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Time For WYSP To Phase Out The 60's

DToTheJ

DToTheJ

You hear about all of the oldies classic hits stations doing it all the time - dropping most of their 60's libraries, sans the Beatles and the Stones, in an attempt to make the station sound "younger."

Ironically, you have 94 WYSP, "The Rock You Grew Up With," which is aiming toward a certain demographic with a mix of Guns N' Roses, Ozzy Osbourne and Pearl Jam.

Yet they are still playing the occasional 60's song. Yesterday alone, I heard Jimi Hendrix and Steppenwolf. Honestly, does it take a person over 30 years to "grow up"? When you're jamming through a music mix of some of the aforementioned core artists, only to be greeted with "Born To Be Wild" - and a hard seg into it, no less - it might make you jump next door to Ben-FM - which has taken the liberty (no pun intended) of gutting anything pre-1979 on its playlist.

I mean, look at Mix 106.1's approach, playing "your soundtrack from high school to now." How many times have they played a Beatles song? I'm waiting...
 
For whatever reason, Rock radio doesn't work the same as Pop radio. Rock listeners have always been more willing to listen to music recorded before they were born, and some of the late 60's stuff (Hendrix, Doors, etc.) has acquired a certain timeless quality. Classic Rock stations that try to specialize in some narrow time range eventually run out of good testing songs.

If a Rock listener were growing up with MMR in the 80's, or YSP in the 90's, they are certainly very familiar with (and did "grow up with", to some extent) the late 60's rock.

And if you're going to go after YSP for playing the 1960's-90's, what can you say about the much more successful WMMR? Their library spans from the 1960's to 2011!
 
Rock formats are generally less date-conscious than hits formats. Steppenwolf, much of The Doors' catalog and Hendrix are timeless. As long as they test well, they're staying. It impresses me that XM's Deep Tracks channel can play a moderate or obscure Hendrix song and its fits into the eclectic format, while Purple Haze or All Along The Watchtower sound familiar, contemporary and right at home in a Classic Rock/Classic Hits formats.

The definition of timeless.
 
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