Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom. During the 1950s and 1960s, pop music encompassed rock and roll and the youth-oriented styles it influenced. Rock and pop music remained roughly synonymous until the late 1960s, after which pop became associated with music that was more commercial, ephemeral , and accessible.
125-409: Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music , rock and roll , doo-wop , surf music , broadly characterized as classic rock and pop rock , from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as well as for a radio format playing this music. Since 2000, 1970s music has been increasingly included in this genre. " Classic hits " have been seen as
250-495: A cable news format as NewsNation in March 2021. A channel may rebrand itself to more accurately reflect its new content. Sci-Fi Channel changed its name to Syfy for both trademark reasons and to allow a stretching of the network's definition of appropriate programming to include content such as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit reruns and WWE professional wrestling. (WWE moved to USA Network in 2016.) Another example
375-473: A chorus that contrasts melodically, rhythmically and harmonically with the verse . The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment. The lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions. Harmony and chord progressions in pop music are often "that of classical European tonality , only more simple-minded." Clichés include
500-500: A merger of Sirius and XM, the two services shifted to a unified group of decades channels, with the playlists for most cut back to reflect a more conventional style of Oldies programming. SiriusXM further marginalized its Oldies stations over the years, moving its 1940s channel off channel 4 in 2015, then in 2021 by moving its 1950s and 1960s channels out of their 5 and 6 channel slots respectively. Music Choice similarly offers an interruption-free Oldies station, which includes music from
625-520: A channel prone to frequent format changes over the course of its history, began as a network targeting rural middle America; parent company Discovery Communications ' purchase of the former Scripps cable networks brought it under the same corporate umbrella as Great American Country , and thus Destination America began adding professional wrestling (briefly) and paranormal ghost-hunting programs to its schedule. Both GAC and Destination America were candidates to be reformatted entirely in 2019 to make way for
750-640: A digital subchannel network in 2019. Other examples include the drifting of The Learning Channel , which has officially renamed itself under the three-letter orphan initialism "TLC" since its transition to primarily reality television series, and that of most of the MTV Networks . MTV Networks were a pioneer in channel drift. Music Television (as MTV was originally known) was originally devoted to popular music videos upon its launch in August 1981, but began adding reality programs and other entertainment geared toward
875-558: A dozen Oldies radio channels, with XM offering separate stations for each decade from the 1940s to the 1990s, and Sirius doing the same for the 1950s through the 1980s, initially all in prime single-digit channel positions. These companies also offered specific genre channels for disco and dance hits, garage rock , classic rock , classic country , and vintage R&B and soul hits. These pay radio channels boasted thousands of songs in their libraries, ensuring far less repetition than traditional broadcast stations. In November 2008, following
1000-724: A few FM stations adopted top 40 formats that leaned towards adults who did not want to hear the same 30 songs repetitively but also did not want to hear music featured on Middle of the road radio stations. They mixed in Oldies with their current product and only played new music a few times an hour. These radio stations were often referred to as "gold" stations. Some AM radio stations also began to employ this format. There were also syndicated music format packages such as Drake-Chenault 's "Solid Gold" format, frequently used on FM stations that needed separate programming from their AM sisters (due to then-new FCC rules on simulcasting ), that functioned as
1125-502: A heavily male-oriented program lineup known as Spike , only to drift back toward general entertainment in 2015 and become the Paramount Network in 2018. While Nickelodeon has largely remained a children's-oriented channel throughout its history, its late-night Nick at Nite programming block (which for Nielsen ratings purposes is a separate channel from Nickelodeon) has drifted greatly from airing classic television (first from
1250-757: A hybrid of Oldies and the adult-oriented softer rock hits of the day. The popularity of the movie American Graffiti is often credited with helping to spur the 1950s nostalgia movement of the early 1970s. It is this movement that gave rise to a number of gold-based stations, such as WHND / WHNE (Honey Radio) in Detroit , WCBS-FM in New York City , WQSR in Baltimore , and WROR in Boston , that were classified as Oldies stations and not adult top 40 . These stations, did play current product sparingly (one or two per hour) throughout
1375-719: A la Are You Being Served? , Monty Python's Flying Circus ). This amounted to exchanging what is termed as "high-brow" material for a more "middle-brow" approach to programming, while avoiding conspicuously mass-appeal formats such as adult-oriented game shows, action-oriented crime dramas, sensationalistic news magazines, and celebrity-driven talk shows. By the 1990s and 2000s, pledge drives became mainly reliant on fare such as TJ Lubinsky 's nostalgic music specials (which themselves focus on oldies and adult standards music largely abandoned by commercial outlets) and self-help seminars of often questionable integrity (the latter were in fact not officially sanctioned by PBS and even rebuked by
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#17328556785901500-399: A light entertainment and easy listening tradition. Pop music is more conservative than other music genres such as folk, blues, country, and tradition. Many pop songs do not contain themes of resistance, opposition, or politics, rather focusing more on love and relationships. Therefore, pop music does not challenge its audiences socially, and does not cause political activism. Frith also said
1625-454: A male-skewing reality-focused channel under the OLN name, then rebranding as a new version of Bravo , based on the current version of the U.S. channel of that name (now a reality channel targeting women), in 2024. The South African Broadcasting Corporation originally had its 3 main channels dedicated to specific ethnic groups and their home languages. SABC 1 primarily broadcasts shows that target
1750-407: A music researcher, states pop music as any type of music that a person has been exposed to by the mass media. Most individuals think that pop music is just the singles charts and not the sum of all chart music. The music charts contain songs from a variety of sources, including classical , jazz , rock , and novelty songs . As a genre, pop music is seen to exist and develop separately. Therefore,
1875-482: A network's owner purchasing a competing channel and drifting one or both channels' formats to avoid overlapping. The aforementioned TNN was one example of this, as its Southern culture programming overlapped extensively with CMT's. ABC Family was also an example as The Walt Disney Company 's 2001 purchase of the channel from News Corporation dramatically reduced its carriage of children's programming in order to avoid redundancy with Disney Channel. Destination America ,
