Melanie Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) 1970 78 1 Not sure about now but from ~2006 to at least 2015 I heard that very often on SiriusXm 70s on 7 to the point I was thinking "not again" and I do like the track.
I appreciate what it sounds like you are doing, and I THINK a year or so ago I saw and followed a link to your thing and dug it? But drifted away---not your fault!---and don't know the link anymore. Could you repost?
The main station is, as I say, 50s/60s "good music" format now, and the classic country is just that, but honestly the plug is likely going to get pulled on the country soon just because there's nearly zero financial support coming in for it. As I say for the main station I'm totally down with going back to oldies, but what does everybody want to hear??? I/we kind of undid our original library in scavenging mode as we've changed formats, so it might take a day or two to overhaul the format and get it back to a place where it makes sense and isn't just playing Leslie Gore B-sides from 1966 or whatever. Don't be put off by the live365 links, these are fully hosted here, they just manage the feed and pay the royalties. As they stand now: WIWS - Free Internet Radio - Live365 WIWS Classic Country - Free Internet Radio - Live365
I'm sure it's been posted here already, but there is no decent Oldies Radio in Los Angeles. Yes, there is the once-mighty KRTH-101, but the playlist is now maybe 50 songs, if that. I don't remember when "Always Something There To Remind Me" by Naked Eyes became the "Stairway To Heaven" of the 80s, but KRTH plays it often. More often than I remember hearing it in the 80s. Also, I heard a Blink-182 song (seriously!) as I was casually tuning in, so even though I stopped listening to KRTH about 2000 when they became 80s-oriented, I figured that was the end....! Now, business wise, I understand that 'oldies is oldies' and there's always a certain demographic that keeps oldies radio going, and that demographic is NOT me anymore. Never really was, actually! When I actively listened to KRTH- say, 1978-1998- they were primarily 60s-70s hits with some 50s rock songs with quite a range of genres that evolved as the demographic got older. They would have theme weekends: 60s which usually covered '63 to '72; '56 to '63; and all #1 hits or all #2 hits from a given era. It was fun and engaging. Now it's truly bland and each hour has 15 minutes of commercials. Anyhow, I am going to check out some of these online links. That's where oldies radio might have a chance to be what it was and still could be.
I'm sorry to hear that you might be calling it a day, as it were, on the stations. Your stations have kept me entertained through many a late night. Our shared hobby can get to be a very expensive one, can't it? I've spent, gosh, something like $10,000 on everything needed to create a pitch perfect recreation of 1960s and early 1970s Top 40 radio. But finding listeners, as you say, just isn't easy to do at all. Most people want to stay well within their comfort zone. You can create something that is truly wonderful, as you have, and just watch it fail to be properly appreciated. That's why I wanted to let you know how much I've enjoyed what you and everyone else working on the WIWS stations have done. And for the record, I love the AM style sound you use.
First and foremost, sorry to hear WIWS is struggling. You guys provide an impressive emulation of the AM sound. Finding listeners is easier said than done for sure. Perhaps the current format feels limiting - Bobby Darin and Kirby Stone are nice, but not what comes to mind for the era. At the same time, like you've said, you'd get accused of diving into dad rock if you played something like Cream. What year range is WIWS on now? I'm hearing something jazzy but I don't trust the Live365 to tell me exactly what song it is right now.
Thank you both - after all the time and money it's really nice to hear that. And yes, we're definitely in that kind of money range at this point, although the other side of it we do have a small amount of Patreon support that's just been accumulating since day one, and I suppose if it's worst case scenario I could probably liquidate some of the library to recoup some of the loss. But all that said, we're not there yet, and I turned the oldies back on - why the hell not? If anybody is interested, it's all 50s/60s here now: live365 Apple App Google App
I don't listen to the radio at all, and I don't have a CD player in my car anymore. If I am driving alone, I usually listen to a podcast. If there are passengers, I usually stream music.
I just wanted to follow up and mention what tends to happen in these "why don't I hear artists I love or these oldies on the radio anymore?" when I post about WIWS; I realize it's only been 12-14 hours, but within the first hour after I switched back to oldies we had 10 listeners....by midnight, two, and this morning, one, and now zero for the last couple of hours. Don't at all mean to be waving my fist in the sky in any way but this happens over and over...we get a small amount of initial interest, one or two people who hang around for a while, then people move on. It's just really perplexing to me given at least every couple of weeks I see these "What happened to the oldies" posts, and we're playing them all, many off original vinyl...so again I say, is it too many deep cuts? The AM filter too much? Etc.? I think we have a big, exciting sound that really captures the era and plays a lot of the now-more-and-more forgotten artists and records. My wife (Dottie on the station) called it very early on; we'd intended this to be like listening to the radio used to be, just turn it on and leave it on, but it's clearly more a novelty to people, and very few people seem to be listening to anything other than vinyl, YouTube or Spotify now.
You're caught between two completely different "oldies" fan populations, one of which ONLY wants to hear the overplayed "classics", and one which is much more adventurous. The former come across your website somehow and belong to group one, but quickly bail when they aren't getting Time of the Season or Sunshine of Your Love every 5 minutes. They also are MUCH more numerous than those in group 2.
