Where have all the oldies gone?

Christmas night in Jacksonville, Florida, was almost as cold as the weather we had left in Iowa. The days gift exchange was done and we were following the usual family ritual of re-heating the left-overs while listening to the last of the holiday music on the radio. Popping past the local oldies station, I was stopped in my tracks by a promo announcing a flip to "Classic Oldies" set for the next morning. Jacksonville never leads these popular culture shifts so I was soon at Joel Denver's All Access site. Six other oldies bastions were flipping that week.

As I began to talk with my friends who are still in the radio trenches, the trend soon became clear. Oldies weren't "Kool" anymore. There were many reasons given. The 60s boomers are now at the upper end of the desirable ad demographic and younger listeners were turned off by Louie Louie. The oldies format was well beyond it's prime.. not salable anymore. Other formats had a bigger revenue potential. One observer even said that the music and culture of the 60s had as much relevance today as the Roaring 20s had to the British Invasion; none.

At first, all of this made me feel every day of my soon-to-be 50 years. These young whipper snappers were taking over and we had better get out of the way. But after some more thought, I began to wonder if there wasn't more to this than met the eye.

Last summer Fred Jacobs heralded the entre of Neo Radio, a return to the deeper play lists, mellower presentation and more educated DJs found at the dawn of the album rock format. Then I read Sean Ross' column on Oldies Without Apologies. The essence of his piece is that a great oldies station is more than just a playlist spanning the Beatle years. It's a total connection with a generation.

When I passed Sean's article along to Bob Green, he shared this interesting bit of data from a USC seminar on the future of radio:

The study ranks formatic elements based on the listener's negative or positive perceptions. People like the music, have favorite DJs and are concerned about news and information when it's relevant to them. They hate most DJs, and can live without the commercials, promos and contests.

"In many ways," Bob says, "the comments about what the mostly college aged audience liked and didn’t like could have been made today, five , ten, twenty or even thirty years ago... From a group who claimed predictability as the most annoying thing about radio, their comments were most predictable."

Another data point of interest: The decline in time spent listening to radio. "Content was of prime importance," Bob continues, "and respondents said that they would definitely consider listening to AM if the content was right...Coming to the forefront when asked what radio can do to improve were the following: Variety, avoid repetitiveness, end contests, the DJs should be our own age, fewer commercials.

"Those of us in radio have heard those things for decades, and we often chose to ignore them. We KNEW better. And sometimes, WE DID know better. But we're at a time and place where the cry that predictability gets tiring has to be re-examined."

Sean Ross notes that the fall Arbitron shows oldies WMJI Cleveland is again leading the market. The numbers grew for oldies stations in Detroit, Pittsburg, Boston, New London, Manchester and Davenport. There is also the tale of WLNG, Eastern Long Island, N.Y. They feature a large playlist, classic PAMS jingles and always seem to be broadcasting on remote. It's a formula that they have followed religiously for years. When the first-ever Arbitron came out for the market, this one-owner station was suddenly Number 3 12+!

What makes these stations unique? Why isn't it working in Jacksonville? Bob Green would say that we've forgotten that radio is show business. We've distilled, homoginized and automated everything to the point where it's all science and no art. "Presentation can alter perception," he says.

What really made Keener a success was their connection to the audience. The WKNR brain trust had an understanding of the alchemy of elements that came together to build the WKNR sound. "Knowing" the listener was a key ingredient. Knowing the listener goes well beyond focus group music testing. It's the total presentation, what Bob called "stationality" that touches somebody's emotional core. When Keener was happening, the music, the voices, the events, even the audience participation provided a continuity, a comfort zone where we could work out our problems, celebrate our victories and perhaps just make it through the day. We still face those same issues today as adults. And if the WLNG phoenominon is to be believed, the same elements still work, no matter what your age. Perhaps there's a parallel to the body blow many of us felt when we heard Johnny Carson had died. He knew how to connect. he did it for 30 years across several generations, and even his successors admit they can't match his magic.

I think that same approach can work today and it doesn't necessarily have to be with an "oldies" station. Whatever the format, take the time to truly understand and connect with your listeners across all day parts and you have a winner. This flies in the face of the "cume machines" that some programmers built when the began to fear that the oldies thing was getting stale. When you go after cume, you too often sacrifice the deeper relationship. It's the same bean-counter, short term, make your quarterly growth mentality that's part and parcel of our Wall Street driven marketplace.

Infatuation doesn't last. It's a lot harder to build the longer term relationships we associate with love. But it's worth the effort.