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WHTT 104.1 Buffalo

C

ChrisInMI

I was in Niagara Falls over the weekend and tuned to WHTT 104.1 out of Buffalo, and noticed that they seem to have evolved from traditional Oldies into a gold-based AC. Not really Classic Hits though, because they're playing a lot of 80s and even 90s AC now from Mike & The Mechanics, Wilson Phillips, Madonna's "Borderline" and so on. According to yes.com they also played Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" about half an hour ago. They now call themselves "Buffalo's Best Mix."

The last time I heard WHTT was in 1999 and they were a very traditional Oldies station with lots of pre-1965: Shangri-Las, Brenda Lee, Connie Francis etc. I kind of like the new direction because it reminds me of when WQKL (Kool 107) Ann Arbor tried a similar music mix in the late '90s, evolving from Oldies into what they called "Adult Contemporary Gold." Also I'm probably biased because I love '80s music (I'm 26 and grew up on that stuff). I also do like the "real" oldies from before '65, but WJJL 1440 is still around to pick up that slack, and a number of Canadian oldies stations like 1050 CHUM, 1150 CKOC and even Oshawa's 1580 CKDO have listenable signals in the area.

What does everyone else think? I know I liked what I heard because they seem to do a good job of balancing pop hits and classic rock with the big soul/R&B crossovers. I like Chatham, Ontario's CFCO (630 AM), which still plays a big variety from the late 50s through the early 80s (and has an excellent signal in Detroit), for the same reason.
 
I just checked a few days' worth of yes.com playlists. It seems to have become an extremely tight-playlist gold-based AC, with a heavy '70s-'80s emphasis, plus a few monster hits from the late '60s. Looks like they play the same 400 songs every day, with multiple spins for several of them, and the playlist is probably even smaller without the Christmas items that are in it now. Not very interesting, but I suppose it's inoffensive enough to work as background noise in a business with a clientele (or workforce) largely in the 25-40-year-old range.

You're right. This is not an oldies station anymore. WDRC-FM up here tried working some of the titles I saw in the WHTT playlist into its oldies format late last year -- "Don't Talk to Strangers," "How Will I Know," "All I Need is a Miracle," to name a few -- but they weren't a good fit with the Stones/Dusty Springfield/Temptations stuff that still made up a good portion of the playlist, and they were dropped this past spring as the station returned to a more oldies-based mix.
 
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