As RadioInsight’s Lance Venta and I were circling in on how to classify KYMT (Neon 93.1) Las Vegas during its first hour, he correctly noted that it was reminiscent of iHeart’s Gen-X stations, which tried to combine ’90s rock and pop in a way that hit radio could not in that era. I first noticed the amount of 2K music and thought of Neon first as “throwback CHR with Adult Hits values.” Then I heard the attitude liners and emphasis on variety and decided on “next-gen Bob- or Jack-FM,” which had, of course, been the intent of Gen-X Radio in the first place.
Since the launch of the Adult Hits format nearly 25 years ago, programmers have been looking for to do the next-gen version. Neon is definitely that. It happens to arrive at a slightly different time in radio when most oldies are not exactly songs you haven’t heard in a while.
Neon 93.1 is a good-sounding radio station under SVP/programming Mojoe Roberts. I could have also described it as along the lines of iHeart’s KZIS (Kiss 107.9) Sacramento, Calif., but that station has become more current. Because the music cuts off at 2022, Neon 93.1 not really “throwback CHR” in the WAKS (Kiss 96.1) Cleveland or WBBM-FM (B96) Chicago sense, and those stations are really more CHR with gold spots (but lower rotations on currents). It plays throwback R&B Hip-Hop, but there’s already a full-fledged outlet for that in the market in rival KXQQ (Q100).
But it’s really not necessary to home in on an exact description, because so many stations in nominally different formats have ended up in the same neighborhood. It was summer 2020 when I declared “The Next Oldies Format Is CHR,” in response to stations’ throwback weekends. We know now that’s not a panacea for Top 40 — probably one of the reasons that Neon decided to park where it did, despite some CHR rumors beforehand. And I’ve enjoyed the throwbacks more than I would have if they were taking up space for a current.
But regardless of whether they image around it, gold remains a major part of most CHR stations, including some like KMVQ (Now 99.7) San Francisco or 2Day FM Sydney, that are aggressive on new music as well. Some stations stage their throwbacks; some just let them happen. In a 12-to-34 format driven to 25-54 by available audience, nobody really feels any need not to play “Low” or “Super Bass.” I’ve always liked hearing gold on CHR — it was part of a station’s creativity — but I still worry about creating the next oldies during a new-music shortage like this one.
Adult CHRs have become more gold-based as well. Mainstream AC has effectively stopped playing currents. WTWV (The Wave) Norfolk, Va., which segued to “Yacht Rock” this week, was, like its counterparts, mostly recurrent in its most-played titles, but differed a little in playing Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” before Christmas or Sarah McLachlan’s “Better Broken,” an AC-only title, all day, not just in overnights. You can’t begrudge a 2.3-share radio station the right to a better life in a new format, but the AC chart will feel its absence.
There’s also been a funhouse mirror added to the yesterday/today distinction in a post-“Running Up That Hill” world. It has been encouraging over the last few years that there hasn’t been the same label eagerness to exhume records with the slightest social media or other provocation. That meant CHR didn’t end up playing a 60+-year-old Connie Francis album cut. But we are seeing “End of Beginning” as an effective current again — a song that became a hit at two years old and got another surge two years later. And somebody reading this probably feels CHR missed the “Pretty Little Baby” moment.
The difference between “then” and “now” is being blurred from the other end, too, as Classic Hits stations push past the ’90s into the mid- and late ’00s. Classic Hits stations that will test “California Love” or “Lose Yourself” are having to make decisions about songs that are playing on some CHRs, and certainly playing on a station like Neon. (For its part, Neon reserves the right to throw in “Sweet Dreams [Are Made of This]” or “Sweet Child o’Mine,” even though the center of the station is much newer.)
The blurring of the lines goes back further in the timeline as well. The Soft AC boom of the late ’90s splintered into an ’80s-to-now version and an “older oldies that still plays the ’60s and lost ’70s” version. But I’ve written about a half-dozen stations that are all in the same place recently, some actually imaged as “yacht rock” and some just effectively living there. (Then we can add the disagreements about whether “yacht rock” includes Rupert Holmes.) And that includes a Soft AC vs. Yacht Rock battle that launched a week ago.
Bob- and Jack-FM started this. They made the decision at the outset to include a few then-recent songs from the late ’90s/early ’00s in their mostly ’70s/’80s mix to avoid being pigeonholed as an Oldies station. In doing so, they were reminiscent of the gold-based AC stations of the early ’80s that led the format’s slow evolution away from currents. The next-gen Adult Hits of Neon aren’t as current as some current gold-based ACs, but cutting off at three years ago is pretty much what the first Adult Hits stations did.
One of the reasons I landed on “Adult Hits” and not “Throwback CHR” for Neon is that it plays ’90s and ’00s Alternative together with the pop stuff in a way that the gold-based CHRs mostly do not. Having to play Nirvana and Notorious B.I.G. at a time when Real McCoy did not yet test was a challenge to Gen X Radio and the other early-’90s stations. It’s less of an issue now, both because even some Classic Hits stations play those songs together, but also because kids of the ’00s did hear Trapt and Usher together on CHR.
Here’s Neon at 2 p.m., February 9:
- 311, “Amber”
- Blackstreet, “No Diggity”
- Britney Spears, “Oops … I Did It Again”
- B.o.B. f/Hayley Williams, “Airplanes”
- Gorillaz, “Clint Eastwood”
- Lady Gaga, “Poker Face”
- No Doubt, “Spiderwebs”
- Empire of the Sun, “Walking on a Dream” — staged with a sweeper that declares “if this sounds unplanned, it’s because it is”
- Chamillionaire, “Ridin’”
- Goo Goo Dolls, “Iris”
- Alice In Chains, “Man in the Box”
- Black Eyed Peas, “Where Is the Love?”
- Notorious B.I.G., “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems”
- Killers, “All These Things That I’ve Done”
