Classic Hits

Oldie Radio Stations

Oldie radio stations first appeared on the scene in the early 1970s. They got their start in the late 60s when some radio stations started to incorporate oldies into their Top 40 formats. At that time, these stations were called “Solid Gold”. Later, the 70s movie American Graffiti seemed to have spawn nostalgia for music from the 50s. This desire encouraged the creation of additional radio stations that solely played the oldies while current songs were played occasionally. These stations were then called Oldies stations.

Oldie radio stations generally played old Top 40 hits from previous decades and limited their playlists to about 300 songs, played repetitively. Oldies were generally from the rock, pop and R&B genres. The other genres such as country or jazz were not considered oldies but they had their own form of oldies format such as ‘classic country’.

Beginning in the early 80s, all the oldie stations began playing oldies full-time, concentrating on the eras of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. This format lasted throughout the 90s. By 2002, oldie stations had to drop songs from before 1964 from their playlists due to the fact that the demographics have become older and therefore undesirable to advertisers. The stations upgraded their playlists to include music through the late-70s. Finally, in the mid-2000s, most oldie stations changed their format from the oldies into what is now called classic hits or classic rock because of low ad revenues.

Today, satellite radio had taken up the slack, offering many oldie radio channels. They have literally thousands of oldie songs in their library and because of that they have the luxury of having a large playlist with limited repetition for their listeners.