I did feel old though when I heard Motley Crue, Metallica, Guns N Roses, and the Black Crowes(90s) on the classic rock stations.
It's fine by me.
Yeah. It's true that bands that had a long past (as well as 80s material like Nugent, Petty, the Stones and Van Halen) did get played on Classic Rock stations. But like you said, it was when 80s acts started to get played on Classic rock stations that I kept thinking to myself "Hey, this isn't 'classic rock' yet, is it?". That was a bit of a head trip for me.
Speaking of the Classic Rock format, remember in the 80s when stations in that format would actually play old and new music from those artists? Whatever happened to that? Nowadays, they will play old Zeppelin or solo Plant but won't play new solo Robert Plant. The same goes with most other classic rock artists. Their new music doesn't get played along with their older stuff. I noticed this phenomenon in the last 5 years or so.
In Detroit back in the 80s, our classics station WCSX had a slogan "It doesn't gotta be old to be a classic", and they would play and old/new block of an artist. That was great. You really got a feel for what their career meant musically. They would also have old/new 'twofers'. I miss that. There is not realy format for the classic rock artists to release new music to radio. (unless you have satellite radio like I do)