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Why So Much 80’s?

Discussion pertaining to Detroit, Ann Arbor, Port Huron, and SW Ontario
Deleted User 14992

Re: Why So Much 80’s?

Post by Deleted User 14992 » Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:19 pm

tivoking wrote:
Thu Apr 25, 2019 3:45 pm
We need a 90's channel now!!!!!! There's so much greatness from hair bands, to alternative, to pop, to rap, to country. That era was so diverse with all genres selling massive amounts of albums. Now, it's rap and pop on the charts.
I agree, But according to the “Hey WDRQ Why Don’t You Do All 90’s” thread I started mostly everyone disagrees, Go figure.



fuzzpower
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Re: Why So Much 80’s?

Post by fuzzpower » Fri Apr 26, 2019 12:42 am

90s had some of the worst music in history. True, every decade has their share of awful music, but the 90s had so much more garbage.



innate-in-you
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Re: Why So Much 80’s?

Post by innate-in-you » Fri Apr 26, 2019 11:51 am

fuzzpower wrote:
Tue Apr 23, 2019 11:04 pm
97.1 was a 70s station about two decades ago and it flopped.
It likely would have succeeded were it not for about six other stations jumping into the oldies pool with WHND at the same time.

The rush took WHND and CKMR out of the race as well.

Ultimately, it was down to WOMC and WKSG (102.7 Mt. Clemens).
All of a sudden, BOTH of them went to what I think was the same consultant(!). They sounded EXACTLY the same, all of the same slogans, jingles and bumpers.

WKSG with its DA beaming eastward from the eastern edge of the market was no match for centrally located, superpowered WOMC.



Marcus
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Location: Sarnia, Ontario

Re: Why So Much 80’s?

Post by Marcus » Fri Apr 26, 2019 1:05 pm

It was like this :
1983 - WHND (AM) was the only Oldies station in Detroit. WCZY or WABX could have went Oldies but one went Top 40 and the other became Class FM (WCLS).
1984 - WKSG 102.7 became the first FM Oldies station in quite awhile.
1986 - Both 93.9 CKLW-FM and WKSG were FM Oldies stations. 1310 WMTG was Motown Gold and WHND was mostly 50's and early 60's.
1988 - By now 93.9 was More 94, WKSG was still around, and WOMC was mostly Oldies. The two AM stations remained.
1991 - CKLW-FM returned as The Legend, WKSG and WOMC sounded the same. On top of that the two AM stations continued. Later in the year WKSG finally gave up, and had to.
1994 - Both 560 WHND and 1310 WMTG were finished. 93.9 FM became The River. It was down to Oldies 104.3 and Star 97 FM which was all 70's.
1997 - 104.3 WOMC was now the only Oldies station in Detroit.
Today : Original Oldies music is now on AM 580 and some of the HD 2 (digital) stations. WOMC now plays mostly 80's music.



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Colonel Flagg
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Re: Why So Much 80’s?

Post by Colonel Flagg » Fri Apr 26, 2019 2:56 pm

fuzzpower wrote:
Tue Apr 23, 2019 11:04 pm
97.1 was a 70s station about two decades ago and it flopped.
Star 97 failed as a 70's station because the station's sound was "too white". Missing were the 70's R&B songs we all loved. You can only go so far with Frampton, and The Steve Miller Band.


"Pretty soon, every kid in America will wish he were me"

Deleted User 14992

Re: Why So Much 80’s?

Post by Deleted User 14992 » Fri Apr 26, 2019 3:01 pm

And the song rotation was way too tight, They were chasing after WCSX at that time thats why no R&B.



Chris1980
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Re: Why So Much 80’s?

Post by Chris1980 » Fri Apr 26, 2019 7:07 pm

tivoking wrote:
Thu Apr 25, 2019 3:45 pm
We need a 90's channel now!!!!!! There's so much greatness from hair bands, to alternative, to pop, to rap, to country. That era was so diverse with all genres selling massive amounts of albums. Now, it's rap and pop on the charts.
And no one station, even then, played ALL of that music. Look at the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 from a week in, say, 1996, and you'd see Celine Dion, 2Pac, Garbage and Tim McGraw. Except in small markets, few stations would have dared to play ALL of that (106.7 The Peak up north came pretty close at times). Those genres didn't mix then and they wouldn't mix now. Music geeks would like a station that plays all that variety; the average listener would not. An Amy Grant fan would likely tune out when a Metallica song came on, and vice versa.

A few markets have tried '90s-based formats and they have not worked. i101 in Chicago and 106.3 in Reno both leaned so heavily toward dance/hip-hop/R&B they could have been classified as rhythmic AC. 101 lasted maybe weeks as I recall before it tweaked to a more conventional hot AC, and 106.3 has been through a couple of format changes and is now Spanish.

