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Mike McVay , President, McVay Media
Mike McVay is founder and President of McVay Media, a full-service consultancy, serving Adult Contemporary, Country, CHR, Oldies, Rock, Sports, and News/Talk radio stations. McVay’s 35 years of broadcast experience include stints as an Owner, General Manager, Program Director, and Air Personality.
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There is confusion as to what this format should be called. We all like to call it “Oldies” because advertisers don’t like that name. Actually I should amend that statement to say, “Those who sell advertising don’t like the name.” We somehow embrace “Classic Hits” because that’s a more acceptable name in the advertising community than “Oldies.” The confusion for me comes in the form of the name itself. “Classic Hits” was its own format before “Oldies” stations started to use the format descriptor as a station name. This theft of a format name adds to the confusion of the format within our industry.
Classic Hits was originally designed as a format that was Soft-Classic Rock. The Eagles, The Doobie Brothers, Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mack, Elton John, Billy Joel, John Mellencamp, Genesis and Heart all came under the heading of “Classic Hits.” The music played on “Oldies” was the Beatles, Beach Boys, Supremes, Rolling Stones and genre music like the British invasion, Motown and American Rock. Today parts of both formats are blended into what is “Classic Hits.”
The conundrum for me is that listeners don’t refer to what we play as “Classic Hits.” Those stations who leave it off almost completely eliminated 60s and play almost no 70s find themselves still being referred to (by the audience) as “Oldies.” Syndicated air personality (Citadel
Media) Tom Kent owns the service mark on Classic Top 40. That name is more representative of what most “Oldies” stations do versus “Classic Hits.” I’ve not seen enough research to know that listeners will refer to the music we play as Classic Top 40, but I do know they understand the word “Classic” and they understand the word “Top 40” as well as understanding how the combination of those two names can mean the music that we play on “Oldies” stations.
There will be those of you who read this who will run screaming into the woods under the belief we should bring back the name “Oldies.” I am not saying we should. I am not saying we shouldn’t. I am saying we need to get over our hang-up with the word and ask the audience what they call the music we play … and then market that is what we play. That way those who want it will know where to find it. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, must be a duck!
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