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Oddly enough, Top 40 radio, which was now moving to the FM band as well, had a hand influencing rock radio at the start of the decade. Top 40 stations were breaking acts like Soft Cell and Human League - acts AOR stations picked up on later. AOR programmers were so image-conscience they initially stayed away from those acts that did not fit in with the corporate sound that had come to define AOR.
"Top 40 is one of the reasons that AOR is recognizing the need for a change in the last six months," says WWDC-FM's Davis. "simply because of the value-free style of programming they do which is 'we don't care who did it or what did it, if it's a hit, we'll play it.' And basically they were beating AOR on a lot of records over the last six months. The perfect example is Men At Work. That was the one that really hit home to people that there was a huge mass appeal group that was acceptable to AOR listeners that weren't being played on AOR."
Like disco before it, the more pop side of the underground music - dubbed "new wave" - became trendy in America in 1980. Top 40 and AOR stations alike picked upon the trend when "My Sharona" by the power-pop band The Knack became an instant smash. The record companies reacted by signing a lot of "The ___'s"-type bands, cutting their hair, and billing them as new wave. Unfortunately, many of these hyped bands did not have much substance. Some had a hit or two, but they generally did not have any lasting success. Too many bands were coming out with a generic new wave sound and American audiences were turned off.
"Some of the labels are just now trying to jump on the bandwagon," says Jimmy Christopher, Music Director for KNAC in Long Beach. "so they get a group together and they take it in with the promotions and the recording money and blah blah blah behind it. And if they come out with a good product fine, but sometimes they don't. And their idea of what a new band is supposed to be like or what a new band is. A lot of the bands are starting to sound the same - the drum machine and synthesizer. I love synthesized music - but that seems to be the mode now and there seem to be about four or five or six bands in that general mode on different labels where they are all the same."
The popularity of modern music has been reflected in the Billboard Top 40 charts as well. "There are more supposed 'new wave' acts making the Billboard charts on Top 40," says Rosie Pisani of Long Island's WLIR, considered one of the country's most progressive stations. "Things that I know WLIR was playing six to eight months ago, like Adam Ant, Culture Club, Dexy's Midnight Runners. Things like that we've been playing since they came out as imports have now crossed over to literally Top 40 as far as the Billboard charts go." So bands that most AOR programmers had traditionally disregarded were all of a sudden becoming important and those programmers took notice.
"So much of what has happened in radio in the past year or two," says Program Director Fred Jacobs of WRIF in Detroit. "is really on a song-by-song basis. As a result, a lot of what have been convenient little labels for all of us have completely deteriorated. What was once easy to define, as being an AOR band or 'wow that's the single' has pretty much blown up. I don't know that there is a definition for it anymore."
Next - Part 5: Defining Rock and Roll >>
1983 AOR Radio Snapshot Index
This page was updated March 7, 2008.
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