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Programming & Music
This essay, Intriguing Radio Stations Of The ’00s – Part I: The Celestial Jukebox, was written by Sean Ross for Radio-Info.com's Programming & Music column.
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Intriguing Radio Stations Of The ’00s – Part I: The Celestial Jukebox
If you’re writing an article about intriguing radio stations of the ’00s, there’s no getting around it. A lot of the creativity of that decade went into finding new and better ways to program old records – whether from the ’70s or the ’90s; whether Classic Country or Old-School Hip-Hop. Ultimately, it made sense to turn the first half of our salute to “Intriguing Radio Stations of the ’00s” over entirely to gold-based radio stations; we’ll return with a look at more current-based outlets (and yes there were some) in part II.
Clearly, this has the potential to provoke certain among radio’s critics. If there are enough library-driven stations for a whole column, might this have anything to do with radio’s dwindling claim on younger listeners at decade’s end? Broadcasters would be happy to debate that with you, but since the advent of PPM, they’ve been too busy signing on new upper-demo stations (and, to be fair, some Top 40s too).
But discovery doesn’t just apply to new music. When the decade began, the iPod was still a year-and-a-half away. The average library size of a “well-programmed” radio station was under 300 titles, sometimes much less. The “variety” that stations offered was more like “plausible deniability”—a stager in front of a song that was going to be played anyway. At the decade’s end, 37-year-old moms liked Top 40 and 18-year-old guys listened to Classic Rock. The term “Celestial Jukebox” was often invoked to describe the way that people now obtained music, but it might as accurately describe the way that listeners cherrypicked the best of 50 years of pop music, even if it wasn’t from their high-school years.
The intriguing stations of the ’00s – library-based division – changed the way that listeners listened to music, an accomplishment I am in no way prepared to cede to the iPod. And they changed our notion of “good programming” in every format. At the end of the decade, you could be at a major-market station playing 750-1,000 records and not be in danger of losing your job (at least for that reason). And the credit for any sea-change must begin with:
When Howard Kroeger’s Bob FM became the first in the current line of Classic Rock/Adult Top 40 hybrids in 2002, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” wasn’t a “Lite FM” staple, Classic Rock PDs were often still contemptuous about the decade between Boston and Bon Jovi, and it was still a violation of programming law to spike in “songs that don’t test” just because they might sound great on the radio. The subsequent hype around Canada’s Jack- and Bob-FMs often distorted what was key about the format—American programmers often took Jack’s “playing what we want” aspect too literally and their GMs often seized on the format as an opportunity to go jockless. Vancouver’s Jack (http://www.jackfm.com/) was proof (then anyway) that the format worked even better on a full-service station. But that which was successfully imported eventually changed the way programmers thought about programming overall.
WRFF (Radio 104.5) Philadelphia
At first, it looked like PDs were using FM94/9’s (http://www.fm949sd.com/) 25-plus targeted version of Alternative as an excuse to play their favorite Smiths and Social Distortion records again, even if not every market’s listeners had known or loved those songs in the first place. But a few years later, Clear Channel’s WRFF (http://www.radio1045.com/main.html) came along and again turned gold-based Alternative from boutique format to PPM success story to the format’s new paradigm, and within a year, even KROQ Los Angeles was playing fewer currents, more library titles, and a more “true-alt” version of the format. The new library-based format has brought a lot of the format’s issues into relief—listeners are slower to assimilate new music and ’90s Pearl Jam and Nirvana is more compelling and mass-appeal than anything since. In the ‘10s, somebody has to find a way to address those. For now, you can’t fight the “Seether.”
By the early ’00s, most Oldies programmers had cut their pre-Beatles material down to maybe one every quarter-hour. Dickie Shannon’s KODJ(http://www.kodj.com/main.html) took that paradigm and held the ’60s to one an hour, substituting then-rare titles like Grand Funk’s “Some Kind of Wonderful.” Very much five years ahead of where the format was going.
KRXY (94.5 Roxy) Olympia, Wash.
A renegade small-market Hot AC that put the forgotten hits of the ’90s back on the radio more than a decade before other stations got around to it. The first station to figure out that “Pour Some Sugar On Me” was now an AC record.
Heart was ahead of even WLTW (Lite FM) New York in figuring out what a potent weapon ’70s disco could be for AC radio. And still ahead of many American counterparts in targeting a generation that grew up with rhythm, not rock.
The success of Bob- and Jack- opened the floodgates for programmers to take the Jack paradigm and do it with every other genre—ignoring one key tenet of Jack’s success: its ability to take the best from multiple genres, instead of going deep in just one. With more music to choose from, Clear Channel’s gold-based Regional Mexican format was one time when the Variety Hits paradigm worked elsewhere.
