Oldies is a dirty word
Since Christmas, at least five radio stations have flipped to "Classic Hits". I heard WKQL's switch to The Eagle brand in Jacksonville on Christmas night. Add Utica, Pensacola, Charleston, Tucson and Spokane. The majority have ditched Oldies and if rumors prove true, more will follow.
Why? One programmer says, "The reason is simple: Oldies has become a dirty word. Tougher and tougher sell to advertisers, and today ratings points don't count if the sellers can't sell 'em, so today formats are flipped in deference to sales. "
Let's think this through. Oldies stations in the time of corporate programming are unimaginative, and over exposed. I'm so sick of the phrase "good times and great oldies". Nobody on Keener or CK ever said that. And the playlists are so tight that hearing a deep cut from Bob Seger's Cameo Parkway days is about as unlikely as hearing The Rationals during an all-request lunch hour. Even getting these tunes into the testing rotations is nearly impossible. And the most die-hard fans tire of hearing My Girl, Pretty Woman and Louie Louie after years of power rotation.
If you turned 20 in 1970 you are approaching your 55th birthday and will soon be beyond the target demographic that advertisers want. That's why the Kool stations were playing Olivia Newton John and pushing the Oldies definition into the late 70s. For a lot of folks, anything before 1985 is an Oldie and anything before 1975 (except the evergreen stuff) is as relevant as Begin the Beguine.
Juxtapose this with the popularity of Little Steven's Underground Garage, where a whole new generation is learning to love the likes of Dick Dale, The Arrows, The Last Heard and yes, even Soupy Sales. Great music spans generations if people who believe share the magic.
I heard this week on NPR that there is great fear in the Fine Arts community that classical music is a dying art. So we shouldn't be surprised that the cookie cutters who package commercial radio are abandoning the 60s. The formula for financial success in the new millennium is simplicity, scalability and high margin. Creating audio art that connects with a community's cultural history is complex, unique and expensive.
Classic 60s radio done right has been a rarity since the instant the Hues Corporation first charted Rock the Boat. XM and Sirius are among the very few that come anywhere near to replicating the feel. As the terrestrial oldies brands continue to drop like flies, more and more of us will look to other sources for our rock and roll fix.
Why? One programmer says, "The reason is simple: Oldies has become a dirty word. Tougher and tougher sell to advertisers, and today ratings points don't count if the sellers can't sell 'em, so today formats are flipped in deference to sales. "
Let's think this through. Oldies stations in the time of corporate programming are unimaginative, and over exposed. I'm so sick of the phrase "good times and great oldies". Nobody on Keener or CK ever said that. And the playlists are so tight that hearing a deep cut from Bob Seger's Cameo Parkway days is about as unlikely as hearing The Rationals during an all-request lunch hour. Even getting these tunes into the testing rotations is nearly impossible. And the most die-hard fans tire of hearing My Girl, Pretty Woman and Louie Louie after years of power rotation.
If you turned 20 in 1970 you are approaching your 55th birthday and will soon be beyond the target demographic that advertisers want. That's why the Kool stations were playing Olivia Newton John and pushing the Oldies definition into the late 70s. For a lot of folks, anything before 1985 is an Oldie and anything before 1975 (except the evergreen stuff) is as relevant as Begin the Beguine.
Juxtapose this with the popularity of Little Steven's Underground Garage, where a whole new generation is learning to love the likes of Dick Dale, The Arrows, The Last Heard and yes, even Soupy Sales. Great music spans generations if people who believe share the magic.
I heard this week on NPR that there is great fear in the Fine Arts community that classical music is a dying art. So we shouldn't be surprised that the cookie cutters who package commercial radio are abandoning the 60s. The formula for financial success in the new millennium is simplicity, scalability and high margin. Creating audio art that connects with a community's cultural history is complex, unique and expensive.
Classic 60s radio done right has been a rarity since the instant the Hues Corporation first charted Rock the Boat. XM and Sirius are among the very few that come anywhere near to replicating the feel. As the terrestrial oldies brands continue to drop like flies, more and more of us will look to other sources for our rock and roll fix.
