Top-40 AMs transition in the 80s.

[Oldbones]

WPOP Hartford went straight from CHR to news in the mid-'70s, adding right-wing talk to the mix in the '80s. WDRC(AM) did the standard transition from CHR to AC to talk.

Didn't WDRC do a standards/nostalgia format for a few years in the 80s?

WCLU Cincinnati was another very small AM top 40 which rarely if ever showed in the ratings. It became oldies WCVG in 1987 under new owners. But I think there might have been a tiny bit of overlap musically. After the switch, WCVG kept playing the same oldies in the same order every day. When that happened, a lot of people finally got rid of their AM-only car radios.

I don't know how long the format lasted, but they did an all-Elvis format for a while. I have an aircheck of them doing so from 1988. Even have a bumper sticker somewhere. It may have just been a stunt, but they claimed otherwise.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Didn't WDRC do a standards/nostalgia format for a few years in the 80s?

That would still qualify, under this thread.

 

[vchimpanzee]

That would still qualify, under this thread.

WTOB Winston-Salem NC did the same thing. I think it's true that the station went from Top 40 to nostalgia/big band around 1980. The city had two popular Top 40 FMs.

WKIX Raleigh NC went country around the same time.

 

[CTListener]

Didn't WDRC do a standards/nostalgia format for a few years in the 80s?

It did, but before that, it went "chicken rock" and got rid of all but the mildest hits from its Top 40 presentation.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Could we stop using that derogatory term "chicken rock"? It was created by radio executives as a put down for stations that transitioned from "good music" to more contemporary formats. It was offensive then and it is offensive now.

The only time I have used the term was in a quote from a former employer, as I told how I came to program the first A/C in my hometown market back in 1978. It is not part of my vocabulary.

 

[davideduardo]

Could we stop using that derogatory term "chicken rock"? It was created by radio executives as a put down for stations that transitioned from "good music" to more contemporary formats. It was offensive then and it is offensive now.

My distinct impression when programming one of the earliest fully formatted "chicken rock" stations in 1972 was that the term came from the record promoters, who liked neither the restricted, heavier gold formats nor the exclusion of the rock songs they were so fond of. I never heard a "radio excecutive" use the term, whether it was a competitor or just someone talking about such formats in the Hamilton, Billboard or Gavin assemblies. At those conventions, the record ducks would quack quite loudly about the "restricted playlists" and, I guess, the fact that the PDs for that format were not as subject to the influences of controlled substances.

The only time I have used the term was in a quote from a former employer, as I told how I came to program the first A/C in my hometown market back in 1978. It is not part of my vocabulary.

I would verbally slap any promoter that used the term (WERC was serviced out of Atlanta but our stations, AC on AM and rock40 on FM, got lots of national calls as we reported to all the trades then, even FMQB and Bobby Poe) but in that era, so many promoters had the "Capricorn/Maocon Mentality" and thought any station that did not rock hard was useless.

For sales, we called the two stations "adult" and "contemporary". We did not use industry terms to market the stations.

 

[michael hagerty]

...and I heard it from managment and from jocks that really just wanted to do Top 40.

I NEVER heard it from a record promo rep, because they were trying to get the records played. But again, I was dealing with Los Angeles and San Francisco promotion people, who dealt with the widest range of formats.

This is a classic case of anecdotal evidence. The three of us were in different places and had different experiences.

And---to K.M.'s point---it was intended as a derogatory term, it did not stick and the format went on to great success.

 

[CTListener]

OK, no more "chicken rock" from me! I picked it up from numerous other posts here over the years and never realized how some pros detested it. As a listener, I appreciated a good uptempo MOR/AC station in the '70s and early '80s just as much as I did a hard rocking Top 40. But as a pre-teen in the Boston area in the mid-'60s, I admit hating what WBZ became once WNAC became WRKO.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Thanks for your consideration, @CTListener. I truly appreciate it.

 

[davideduardo]

...and I heard it from managment and from jocks that really just wanted to do Top 40.

I NEVER heard it from a record promo rep, because they were trying to get the records played. But again, I was dealing with Los Angeles and San Francisco promotion people, who dealt with the widest range of formats.

Very different from the stations on the Florida Georgia line, AL, MS, AK, TN and SC at least. Most were serviced out of Atlanta and they were rock and Top 40 oriented. Between Capricorn's influence and that format coming out of Abrams' station in NC that became the AOR format, there was sort of a casual dismissal for the evolving AC format. I got attention because I also had a rock leaning Top 40 that challenged Dees and WSGN and played fewer songs like "Ben" and more "Sweet Home Alabama" stuff.

This is a classic case of anecdotal evidence. The three of us were in different places and had different experiences.

