WLTW’s Fortieth Birthday Present: AC’s World Domination

In January, 1984, there was seemingly nobody who didn’t like CHR music. After a few years when Adult Contemporary stations like WYNY New York and “Love Songs” WPIX had seemed to dampen Top 40’s long-term prospects, adults were excited about hit music again. WHTZ (Z100) New York was in the middle of its worst-to-first climb. The format even broke two new holiday songs at year’s end, thanks to Wham! and Band Aid.

When WLTW (Lite FM) New York launched that month, it was as a niche format between the ACs and WRFM, at a moment when Easy Listening was still very successful. With a focus on the soft ‘60s and ‘70s, WLTW further fragmented the AC stations that didn’t know whether to play more of the oldies that had made them successful a few years earlier or react to the sudden interest in new music.

On Tuesday, Lite FM celebrated its fortieth birthday with a station-best 14.3 share in the Nielsen Holiday PPM ratings. According to Ratings Expert Chris Huff, that was the highest share for any New York station since then-MOR WOR in 1970. In those forty years, AC has been through numerous cycles. At this moment, Top 40 is at its most challenged (although Z100 remains stronger than most). AC is enjoying a moment of dominance, challenged among music formats only by a resurgent Country radio. 

It’s worth remembering now that just a little over a decade ago, AC found itself stuck between the last dominant moment of Top 40 and the resurgence of Classic Hits. At that moment, AC was thought of as a format that could generate passion only during its 5-8 weeks of the all-Christmas format. Remember also that a few years earlier, WLTW had briefly been nudged into dropping the “Lite FM” name by the launch of WWFS (Fresh FM), the once-and-future WNEW, and the specter of a format that was “soft but contemporary.”

It’s also always fun to look at an hour of WLTW and look at the songs that would have once been definingly “what Lite FM doesn’t play.” “Don’t You Want Me,” the oldest song in an hour I monitored yesterday, eventually became the definition of “the song everybody likes,” but part of what made it a song that revitalized CHR in 1982 was that it sounded like little else, and that not everybody liked synths in popular music.

There are a lot of great radio stations contributing to AC’s dominance right now: KOST Los Angeles, WBEB (B101) Philadelphia, KOIT San Francisco, WMJX (Magic 106.7) Boston, CHFI Toronto, WMGQ (Magic 98.3) New Jersey, and Soft AC WLIT Chicago among them. If I write a lot about WLTW, it’s partially because I’m in their backyard. But I’m also fascinated by what Lite has done over the past 20 years to continually re-set the boundaries of AC. “Woman” by Doja Cat isn’t yet a song every AC plays, but seeing it do well for WLTW did anticipate the all-ages success of “Calm Down” and show the adult potential of the Afrobeats genre even among pop listeners.

The next stories waiting to be written about AC are going to involve how the format assimilates the CHR hits of the “throwback CHR” era. Many of those songs came to AC quickly during a period when Top 40 had particular sway with adult women. It will be interesting to see what else makes the transition. It will also be interesting to see how the rapid success of co-owned WMIA (Magic 93.9) Miami’s English-language gold-based AC with Spanish-language announcers plays out in other markets and what that means for the AC coalition.

There’s been a lot written in recent years about a generation of younger listeners that is less tethered to current hit music and more open to music that was “before their time.” Streaming and TikTok have gotten the publicity, but, really WLTW and its AC brethren deserve a lot of that credit, along with Classic Hits. For every two-week blip when an oddity like “Misty” by Leslie Gore floats onto our radar, the enduring all-ages songs have been AC mainstays: “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and “Never Gonna Give You Up.” 

Lite FM also serves as a reminder of radio’s strengths. AC’s period of self-doubt also coincided with the rise of Pandora and predictions that Mainstream AC would be the thing most easily replicated by listeners elsewhere. (Three years ago, we also wondered if AC would be challenged when there was less of a need for a traditional “at work” radio station.) So it’s worth pointing out that a music-intensive radio station playing ubiquitous songs with just enough companionship resonates so much with the people who still choose radio.

Here’s WLTW just before 11 a.m., January 24:

• Corey Hart, “Sunglasses at Night”
• Madonna, “Open Your Heart”
• Elton John, “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”
• Miley Cyrus, “Flowers”
• Michael Jackson, “The Way You Make Me Feel”
• Human League, “Don’t You Want Me”
• Justin Timberlake, “Sexyback”
• Heart, “These Dreams”
• Doja Cat, “Woman”
• Cher, “Believe”
• Avicii, “Wake Me Up”
• Fine Young Cannibals, “She Drives Me Crazy”
• Gwen Stefani, “Hollaback Girl”
• Fugees, “Killing Me Softly”