Posted by Marty Brooks on August 19, 2008 at 00:03:55:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Oldies: The New Hot Thing posted by Jim Surace on August 17, 2008 at 13:48:58:
"Just a question..
Assuming a particular radio station is playing oldies from 50's - 90's, do those oldie stations actually think that they will keep listeners who prefer music from a couple of decades earlier or visa versa? (50's - 70's)"
I don't know of any commercial stations playing that entire span. CBS-FM mainly plays 70s to 90s. If they play anything from the 60's, it's generally post-'64. They'll throw in a very famous earlier track once in a while, but it's rare. It's a balancing act because most older people listening to CBS-FM really don't want to hear anything from the 80s and beyond and there's a strong contingent who feel the station isn't true unless they play 50's music, but the station has to try and skew younger to survive.
We didn't listen to music from 1930 in 1970 (except perhaps for "Tiptoe Through the Tulips") and even though it's the same overall genre of music, why would we expect younger people to listen to 40-year-old music today?
In an ideal world, only the quality of music would matter, but people have been brainwashed to only want what they perceive as the "hits" from the music of the era they grew up with. Why people are happy listening to the same burnt-out tracks, I'll never know, but they are. If they're not, they don't listen to CBS-FM. They listen to Felix Hernandez on WBGO, WFUV, satellite, web-based radio stations or their iPod.