Posted on 10/31/2003 11:52:53 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) - One of the surest ways to feel older is to listen to the radio and hear songs from your childhood - or, even worse, your adulthood - described as "oldies." If over the years it seems those songs have gotten newer while you've gotten older, it's not your imagination. Oldies radio stations that once featured songs from the 1950s and '60s now play songs from the '70s. "Radio is an ever-changing thing, especially an oldies station," said Jeff Gold, a 44-year-old DJ whose build and voice personify his station's call letters, WBIG. "As the years go by, newer songs become oldies. That's just the nature of the beast," said Gold, known as "Goldy" to his listeners in the Washington area. So roll over Chuck Berry and make way for Fleetwood Mac. Your music hasn't lost its appeal to listeners. But advertisers? That's another story. Advertisers covet the 25-to-54 age group. The first baby boomers - the generation born right after World War II and the primary audience for oldies music - are pushing 60. "This is Marketing 101," said Dick Bartley, who hosts two nationally syndicated oldies programs, "Rock & Roll's Greatest Hits" and "American Gold." "The oldies format is doing what every business has to do - follow your demographic." So as radio stations seek to attract advertisers, it's increasingly difficult for fans of 1950s and early '60s rock to find those tunes on the dial. A study by Coleman, a North Carolina media research firm, found the vast majority of oldies stations in the 50 largest markets are playing more modern music than they did three years ago. "The only reason that our oldies stations have moved into the late '60s and '70s is the advertisers are telling us we have to do it in order for them to place business on our radio stations," said Marty Thompson, operations manager at KQOL in Las Vegas and director of oldies programming for Clear Channel, the nation's largest chain with 1,200 stations, including WBIG. The oldies format began in the early 1970s, as then-less-popular FM stations tried to distinguish themselves from the Top 40 AM giants, according to E. Alvin Davis, a Cincinnati-based radio consultant who specializes in oldies stations. Among the earliest: WCAU-FM (now WOGL-FM) in Philadelphia and WCBS-FM in New York City. By the '80s, almost every major city had a full-time oldies station. In recent years, the industry definition of oldies changed to include all of the '70s. "As with the format when it originally came about, the whole genesis was to play music that was older," said Tim Maranville, program director at KOOL in Phoenix and vice president for oldies programming at Infinity Broadcasting, which owns 120 stations. "These songs are growing into our format. As an oldies person, the '70s don't bother me because there was some wonderful music in the '70s." But the newer music has turned off some longtime listeners. Indeed, a new study by Coleman found oldies fans abandoning stations in direct proportion to the amount of '70s music on the air. That includes people like Joe Barnard, 61, of Fairfax Station, Va., who said he now listens to compact discs or cassette tapes because he can't hear '50s songs on the radio. "I have nothing against '70s music," he said. "It's just not the music I'm interested in hearing. My real interest in music began in the '50s. I still want to hear '50s music." Jenny McCaw, 54, of Alexandria, Va., agreed. "The Eagles are a good group, but they're not '50s and they're not old enough to be oldies," she said. Alan Lee hosts a Sunday evening '50s program on Baltimore oldies station WQSR and owns record stores in Silver Spring, Md., and Baltimore that specialize in oldies music. He said there still is a market for traditional oldies because, "For whatever reason, people tend to be fond of music that was popular when they were teenagers." One byproduct of the trend toward newer oldies is the return of '50s and '60s music to AM radio, which played those songs when they were new. At least seven AM stations around the country, from Buffalo, N.Y., to Portland, Ore., are trying this format. Cincinnati's "real oldies" station uses the same call letters - WSAI - and some of the DJs from its days as a Top 40 station four decades earlier. "We don't pretend that these AM oldies stations are going to beat the FM oldies station," program director Dan Allen said. "Our goal is simply to provide a solid audience. Since this music was on AM originally, we decided to give this a try."
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