I think any station that's going to stream Oldies these days needs to have two of them - I mean, it's not like they're competing with other terrestrial stations when you're online, right? Online streams don't have "drive times" ingrained into their broadcast day like those critical times when a 22-minute commute means less exposure necessitating a guaranteed killer song every 10 minutes before you get out of the car, and the next guy gets into his car and wants the same experience. Removing that pressure to always be playing your "top-of-the-hour-songs", should eliminate a lot of impressions your station plays "the same songs over and over". But Oldies is such a connector with the mainstream audience who is not just from that era, but raised their kids on it. So your standard, can't-miss, audience-tested favorites should be your mothership stream. And then, spend a good portion of your promotional time (liners, promos), chatting-up your other stream, which doesn't have to be completely "deep cut", just...relax the power rotations of your overplayed titles, to make room for some of those others that are also remembered. Another thing about Oldies and Classic Rock which is unique to these formats is, back when these songs were new, they weren't being played on a 1300-song playlist, so they didn't have hundreds of songs crowding each other for attention like now: there were probably 120 songs to juggle at the most, when they were all considered "current" songs on either a pop station or rock station in their heyday. But, combine years and years of charts and decades and decades of styles to make a complete Oldies or Classic Rock experience, means you're balancing the memories of maybe ten whole generations of high school years, and maybe 25 different school proms, homecoming weekends or class reunions, into one thick, multiple-personality playlist! Oldies is also great at using excuses to "break format", such as those specialty weekends highlighting one-hit-wonders , Beatles, Motown, beach music (both kinds!), etc. Also, host those slots in the day for your Beatle Break, #1-of-the-day, or my favorite part of this job: request hours! Then on your second stream, you could be more "record-geeky", with deeper background in your song intros, top 5's, label or genre retrospectives, or a daily segment reading online listener reminders, like "What Did We Miss?" After all, they can't be "forgotten oldies", if you're the 'hero' right there on the air, to remind everybody! You can build your brand sufficiently on two different streams, allowing your audience the flexibility of how they can get their oldies from "one single place"...with two different flavors.
That's actually an interesting idea and one that hadn't occurred to me before, although I'm not sure we'd have the bandwidth to pull it off. Which is definitely a big chunk of realization I've had, just playing the music isn't enough, there needs to be several layers of development and promotion to even break through a tiny bit. Really debating our future right now....the station is still up, we're still playing a lot of great music, with tons of vintage jingles, commercials, etc...it's kind of like a living aircheck. But we've not had more than two listeners at a time at any point today. Where are all these "what happened to the great oldies" people????
Fact is, Oldies radio folks love this stuff as much as you do, and they want the chance to play as many of them as possible. But it's a numbers game, and it's been proven time and time again, the more you play the highest-testing, most-familiar songs for your casual, general audience, the higher the TSL goes up, the better the ratings are, the more ad agencies are willing to spend for advertising on your station...and the more that supports keeping the lights on to reach the more niche die-hard oldies fans like us. It just doesn't happen without endless churning of a very tight playlist geared towards reinforcing the notion that, even if you don't hear your favorites every day, this is the likeliest place they're probably playing, even when you're not listening.
You seem like you're ex-radio; I never expected this to be radio-like in terms of audience or demo, and we don't play to those kinds of things - if you listen to the station you'll get it. I'm just surprised that every time there's a thread like this and I chime in, we get almost no reaction. I realize that might reflect on our product, but I'm still surprised, especially since people who do get what we're doing go nuts for it.
I'm listening right now and like what I'm hearing, including the AM radio sound. I like the oldies format better than the 50s pop you were previously playing. I also dig the country station and listen to it sometimes too.
I'm about as close to still being in it as "ex-radio" can be. I'm not an engineer sort, just programming, marketing and "management-adjacent". Most of my time in these threads is offering others what perspective I can from the other side of the mic, and help them understand what frustrates them - and surprisingly, how they may have even helped some of those frustrations come about! I'm not nostalgic about the way radio used to work, only how much better it could be, taking the present into account. The way I see it, the problem with nostalgia is more the way it was pitched to us, getting in the way of making our modern experience the best it can be, now. Show me "the good old days", and I'll show you somebody who just wasn't paying attention.
I’d listen if you played 50’s/60’s (no dad rock please) Top 100 looking across all the charts - pop, easy listening, jazz, etc. And the AM filter is a turn-off - it’s fine when I’m truly listening to an AM radio but to emulate it? Not so much. It would be like playing a digital file and overlaying pops and clicks to sound like vinyl. One person’s thoughts. And good luck!
I’ve encountered a Station that stresses it’s not “Classic Rock” they play but “Album Rock”. The noticeable problem arises when they don’t play the same Songs but are continually going to the same Artists for their choices, relying on a limited group for selection.
A new Classic Rock Radio Station is now on-air just up the highway from me and summarized by Wikipedia as… CKLK-FM is a radio station licensed to Grimsby, Ontario, Canada, serving the Niagara Region broadcasting at 88.5 FM with a classic hits format branded as 88.5 The Lake.
