Oldies To Become Satellite-Only Genre (June 18, 2005)

Ratings for KOOL 99.3 FM, for example, have been hampered with a being based on a Mexican transmitter, which has difficulty reaching parts of North County, home of a large swath of oldies music fans. Oldies in San Diego may be more popular in the county than Arbitron is rating, but formats on a Mexican stick in Tijuana typically can reach as far north as Rancho Penasquitos and Del Mar with ease, but once you start passing the hills past State Highway 56, the 99.3 FM signal can be eaten in part by stations in Los Angeles and Riverside nearby the frequency. A signal based on Mount Soledad, however, can reach up to the northern boundary of San Diego County before stations to the north begin chewing away at them.

When the oldies format was on 95.7 before that until 2003, and on 94.1 before that until 2001, and on 94.9 before that until November 2000, oldies as a format ranged in the middle of the ratings pack since those frequencies are based in San Diego County.

Oldies radio is now being driven downward by their target demographic of 35-64 listeners choosing to listen to talk radio on the AM dial, subscribing to satellite radio with more than two dozen channels of various genres aimed at their age range, listening to Internet radio stations, or simply dying off early either fed-up or moving to another realm, all taking their turns to chew away at the once-popular genre, now no longer heard in 20 of the top 100 radio markets.

With playlists restricted to some 500 songs at a time, listeners are demanding and getting more variety by moving to the alternatives when they can, and listening to talk radio.

Some oldies stations are responding, but in a wrong way. Randy Dotinga of the North County Times reported that KOOL PD Dave Mason expanded the playlist to about 1,200 songs ranging from circa 1962 to circa 1979. With a range of about 18 years, that's only 66 songs from each year on average, only 2/3rds of the yearly Top 100 songs of the year in number.

Some oldies stations are adding more genres to their range of music, which some critics deemed suicidal, playing some that just don't mix with others. Who wants to hear an easy listening instrumental just before Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love?"

Oldies stations tend to stick to two or three genres, but its the range of years that needs to be expanded, not the range of genres within a limited time range. Several songs from the 50s to the 70s can easily be mixed into the matching formats that play the latest hits of the genres as well as the 80s and 90s.

People don't like a song because it's part of a teenage life. People like a song because it's good. Too many radio programmers and music directors keep making the same mistake, thinking that if you're 14-18, then you're into music, which I, being a TV addict, was simply not into in my high school years. As a teenager, I listened to real oldies music: classical works on the old Warner Brothers' cartoons!

Oldies are being replaced by a new kind of oldies station, which isn't really new. Stations playing oldies from the 70s and 80s on one station isn't a new idea. KCBQ-FM 105.3 had that kind of format for two years from 1993-1995, but with a playlist of some 300 songs, 15 for each year, the format wore out very fast. Now that the oldies stations can play songs from the 70s through the 90s and some even from this decade, the advertisers are more interested in getting their messages across the listeners of Elton John, Duran Duran, Nirvana, and some groups from this decade I never heard of before since I quit listening to Top 40, CHR, or Hot AC radio in 2000.

Advertisers want that lucrative 18-49 range, not just on television, but also on the radio, so the baby-boomer listeners born before 1955 are being shut out as far as music programming is concerned. Even those in the younger range of boomers, 1956-64, such as myself, are rich enough to afford to pay for alternatives to the commercial radio stations for music enjoyment and expansion of the mind, so advertisers are going to have a harder time getting listeners in their 40s then they did ten years ago before any of the alternatives existed.

Dropping songs from the 50s in the oldies formats was a big mistake, since many boomers born in the 1960s who weren't around then when they were topping the charts enjoyed hearing the likes of Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers, James Brown, and Buddy Holly first heard them on the oldies stations while they were teenagers in the 1970s when they first got their own portable radios, and they also listened to the current hits of the time as well. The songs from the 50s through the 70s were for the most part mature enough and suitable for all age groups to listen to without the kind of infantile lyrics found on today's rap-dominated Top 40 playlists. Many of today's teenagers are listening to the 50s, 60s, and 70s songs they never heard on their iPods and hand-me-downs from their parents on CDs, many of which, cited The Beatles as their favorite group.

