First Listen: Ken Bruce’s Secret ’60s, Forgotten ’80s, and Smoother Stopsets

This column is known for its First Listens to new stations, especially those that play a deeper or older take on Classic Hits. It’s also known for harping relentlessly on the need for a better streaming experience. Bauer Media’s launch last week of Ken Bruce’s Secret ’60s side-channel, as well as Absolute Radio’s Forgotten ’80s, brings all those stories together.

Bruce debuted on Bauer’s national Greatest Hits Radio on April 3. (We reviewed his first day here.) A week ago, the UK’s’ RAJAR ratings showed great initial gains both for Greatest Hits and commercial radio overall, as well as losses for his former employer, BBC Radio 2. As a few analyses pointed out, it’s not quite an apples-to-apples comparison. But it was great news for Classic Hits on FM, a format that had barely existed in the UK until recently.

From the beginning, Bauer has been using Bruce’s hiring to promote the premium, commercial-free version of its streaming platform, which it launched two years ago. Secret ’60s and Forgotten ’80s are part of a hundred-station suite of side channels, in addition to the commercial-free feeds of Bauer’s broadcast stations and DAB side channels (many of them brand extensions as well). 

As you’d expect, Bruce has been allowed to spike a few older titles on Greatest Hits, which he has positioned as being snuck into the regular format. The station name came from a listener who ran with the gag. Five days after joining existing Greatest Hits side channels for the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, and Simon Mayo’s albums feature, Bauer’s Rob D’Ovidio says Secret ’60s is now the service’s No. 1 streaming station. Forgotten ‘80s is an extension of a show we’ve enjoyed several times this year, particularly during its 10th anniversary salute to each year of the decade.

A few weeks ago, as part of our discussion of AI at radio, I wrote about the troubles that radio had just managing the tech it had now — particularly automation and ad insertion. This week, we listened to an hour of the Greatest Hits Radio format as heard both over the air on the station’s Birmingham/West Midlands frequency and by premium subscribers. We also took First Listens to both Secret ’60s and Forgotten ’80s.

The commercial-free feeds are made possible with fill songs, same as American stations use. The side channels are comparable to the extensive suite of stations that other European broadcasters (and now American streaming platforms) offer. What stands out is the subscription angle — especially in the UK, where a viable DAB means that there are already extra choices for free — but also that a seamless experience isn’t as challenging as it is to broadcasters here.

In the U.S., the streaming stopset experience is complicated by the insertion of fill songs and commercial content that interrupts the regular feed, sometimes abruptly. Bauer premium subscribers are listening to a national feed that contains the fill songs. Jock breaks at the end of sweeps end with a station logo that then segues into the extra song. It was actually the Birmingham/West Midlands feed where I heard that logo cut off slightly by the local ads (on one ad break, out of the four I heard.) 

The most-recent column on streaming’s travails in America was prompted by the major-market station where I heard the same two fill songs three times over the course of an hour. That week, two different readers e-mailed to let me know that one major broadcaster was taking steps to address the fill-songs issue, rather than relying on a random server. Bauer has staffers whose jobs are the interstitial content, meaning that Greatest Hits Radio essentially has its own music director for fill songs.  

Here’s what listeners to the commercial free Greatest Hits Feed heard, with notes on how it differed for listeners to the Birmingham/West Midlands feed, starting immediately after the 9 p.m. news on August 7 during the last hour of Jackie Brambles’s show:

• Bangles, “Manic Monday” — the first of a “five massive anthems in a row” feature
• Philip Bailey & Phil Collins, “Easy Lover”
• Queen, “We Are the Champions” — played as a standalone
• David Bowie, “Heroes”
• Whitney Houston, “How Will I Know” — followed by a jock break and station jingle into …
• Patrice Rushen, “Forget Me Nots” vs. a four-minute commercial break on the over-the-air feed
• Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Star”
• R.E.M., “Shiny Happy People”
• Gary Moore, “Parisienne Walkways” — tonight’s “Musical Me Time” song: Listeners share wellness stories followed by a song. Other listeners were encouraged to send positive thoughts. Referring to the station’s growing cume, Brambles notes that there are 900,000 listeners available to help. Another jingle into …
• Aretha Franklin, “Who’s Zoomin’ Who” vs. five minutes of spots over-the-air
• Bill Withers, “Lovely Day”
• Paul Simon, “You Can Call Me Al”
• Mud, “Oh Boy” — Sweet-like glam remake of the Buddy Holly hit by the band that became one of producers Mike Chapman & Nicky Chinn’s main hitmakers after the team parted ways with the Sweet. The hour’s outlier, it was a request for a listener’s anniversary. (The Mud 8-track was the only one the couple owned starting out, the wife recalled.)
• Bobby Brown, “Every Little Step” — vs. 3:30 of spots OTA leading to the news.

