that CBS-FM has spun Montell Jordan's "This Is How We Do It." Again, another song with strong appeal. I could see "Yeah" from Usher test well on classic hits. But, maybe next year.

 

[oldies76]

i've said it before and i'll say it again. i'm 57, out of the target demo, and i'd rather hear "Cant Stop The Feeling" or "Me Too" than a lot of songs from the 70s. And, i was addicted to that music for years. Now, most of it sounds dated.

Any music from any era is dated....today's music will be dated in 20-30 years. It's not whether it's dated, it's whether it's good music to begin with and sorry to say, while some songs from today are good...ie.."Cheap Thrills", hearing the 70's any day of the week, when hardly anyone plays them anymore today, is a blessing and joy.

 

[oldies76]

Do what I did on the 4th of July. I was on a crowded San Diego beach from early morning until it started to get dark. The night before, to my amazement, I was in Target and found an AM/FM, C.D. and Cassette player. Cassettes! Can you believe it? So I went into my storage unit and dug out my case of K-Earth's Number One's of Rock & Roll ... recorded off the air back in 1989 and during the final year they did it, in 1990 on chrome cassettes., complete with all the jingles and air personalities of the day. I cranked it up and played them in random order. I started in the early to mid 70's and worked my way back to the fifties. One woman in her mid-20's came up and said, "Love this music" and sat the whole day enjoying it with me. A quick glance around the beach saw people either singing or bopping along to songs that have such an eternal value, that they were familiar to people that your so-called research says shouldn't even know this music.

And that's a wonderful thing!!! Music will always enlighten those that love such songs, or even an older presentation on a station like K-Earth 101. That special that aired in the 80's was their heyday and frankly should have never disappeared after 1990. It was unique and one-of-a-kind. To this day, I play those songs, in order every Labor Day Weekend and provides a great throwback to a time when radio was free, creative, personal and somewhat off-limits to the corporate restrictions of the last 10 years.

We get that KRTH is trying to appeal to the new 25-54, but as they accomplished in the 80's with weekends, why couldn't they do that today with their newer demographics? The millennials would love it too, as we did, 20-30 years ago.

Vinnie, you are very knowledgeable in KRTH's legacy and heritage. Maybe some day, a portion of it can be revived somewhere and somehow. Glad you have returned by the way!

K-Earth 101 presents "Southern California's #1's of Rock and Roll Weekend".......You can't beat that, ever!! And the sad thing, many are afraid to try it today when they shouldn't be. That's 2016 for ya!

 

[TheBigA]

Any music from any era is dated....today's music will be dated in 20-30 years.

Sooner than that. Music becomes dated as soon as something new happens stylistically. There's another discussion on another board about how electronic dance music is changing, so that fans of the original genre don't recognize it any more. Eight year old Deadmau5 songs sound dated now. The way around that is to evolve and adapt to changing musical styles. The Beatles did it, so they aged with their fans. Madonna has done it fairly well too.

 

[oldies76]

I went to the Pitbull concert this Saturday and was amazed at how many younger boomers were there. There is a stereotype that if I once liked "At the Hop" and "Peggy Sue" I should like to hear them today. I'll take "Messin' Around" and "International Love" many times over the older stuff.

That may be good and all......but ask yourself, which music will remain timeless and remembered in another 50 years. Certainly not those two Pitbull songs. I'll give you "Calle Ocho"...if that.

 

[davideduardo]

That may be good and all......but ask yourself, which music will remain timeless and remembered in another 50 years. Certainly not those two Pitbull songs. I'll give you "Calle Ocho"...if that.

There is very little from 50 to 60 years ago that I want to hear over again now, so I really have no concern for the staying power of songs I like today. When I stop liking them, I take them off my playlist.

For example, nearly 20 years ago I loved Ian Van Dahl's "Castles in the Sky" and played it a lot. I don't want to hear it today.

About 20 years before that, I even programmed a disco station to #1. I loved the music. But I got over it, as did the audience.

In doing thousands of interviews over the years with listeners, I have found that there are many who like to hear older stuff sometimes, but fewer who only want to hear older stuff and have no interest in more current music. For radio, the issue is whether sharing those listeners gets adequate cume and TSL in the right demos to be successful.

 

[davideduardo]

We get that KRTH is trying to appeal to the new 25-54, but as they accomplished in the 80's with weekends, why couldn't they do that today with their newer demographics? The millennials would love it too, as we did, 20-30 years ago.

KRTH does not program for millennials. The core is 35-54, with a lot of spillage into 35-64.

 

[TheBigA]

KRTH does not program for millennials.

CBS LA has a couple of other stations that do that quite well. No need to force other stations in the arsenal to do it. That's the trick in cluster management.

 

[oldies76]

There is very little from 50 to 60 years ago that I want to hear over again now, so I really have no concern for the staying power of songs I like today. When I stop liking them, I take them off my playlist.

