We have lost our Oldies Station

[H2IZCOOL]

Yep, Washington's "Oldies 100" (WBIG - 100.3), following the path of many other radio stations in the country, has dropped their Oldies format and adopted a "classic rock of the '70s and early '80s" format.

Stations changing formats happens all the time. Dropping a genre of music from the airwaves of a major metropolitan area - with no one else picking it up - seems to be a much newer phenomenon.

Of course, Oldies stations in general have been less than perfect with their 5-song playlists. I stopped listening regularly to WBIG years ago when they decided to cut out most of their '50s stuff and replace it with early '70s.

I predicted on a thread here a few months ago, that in a few years, the Beatles and other British Invasion acts would disappear from playlists within the next few years. Looks like it's happening sooner than expected.

This REALLY makes the case for iPods and CD mixes and downloads and whatever you can do for shaping your OWN playlists, and to hell with radio!

[Pete70s]

It's pretty tragic that these so-called "oldies" stations are playing stuff like "Uptown Girl" and "Jack & Diane". Not that they're bad songs (not really my cup of tea), but they'reNOT OLDIES!!!

[H2IZCOOL]

pete70s said:

It's pretty tragic that these so-called "oldies" stations are playing stuff like "Uptown Girl" and "Jack & Diane". Not that they're bad songs (not really my cup of tea), but they'reNOT OLDIES!!!

I guess it all depends how you want to define an "Oldie" - if you take it to mean ANY popular song thats more than - say - 10 years old, you could justify adding newer songs to the mix (note I didn't say REPLACING - just building bigger playlists.) If you define "Oldies" by what they've become to mean: music of the mid '50s through early '70s (some might argue no later than the late '60s) then you can truthfully say that these radio stations have abandoned us.

You can take heart, Pete, in one sentence from the article in the Washington Post that says that there are still good markets for oldies in some cities like Denver, Boston, and LA. - but other cities supposedly have no market.

btw, here's the website:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/03/AR2006040301979.html

Ironically, the three cities that the article mentioned are the same three cities that Dave Loggins mentions in his early '70s hit Please Come To Boston. -- and that song along with its contemporaries are likely to be included in the next music purge that will come up in a few years.

[Beatles4ever]

This seems to be happening all over,Ed....although when the great Oldies stations change here they usually go Tejano.Not that I'm predjudiced...I just can't understand what they're singing about!
Oldies to me is 50s-60s rock and roll but I do like the 70s-80s classic rock.

[smittykins--70s pop RULES!]

That's why I've pretty much given up listening to radio when I'm at home and putting on Music Choice channels instead.

[Dawn]

It's discouraging to see how so many classic artists of the '50s and '60s are steadily being eliminated from public radio stations. About a year ago, a new "oldies" station came to my area. Due to format changes on other stations, we had not had an oldies station at all for several months prior to that, so I was glad to have it at first. But their idea of "oldies" is a span roughly from the late '60s through the mid '80s, with almost no pre-Invasion hits and very little early Beatles and Beach Boys, Petula Clark, Elvis, etc.

[55dodger]

Another sign you can't find good oldies, my daughter wanted to download some oldies ringtones to her phone. Specifically, Mr. Tambourine Man, For What's it Worth, & Do You Believe in Magic?. She was at some website claiming to have the oldies, but she couldn't find anything older than 1970. She was so disappointed, as she loves those songs.

[edehl]

I don't understand why this is happening. We just lost our only oldies station in Seattle, 97.3 KBSG, as it changed to a talk show format. For about 15 or so years, KBSG was the only station to listen to for oldies from the 60s. Recently, they had "updated" their format to include songs from the 70s, which was okay, but heavily discofied. I could still deal with it, as long as I still got my dose of groovy tunes. Now, as of last month, the station is completely gone.
We have a couple other stations in the area that play classic rock, but if you're not in the mood to hear "Freebird" or "All Right Now", you're pretty much out of luck. It's sad, because the sixties are my favorite time for music and now if I want to hear "oldies", I can't turn on my radio to do so. It's a stone bummer.

[H2IZCOOL]

Sept 27, 2008 1:01:41 GMT -5 edehl said:

I don't understand why this is happening. We just lost our only oldies station in Seattle, 97.3 KBSG, as it changed to a talk show format. For about 15 or so years, KBSG was the only station to listen to for oldies from the 60s. Recently, they had "updated" their format to include songs from the 70s, which was okay, but heavily discofied. I could still deal with it, as long as I still got my dose of groovy tunes. Now, as of last month, the station is completely gone.
We have a couple other stations in the area that play classic rock, but if you're not in the mood to hear "Freebird" or "All Right Now", you're pretty much out of luck. It's sad, because the sixties are my favorite time for music and now if I want to hear "oldies", I can't turn on my radio to do so. It's a stone bummer.

