More Thoughts on the State of Oldies Radio Stations

This is a continuation from a previous post a couple months ago.  In that previous post, I mused about the state of oldies radio stations and classic rock radio stations.  I had been a fan of both in my youth (in the 1980s and 1990s), but had also left touch with both after having been abroad for the past 24 years.  Now that I'm back, I'm pleasantly surprised to find they are both still around, but a bit frustrated to find that the range of oldies songs on the radio has drastically decreased.  I feel like I keep hearing the same 10 songs over and over again now.

The other week, I was meeting up with some of my old friends, and I mentioned this.  "That's not new," one of my friends said.  "Radio has always been like that."

Well, maybe the top billboard radio stations were always like that.  But oldies stations use to play a wide range of songs.

I had it in mind to put together a blog post describing some of the songs I used to hear on oldies radio stations back in the day, but I never hear anymore.  And then, quite by chance, I came across this Youtube video, which is a perfect list of songs, most of which have disappeared from the radio.

EVERY BILLBOARD #1 HIT (1960 - 1969) WITH VIDEO

Now, not all of these seem to have disappeared from oldies radio. I still hear Born to be Wild  and I'm a Believer on the radio a lot.  But when was the last time you heard Ode to Billy Joe or Incense and Peppermints playing on the radio?  Those songs are gone, right?

[Right?  It's not just me, right?  Let me know what the oldies stations are like in your area, if you're reading this.]

At one time I thought that oldies songs were gradually dying off in a temporal order.  As the baby boomers aged, and stopped listeing to the radio, first songs from the 1950s would be the first to go.  Then songs from the early 1960s would be next.  Then the mid-1960s.  Et cetera.

But, based on my own listening experience, that doesn't seem to be what has happened.  There are some songs from the 1950s and early 1960s still on the radio.  I still hear Shout and Stand By Me frequently on the radio, for example.

So what's going on?
In the previous post, I had written:

Radio in America has of course changed since I've been gone.  Although not as much as I thought it had.  I had been under the impression that oldies radio stations were permanently gone from the cultural landscape, but oldies and classic rock stations are actually still around.

...but actually, I now think I was right the first time.  Oldies radio stations are dead--at least as we knew them in the 1980s and 1990s.  Back then, oldies radio stations were catering to people who actually remembered when all those songs had first been big hits.
Now, oldies radio stations are no longer catering to people who could remember the 1950s and 1960s.  They're catering to people of my generation (and younger) who know some of these songs from movies and pop culture.  So a song like the aforementioned Ode to Billy Joe (which would never get included on a modern movie soundtrack) is obvious out, while a song like Born to be Wild is still playable.

That's my current theory, anyway.

Well, if these songs are becoming forgotten, I suppose that's all the more reason to discuss them on this blog.  So, in my Music Reviews project, I may be discussing a lot of these old songs on this blog.
No promises, of course.  But if I can find the time, there are a lot of old songs that I never hear on the radio anymore which I would love to talk about.