What was significant is that I was on the Poe, Hamilton, Rudman and Gavin reporting panels for either my AC or Rock40 FM (or both) and was among a group of PDs that informallty conferenced at the time, including our own Scott Shannon and the PD in Knoxville at our WKGN as well as Tanner in Jackson and Top 40 AC or AC/Gold stations in Mobile, Memphis, Montgomery, Jacksonville and a couple of other markets. Due to the high cost of Long Distance, we often exchanged lists marked by hand by mail and one on a very early Xerox machine!

And---to K.M.'s point---it was intended as a derogatory term, it did not stick and the format went on to great success.

The format had a soul before it had a name. Because it was, truly, Top 40 without the deep soul and rock stuff, it was widely referred to as "Chicken Rock".

In fact, several years later... early '75 when I was helping Larry Mazursky who had taken on Kalmenson's KRUX in Phoenix, we hired Kent Burkhart to consult. KRIZ and KRUX were killed by KUPD that did Top 40 on its rebuilt FM as well as the 500 watt AM "from the trailer in a field outside of Guadalupe". Burkhart said that the KRUX name had the greatest heritage in the market, so what we would do is back off by 10 to 15 years and play the most recent roughly 1963 to 1972 gold and toss in the "adult" currents about 3 an hour.

What did Burkhart call it? "Chicken Rock". His reference was to "anyone who went through the late 60s without flowers in their hair." People who did not know what "blunt" and "toke" meant.

The "funest" thing was to go to a Hamilton convention... like the one in Broadmoor... back then and see how people reacted to a PD who did what was an earlier AC as well as one of the more progressive Top 40 stations. On one hand, an FM playing Marshall Tucker Band and Charlie Daniels Band and the Allmans and then an AM with "Ben" and "The Morning After".

 

[K.M. Richards]

What did Burkhart call it? "Chicken Rock". His reference was to "anyone who went through the late 60s without flowers in their hair." People who did not know what "blunt" and "toke" meant.

As much as I have always respected Kent Burkhart, the term was co-opted by others and used in a derogatory manner, despite his good intentions.

And it still insults me.

 

[davideduardo]

As much as I have always respected Kent Burkhart, the term was co-opted by others and used in a derogatory manner, despite his good intentions.

Burkhart used the term because he understood that there was a market for some form of AC that was more gold based than Top 40 and which many broadcasters in the early and mid 70's did not understand. He was calling the music exactly what it was: a top 40 that was afraid to play harder rock and more aggressive songs. He saw that misconception as an opportunity.

I actually used part of Kent's reasoning when, in '75, I was recruited to rebuild an AM and FM in Puerto Rico. I removed the salsa and soul and most of the English language songs from what Mike Joseph was doing at WKAQ and got an AC format that was mostly Spanish pop, light rock and ballads and a few very mainstream English language hits. Instead of Mike's 30-40 songs, we played over 300, with more than 50% gold. 11-Q debuted at #2 and was #1 in women. It was "chicken rock" in Spanish.

 

[kevtronics]

1040 WJHR (now WCHR) in Flemington, NJ is an oddity. After over a decade of delay in building the station, it finally went on the air in January 1998 with an AC format. By about October of that year, it switched to CHR/Top 40. (In AM Stereo!) But it didn't last long... in May 1999 they switched to a talk format. Today it is once again CHR... if by that you mean CHRistian Talk.

 

[michael hagerty]

Burkhart used the term because he understood that there was a market for some form of AC that was more gold based than Top 40 and which many broadcasters in the early and mid 70's did not understand. He was calling the music exactly what it was: a top 40 that was afraid to play harder rock and more aggressive songs. He saw that misconception as an opportunity.

"Afraid" isn't the correct word.

Again, we were on different sides of the continent, so mileage may vary, but it was clear, from the time I entered the business in 1971, that the first generation of Top 40 listeners were not interested in "graduating" to MOR, but that several records Top 40 played, from Donny Osmond to Led Zeppelin, as well as a teen-centric approach to jock content and promotion, weren't working for them anymore.

If you go back and listen to the KFMB aircheck I posted on page one from 1973, in 25-ish minutes, they're playing both Richie Havens' "Here Comes the Sun" and the Doors' "Riders on the Storm" as Gold.

There may have been timid AC PDs, but I wan't one of them. I wasn't willing to let a guitar lick kill an otherwise great record for my stations. My rule was never "will this offend my most sensitive listener?" These were people who grew up on Top 40. We're playing the hits they remember and sparing them 5-7 current records this week that they don't want to hear.

Black music and Latin-influenced music (Santana, Malo, El Chicano) was not only welcome, but essential. If there's one place where AC PDs tended to play it too safe, in my opinion, it was there. But I had the advantage of being a native Californian and the radio without that music was just out of the question.

 

[garfradio]

As Top 40 disappeared on AM in the early 1980s, there were a few paths many stations took if they did a dramatic change: Country, Oldies, News/Talk, or Music Of Your Life. I don't recall too many switches to Spanish language programming at that time.