2000-498: A pop song is to them, songs from the 1960s turned out to be the most memorable, significantly more than songs from recent years 2000 to 2015. Before the progressive pop of the late 1960s, performers were typically unable to decide on the artistic content of their music. Assisted by the mid-1960s economic boom, record labels began investing in artists, giving them the freedom to experiment, and offering them limited control over their content and marketing. This situation declined after
2125-456: A sense of noblesse oblige to their communities and the country at large (in later years, these grants were targeted more toward certain genres, raising suspicions by critics that they constituted de facto commercial advertising). This generated another large source of revenue. Some stations went so far as to stage week-long "auctions" of merchandise or services donated by retailers and other businesses, to which viewers placed "bids," from which
2250-455: A separation which was "also, broadly, one between boys and girls, middle-class and working-class." The latter half of the 20th century included a large-scale trend in American culture in which the boundaries between art and pop music were increasingly blurred. Between 1950 and 1970, there was a debate of pop versus art. Since then, certain music publications have embraced the music's legitimacy,
2375-427: A shift away from its previous "blue sky" direction for its drama slate. In some countries, cable television channels are subject to the rules and regulations set forth by each country's communications bureau and must be licensed accordingly. In Canada, specialty television channels were initially subject to conditions of license requiring them to operate within quotas of specific categories of programs. This system
2500-465: A shift from informative or artistic quality programming aimed at cultured and educated viewers toward sensational, ratings-based or reality-formatted programming designed solely for the entertainment of a mass audience. Channel drift frequently features the incorporation of infotainment , reality television and heavy advertising into the channel's lineup. Networks primarily focused on a particular topic, such as History Channel , tend to add shows that
2625-449: A similar carriage dispute with DirecTV , who dropped the channel by citing its carriage fees, and complaints from viewers over the amount of reality programming it had carried. DirecTV added a competing channel, WeatherNation TV , as an alternative. TWC reached a new carriage agreement with DirecTV on 8 April 2014, with the network agreeing to reduce the amount of reality programming it carries on weekdays. The former Family Channel
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#17328556785902750-504: A standard disclaimer before each broadcast of The 700 Club in which The Walt Disney Company disowns any connection to the show. Disney further denied the "Family" stipulation existed in late 2015 when it announced plans to rename the channel " Freeform " in January 2016. In February 2009, Disney XD was originally launched as a boy-oriented TV channel, with the parent channel's shows aimed mostly at girls aged 13 – 16. Four years later, after
2875-428: A successor to the oldies format on the radio, with music from the 1980s serving as the core example. This category includes styles as diverse as doo-wop , early rock and roll , novelty songs , bubblegum music , folk rock , psychedelic rock , baroque pop , surf music , soul music , rhythm and blues , classic rock , some blues , and some country music . Golden Oldies usually refers to music exclusively from
3000-416: A tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments ; and seeks to encourage dancing or uses dance-oriented rhythms. The main medium of pop music is the song, often between two and a half and three and a half minutes in length, generally marked by a consistent and noticeable rhythmic element , a mainstream style and a simple traditional structure . The structure of many popular songs
3125-472: A thriving pop music industry, most of which is devoted to Western-style pop. Japan has for several years produced a greater quantity of music than everywhere except the US. The spread of Western-style pop music has been interpreted variously as representing processes of Americanization, homogenization , modernization, creative appropriation, cultural imperialism , or a more general process of globalization . One of
3250-483: A trend referred to as " poptimism ". Throughout its development, pop music has absorbed influences from other genres of popular music. Early pop music drew on traditional pop , an American counterpart to German Schlager and French Chanson , however compared to the pop of European countries, traditional pop originally emphasized influences ranging from Tin Pan Alley songwriting, Broadway theatre , and show tunes . As
3375-465: A young adult audience in the 1990s, gradually beginning a progression toward its current focus of reality and scripted programming. The music videos on the main channel were eventually limited to overnight and morning time periods, and were eventually pushed to spinoff networks MTV2 , then to MTV Hits . MTV2 itself gradually drifted from an all-music video format to include reruns of MTV programs, original series, and acquired off-network sitcoms; MTV Hits
3500-425: Is all the collective clubs around the world. Radio is just doing its best to keep up." Songs that talked of escapism through partying became the most popular, influenced by the impulse to forget the economic troubles that had taken over the world after the 2008 crash . Throughout the 2010s, a lot of pop music also began to take cues from Alternative pop . Popularized by artists such as Lana Del Rey and Lorde in
3625-503: Is becoming increasingly rare on radio. Of the 1000 most played songs on radio as of May 2020, only four of them are from before 1970, and three of them also benefit from being aired on classic rock stations, Oldies, and classic hits. Of the 100 songs that suffered the most drop-off in popularity from their heyday to 2022, a majority were from the 1960s; 56% were from before the British Invasion and another 13% were from then to 1969. This
3750-451: Is despite a small pantheon of songs from that era that have become part of an "eternal jukebox of all-ages event records," as well as parents and grandparents who had listened to the music when they were younger passing those songs on to their children; in the latter case, the older songs popular among the younger crowd can be more random, driven by exposure in television, film, commercials and person-to-person. The Oldies format remains one of
3875-652: Is essentially conservative". It is, "provided from on high (by record companies, radio programmers, and concert promoters) rather than being made from below (...) Pop is not a do-it-yourself music but is professionally produced and packaged". According to Frith, characteristics of pop music include an aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-culture or ideology, and an emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal "artistic" qualities. Besides, Frith also offers three identifying characteristics of pop music: light entertainment, commercial imperatives, and personal identification. Pop music grew out of