For example, nearly 20 years ago I loved Ian Van Dahl's "Castles in the Sky" and played it a lot. I don't want to hear it today.

About 20 years before that, I even programmed a disco station to #1. I loved the music. But I got over it, as did the audience.

But you are emphasizing that point from a business standpoint. Just because a song is 30 or 50 years old, you don't just quit liking it, especially if you grew up with it positively or it was one that stood out and was a favorite for so many years. As a music listener, your heart truly enjoys that music. Everyone does.

Now, if you grew up with a song that you hated from it's release, that's one thing, But if you liked it in 1957 and to suddenly dislike it today, after liking it for decades, that's unusual.

As a music listener myself, there are songs that I have disliked from it's debut. But there's not one song out there since the inception of rock and roll where I can say, I dislike today, after liking them for so long. It just does not work that way.

Now if radio plays an old song to death, I can certainly get sick of it, but I won't dislike it.

 

[oldies76]

KRTH does not program for millennials. The core is 35-54, with a lot of spillage into 35-64.

Well then, that puts me smack dab right in the upper end of their target at 49. Gen X.

 

[davideduardo]

But you are emphasizing that point from a business standpoint. Just because a song is 30 or 50 years old, you don't just quit liking it, especially if you grew up with it positively or it was one that stood out and was a favorite for so many years. As a music listener, your heart truly enjoys that music. Everyone does.

I am not viewing this from a radio perspective. I named songs and genres I liked. In the case of disco, I actually got to program a station that I enjoyed listening to at ear-splitting levels! But don't come near me with Patrick Hernandez or Village People or Lipps, Inc. today!

Most of the songs I liked as a kid and young adult are ones I do not want to hear again. Some are even an embarrassment to admit ever having liked... that's why I mentioned disco. For example, I can pretty clearly remember the first twenty or thirty singles I bought as a kid... right down to the colors of the labels and the thickness of the vinyl. But I'd rather be spared having to hear them again.

And there are a few I still like, but one hearing every few years is enough to trigger the memories because the songs themselves don't cut it any more.

Now, if you grew up with a song that you hated from it's release, that's one thing, But if you liked it in 1957 and to suddenly dislike it today, after liking it for decades, that's unusual.

No, it's not just "all of a sudden". As newer things happened in music, the older stuff seemed stilted, dull and dated. I lost interest as I picked up on new stuff.

As a music listener myself, there are songs that I have disliked from it's debut. But there's not one song out there since the inception of rock and roll where I can say, I dislike today, after liking them for so long. It just does not work that way.

When asking listeners about songs that they once liked that were also big mass market hits, I find that very few survive the passage of time. Most cease being appealing over the years to most listeners and, as the saying goes, only the strong survive.

You are the exception, and no radio station can ever, ever make you happy.

You are what we occasionally find in music testing, and which are called "outliers"; outliers share little in common with the bulk of listeners in a demographic. In research, we do "data cleansing" to remove outliers based on a well defined set of criteria. Getting advice from you and your kind is mortally dangerous for a radio station.

 

[oldies76]

I am not viewing this from a radio perspective. I named songs and genres I liked. In the case of disco, I actually got to program a station that I enjoyed listening to at ear-splitting levels! But don't come near me with Patrick Hernandez or Village People or Lipps, Inc. today!

Most of the songs I liked as a kid and young adult are ones I do not want to hear again. Some are even an embarrassment to admit ever having liked... that's why I mentioned disco. For example, I can pretty clearly remember the first twenty or thirty singles I bought as a kid... right down to the colors of the labels and the thickness of the vinyl. But I'd rather be spared having to hear them again.

The vast majority enjoy hearing their music that provided them with wonderful memories. It's the ones with bad memories they dislike today or have gotten over it. You might be embarrassed playing certain songs in front of others, but hearing them yourself in privacy should quell that. There's nothing wrong with listening to music today you enjoyed as a kid. Everyone does it....that's life. Heck I still listen to late 60's & early 70's Spanish music my dad recorded on reel to reel tapes in 1972. Yeah, they are dated, but it's still great music, believe me.

As for being an "outlier", maybe I am, but I can tell you this. There are some radio stations out there that appeal to music buffs and I'm happy with them. Certainly not a KRTH, but they are out there.

 

[oldies76]

Getting advice from you and your kind is mortally dangerous for a radio station.

Maybe someday they'll be enough of us to make a difference and radio stations will embrace us. KFXM...one example.

 

[Vinnie Daniels]

You are what we occasionally find in music testing, and which are called "outliers"; outliers share little in common with the bulk of listeners in a demographic. In research, we do "data cleansing" to remove outliers based on a well defined set of criteria.

