Company News · April 7, 2008

At Classic Rock, AC/DC (And The ’80s) Gain Current-cy

By Edison Research

It started a year ago with AC/DC. The client was an upper-demo Classic Rock station that verged on Classic Hits. But they’d thrown a few more AC/DC songs in the test this time and suddenly we were staring at an AC/DC song that wasn’t “You Shook Me All Night Long” on the first page. Everybody knew that “You Shook Me” had become an all-ages party song staple at weddings and bar mitzvahs, no longer considered edgy in any way. But “Highway to Hell” hardly seemed to have become that.
Since then, we’ve seen a pretty wide spread of AC/DC songs start to come back strongly in Classic Rock music tests – sometimes five or six titles with fairly similar scores at a given station. And while that band has had a renewed cachet lately — used heavily in TV commercials and channeled by multiple newer acts for several years now – their graduation from peripheral act with one mass-appeal song to a more mainstream artist is just one indication that the boundaries of Classic Rock might finally be shifting a little.
AC/DC’s changed fortunes is just one way in which some of Classic Rock’s spring music tests are looking either a little harder or a little newer (or both) than the average Classic Rock test of just a few years ago. Typically, these are stations that test up to age 50, but I’ve seen similar phenomena at stations that go to age 54. The changes usually involve a handful of very big hard rock titles from the early-to-mid ’80s–an Ozzy here, a Judas Priest or Scorpions there. At the same time, some warhorse acts, like the Rolling Stones, are contributing fewer useable titles with each test.
In some ways, it feels like the ’80s have long been a part of the format – enough so for Bowling For Soup to make fun of Motley Crue on Classic Rock four years ago. But to Classic Rock programmers, the ’80s can still be daunting. Many PDs see the ’80s as a mere handful of useable titles — many of them sonically tied to the ’70s (Don Henley, Tom Petty, John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, etc.). Because how are you going to play “Dr. Feelgood” by Motley Crue next to “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”?
The ’80s weren’t also a tricky time for Rock radio in general. The heavily-rated early ’80s were the era of corporate rock. The mid-’80s were dominated by Top 40; and the music that Rock kept for itself was often marginal. In the mid-’80s, with Classic Rock looming as a competitor, Rock stations became more adult and conservative than ever, and much of the music that excited Rock fans, whether Motley Crue or Metallica was incubated somewhere other than Rock radio.
There was also the quick boom and bust cycle of the Classic Rock That Really Rocks approach — which was generally both harder and newer — a decade ago. Then there was the advent of the Bob- and Jack-FM movement which had depended heavily on ’80s Rock, thus leaving the available audience for Classic Rock even older and more traditional in many markets.
There was also some comfort in the consistency of Classic Rock — knowing that the format’s core titles didn’t change much and didn’t burn. That was significant because Oldies had enjoyed the stability of 300 records that tested consistently and did not burn for 15 years – and as soon as they did, programmers began to scramble. So is it now possible to reconsider the parameters of Classic Rock without launching the format down, well, the Highway to Hell?
Well, for one thing, after a few years of blind panic, in which modernizing seemed to annoy the core without co-opting younger listeners, Oldies stations have settled into playing the ’70s and even the ’80s and have seemingly lived to tell the story. The ’80s have been incorporated tentatively in most places, but more dramatically in a few. If the new WOCL (Sunny 105.9) Orlando, Fla., can play “Funky Cold Medina,” the kind of song that Oldies was once supposed to provide a safe-haven from, what’s the big deal about “Home Sweet Home” at Classic Rock?
In addition, the juggernaut that was Bob- and Jack-FM has stabilized in many markets. Bob and Jack had simultaneously proven that there was an audience that had forged its Rock tastes in the era between Boston and Guns ‘N’ Roses and relieved Classic Rock stations of the burden of actually having to play too much of that music. Now there is an opportunity to include some of those listeners again.
Finally, the listeners for whom Classic Rock That Really Rocks represented outreach a decade ago are now 35-plus. In a world where 16-year-olds like Led Zeppelin and 38-year-old women like Flo Rida, there’s not quite the inevitability to this that there once might have been. But most of the music in question is now more than 25 years old, so if you liked it when you were 20, you’re not only in the Classic Rock demo now, but in its upper reaches with only a few years left to screen in to a Classic Rock test. And with those changes, there will likely be at least a few more playable titles from the ’80s for stations willing to test them.
Oldies programmers often tried to find more ’70s titles by brute force, forcing some of those songs onto the air many years ahead of finding a quorum for them. By then it was a matter of necessity for Oldies. Classic Rock PDs have the ability to look for those songs from a position of strength — but they should at least look. And those able to do strategic research should be keeping an eye peeled for any possible formula change. For some stations, the market opportunity may indeed be to continue as a station driven by pre-1976 music. In others, it will inevitably morph.

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