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4000-542: Is fairly common, but would have been much more disruptive to one of the most widely distributed channels on cable). Nonetheless, under the ABC Family brand, the channel drifted from its strictly family-friendly format under Disney ownership; the channel gradually dropped series aimed at children from its schedule and incorporated programs aimed at young adults featuring profanity , some violence, and some sexual content, alongside its family-oriented series and films, and now airs
4125-514: Is funded entirely by an endowment from the estate of its founder and is not dependent whatsoever on private donations or government funding, unlike the PBS system. Second, serious, civil public affairs programming is frequently found on the C-SPAN networks, non-profit public services provided by cable companies and paid for by a portion of each customer's monthly bill. This supplements PBS news programming such as
4250-421: Is known for the near-total and sometimes arbitrary exclusion of some acts that were very popular in their time, including The Osmonds and Barbra Streisand . A variation on the Oldies theme is classic hits, which provides most of the playlist of Oldies with some classic rock with an addition of contemporaneous R&B and pop hits as well, creating a balance between the mostly 1970s-focused classic rock genre and
4375-583: Is largely the story of the intertwining pop culture of the United States and the United Kingdom in the postwar era. — Bob Stanley According to Grove Music Online , "Western-derived pop styles, whether coexisting with or marginalizing distinctively local genres, have spread throughout the world and have come to constitute stylistic common denominators in global commercial music cultures". Some non-Western countries, such as Japan, have developed
4500-462: Is most in line with the tastes and interests of the urban middle class." The term "pop song" was first used in 1926, in the sense of a piece of music "having popular appeal". Hatch and Millward indicate that many events in the history of recording in the 1920s can be seen as the birth of the modern pop music industry, including in country , blues , and hillbilly music . According to the website of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ,
4625-434: Is one of the few known instances in which the amount of channel drift allowed was limited to some degree. Launching as religious network CBN Satellite Service (a cable extension of televangelist Pat Robertson 's Christian Broadcasting Network ) in 1977, it later incorporated family-oriented secular programs by 1984, which became the channel's dominant form of programming for nearly two decades. In 1990, CBN agreed to spin off
4750-500: Is similar to the way Oldies stations sounded several years back, still playing one or two pre-1964 songs an hour during the day and as many as four an hour at night. However, to illustrate the continued decline in the format, San Francisco 's KFRC moved toward Classic Hits in 2005 and dropped this format entirely in 2006 in favor of the Rhythmic AC " MOViN " format, which left most of Northern California without an oldies station until
4875-430: Is that of a verse and a chorus, the chorus serving as the portion of the track that is designed to stick in the ear through simple repetition both musically and lyrically. The chorus is often where the music builds towards and is often preceded by "the drop" where the bass and drum parts "drop out". Common variants include the verse-chorus form and the thirty-two-bar form , with a focus on melodies and catchy hooks , and
5000-515: Is the case of the Fox Broadcasting Company . Throughout its early existence, and even after its ascent to major network status , Fox had a reputation for lowbrow, alternative programming and knockoffs of other networks' hit shows, both aimed at a very young demographic. Beginning with the major success of American Idol in the early 2000s, Fox drifted away somewhat from this reputation; its dramas and sitcoms became more conventional, on
5125-532: Is the conversion of Court TV to truTV , which allowed it to show more reality-based programming (though initially retaining a law enforcement focus, such as repeats of World's Wildest Police Videos ) and slowly phase out their advertiser-repelling legal system and courtroom programming . This process ended in October 2009 when the remaining courtroom analysis programs transitioned to CNN.com 's legal news section and occasional court coverage from CNN Center on
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5250-429: Is the most prominent network still focused on 1950s and 1960s television shows. Nickelodeon's cable channel Nicktoons is another example of channel drift, though in that channel's particular case, it has never had a particularly strong focus on anything other than being an overflow channel for Nickelodeon. In 2014, Nicktoons added sports content to its lineup to little viewer interest, but the block continued as three of
5375-459: The PBS Newshour and Washington Week , two of the remaining public affairs programs on the national schedule. Channel drift is not always successful, and can often lead to backlash. The Weather Channel (TWC), for instance, faced criticism for its attempts to add entertainment programming to its schedule (which had historically focused primarily on weather news and information), culminating in
5500-507: The 1950s and 1960s . Oldies radio typically features artists such as Elvis Presley , Chuck Berry , The Beatles , Jerry Lee Lewis , The Beach Boys , Frankie Avalon , The Four Seasons , Paul Anka , Neil Sedaka , Little Richard and Sam Cooke ; as well as such musical movements and genres as early rock and roll, rockabilly , doo-wop , soul music , Motown , British Invasion , early girl groups , surf music , teen idol singers, teenage tragedy songs , and bubblegum pop . Music from
5625-628: The Bantu-speakers , while SABC 2 focused on Afrikaans programming and SABC 3 aimed at the English-speaking South Africans. With the fall of apartheid , SABC2 eventually transitioned to a mix of English and other languages, including Afrikaans, and more programming shifting over to other venues such as DStv , with KykNET the most prominent example. In September 2020, GMA News TV began its gradual transition from its original news format to general entertainment and sports, since
5750-621: The British Broadcasting Corporation ) and documentaries on sometimes arcane subjects. This led to the introduction of things like lifestyle-oriented shows featuring hobbies like gardening, cooking, and home repair; specialty or niche informational programs like the Nightly Business Report and The Charlie Rose Show ; reruns of certain former commercial TV shows (e.g., The Lawrence Welk Show , National Geographic specials); and British-import situation comedies (
5875-542: The Dial Global corporation, the networks have merged into one, Kool Gold . Satellite Music Network offered "Oldies Radio", which survived until its acquisition by ABC but has since rebranded as Classic Hits Radio under current owner Cumulus Media Networks , focusing on music primarily from the 1970s and 1980s, with some limited 1960s music. ABC also offered The True Oldies Channel , a 24-hour Oldies network programmed and voice tracked at all hours by Scott Shannon , at
6000-873: The Golden Age of Television , later expanding to shows from the 1960s and 1970s), to more recent shows still airing in local syndication , to its current focus on adolescent and young adult audiences similar to that of ABC Family (now Freeform ). Nick at Nite launched TV Land as a spin-off channel due to its increased focus on more recent programming (as well as the elimination of non- sitcom programming on Nick at Nite), only for TV Land itself to eventually shift to more recent programming and even original programming. In recent years, networks such as Cozi TV and MeTV have emerged to fill this gap with their programming being primarily 1950s–1960s television shows; even those networks have left older content to early hours in their broadcast day for more recent content. Retro Television Network
