The Oldies Facts

All right, baby boomers. Throw out the Rogaine. Toss the Grecian Formula. Trade in that sports car for a sensible sedan.

KRTH-FM (101.1), the L.A. station that’s long been the top-rated oldies outlet in the nation with a playlist of ‘50s and ‘60s favorites, has recently added such ‘70s acts as the Bee Gees, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, the Doobie Brothers and Chicago to its roster.

No more classic rock euphemism--the music of the ‘70s is now officially oldies. Which, dear boomers, means that you’re, well, not as young as you used to be.

It’s just the inevitable march of time, says KRTH program director Mike Phillips--not that it’s any consolation.

“We do a lot of music research at the station and we are constantly in touch with our audience to find out exactly what they want to hear,” he says. “And in our last research project we found there was a lot heavier appetite for ‘70s music than there had been.”

Phillips notes that the evidence of interest in that decade is pretty easy to see.

“A lot of pop culture is trended toward the ‘70s--a lot more ‘70s music in commercials and movies, and on television things like ‘That ‘70s Show,’ ” he says.

But if that’s bad news for boomers, it’s even worse for ‘50s fans. In order to accommodate the newer sounds, Phillips has passed some older stuff out of even the oldies category.

“One thing that makes this work is we have dropped some of the ‘50s music that we had played occasionally, such as Connie Francis and Pat Boone,” he says. “We’re continuing to play the legendary ‘50s artists like Elvis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry. Dropping the other stuff means we can play music that sounds compatible with the new music we’ve added.”

But if the music is sliding from “Happy Days” to “That ‘70s Show,” the presentation at KRTH won’t have to.

“When I arrived here 8 1/2 years ago, disc jockeys would occasionally make references to Mel’s Drive-in, ducktails, jukeboxes and that,” he says. “I came from a company that specialized in helping oldies stations around the country, and we talked to a lot of listeners who said, ‘Play the music, but don’t remind us how old we are.’ So we’re a contemporary station that happens to play oldies and we’ll continue to take that position.”

The shift will, however, be apparent in the live shows the station presents each year. The Legends of Rock event, hosted by deejay Brian Berns, is expected to have “less emphasis on early doo-wop groups and more on mid- to late-’60s and early-’70s artists.”

(KRTH is also this summer adding a Latin rock concert hosted by Huggy Boy, the L.A. radio legend who moved to KRTH after oldies KRLA-AM [1110] shifted to all-talk.)

The new approach would seem to pit KRTH against KCBS-FM (Arrow 93.1), its Infinity Broadcasting sister station that plays ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s classic rock. But Phillips says there is no sibling rivalry.

“We play some of Arrow’s music, but you can’t find the Supremes, the Beach Boys, Elvis or Marvin Gaye on Arrow to much extent,” he says. “So there’s a significant point of difference.”

And at the same time, you’re not going to hear Led Zeppelin or Heart or Supertramp on KRTH, so if that’s your taste, Arrow’s still the place--as is KLOS-FM (95.5), which mixes rock classics with a smattering of compatible new acts.

Perhaps the one comfort for the generation in question is the knowledge that the whippersnappers coming along behind them will, soon enough, find themselves in a similar situation.

“Some day,” Phillips says, “middle-age couples will be walking down the beach saying, ‘They’re playing our song’--and it will be Puff Daddy.”

Un-conventional: Anywhere Jesse Jackson speaks, you can expect some sparks to fly. Erica Farber is counting on it. She’s the publisher and CEO of the weekly trade publication Radio & Records and host of the annual R&R; Convention, where the top topics facing radio broadcasters come to a head each year.

Jackson, fresh off his role in gaining the release of three American soldiers in Yugoslavia last month, will serve as a keynote speaker at the 1999 confab, which begins next Thursday at the Century Plaza Hotel, shining a light on what well could be the top issue of radio as the century ends: diversity.

“I’m excited about Jackson speaking on a number of levels,” Farber says. “The issue that’s really come up is diversity, not just of the population, but as what the formats in radio are and also among the people working at the stations.”

The fact is that with formats increasingly narrowing to target segments of our increasingly varied cultural spectrum, many questions are raised about the effects of what could be seen as programming Balkanization. Is separate but equal good for radio? And is it really equal?

Meanwhile, Farber sees several other issues also at play this year--though none quite as combustible as last year’s leading issues of the impact of the wave of communications corporate mergers and such hot-button topics as “pay-for-play,” with record companies in essence buying time on stations to provide exposure for songs.

The biggest challenge of the day, she says, is for broadcasters to assess the coming impact of Internet and satellite delivery systems. To that end, another leading speaker will be Mark Cuban, founder of the Internet radio delivery entity Broadcast.com.

“He had this early vision about radio and the Internet, and now everyone’s trying to figure out what to do,” she says. “We have a millennium, a whole new paradigm, and who are these new players?”

Some other issues she expects to draw big interest include the growth of Spanish-language radio and the expected growth of FM talk, as well as a report that R&R; will make of a new survey it did with Edison Research on the impact of the recent increase of numbers of ads in the average hour recently.

“No one has really been doing research on the effect on listeners of higher ad loads,” she says. “So we went out and talked to listeners to find out what it means to them.”