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1 Comments:
At 1:00 PM, Anonymous said…
Scott,
I'd like to respond to what you wrote on the KeenerBlog about the oldies format. First, thanks for one of my favorite lines I've ever read in an article - "Great music spans generations if people who believe share the magic."
I think that what we are seeing is a natural evolution of the oldies format. You will recall that when the format was born in the early 70s, most oldies stations were on AM. Yes there were exceptions like WCBS-FM, and even W4 and WJR-FM in Detroit tried it briefly, but most of the oldies stations back then were on the AM dial - Honey in Detroit, WIND in Chicago, WGAR in Cleveland, WCWA in Toledo, WKTH and WLAV-AM in Grand Rapids, and so on. Then in the late 80s when the demographic became more appealing, FM's started to try the format and many did very well with it. But those stations have seen falling numbers in recent years, and I felt that ultimately the format would disappear from FM but make a comeback on AM, which I think is what we see happening.
In another 10 or 20 years, I think that oldies stations will be very similar to today's Adult Standards stations - they'll almost all be on AM, and they will have fairly large playlists. Of course the difference will be that the years featured will be mid-50s thru early 70s rather than late 30s thru mid-50s. Ideally, these stations would not see a lot of song "burn" with the large playlists, but most will probably do what the Adult Standards station that I voice track for does - they play one batch of songs for a few months, then give them a rest and play a different batch for a while. Apparently some programming wizard has determined that this technique gets better ratings than just rotating everything on the playlist equally.
If I'm right and oldies go back to AM, that's good news and bad news. The bad news is that companies tend to ignore their AM stations and don't put much if any money into them. That means that most oldies stations will be automated or satellite with little or no local input. But there is potential for good things to happen, as happened to me when I was hired at WLAV-AM in 1985. They had the same PD for both LAV-AM and FM, and he spent 99% of his time concentrating on the FM station. When I arrived and he found out how knowledgeable I was about the music and format, he pretty much gave me free reign to do whatever I wanted. This scenario could happen again, provided there are enough people like me who are willing to work for peanuts for the privilege of doing the format that they love. There have been examples of great oldies stations surviving and even thriving against all odds. KOOL-AM in Phoenix in the late 80s was the best oldies station I ever heard. It got great ratings in Phoenix but when they put it up on the bird it didn't do as well in other markets, so they started to screw with it and ended up killing it. Another station that I've never heard but I keep reading about on oldies message boards is WLNG in Long Island which apparently has an amazingly large playlist.
The other area where I see possibilities is public radio. Today the only place you can see oldies artists on TV is on public TV stations,on shows likethe Doo-Wop reunion that they usually show during pledge week. I can see oldies music eventually turning up on public radio as well. About 10 years ago there was a pretty popular show called "Rare & Scratchy Rock & Roll" on NPR, but it apparently got canceled when they lost their corporate sponsor.
The larger question beyond oldies radio is just how is this music going to be preserved and remembered. A few years back I looked into starting a non-profit organization that I was going to call SPGORR which stood for the Society for the Preservation of Good Old Rock & Roll. I had three goals in mind - 1.Establish a web site that would feature information on what I call "Rock & Roll's Unsung Heroes," the artists that did great things but are ignored by the mainstream media and rock press. Only politically correct artists ever get nominated or inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. 2) Establishment of some sort of radio show or radio station that would feature the music of these unsung artists; and 3) Eventually open an actual facility that people could come visit, an "alternative" rock hall of fame if you will.
Unfortunately my excitement regarding this project was short-lived once I did some research and found out about all of the ridiculous government regulations and guidelines that non-profits must abide by. But I haven't completely given up on it, because ultimately it is up to people like you and me and Little Steven and Bob Irwin from Sundazed Records to keep interest in this music alive. The corporations aren't going to do it, nor are the typical oldies fans - it's up to us fanatics!
-Jim Heddle http://stormyjim.blogspot.com/
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