6125-434: The barbershop quartet-style harmony (i.e. ii – V – I) and blues scale -influenced harmony. There was a lessening of the influence of traditional views of the circle of fifths between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s, including less predominance for the dominant function . In October 2023, Billboard compiled a list of "the 500 best pop songs". In doing so, they noted the difficulty of defining "pop songs": One of
6250-439: The folk revival and instrumental beautiful music are among the most commonly excluded recordings from the Oldies era. Most traditional Oldies stations limit their on-air playlists to no more than 300 songs, based on the programming strategy that average listeners and passive listeners will stay tuned provided they are familiar with the hits being played. A drawback to this concept is the constant heavy rotation and repetition of
6375-562: The 1950s, 1960s and 1970s that was in rotation at affiliate stations. All but a few of these shows had ended their run by the mid-1990s, though Bartley's ran into the late 2000s (and eventually returned for several years in the late 2010s) while Clark's show continued until his 2004 stroke and in reruns until 2020. From 1986 to 1990 several solid gold stations evolved into full-time Oldies stations by eliminating current and recent product while also gradually eliminating 1980s songs and limiting 1970s songs substantially. KRTH and WQSR both did this in
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#17328556785906500-406: The 1950s, 1960s, and decades channels for the 1970s through the 1990s. A number of Internet radio stations also carry the format. From the late 2010s until 2022, shortwave radio station WTWW operated an Oldies service in the evening hours. In November 2022, WTWW lead engineer Ted Randall left the station and took the Oldies programming to a dedicated transmitter on WRMI a short distance down
6625-666: The 1970s and into the 1980s; WCBS-FM, for example, played current hits under the moniker "Future Gold" through the late 1980s, and WLNG on nearby Long Island featured a roughly 50/50 mix of current hits and Oldies from the early 1960s until about 1999. Most of these "Solid Gold" stations began to either evolve into other formats or drop the format altogether in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Most AM gold stations flipped to other formats. Some FM stations evolved into adult contemporary stations, including WROR in Boston and WFYR in Chicago . In
6750-406: The 1970s. They indeed played more 1970s music than any other notable Oldies station. At the same time, WCBS-FM featured slightly more pre 1964 songs than the average station playing as many as five of those per hour. Oldies stations continued to be late 1960s based throughout the 1990s. WCBS-FM was an exception. Most AM Oldies stations also disappeared by the early 1990s except in markets where there
6875-435: The American and (from the mid-1960s) British music industries , whose influence has made pop music something of an international monoculture, but most regions and countries have their own form of pop music, sometimes producing local versions of wider trends, and lending them local characteristics. Some of these trends (for example Europop ) have had a significant impact on the development of the genre. The story of pop music
7000-622: The Federal government, along with those of most U.S. states, invested in production and distribution of such programming via NET/PBS and the construction of a large number of new stations. The political climate of the time was decidedly liberal and thus supportive of generous governmental funding of the medium, which developed its institutions accordingly. However, the 1970s saw a political turn rightward , increasingly suspicious of Federal programs especially, and originally-anticipated steady increases in public taxpayer support did not materialize, leaving
7125-673: The Jack FM format, resulting in a tremendous outcry from Oldies fans in the Big Apple and a huge decline in revenue followed. WJMK in Chicago (WCBS-FM's sister station) switched to Jack FM on the same day. Some point to the demise of WCBS-FM and WJMK as a sign that the Oldies format is in danger, for many of the same reasons that the adult standards and smooth jazz formats are disappearing. The Oldies format returned to WCBS-FM on July 12, 2007, in an updated form featuring music from 1964 to 1989 without
7250-755: The Life , to the lineup. After The Walt Disney Company acquired the channel from News Corporation in 2001, Disney planned to reformat the channel as "XYZ" (a reverse reference to the American Broadcasting Company 's abbreviation) and shift its target to a more hip audience such as college students or young women; possibly to avoid redundancies with the existing family-friendly Disney Channel . To create XYZ, Fox Family would have had to cease to exist — Disney would have had to create XYZ as an entirely new network, and negotiate carriage agreements with pay television providers from scratch (something that, in modern times,
7375-557: The Magnolia Network, which replaced DIY Network when it launched in 2021. Another case of channel drift is HLN , which started as CNN2. Its format originally consisted of rolling half-hour newscasts that were updated periodically throughout the day; one year after its launch, the channel changed its name to CNN Headline News to better reflect the rolling news format. By 2005, its programming began to include hour-long specialty and discussion-based news programs similar to those found on
7500-583: The acquisition of rights to NCAA and additional entertainment programs due to the increase of its commercial load. This changes was targeted by mounting viewers' criticism where entertainment programs should be pre-emptied for the news coverage , notably when the Philippines was hit by Typhoon Goni (Rolly) which later re-branded as GTV in February 2021. To a certain extent, channel drift can also occur in radio, especially music radio : see, for instance,
7625-621: The adult schedule, in order to appeal to a wider audience than a small, highly educated cohort. This especially became the case during pledge drives, which were imagined to be times when non-regular viewers could be appealed to with special programming. With the aging (and eventual death) of audiences who were the most enthusiastic for more serious (and heretofore customary) fare, it was felt that younger viewers with more disposable income would be more interested in programs akin to those they were accustomed to on commercial television rather than formats such as classical dramas (a number of them imports from
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#17328556785907750-463: The case of the History Channel, Pawn Stars , American Pickers , and Top Shot ), while other programming may have no association whatsoever (such as Ax Men and Ice Road Truckers ). Channel drift can also result from the acquisition of sports rights or reruns of popular television series that would otherwise not fit the channel's format; Outdoor Life Network , for instance, acquired
7875-412: The channel's management feel that a larger audience wants to see, thus leading to additional profits. By producing irrelevant or low-quality programming they can increase their ratings to a target audience, increase viewership and increase revenues. The degree of channel drift can vary: some of the nonconforming programming may retain some degree of association with the channel's original purpose (such as in