The Premium side channels allow listeners to skip songs, but they are produced enough to make them more of a radio experience than a straight playlist. (In some cases, the station sweepers are over the intros.) No channel features an on-air DJ in real time, although some are more hosted than others, such as a Def Leppard channel featuring Joe Elliott that will launch next week. 

Bruce appears on his side channel through sweepers such as the one where he tells listeners, “I’m Ben Kruce. If you think you recognize this voice, you’re very mistaken. Keep our ’60s secret.” Here’s Ken Bruce’s Secret ’60s as monitored August 6:

• Johnny Kidd & Pirates, “I’ll Never Get Over You”
• Robert Knight, “Love on a Mountaintop”
• Beach Boys, “I Can Hear Music”
• Zombies, “She’s Not There”
• Foundations, “Build Me Up Buttercup”
• Fleetwood Mac, “Man of the World” — the early lineup’s languid blues hit
• Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, “The Onion Song” — a bigger hit in the UK; with Terrell ailing, the female vocal is generally believed to be Valerie Simpson
• Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, “Hold Tight” — maniacal UK rocker that had, oddly enough, also come up on a Spotify playlist with deeper oldies that day
• Frank Sinatra, “My Way”
• Beatles, “Hey Jude”
• Cher, “Bang Bang”
• Fifth Dimension, “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” — had been on the same Spotify playlist
• Tommy James & Shondells, “Mony Mony”
• Elvis Presley, “The Girl of My Best Friend”
• Simon & Garfunkel, “The Boxer”

Here’s Absolute Radio’s Forgotten ’80s on August 7. (One of the sweepers here promises “only happy comforting moments of rose-tinted youth.”) As with hearing the live Sunday night show that spawned it, not all of these songs are “forgotten” by North American audiences. Rudd’s yearly spotlights were one of my favorite things I’ve heard this year, and the Sunday night show is still worth a listen as well.

• Monsoon, “Ever So Lonely”
• Christopher Cross, “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)”
• Limahl, “The Never Ending Story”
• Bryan Adams, “Cuts Like a Knife”
• Will To Power, “Baby I Love Your Way/Free Bird”
• Bow Wow Wow, “I Want Candy”
• a-Ha, “You Are the One”
• Generation X, “Dancing with Myself” — slightly different from the Billy Idol version heard here
• Lipps Inc., “Funkytown”
• Human League, “Being Boiled”
• REO Speedwagon, “Take It on the Run”
• Heart, “What About Love”
• Kirsty MacColl, “There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis”
• Marillion, “Incommunicado”
• Roxy Music, “Avalon”
• ABC, “Tears Are Not Enough”
• Bruce Springsteen, “I’m on Fire”

I didn’t write about the Bauer premium service when it launched two years ago. It was covered by Fred Jacobs and others; Jacobs moderated a panel on it at Canadian Music Week last summer. I came back to the story at the suggestion of Bauer’s Dan Wright after the recent AI/UX column, even before the new channels were announced. Bauer doesn’t give a subscriber count, but it’s telling that Premium remains a priority two years later and can hire people to oversee content.

Beyond that, I didn’t find UK streaming radio difficult to listen to; as heard from here, the spots were novel, not noxious, even with 12:30 worth of ads (plus news) in the hour I heard. What was obnoxious was the notion of U.S. radio upcharging just for making the streaming experience bearable. At this moment, radio is imaged heavily on “no subscription fees.” I support that, but having a hundred extra choices plus a better main station feed is something that would make that a more viable option against satellite radio or streaming services that will come to sound more like broadcast radio with time. 

U.S. stations that play ’60s/early ’70s are already some of streaming’s most popular (and ROR readers’ favorites). For a while, rather than try to leverage that success into a more robust streaming product with national sales, some owners were actually geoblocking them. The success of Ken Bruce and his side channel is again a reminder of radio’s power. The simple change that makes the Bauer streams better at fill-song time — making them the primary feed — is a reminder that one of our biggest obstacles is fixable.