Nostalgia stations, that is, stations playing standards from the 40s-70s, are also on the way out, going off of the dial, also to be found on Satellite and streaming Internet. Advertisers simply don't care to advertise to a mostly Social Security eligible audience.

With oldies and nostalgia leaving the free broadcast dial, radio needs to think about what to come up with to attract the lucrative age groups the advertisers want to reach, and they think that programming hits that age group of 18-49 is long tired of and outgrown will have them tuning in everyday. Not so. That age group also has iPods, CDs, satellite, and/or downloads in any combination. Oldies only formats as a broadcasting niche are obsolete in today's radio world.

Today's aging baby boomers do like to hear something that's new everyday, so talk radio is one way for them to get their fill of topics and news of the day. When it comes to music, they also like to hear new songs that don't insult their intelligence like the playlists found on hip-hop and CHR stations often do. Music directors need to simply grow up and get into the field they are employed in by finding new music aimed at the mature music fans.

Top 40 radio used to play a wide range of genres, but around 1974, as specialty formats on FM radio began a foothold on the radio listener's habits, genres such as rock and roll, soul, adult contemporary, and even disco, got their own formats and audiences with even wider range of hits and range of years they can play as opposed to the top 40 stations of the day. Many listeners in their 30s and younger never spent much time listening to the traditional top 40 stations, choosing to specialize on the genre-driven formats on the FM dial, so when they listen to those so-called Jack-FM(tm) foramts playing hits from the 70s to today, most of the music seems to go over their heads, having no clue when these songs were popular or who the musical acts were singing them.

It's already happened with me. I tried listening to Jack FM on 100.7 in San Diego several times. I recognized most of the songs from the 70s and 80s, but I drew a blank when it came to songs from the 90s and today, thinking that all music sounded like Jewel, Dave Matthews, or Nirvana, so I basically gave up trying to come up with any answers on who was singing what and quit listening to the station. Thanks to the Clear-Channel cookie mentality of picking music to play on the radio, the songs from this decade are so homogenous that I can't tell one act from another as they all tend to sound like one another.

Oldies as a Top 40 format for the younger than 40 set are basically not going to be popular, but oldies formats based on genres such as classic rock (rock and roll from the 60s-80s), old school (R&B and soul from the 70s-80s), and adult contemporary (70s-today) are where the listeners younger than 40 are basically driven to. Why do the Arbitrons consistently rank KYXY (ac), KGB (classic rock), and Magic 92.5 (old school) in the top 15 out of some 45 stations in the San Diego area? The audiences that grew up on specialty formats are basically driven to listen to stations that play what they liked when they were younger, but as they age, they're also getting into other genres aimed at the mature audience such a folk, bluegrass, country, electronica, and Christian.

The definition of oldies changed as the years go by, first by definition of Top 40 radio, but now the new definition of oldies radio has been splintered by the basic formats that were in existance in the growing days of FM radio in the 1970s. With today's alternative choices of music in full swing, the definition of oldies radio may be its own obituary as that kind of period-piece music may not have a future in radio in 2030 since there won't be an audience base to make such an oldies format based on the likes of Kelly Clarkson, Eminem, and whatever else is on top 40 radio today attractive to advertisers, while their target audience will be in their 40s and 50s listening to their definition of oldies music on successors to iPods.

What can radio do in 2030? Formats based on TV sound? Will Bob Barker still be alive in his 110s hosting Price is Right simulcasted on the radio? How about all call-in radio formats where callers get on the air to simply say anything they want to, like a no-host open-mike radio show? How about imitating a pirate radio station, playing music nobody ever thought of playing on the radio. Listen to Pirate 96.9 in San Diego and you'll get a good idea how to eschew the influence of corporate music label payola.

Any way you slice it, oldies radio by definition of having all of the era's hits on one station is being relegated to satellite and Internet radio. Enjoy it on free radio while you can, before half of the target audience you're part of is too old to care that Red Bull gives you wings.