8000-424: The controversial introduction of a Friday-night movie block featuring films with some relation to weather as a plot point (such as The Perfect Storm ). Citing the network's carriage fees and drift towards entertainment content, Dish Network dropped TWC and replaced it with WeatherNation 's The Weather Cast on 21 May 2010, only to reach a deal to carry TWC again three days later. In January 2014, TWC faced
8125-645: The debut of KCCL (K-Hits 92.1) in Sacramento in January 2007. However, KFRC had already evolved its format and positioning to classic hits at the time it changed to "Movin". But KFRC was not gone for long. On May 17, 2007, with Free FM hot talk format failing on 106.9 KIFR CBS relaunched KFRC with a rock leaning classic hits format on 106.9. But KFRC was not back for long either. On October 27, 2008, 106.9 KFRC FM became an all news 740 KCBS AM simulcast. KFRC now only airs on 106.9 FM HD-2 and online at KFRC.com. But KFRC came back again. On January 1, 2009, KFRC returned on
8250-770: The decade, it was common for pop producers, songwriters, and engineers to freely experiment with musical form, orchestration , unnatural reverb , and other sound effects. Some of the best known examples are Phil Spector 's Wall of Sound and Joe Meek 's use of homemade electronic sound effects for acts like the Tornados . At the same time, pop music on radio and in both American and British film moved away from refined Tin Pan Alley to more eccentric songwriting and incorporated reverb-drenched electric guitar, symphonic strings, and horns played by groups of properly arranged and rehearsed studio musicians. A 2019 study held by New York University in which 643 participants had to rank how familiar
8375-488: The dial from WTWW on the 60-meter band . Pop music Identifying factors of pop music usually include repeated choruses and hooks , short to medium-length songs written in a basic format (often the verse–chorus structure ), and rhythms or tempos that can be easily danced to. Much of pop music also borrows elements from other styles such as rock, urban , dance , Latin , and country . The terms popular music and pop music are often used interchangeably, although
8500-561: The earlier music tended to appeal to an older demographic that advertisers found undesirable—hence, the addition of music from the 1970s and early 1980s. WCBS-FM canceled their "Doo Wop Shop" program and began playing only one pre-1964 oldie per hour; by 2003, there were fewer than 50 songs from the 1950s and early 1960s in the regular rotation. Many stations have since dropped the Oldies format because of low ad revenue despite high ratings. On June 3, 2005, New York City's WCBS-FM, an Oldies-based station for over three decades, abruptly switched to
8625-454: The early 1960s, [the term] 'pop music' competed terminologically with beat music [in England], while in the US its coverage overlapped (as it still does) with that of 'rock and roll'". From about 1967, the term "pop music" was increasingly used in opposition to the term rock music, a division that gave generic significance to both terms. While rock aspired to authenticity and an expansion of
8750-1017: The early 1980s many AC stations began mixing in more Oldies into regular rotation and aired Oldies shows on Saturday nights. Beginning in 1982, both AM and FM stations began changing to full-time Oldies formats. These stations played strictly music from 1955 to 1973, focusing on the 1964–1969 era. Among these Oldies stations were WNBC in New York City before 1988, WDRC-FM in Hartford, Connecticut , WODS in Boston, WOGL in Philadelphia , KLUV in Dallas , WWSW in Pittsburgh , WJMK in Chicago , and CHUM in Toronto . Some had as few as 300 songs while stations like WODS and WOGL had as many as 1,500 songs in regular rotation. By 1989, most large and medium markets had at least one, usually FM, Oldies station. This period also saw
8875-469: The early 2010s and later inspiring other highly influential artists including Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift , it gave space to a more sad and moody tone within pop music. Channel drift Channel drift or network decay is the gradual shift of a television network away from its original programming, to either target a newer and more profitable audience, or to broaden its viewership by including less niche programming. Often, this results in
9000-477: The fare available on commercial broadcasting, such as theatrical plays, classical music concerts, literary dramas, and serious public affairs initiatives like investigative reporting and civil discussion of political matters, things that had been mostly abandoned by the commercial networks with the end of the Golden Age of Television in and around 1960. Beginning with the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 ,
9125-522: The format initially. Since around 2000, stations have begun to limit selections from the 1950s and early 1960s. At the same time these stations began playing songs from as late as 1979 and even a few 1980s songs. WCBS-FM New York slightly cut back on the pre-1964 oldies and slightly increased the 1970s and 1980s songs early in 2001. They also eliminated the overnight currents at the same time along with some speciality shows. In 2002, many Oldies stations began dropping pre-1964 music from their playlists, since
9250-428: The former more accurately describes all music that is targeted for mass appeal (compare art music ) and includes many disparate styles. Although much of the music that appears on record charts is considered to be pop music, the genre is distinguished from chart music . David Hatch and Stephen Millward describe pop music as "a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz, and folk music". David Boyle,
9375-578: The genre evolved more influences ranging from classical , folk , rock , country , electronic music , and other popular genres became more prominent. In 2016, a Scientific Reports study that examined over 464,000 recordings of popular music recorded between 1955 and 2010 found that, compared to 1960s pop music, contemporary pop music uses a smaller variety of pitch progressions, greater average volume, less diverse instrumentation and recording techniques, and less timbral variety. Scientific American ' s John Matson reported that this "seems to support
9500-409: The home. By the early 1980s, the promotion of pop music had been greatly affected by the rise of music television channels like MTV , which "favoured those artists such as Michael Jackson and Madonna who had a strong visual appeal". Multi-track recording (from the 1960s) and digital sampling (from the 1980s) have also been used as methods for the creation and elaboration of pop music. During
9625-547: The late 1960s to 1990s (sometimes playing newer material made in the same style as the older songs). As formats have drifted in time with their target audiences, classic hits and classic rock have moved further away from pure Oldies, which has largely remained a static format. In the early days of the rock era, the term Oldies referred to the traditional pop songs of previous decades; a 1953 record review in Billboard describes 1925's " Yes Sir, That's My Baby " as an Oldie. Oldies
9750-414: The late 1970s and would not reemerge until the rise of Internet stars. Indie pop , which developed in the late 1970s, marked another departure from the glamour of contemporary pop music, with guitar bands formed on the then-novel premise that one could record and release their own music without having to procure a record contract from a major label. The 1980s are commonly remembered for an increase in
