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WROR Adds Non Rock, now “80s And More”

Interesting-- yes the likes of Jackson etc were absent despite huge success.Classic pop not classic hits or rock?
There was a time when MTV played few black artists.Michael Jackson changed that, as did the success of rap...and yes I just put WROR on and Beat It was just ending.Display on my HD portable still says Boston's Greatest Hits
 
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"Wanna Be Starting Something" on right now. The online player still says Boston's Greatest Hits. Looks like much of the '70s library has been dumped to make room for all the non-rock titles. No sign of '90s, though, so I guess the '70s hits that remain are the "more" in the new slogan. Two songs by Boston in just over two hours -- I have a feeling that group will be hard to dislodge from the playlist for a long time.
 
So they've basically become what WODS would have evolved into.

Personally I'm glad that Boston has a station like this now, and I've never been a fan of the "classic rock lite" approach to the Classic Hits format, but I do wonder if their ratings will take a hit.
 
mjb1124 said:
So they've basically become what WODS would have evolved into.

Personally I'm glad that Boston has a station like this now, and I've never been a fan of the "classic rock lite" approach to the Classic Hits format, but I do wonder if their ratings will take a hit.
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With 55+ men, probably. They'll drift off to WZLX, satellite, streaming services or just play stuff from their personal collections. But they won't be missed, especially since the station should be adding a whole lot of 35-54 women who loved the pop side of CHR music in their teens and twenties and increasingly can't relate to AC.
 
t
he likes of Jackson etc were absent
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When I hear the jacksons on an 80's station I button push. Madonna has to be on even though she's the most hated artist of the decade by people that worked with her. Lauper...I suppose so.
 
This is really an interesting development. WROR has decided to play non-rock hits. I always wondered about a station would consider itself "Classic Hits" but never play Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston or Gloria Estefan. Was it racist? Did WROR do research that showed its listeners wanted only music made by white people? Or was the station trying to only play hits that were common to BOTH the Top 40 and to the AOR charts? That way they could please both audiences, guys who grew up with AOR and women who grew up with Top 40?

Most of the successful Classic Hits stations around the U.S. play a few songs per hour that were not on the AOR charts, just the Top 40, by Jackson, Madonna, etc. (Although not as many as you may have heard on Oldies stations in years past.) The big Classic Hits stations follow this format... WCBS-FM, WOGL, WLS-FM, KLUV. Yet WROR was pretty strict. Virtually no pop or dance songs. Other New England stations copied that policy, such as the Frank stations in Maine & NH, and WWFX Worcester.

WROR did great in the ratings. Usually #2, #3 or #4 and occasionally #1. I wonder what made the station decide to go standard Classic Hits, including dance/pop hits?
 
It seems that there were quite a few more pop hits played this morning than this afternoon/evening. I've got to wonder if this was rushed because they felt someone else could flip to fill the void? The playlist at least so far is still mostly rock, and VERY repititive. I'm pretty sure I've heard Eddie Money - Baby Hold On and Whitesnake - Here I Go Again at least 3 times today. I've heard a few of the new additions repeated as well. So far, I'm not impressed. Hopefully they're just making a gradual transition to try to save the previous large audience, but they really need to open up the playlist a little.
 
jlehmann said:
I'm pretty sure I've heard Eddie Money - Baby Hold On and Whitesnake - Here I Go Again at least 3 times today. I've heard a few of the new additions repeated as well.
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That's not uncommon. I've been studying playlists for The Breeze, and a lot of songs are getting 3 spins a day. It's rare for radio stations to program with the idea that listeners will keep the station on all day. The statistics are that time spent listening for an OTA radio station is around 2 hours a day. So 2 or 3 spins of a song in three different dayparts is not seen as repetition. BTW in a currents-based format like CHR or country, you're likely to hear the top 10 songs in heavy rotation every 2-3 hours. So this is fairly moderate.
 
TheBigA said:
That's not uncommon. I've been studying playlists for The Breeze, and a lot of songs are getting 3 spins a day. It's rare for radio stations to program with the idea that listeners will keep the station on all day. The statistics are that time spent listening for an OTA radio station is around 2 hours a day. So 2 or 3 spins of a song in three different dayparts is not seen as repetition. BTW in a currents-based format like CHR or country, you're likely to hear the top 10 songs in heavy rotation every 2-3 hours. So this is fairly moderate.
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In fact, in CHR 2 hours or about 70 spins a week is slow. The powers generally get over 100 spins a week at many stations. 70 is more typical of a Hot AC.

Total radio listening by the average person is around 11 hours a week. Average for a single station is in the 3 to 4 hour range weekly.

Using LA as an example (NYC is lower due to less in-car listening), the average 18-49 person listens to 10 hours of radio a week, plus or minus 15 minutes from book to book. TSL per week per station ranges from an hour and a half for KIIS to two hours and a half for KOST.