The country choice worked for a few years in some markets but then country audiences moved over to FM. Some AM country stations would lean more traditional/older to focus on available audience and gained a few more years of viability, especially when they were combo sold with a successful FM country station.

Oldies was a midrange ratings performer in the early 1980s in most markets, mostly because (a) radio hadn't yet figured out that "tight is right" for the format so most playlists were playing too many so-so songs and music testing was not yet common enough and (b) many markets had AC stations that did a good job being oldies oriented (via noon shows, features, weekends) to fill the need. By the late 1980s, research got more effective at precisely defining music positions, and Oldies on FM boomed by applying those lessons.

News/talk was expensive so it was a tougher choice for management (remember that interest rates in the early 1980s were brutal, so the cost of capital to cover operating losses was a real concern). Then NBC's Talknet and ABC's talk show network rolled out to give local operators some cost effective options to fill up much of their broadcast days. In most places, the format was slow to grow. However for stations with patient ownership it was often a good choice.

Music Of Your Life nostalgia was a quick ratings winner, especially in markets that leaned older. But it was difficult to convert the ratings into a lot of revenue since the format's demographic sweet spot was 50+. Efforts to lean a bit younger didn't work so well ratings wise.

A lot of Top 40s *did* try to age up a bit initially, but in many markets that path was already covered by ACs that had established a strong music position. Then the AM heritage ACs got taken apart in just a few years as different flavors of AC developed on FM (hot, mainstream, gold based, super soft). The lucky ones could use their information image to pivot to news/talk.

As AM stations ran out of format options, the next play was to became a simulcast/shadowcast partner to successful FM brands to add a few tenths of a ratings point to improve rank position in the ratings.

 

[The New Chico]

Seattle market-
KJR was the grdual move, from T40, to AC, to oldies, to oldies with a sports emphasis, to all-sports. Took about 9 years to go through these transitions. SO, like many others around the country.

KING, OTOH, was pretty abrupt. The local family who owned them were never super comfortable with T40 as a format (the FM was and is classical, the TV was always community-programming driven.) But until the early 80s they put up with the AM being T40 becuase it billed well. They softened up imaging and dumped a couple of the louder jocks and louder rock in 1982. Then abruptly went all news-talk in 1984 with mostly local talent.

KJR-AM is now fully syndicated sport yakkers. The local sports talk has moved to FM. KING-AM (KPTR) is now clearance for 2nd/3rd level syndicated conservative talk, branded as "The Patriot."

 

[CTListener]

"Afraid" isn't the correct word.

What about the stations that used the single with the "girls I knew" patch over the offensive "crap I learned" phrase in Paul Simon's "Kodachrome," which is what WBZ was doing when WRKO was playing the "naughty" version? Or the stations that censored the "making love in the green grass" line in Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl"?

 

[michael hagerty]

What about the stations that used the single with the "girls I knew" patch over the offensive "crap I learned" phrase in Paul Simon's "Kodachrome," which is what WBZ was doing when WRKO was playing the "naughty" version?

Ask them. KHJ actually played the edit. I never did. So my AC block in Bishop, California was wilder than the number one Top 40 on the West Coast (if that counts as "wild").

There are some PDs who had to program to the General Manager first and the audience second. Poor bastards.

Also, I understand that the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston was not shy about making its influence felt in that fair city.

The Everly Brothers Were Once Banned on Boston Radio for This “Controversial” Song

Although hard to imagine by today's standards, the Everly Brothers were once banned from the radio due to their "suggestive" lyrics.

americansongwriter.com

In the 70s, they went after Billy Joel’s “Only The Good Die Young.”

Or the stations that censored the "making love in the green grass" line in Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl"?

Again, I played the original. Phone never rang once. And that version existed only because some timid Top 40 programmers in 1967 wouldn’t play it otherwise.

The key to programming AC was to understand that the "A" stood for "adult". Sheltered and/or horny 14-year-old boys made a much bigger deal out of a single word or phrase in a song than 37-year-old men and women ever did.

 

[vchimpanzee]

On one hand, an FM playing Marshall Tucker Band and Charlie Daniels Band and the Allmans and then an AM with "Ben" and "The Morning After".

I remember hearing "The Morning After" on the hard-rocking WROQ in Charlotte.

 

[vchimpanzee]

As Top 40 disappeared on AM in the early 1980s, there were a few paths many stations took if they did a dramatic change: Country, Oldies, News/Talk, or Music Of Your Life.

Music Of Your Life nostalgia was a quick ratings winner, especially in markets that leaned older. But it was difficult to convert the ratings into a lot of revenue since the format's demographic sweet spot was 50+. Efforts to lean a bit younger didn't work so well ratings wise.

Here's what appeared in the newspaper when Winston-Salem's WTOB went from Top 40 to Music of Your Life.

Article clipped from Winston-Salem Journal

Clipping found in Winston-Salem Journal published in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on 3/13/1980.

www.newspapers.com