9875-449: The late 1980s into the early 1990s. WCBS-FM however continued playing current product in regular rotation until 1988. After that, they played it once an hour between 11pm and 5:30am, until 2001. WCBS-FM also played several 1990s songs per shift during these overnight hours. They also continued to play between one 1980s song every couple of hours to as many as two per hour day and night. WCBS-FM also played from three to five songs per hour from
10000-402: The late 2000s, such as Mad Men , The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad . However, a further drift into unscripted shows such as 4th and Loud (a docuseries focusing on an Arena Football League team owned by members of the rock band Kiss ) and Game of Arms (a reality series following competitive arm wrestlers ) were mostly unsuccessful, prompting the network to cancel all but two of
10125-401: The late 20th century that became global superstars include Whitney Houston , Michael Jackson , Madonna , George Michael , and Prince . At the beginning of the 2000s, the trends that dominated during the late 1990s still continued, but the music industry started to change as people began to download music from the internet. People were able to discover genres and artists that were outside of
10250-460: The later launch of MTV-branded channels in Canada; Craig Media 's MTV Canada was licensed as a channel featuring entertainment and informal education programming targeting youth and young adults, and could not devote more than 10% of its weekly programming to "music video clips" in order to protect MuchMusic. However, following complaints by its owner CHUM Limited (who also accused Craig of having used
10375-547: The latter practice by using what would otherwise be "dead air" time). Some PBS stations, in fact, took advantage of the changes to directly provide educational programs to schools without using airtime at all, something that accelerated with the emergence of video on demand via the internet in the 2000s. That created a void in the daytime hours that PBS executives decided to fill with a new generation of children's programming, aimed at preschoolers. To supplement beloved historic programs such as Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow ,
10500-680: The level of the historic Big Three television networks , and it put less emphasis on reality programs later that decade. One less obvious, but nonetheless true, example of the phenomenon has occurred since the 1980s in American public television. From the origins of the medium in the late 1950s, stations, who were then affiliated with National Educational Television , the precursor to the current PBS , served two specific audiences: first, they provided, on weekdays, instructional programming for children used in school classrooms, to supplement traditional curricula; second, they served adults (on evenings and weekends) by scheduling shows that were alternatives to
10625-478: The main CNN channel (such as Showbiz Tonight , Nancy Grace and Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell ) and by 2013, it had ceased its scaled back rolling news coverage further – relegating it to morning and early afternoon timeslots – and shifted toward crime mysteries and docudramas, showing programs such as Forensic Files . One of the earliest examples of channel drift, and one that predates modern cable television,
10750-501: The main purpose of pop music is to create revenue. It is not a medium of free articulation of the people. Instead, pop music seeks to supply the nature of personal desire and achieve the instant empathy with cliche personalities, stereotypes, and melodrama that appeals to listeners. It is mostly about how much revenue pop music makes for record companies. Music scholar Timothy Warner said pop music typically has an emphasis on recording, production, and technology, rather than live performance;
10875-462: The mainline channel. TruTV then aired competitions, hidden camera prank shows, and even the first three rounds of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament . TruTV was further reformatted to a more conventional reality network with a strong emphasis on comedy on 27 October 2014, and then to comedy programming full-time in 2016 with the addition of scripted programming. Court TV was revived as
11000-508: The mainstream and propel them to fame, but at the same time smaller artists had a harder time making a living because their music was being pirated. Popular artists were Avril Lavigne , Justin Timberlake , NSYNC , Christina Aguilera , Destiny's Child , and Britney Spears . Pop music often came from many different genres, with each genre in turn influencing the next one, blurring the lines between them and making them less distinct. This change
11125-448: The manner in which pop has been disseminated", which helped to move pop music to "a record/radio/film star system". Another technological change was the widespread availability of television in the 1950s with televised performances, which meant that "pop stars had to have a visual presence". In the 1960s, the introduction of inexpensive, portable transistor radios meant that teenagers in the developed world could listen to music outside of
11250-403: The mid-1960s, pop music made repeated forays into new sounds, styles, and techniques that inspired public discourse among its listeners. The word "progressive" was frequently used, and it was thought that every song and single was to be a "progression" from the last. Music critic Simon Reynolds writes that beginning with 1967, a divide would exist between "progressive" pop and "mass/chart" pop,
11375-460: The mid-2010s, as the phrase "classic hits" came to entail a format centered around late 1970s ( disco -era) and 1980s pop, dance and rock format, the phrase "Oldies" had come to entail a 1960s to mid-1970s format that centered mostly on soft rock and easy listening (akin to the old MOR format), examples including WRME-LD in Chicago. More upbeat 1960s and 1970s stations are known within the industry as "gold" classic hits. As of 2020, 1960s music
11500-463: The more broad-based Oldies format. The evolution of Oldies into classic hits is an example of channel drift . The Oldies format began to appear in the early 1970s. KOOL-FM in Phoenix became one of the first radio stations to play Oldies music, at that time focusing on the 1950s and early 1960s. In the 1960s, very few top 40 radio stations played anything more than a few years old. In the late 1960s,
11625-737: The most popular formats on radio in markets where it is still active. Some of the most successful major-market Oldies stations today include KRTH "K-Earth 101" in Los Angeles , XHPRS-FM "105.7 the Walrus" in Tijuana - San Diego , KOLA 99.9 in Riverside - San Bernandino KYNO in Fresno , California, 98.1 WOGL in Philadelphia , WMJI "Majic 105.7" in Cleveland , and KSPF in Dallas . WLS-FM in Chicago , however,
11750-458: The network (e.g., Firing Line [original version], Wall Street Week ). At about the same time, development in technologies such as video cassette recorders enabled schoolteachers to bypass the need to schedule their classes around broadcasts of instructional material; typically, either school support staff would record the shows or teachers would do so themselves by using their VCRs' overnight silent-record function (some stations accommodated
