The first thing to know about “playing everything” is that you probably are not. For the past 25 years, the contract between Adult Hits stations and their audience has been that “everything” really means a wide stylistic range of big, mostly enduring hits from the late ’70s forward. Adult Hits draws from the reliable titles of Classic Hits, Classic Rock, and Mainstream AC, but it mostly plays songs that do well in music research, especially in the PPM era.
Even those parameters require a steady hand at the music scheduler. KBPA (Bob 103.5) Austin’s timeframe stretches from the Beatles (albeit “Twist and Shout”) to “Blinding Lights.” WARH (The Arch) St. Louis ranges from “Twist and Shout” to “Levitating,” effectively a year newer.
As with “Twist and Shout,” both a ’60s and an ’80s oldie, WRRK (96.9 Bob FM) Pittsburgh isn’t exactly going back to 1962 with “Do You Love Me” by the Contours, but it too plays “Levitating,” and can spike in songs that do not test like “(Can’t Live Without Your) Love & Affection” by Nelson or “Living After Midnight” by Judas Priest on the way.
When Adult Hits KKHH (The Spot) Houston went all-Sports, AM/translator combo KJOZ (X106.1) launched a broad version of the format that some commenters thought was too wide and deep. In subsequent weeks, the music has coalesced to more of what Spot listeners were used to. Full-service AC KINY Juneau, Alaska has just retooled and is now running a ’70s-through-today mix. It isn’t deeper than typical Adult Hits outlets, but the AC lean makes it a different universe of songs.
I’ve taken a First Listen to X106.1 and KINY, as well as catching up with online outlet Music Through the Tunnel of Time, which goes beyond the usual adult-hits parameters. You can see those here. My own thoughts on playing “everything” begin with:
You can schedule anything you want to take responsibility for. With wider variety comes more work on a segue-to-segue basis. It’s my unlikeliest analogy yet, but long and short playlists are really like choosing between long and short hair. It depends on the statement you want to make and the time you want to spend on upkeep. “Playing the hits” will always be easier; sometimes a fade gets boring, particularly when everybody else has it.
The target audience matters. Audience taste is more un-siloed than ever, but frame of reference is still an issue, and even the Classic Hits target doesn’t remember much before the late ’80s. As with the Beatles and Contours, syncs and streaming have put an occasional “Fortunate Son” or “Running Up That Hill” back on the radio. For the most part, depth is for the listeners who were there at the time.
If you’re going to go deep, do it in one place. Most depth loses somebody who didn’t grow up with the music. If you’ve built trust, you have a better chance of a 38-year-old deciding that “Living After Midnight” or “Sausalito Summernight (a signature “oh wow” for Adult Hits in its early days) is fun also. If you still believe that ’80s is your center lane and your calling card for younger listeners, that seems like the best place to dig.
“Oh wow” and depth are not always the same thing. With the passage of time, there are still plenty of ’80s titles that are fading with the overall audience but remain perceived hits. “Walk of Life” by Dire Straits doesn’t test as well as younger listeners move into the Classic Hits demo, but they’ll probably know what it is. Similarly, most of those stations now specializing in the ’60s and ’70s are relying heavily on “Build Me Up Buttercup” or “Evil Woman,” once the least “oh wow” of titles, but now long gone from other formats.
Tempo is an equalizer. When I scheduled an all-’90s format, I was comfortable with “Ghetto Supastar” next to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Both up, both hot, both party songs. It wasn’t any different to me than “Billie Jean” into “You Give Love a Bad Name.” But not everybody at the station heard it that way. “When I deejay, those songs are two separate sets,” said one staffer about clubs and parties. I also can’t deny the power of “Under the Bridge” and “Iris,” even though they sound abrupt coming out of anything.
Currents complicate things. In the early days of the format, Adult Hits stations generally played a recurrent or two just to reinforce the “everything” promise, but not enough to be confused with an AC format that still plays currents. Now, a gold-based station that tried to play true currents would be newer than its Mainstream AC rivals. I also know of a broad gold-based AC that has done better since dropping “Levitating” and other 2020+ titles; it sounded okay, but it also prompted the “I can hear that anywhere” complaints.
The ’60s really complicate things, especially the early ’60s. This tends to be an issue more for that sub-group of stations that I’ve dubbed “Double-Wides,” the stations that go closer to “play everything” than most. The place where those stations usually lose me is the early/pre-Beatles ’60s or before. I think I could still make “Be My Baby” work for a generation that knows it through Dirty Dancing. Occasionally, I come across a particularly broad Oldies station playing something like “Teenage Idol” by Rick Nelson and wonder why they bother.
Staging helps. When a broad gold-based station goes either older or newer, particularly with currents, it helps to explain why a song is there. That’s not easily done for an unhosted Adult Hits outlet. There are two other tricks I particularly like, both of them learned from the R&B Oldies format. Steve Crumbley’s WFOG (Soul Classics 92.9) Norfolk, Va. (now WTWV), used to put all its ’60s titles in one bottom-of-the-hour triple-play. The late Bobby O’Jay’s WDIA Memphis went from ’60s to (then-) currents in the ’90s by starting a sweep with its oldest songs and working forward to the newest. No segue ever sounded abrupt.
Finally, “everything” sounds better with a (point of) view. One of the problems with variety formats, especially the broadest ones, is that they can easily become your own personal playlist. You understand what “Teenage Idol” is doing there. I don’t. I sometimes hear a broad-playlisted “Oldies XL” station play four songs that I like, and then four that I don’t (but aren’t consensus hits either.) My through line for pre-Beatles through today would be “still at least a little hip” now, but that also requires finding an audience that considers the same things hip. That makes it easier to not go deep.