Then my question to you, David is why then are researchers using people like Oldies76 and me (and others like us) as part of their focus test? Why waste our time? Would you want your time wasted? That's pretty much like saying, "hey we want your opinion and we value it. Oh, wait. No, we really don't." Sounds like what your saying is that you want folks whose opinions already jive with what you've already pre-determined. Seems like it amounts to validation that you're looking for. I'm guessing that stations pay these focus testers upward of $35,000 to $50,000 annually. Why not save the money and just use the playlist you already had in mind to use anyway?

 

[davideduardo]

Then my question to you, David is why then are researchers using people like Oldies76 and me (and others like us) as part of their focus test? Why waste our time? Would you want your time wasted? That's pretty much like saying, "hey we want your opinion and we value it. Oh, wait. No, we really don't."

Test recruiting (and it is not a "focus group" in any form or fashion) is done based on strict age and station usage criteria. Often a "pod" of representative music clips is used to screen further, too. If an outlier passes the screen, there is no way to know they are an outlier until data processing is done after the test. Outliers with radically divergent responses are simply discarded before final test tabulation.

We have no way of screening out some outliers. But normally, we might discard a single outlier in one test out of every two or three... meaning less than 0.3% of recruits turn out to provide useless data. More often we discard a participant or two because they don't move the dial or score every song the same... they are just there for the incentive. If we spot that early one, we "pay and send" to avoid having a disinterested person in the room.

Sounds like what your saying is that you want folks whose opinions already jive with what you've already pre-determined. Seems like it amounts to validation that you're looking for.

We want people who fit in the range of the other 99 people at a test. If the range for particular songs is 60 to 80, and the outlier scores it a 10 and the outlier is outside a statistical range on nearly every song, they are useless and they can warp the results. We want people who generally like the music, but who will tell us which songs are great, which are good, which are OK and which suck. When averaged, if a song is neutral to sucky, it does not get played. But if it is strong neutral to "favorite" it gets played. If it is good to great, it gets played a lot.

I'm guessing that stations pay these focus testers upward of $35,000 to $50,000 annually. Why not save the money and just use the playlist you already had in mind to use anyway?

Again they are not focus groups. A single AMT (Auditorium Music Test) may cots $30,000 to $45,000 depending on the song count. And they reveal hundreds of actions on individual songs, ranging from adding them or removing them to changes in rotations and song coding in the music scheduling software. It may take form several days to several weeks to implement a music test as the results can sometimes require changing clocks, changing rules in the scheduler and doing all kinds of adjustments based on reevaluating tempo, artist protection and tweaking horizontal and vertical rotation patterns. Sometimes even entire categories are restructured, added or removed.

We don't have a library list in mind. The audience gives us a snapshot every 6 months or so when we do a full library test.

The outlier is beyond the extremes of the group consensus and just represented bizarre, atypical behaviour. There is nothing contributed by one person out of 100 who is totally different than the group as a whole, and they represent a true danger. The outlier is the occasional schizophrenic in a world of more normally behaving people.

 

[davideduardo]

Maybe someday they'll be enough of us to make a difference and radio stations will embrace us. KFXM...one example.

KFXM is a LPFM, covering less than 15,000 people in the 60 dbu with its 100 watt signal. It is run as a hobby, although it is very well run and set up.

It's too bad that there are not more LPFMs like KFXM. There are entirely too many that were set up for other purposes with good intentions, but which fail after it is found that the coverage is limited and the results not as expected.

 

[Yabadabado1]

I used to work at a disco station back in the late 70s and there were a few songs that, after a while, made me want to vomit. Case in point: "Ring My Bell" by Anita Ward. Every other phone call for a while was "please play "Ring My Bell". It was so bad that I actually told people after about a month of it "That's it, I'm sick of this song, I'm busting this record into pieces" and proceeded to smash it into oblivion. [Don't worry, we had a back up 12" single around]. You would have thought I had set a basket of puppies on fire. After about 2 1/2 hours I said "I have been spoken to by management....by request, here's "Ring My Bell." Nowadays, no problem listening to it, I even found the 12" version in a used record shop and snatched it up. It reminds me of a time when I had LOTS of fun and body parts didn't malfunction every three months or so. Lots of other records I grew tired of but enjoy hearing them now.

KXFM is great, I've listened to them a few times online. Was really surprised when I checked into them that they were an LPFM.

 

[oldies76]

The outlier is beyond the extremes of the group consensus and just represented bizarre, atypical behaviour. There is nothing contributed by one person out of 100 who is totally different than the group as a whole, and they represent a true danger. The outlier is the occasional schizophrenic in a world of more normally behaving people.

I didn't realize that just simply listening to music and appreciating it is considered "bizarre"....well maybe to you guys (naturally), but not to our family and friends......and millions of fans. There are far more of us than anyone will ever realize. You guys just find ways to weed us out.