To get away from the unique Miami market, I looked at San Francisco and The Breeze there. It gets an average of two hours per listener per week, while KIOI gets a quarter hour less. So, if habits are regular, even a P1 listener will not hear the same song for at least a week on the higher rotation cuts as in the markets I checked, Miami, SD, SF and Tampa, the hottest rotation is under 15 weekly spins.
 
Gregg. said:
WROR did great in the ratings. Usually #2, #3 or #4 and occasionally #1. I wonder what made the station decide to go standard Classic Hits, including dance/pop hits?
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Updating the age of their listeners to skew younger than they were. With this format change they got rid of the few remaining '60s rock hits they were playing, and most of the '70s rock hits which they were heavy on, and updated most of their playlist to the '80s.

They obviously wanted a somewhat younger audience to please advertisers and sponsors, even if their overall numbers go down a bit. Same reason WODS dumped the Classic Hits format entirely (put it on their HD2 channel) for CHR. Lower overall numbers, but a younger audience.

Listeners in their 50's and over apparently don't do these major market stations much good for advertisers. The portion of that older age group that were making their ratings might as well not even exist. Some small suburban and independent stations can niche to older audiences with oldies and adult standards, but the major market stations need the younger demos.

WZLX while still Classic Rock with a (narrowing) playlist of major late '60s, '70s and '80s AOR warhorses, has also updated into major '90s mainstream grunge rock acts. WROR wouldn't want to go there, not enough of an audience to split (WAAF and WBOS also play them), and WROR is no longer co-owned with "Magic" WMJX that still includes '80s pop/dance hits in their female-leaning AC mix so they no longer have to niche away from them (protect them) with exclusively rock oriented hits, and can compete with them with some '80s dance pop hits for a piece of their successful and somewhat younger-skewing listenership.
 
Eli Polonsky said:
Updating the age of their listeners to skew younger than they were. With this format change they got rid of the few remaining '60s rock hits they were playing, and most of the '70s rock hits which they were heavy on, and updated most of their playlist to the '80s.
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"Dream On" and "More Than a Feeling" are likely to become the "Brown Eyed Girl" of the format in Boston. I understand the provincial pride in Aerosmith and Boston, but it's hard to imagine listeners whose teenage soundtrack was Michael Jackson and Madonna having any connection at all with these plodding dinosaurs from a past musical epoch. Will both still be played when the songs themselves turn 50, which for "Dream On" will be in only three years?
 
So there are 3 reasons for this adjustment, in this order:

1. The threat of a station in the market flipping to the WCBS, KRTH, WOGL style classic hits.
2. To lower the demos and be stronger 25-54.
3. They no longer are in a cluster where they didn't feel the need to step on 106.7's toes.

I've read time and time again that Boston is a rock town so the real 80s classic hits format wouldn't work. I know that WBCN ruled the 80s but so did WXKS. A slight more rock lean to the mix is justified but no reason for ignoring the pop and rhythmic pop mass appeal hits of the 80s. If done right there is no reason that this cannot compete with Kiss for ratings top dog.
 
I just looked and you are right Big A, there are alot of 70s still being played. Some 70s are ok but there is too much right now. Maybe they are trying to slowly adjust the mix so that they can retain most of their current listeners while adding new ones. If they just switched completely to something like what WOGL is doing right now it might be too much of a sudden change for their p1s, many of which are in demo and they would want to keep.
 
Some 80s are there including songs by Human League and Dexys Midnight Runners but yes a whole lot of 70s. "And More...." Yesterday morning I saw a couple complaints on their facebook along the lines of "don't toss
out the 70s". Looking at the playlist on their site it's like when Eagle 93.7 was on--when they added some 80s to Hits of the 70s.
Yes how to not chase away the 70s fans...?

Remember when Beasley introduced "The New 102.5" aka WKLB--that lasted a day or two. Work in progress...?
The logo for WROR "The 80s and More" is the same as the old "Greatest Hits" basically.
 
DOB said:
If they just switched completely to something like what WOGL is doing right now it might be too much of a sudden change for their p1s, many of which are in demo and they would want to keep.
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Compare their recently played with co-owned BEN-FM. It's more like them than WOGL. Hopefully they won't duplicate BEN's ratings.
 
I agree, this is going to be a gradual and measured change. Of course, WROR isn't the only Classic Hits station playing "More Than A Feeling" and "Dream On", not by a long shot, so those must still test well with the target audience. Right now, it mainly seems to be a matter of cutting the last of the '60s music along with some of the less pop-oriented rock, and sprinkling in Michael Jackson and Madonna type music. I imagine it might sound similar to WCBS-FM New York in the end, with the rock crossovers being a bit more dominant, but rhythmic pop also having a significant presence.

And I don't think we have to worry about their ratings going down to Ben FM levels, because Philly is a more rhythmic/R&B-oriented market, plus WROR doesn't have as close of a competitor as WOGL is to them.
 
Now It's kinda funny, everyone thought that WBOS would eventually make the flip, but it turns out to be WROR instead, go figure!
 
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