For better or for worse, the closest thing Detroit has to a '90s station is 105.1 The Bounce.



innate-in-you
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Re: Why So Much 80’s?

Post by innate-in-you » Fri Apr 26, 2019 7:31 pm

Marcus wrote:
Fri Apr 26, 2019 1:05 pm
It was like this :
1983 - WHND (AM) was the only Oldies station in Detroit. WCZY or WABX could have went Oldies but one went Top 40 and the other became Class FM (WCLS).
1984 - WKSG 102.7 became the first FM Oldies station in quite awhile.
1986 - Both 93.9 CKLW-FM and WKSG were FM Oldies stations. 1310 WMTG was Motown Gold and WHND was mostly 50's and early 60's.
1988 - By now 93.9 was More 94, WKSG was still around, and WOMC was mostly Oldies. The two AM stations remained.
1991 - CKLW-FM returned as The Legend, WKSG and WOMC sounded the same. On top of that the two AM stations continued. Later in the year WKSG finally gave up, and had to.
1994 - Both 560 WHND and 1310 WMTG were finished. 93.9 FM became The River. It was down to Oldies 104.3 and Star 97 FM which was all 70's.
1997 - 104.3 WOMC was now the only Oldies station in Detroit.
Today : Original Oldies music is now on AM 580 and some of the HD 2 (digital) stations. WOMC now plays mostly 80's music.
You've got it down very well!

Of note:
WHND briefly had competition in WTWR 92.3, though they skewed late 60s and early oldies (barely oldies?).
WTWR also had a problem deciding what to stay with, it's format in constant flux.

More 94 was more an image change than a format change. 93.9 was hampered all through that era by Canadian rules that regulated formats. Rock belonged on AM in Canada. How they tried to get around it was amazing- playing short snippets of beautiful music between 10p and midnight, claiming each of those snippets was an edited song. 93.9 went through very many formats in a short time before becoming The River.

WHND's demise was hastened by external circumstance. They switched from live DJs on all daytime hours to live only in the morning drive, with midday and afternoon hours was "Kool Gold", a playlist similar to WHND's, but with annoying "Remember When...." segments. Well, Kool Gold itself dropped out suddenly, and WHND was in no condition to bring announcers back in, so the station became brokered. Interestingly, it was still oldies in the morning, as an oldies program bought the timeslots (Deano Day, IIRC).



Bobbert
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Re: Why So Much 80’s?

Post by Bobbert » Sat Apr 27, 2019 4:56 pm

ZenithCKLW wrote:
Wed Apr 24, 2019 12:07 pm
Is 80's the last decade of "pop" music before it really segmented into so many sub-genres and formats? For instance today, pop music could be Drake or the Jonas Brothers or some pop-country artist, and you typically either like one or the other, whereas in the past, pop was pop and it had a more mass appeal, making a general "80's format" more viable. Is that possible?
The rise of hip hop and rap in the 1990s did a lot to segment the pop music audience. On YouTube, a collection of songs from 1985 includes a lot of crossover music with mass appeal that is still played on today's highest rated pop stations. A collection of songs from 1995 includes a lot of carefully segmented music that hasn't really had much airplay on WNIC, WOMC, etc.

All of this really hit me in the late 1990s when I was walking around Kellogg Park in downtown Plymouth, hearing rap music blaring from the cars of suburban white kids.

Since then, the closest the pop music audience has came together was at the height of the American Idol era, with wide appeal for Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Clay Aiken, Jennifer Hudson, and Carrie Underwood.



Bobbert
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Re: Why So Much 80’s?

Post by Bobbert » Sat Apr 27, 2019 5:08 pm

stopnswop2 wrote:
Tue Apr 23, 2019 10:35 pm
when do we get a 70s obsession?

There was a 60's obsession in the 90s, then 80s in the 2000s, and 2010s..

What is wrong with the 70s????
One thing that hurt 70s nostalgia was the rise of music videos in the 1980s. That pushed the new music so far to the front that 70s nostalgia never had a chance to take hold.

Also, the nostalgic image of the 70s is very shallow and superficial. i went from grade school to college in that decade and it was much more than disco, lava lamps, pet rocks, and CB radios.

80s movies also help fuel the 80s music obsession. Like 80s music, 80s movies had a much brighter, bouncier texture than movies of the previous decade. Just think of the music-filled soundtracks of 80s movies—Top Gun, Dirty Dancing, Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, and so on.



Editorcj
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Re: Why So Much 80’s?

Post by Editorcj » Mon Apr 29, 2019 4:24 pm

Kids who grew up in the 80's are now at their peak purchasing power. Late 40's early 50's. Radio going where the money is.



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