Scott Shannon looked at the “Real Oldies” AMs of the mid-’00s and staked out the halfway point between there and the the increasingly ’70s-based FMs of the time. As it evolved, and WLS-FM Chicago became its flagship, TOC became less the station that still played Little Richard and more the station that still played Paul Revere & the Raiders. But that was a valuable public service, too. Proof, again, that you can play more than 275 songs, if you’re willing to take responsibility for it.
KBPA (Bob FM) Austin
The proudest and most enduring showplaces for the Adult/Variety Hits format in America, and certainly the ones that show that there was no magic, by itself, in being jockless.
The happier-than-ever WCBS-FM that returned in 2007 is often thought of as the station that continues to push the Greatest Hits format forward chronologically. What it has really shown, as a station that can segue from “Bobby’s Girl” into “When Doves Cry,” is that the actual age of a song is irrelevant.
KQMT (the Mountain) Denver
Deep cuts. Nuggets from the soft-rock ’70s. Nick Michaels imaging. Bonneville’s WDRV was an entirely different animal from anything on the radio when it first launched. Then Entercom tried it in Denver, Buffalo, N.Y., and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., proving that even people in shot-and-a-beer markets bought entire albums in the ’70s.
The music on Russ Oasis’ maverick mid-’00s Classic Hits station started out at the halfway point between WDRV and Jack, then radiated far beyond either of them, with a presentation based on legendary Top 40. For a few years, it truly stunned the market. Years later, a station I’m still proud to have been involved with. And more than trace elements are present in recent crosstown debut WNTR (My 107.9).
The Movin’ format of KQMV Seattle and elsewhere was a conscious effort to do a new gold-based AC format for the Rhythm Nation. WKTU, through its various changes of the decade, just sort of gravitated there, eventually bringing other Clear Channel stations along. And the winning formula eventually turned out to be based on “now” (or at least “recently”) as much as “then.”
WNEW (Mix 102.7) New York
If Heart and WLTW showed the power of classic dance at AC, this mid-’00s New York treasure (now Fresh) almost got an entire format out of it for a year or two.
If WCBS-FM New York is the station that “Greatest Hits” programmers tend to steal from, WOGL is the station directly responsible for their continued (and newly robust) existence. At the time, WOGL was reluctant to be known as the former Oldies’ format first PPM success story, lest it imply that the station was only saved by PPM. Time and scores of new Greatest Hits launches of varying success have shown the real lesson of WOGL to be that a well-done Greatest Hits station could continue to thrive in PPM. And, oh yeah, they still sound like Philadelphia.
WOLL (Kool 105.5) West Palm Beach
WSNI (Sunny 104.5) Philadelphia
WWZY (the Breeze) Monmouth/Ocean, N.J.
WOLL took KODJ’s evolution one step further. It eliminated most of the ’60s—save an occasional Beatles or Motown song—and played the ’70s and ’80s songs that would have been on an Oldies station. WSNI, now WRFF, and The Breeze redefined Soft AC and also went deeper into the library than most.
For all the chatter about the presentation, Jack’s secret weapon was playing the late ’70s/early ’80s corporate rock that Classic Rock PDs hated. Clear Channel’s Brew (http://www.973thebrew.com/main.html) found a whole station there.
WRBO (Soul Classics 103.5) Memphis
R&B Oldies stations wanted to go Urban AC in the ’00s. Urban AC stations wanted to get away from the ’70s. Soul Classics 103.5 plays a current here and a talk show there, but they’ve remained the most true to the Classic Soul format. XHRM, meanwhile, has kept Jammin’ Oldies alive and market-leading – not something most would have anticipated a decade ago.
WSAI (Real Oldies 1530) Cincinnati
KKSN-FM (Kissin’ 97) Portland, Ore.
WSAI’s Real Oldies format didn’t solve the ’50s issue for Oldies radio. It didn’t give every former Adult Standards station a place to land—although some are still trying similar formats on former Adult Standards AMs. But WSAI was a beautifully realized station nevertheless. Bob Harlow’s KKSN was another great sounding station that could not, in the short term, keep owners from abandoning pre-Beatles music (or, for a while, the Oldies format). Now, you can find a lot of similarities between it and today’s CBS-FM.
By the early 2000s, everybody understood that Hip-Hop Oldies weren’t going to disappear from the radio forever, any more than R&B oldies had. But it took Clear Channel’s Power 105, ( http://www.power1051fm.com/main.html) looking for a wedge against the then-intimidating WQHT (Hot 97) to make the move, helping steer the format overall to a more adult/R&B-driven place as well.
Disclaimer: Stations I have recently worked with my other capacity as VP of programming for Edison Research are asterisked.
About the Writer
Sean Ross, one of the radio and music industry’s most widely respected writers and programming analysts, is the author of the newsletter Ross On Radio, an extension of his long-running column of the same name.