11875-573: The network and leading stations developed several animated series with an educational and/or ethical emphasis. Part of that was also occasioned by the fact that commercial stations and networks were canceling children's cartoons, many of which were considered of dubious quality in any case, due to changing viewing habits and the FCC mandate, imposed in 1996, that required broadcast stations (of any kind) to include at least three hours per week of informational and educational programs for young people. Therefore, with
12000-414: The network to International Family Entertainment , but with strings attached: it is required to air CBN's flagship program The 700 Club twice each weekday as well as a day-long CBN telethon each January in perpetuity as part of a long-term time-buy . Following its sale to News Corporation , CBN made another long-term time-buy on the station to air a daily half-hour CBN talk show, then known as Living
12125-527: The network was found to have a surprisingly high female audience, Disney XD added some programs with female protagonists, such as Kim Possible and Star vs. the Forces of Evil , while maintaining a mostly action-driven format. In more recent years, networks have started abandoning the idea of channel drift as some of the channels experienced poor results. AMC (originally an outlet for "American Movie Classics") drifted successfully into premium scripted dramas in
12250-698: The network's ombudsman ). Despite the stated aims to appeal to a non-elderly audience, PBS could not keep up, it seemed to many, with rapid developments in cable television , which began offering alternatives to viewers that were generally more sensationalistic and visually compelling than the staid, restrained traditions of the public medium. Some of those new networks in fact began aping the "how-to" and lifestyle formats that originally became popular via PBS (e.g., HGTV , Food Network ). That competition, in turn, began to influence programmers to even further diminish or outright remove any shows considered "stuffy" or slow-paced, which eliminated several long-running staples of
12375-715: The new PBS and its stations with significant monetary gaps that had to be filled by other sources. " Pledge drives ," at least an annual occurrence on stations, emerged in the mid-1970s to address cutbacks from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that occurred due to political changes and the economic recessions of that period; members of the general public donated money to the station in exchange for certain privileges. Also, stations and program producers began to cultivate so-called "underwriting" (a modified form of advertising that did not interrupt shows in progress) from businesses, particularly large corporations who were then motivated by
12500-465: The original Canadian version of Bravo! (now CTV Drama Channel ) replacing performing arts programming with more scripted drama. In 2015, the CRTC said it would no longer enforce most of the remaining genre protection rules, except for those related to sports programming. Since then, many Canadian channels have altered their formats considerably, such as with the former Outdoor Life Network (OLN) first becoming
12625-452: The original mission of public television having drastically changed in both its dimensions since its 1950s origins due to technological, political, and cultural shifts, channel drift became quite endemic to PBS and its affiliates. As such, this occurrence has left voids for adult viewers that have been filled mainly by two sources. First, the main fine arts source for television is the cable-and-satellite-distributed Classic Arts Showcase , which
12750-802: The pop music styles that developed alongside other music styles is Latin pop , which rose in popularity in the US during the 1950s with early rock and roll success Ritchie Valens . Later, Los Lobos and Chicano rock gained in popularity during the 1970s and 1980s, and musician Selena saw large-scale popularity in the 1980s and 1990s, along with crossover appeal with fans of Tejano musicians Lydia Mendoza and Little Joe . With later Hispanic and Latino Americans seeing success within pop music charts, 1990s pop successes stayed popular in both their original genres and in broader pop music. Latin pop hit singles, such as " Macarena " by Los del Río and " Despacito " by Luis Fonsi , have seen record-breaking success on worldwide pop music charts. Notable pop artists of
12875-400: The popular anecdotal observation that pop music of yore was "better", or at least more varied, than today's top-40 stuff". However, he also noted that the study may not have been entirely representative of pop in each generation. In the 1960s, the majority of mainstream pop music fell in two categories: guitar, drum and bass groups or singers backed by a traditional orchestra. Since early in
13000-448: The possibilities of popular music, pop was more commercial, ephemeral, and accessible. According to British musicologist Simon Frith , pop music is produced "as a matter of enterprise not art", and is "designed to appeal to everyone" but "doesn't come from any particular place or mark off any particular taste". Frith adds that it is "not driven by any significant ambition except profit and commercial reward [...] and, in musical terms, it
13125-456: The pretense of a youth-based service to contravene the genre protection rule by, ultimately, offering a music-based service), the CRTC ruled that MTV Canada violated this quota due to music video content contained within programs such as Making the Video and MTV Select —even though the program categories distinguish music-related programs and music videos. Contrarily, sister channel MTV2 Canada
13250-510: The programs ( NFL Rush Zone , WWE Slam City and Wild Grinders ) were produced by sports leagues or to promote Viacom personalities on other networks (for Wild Grinders , MTV host Rob Dyrdek ). For a time, Nicktoons' schedule has begun to feature live-action sitcoms on a cyclical basis, depending on the current output and success of Nickelodeon's animated series. As of mid-2024, Nicktoons became entirely dedicated to reruns of SpongeBob SquarePants . Channel drift can also result from
13375-644: The radio at 1550 AM, as true Oldies. KZQZ , which aired in St. Louis , and began playing Oldies in March 2008, held onto the traditional Oldies format, playing a wide variety of top 40 Billboard hits from the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, until the FCC forced the station off the air in 2020. Non-commercial WXRB , 95.1 FM in Dudley, Massachusetts (one of the first non-commercial all-Oldies stations in North America) began playing Golden Oldies on March 6, 2005, at 1:00pm, focusing on
13500-503: The reasons pop can be hard to summarize is because there’s no real sonic or musical definition to it. There are common elements to a lot of the biggest pop songs, but at the end of the day, "pop" means "popular" first and foremost, and just about any song that becomes popular enough...can be considered a pop song. In the 1940s, improved microphone design allowed a more intimate singing style and, ten or twenty years later, inexpensive and more durable 45 rpm records for singles "revolutionized
13625-584: The rights to the National Hockey League in 2005, so the network began transitioning toward a general sports network known today as NBCSN . Conversely, WGN America abandoned its expensive sports packages in 2014 as part of its drift from a Chicago -centric superstation into a nationally oriented general entertainment channel; WGN America eventually started a gradual transition away from entertainment programming, structured as such due to contractual commitments to existing syndicated programming, to adopt