I guess it's all about demographics, Edehl. I don't count because I'm too old. You don't count because you like music you're not "supposed" to like.

Thank goodness for XM radio - and being able to mix and burn our own CDs.

I have XM's "The '60s on 6" streaming on my computer right now.

[Dawn]

It's depressing to think of how much the oldies format has changed over the past 15-20 years or so. Back in the late '80s and early '90s, the oldies stations I listened to played only '50s through about 1972 or so, and the playlists were diverse and deep. I remember hearing songs like the Dells' There Is, Nancy Sinatra's Sugar Town, Herman Hermits' Listen People, Lighthouse's One Fine Morning - even Ferrante & Teicher's Exodus! Now, it would be difficult to find a station that would play any of those songs, much less all of them. The playlists of oldies stations these days try to cover too many years, and are so diluted that you hear only about 20 songs or less from any given year.

There are still a few good oldies stations out there, but they're getting fewer and farther between. The folks in northern New Mexico are lucky to have a great one: KDSK . We listened to that for as long as we could get the signal when we were moving cross-country, and it's a fantastic station. There also used to be a good one in Scranton, PA that played only '50s and early '60s hits, but I think they have since changed formats.

[edehl]

I've got to thank you guys, though, for turning me onto Pandora radio. Even though I can't listen to it if I'm not online or on a radio, it's a great resource for listening to the oldies. If you shuffle all your favorite "stations" together, you get quite a wide variety of tunes.

[daniel]

There's a small AM station here in Cleveland that digs deep for Oldies -- I've heard cuts on there that I've never heard before which is pretty cool. (I looked on their website but unfortunately they don't tell you what they've played) They claim to take requests, so I'm tempted to call up and request something like "Sally Go 'Round The Roses"...

When I first started working at an Oldies station our playlist was from 1958 (I think it was '58) to 1974. The only song newer than that that we played was "Old Time Rock And Roll" because the PD thought it fit. It's odd that some of the songs we played quite a lot like "Come On Down To My Boat", "Tobacco Road" and even "Listen People" are absent from Oldies stations today. (I remember we HAD to play "The Mighty Quinn" because our owner's name was Tom Quinn...)

[Dawn]

Feb 8, 2009 9:05:14 GMT -5 daniel said:

There's a small AM station here in Cleveland that digs deep for Oldies -- I've heard cuts on there that I've never heard before which is pretty cool. (I looked on their website but unfortunately they don't tell you what they've played) They claim to take requests, so I'm tempted to call up and request something like "Sally Go 'Round The Roses"...

When I first started working at an Oldies station our playlist was from 1958 (I think it was '58) to 1974. The only song newer than that that we played was "Old Time Rock And Roll" because the PD thought it fit. It's odd that some of the songs we played quite a lot like "Come On Down To My Boat", "Tobacco Road" and even "Listen People" are absent from Oldies stations today. (I remember we HAD to play "The Mighty Quinn" because our owner's name was Tom Quinn...)

I remember hearing Come on Down to My Boat and Tobacco Road quite often on the oldies stations I listened to back in the '90s. Now, I can't remember the last time I heard either of those songs on the radio.

[daniel]

I'm so glad I burned copies of the Oldies CD library before I quit working there -- I'd be lost without it seeing how junky Oldies radio has become! I stopped listneing to WMJI when they played "Somebody To Love" and followed it with "Flashdance". HURL!

Some others that seem to have vanished from Oldies radio:

"Pied Piper"-Crispian St. Peters
"Bristol Stomp"-Dovells
Anything by Tommy Roe
"Mashed Potato Time"-Dee Dee Sharp
"Raindrops"-Dee Clark
"Have I The Right"-Honeycombs

And of course there are many, many more... for another thread perhaps!

[Dawn]

Feb 8, 2009 14:21:08 GMT -5 daniel said:

I'm so glad I burned copies of the Oldies CD library before I quit working there -- I'd be lost without it seeing how junky Oldies radio has become! I stopped listneing to WMJI when they played "Somebody To Love" and followed it with "Flashdance". HURL!

Some others that seem to have vanished from Oldies radio:

"Pied Piper"-Crispian St. Peters
"Bristol Stomp"-Dovells
Anything by Tommy Roe
"Mashed Potato Time"-Dee Dee Sharp
"Raindrops"-Dee Clark
"Have I The Right"-Honeycombs

And of course there are many, many more... for another thread perhaps!

It seems like more and more of the '50s and early-to-mid '60s especially are disappearing from the playlists. Now, it's rare to hear a pre-1965 song on any of the oldies or classic rock stations. It's a shame, because there are so many great early rock classics that will likely end up forgotten.

Earlier today on KRTH, the L.A. oldies station, they played Bon Jovi's Living On A Prayer!