[Othniel]

The problem with a lot of oldies stations is that they play the same blasted playlist all the time, the same 300 or so songs that were "hits." They don't mine the albums or play the B-sides, so people get tired of the same old stuff. One of my favorite stations as a younger man was one that played cuts from the albums the hits appeared on. It was great. Sometimes they played the hits, but often the non-hits were better than the "hits."

One station in the Seattle area played nothing but 70's music. That included disco, rock, beginnings of punk, what country they had back then....an incredible mix. You could listen for a week and never hear the same song twice. Great stuff.

[nuconvert]

"The problem with a lot of oldies stations is that they play the same blasted playlist all the time"

Yup. I find that too.

[My Favorite Headache]

It is auditorium testing,not the radio station's fault. They bring in about 1,500 people and play them 10-20 second samples of songs and people vote on them for a few hours and are paid like 20 bucks for their time.

Whatever the results are of the tests the radio station sets their playlist accordingly. That means deeper cuts ala AOR Rock radio are not going to be picked because instead of radio giving a chance to rock artists they just play it safe and play the hits that the idiotic public chooses...

"oh yeah man i love black dog from zep..im votin for that...oh yeah i love more than a feeling from boston...im votin for that" so when they throw in a mix of songs and people do not recognize the song,they don't vote for it because they have either forgotten what that song was or only have 10-20 seconds to decide.

[Taft in '52]

My favorite radio station for rock and roll music is XESUR, a border blaster out of Rosarita Beach, BCN, at 540 kilocycles on the AM dial. This station has a rich repertoire of music that includes not only hits, but obscurities as "Wicked Ruby," by Tony Zella (1958), an up-tempo rocker by an obscure Detroit artist that I had never heard before. Its signal can be heard throughout much of Southern California.

[MitchellC]

The problem with a lot of oldies stations is that they play the same blasted playlist all the time, the same 300 or so songs that were "hits."

Yup. Same with the Oldies station that was here until recently, except they didn't even play half the hits. I didn't realize 'Something' and 'Come Together' were Beatles songs until a few years ago, and this is after two decades of listening to this station (thanks to my parents) !

And imagine my surprise when I discovered Joe Cocker didn't write 'With A Little Help From My Friends'... :)