13750-460: The rise of syndicated radio shows specifically aimed at an Oldies format. They included Soundtrack of the 1960s with Murray the K , Dick Clark's Rock, Roll & Remember , Live from the '60s with The Real Don Steele , Cruisin' America with Cousin Brucie , and Rock & Roll's Greatest Hits with Dick Bartley . Most of these shows were three hours long and featured much of the same music from
13875-660: The shows ( Comic Book Men , a docuseries following a comic book store owned by filmmaker Kevin Smith , and the Walking Dead -related talk show Talking Dead ) in favor of focusing more on its core scripted slate. In the early-2010s, USA Network —which built a niche for lighthearted comedy-dramas through the 2000s—attempted to augment them with original sitcoms (such as Benched and Sirens ) to build upon its acquisition of off-network reruns of Modern Family . USA mostly backed away from that approach by 2014, as it prepared
14000-451: The station's program library, as well as rejection of the format by active listeners. This can be avoided either through the use of a broader playlist or by rotating different songs from the Oldies era into and out of the playlist every few weeks. Oldies has some overlap with the classic hits and classic rock formats. Classic hits features pop and rock hits from the early 1970s to early 1990s , while classic rock focuses on album rock from
14125-573: The term "pop music" "originated in Britain in the mid-1950s as a description for rock and roll and the new youth music styles that it influenced". The Oxford Dictionary of Music states that while pop's "earlier meaning meant concerts appealing to a wide audience [...] since the late 1950s, however, pop has had the special meaning of non-classical mus[ic], usually in the form of songs, performed by such artists as The Beatles , The Rolling Stones , ABBA , etc." Grove Music Online also states that "[...] in
14250-409: The term "pop music" may be used to describe a distinct genre, designed to appeal to all, often characterized as "instant singles-based music aimed at teenagers" in contrast to rock music as "album-based music for adults". Pop music continuously evolves along with the term's definition. According to music writer Bill Lamb, popular music is defined as "the music since industrialization in the 1800s that
14375-562: The time morning show host at ABC's WPLJ . The True Oldies Channel was conceived on the concept of avoiding the drift into 1970s and 1980s music that the Oldies format was undergoing in the first years of the 21st century. Eventually, by the end of the network's terrestrial run in 2014, it had taken a hybrid approach, with both 1960s and 1970s music being featured at the core of the network, with some limited 1980s music included. In North America , satellite radio broadcasters XM and Sirius launched in 2001 and 2002, respectively, with more than
14500-623: The use of digital recording , associated with the usage of synthesizers , with synth-pop music and other electronic genres featuring non-traditional instruments increasing in popularity. By 2014, pop music worldwide had been permeated by electronic dance music . In 2018, researchers at the University of California, Irvine , concluded that pop music has become 'sadder' since the 1980s. The elements of happiness and brightness have eventually been replaced with electronic beats making pop music more 'sad yet danceable'. Pop music has been dominated by
14625-434: The winner received the item or service in exchange for a donation to the station; these were quite successful in many markets from the 1970s through the 2000s. In order to attract audiences who would donate to stations, which, in turn, purchased programming from other stations and producers in the PBS system, program managers felt increasingly that it was necessary to reduce the proportion of cultural and informational shows on
14750-416: The word "Oldies", but rather "Greatest Hits" in the on-air positioning, with songs such as " Girls Just Want to Have Fun " by Cyndi Lauper , " Gloria " by Laura Branigan , and corporate rock hit " We Built This City " by Starship in rotation (though the original WCBS-FM played current hits mixed in with its Oldies as late as the late 1980s and the three songs mentioned here during most of their years). By
14875-605: The years 1954 through 1979. On August 27, 2009, Grand Rapids, Michigan station WGVU became the first public radio station to feature an all-Oldies format. The format has since been imitated by other public radio stations; for example, WCNY-FM in Syracuse, New York has begun broadcasting a personality-based oldies format on its HD Radio digital subchannel . Jones Radio Networks , Waitt Radio Networks and Transtar Radio Networks also offered 24-hour satellite-distributed Oldies formats; since those companies have integrated into
15000-542: Was able to devote its lineup to music video programming, as it was licensed as part of "Music 5"—a specialty service consisting of channels devoted to specific genres of music. A second incarnation of MTV Canada launched by CTVglobemedia in 2005 was also restricted in its airing of music content, but this time as the result of drift from its original format as TalkTV. Over time, many channels found ways to adjust their programming to more popular fare while technically remaining compliant with their licensed genres, such as
15125-553: Was designed by the country's telecommunications regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), primarily to ensure the integrity of channels that were licensed with the expectation of a specific format, and to prevent undue competition with established channels–a practice referred to as the "genre protection" rules. For example, the presence of MuchMusic as an established music channel in Canada led to applications of these rules impacting
15250-453: Was epitomized in Spears' highly influential 2007 album Blackout , which under the influence of producer Danja , mixed the sounds of EDM , avant-funk , R&B , dance music , and hip hop . By 2010, pop music impacted by dance music came to be dominant on the charts. Instead of radio setting the trends, it was now the club. At the beginning of the 2010s, Will.i.am stated, "The new bubble
15375-412: Was later discontinued in favor of NickMusic . Video Hits One likewise began as an outlet for adult contemporary music before transitioning to an urban pop culture channel as VH1 ; Country Music Television drifted to southern culture and general rerun programming as CMT; and The Nashville Network , perhaps the most dramatic, drifted to general entertainment format as The National Network and then to
15500-431: Was no FM oldies outlet. The format fared well with no end in sight. Beginning in 2000, Oldies stations began to notice that their demographics were getting older and harder to sell. Still, at that time only a few stations dumped the format altogether. A few, such as Orlando 's WOCL and Sacramento 's KHYL shifted to the briefly popular and more disco -centric rhythmic oldies format; most others continued to hang onto
15625-556: Was programming changes by CBS . During the late 1960s, CBS had a reputation as a network with a disproportionate number of shows that targeted rural and older viewers, seen by advertisers as undesirable due to ingrained buying habits on the one hand and a greater perception of poverty on the other. Beginning in 1970, incoming network vice president Fred Silverman orchestrated the " rural purge ," in which these shows were canceled in favor of shows targeting younger, suburban viewers with more disposable income. Another example of channel drift
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