Earlier this month Richard Wagoner, a San Pedro freelance columnist covering radio in Southern California, wrote why oldies stations might be showing us the future of radio:

The appeal of oldies cannot be denied. Out of the top 10 stations (in LA), six are either fully oldies-based or rely heavily on them in the music mix.

Top 40, or Contemporary Hit Radio as it is called today has taken a hit nationwide. As the format tends to attract younger listeners, the fact that many younger listeners are getting their music from streaming services and apps like TikTok, it seems to be the natural progression.

Top 40 stations across the country have added more “gold” to their playlists; and the idea of playing music that is old but “new to you” has taken hold as an easy way to attract listeners.

But it doesn’t work to attract younger listeners, so top 40 as a format suffers.

The answer lies in the appeal of the very things that are supposedly killing radio. TikTok is exposing kids to music, new and old, from multiple genres. Streaming services use curators to find music that listeners may like, based upon the songs they play — and those they skip.

Add in Sean Ross, who writes in RadioInsight.com that most people fondly remember their own top 40 listening days from “when top 40 played it all,” and you have the answer: play it all.

Top 40 has always thrived when it played it all and has always stagnated when it limited itself. You saw it happen with too much “bubblegum,” too much disco, too much country, too much of “the Miami sound,” too much grunge and too much hip-hop. All of those eras had temporary success, but ultimately led to ratings declines as listeners left for other stations.

Yet when “they played it all,” such as the 1960s where you could hear The Beatles, The Bee Gees, Jefferson Airplane and Cream all on the same station, it just worked. Same for when Prince, The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, and Foreigner all shared space on the same station. That variety of music makes things interesting, and today’s teens especially are, according to research, more willing to listen to different genres right now than any other generation.

Inside Music Media’s Del Colliano : “Young audiences are more eclectic than baby boomers, Gen X or even older millennials – they mix genres,” he explains. They are “spellbound” when they find it, open to fresh musical styles, “and amazingly curious.”

Radio is losing young people, he says, in part because, aside from the commercial overload, “radio no longer breaks new music and acts.” Fix it and become the influencers you used to be, Del Colliano advises programmers, instead of letting social media do it.

Top 40 is not dead, it’s just dormant. And the time is ripe for a comeback. Hopefully sooner than later.

—Richard Wagoner writing in Los Angeles Daily News

According to the Billboard Hot 100 chart, here are the Top Ten hits fifty years ago today, September 15, 1973:

10) Here I Am Come & Take Me – Al Green

9) Live And Let Die – Wings

8) Gypsy Man – War

7) Touch Me In the Morning – Diana Ross

6) Brother Louie – Stories

5) We’re An American Band – Grand Funk

4) Loves Me Like A Rock – Paul Simon (with the Dixie Hummingbirds)

3) Say Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose – Dawn featuring Tony Orlando

2) Let’s Get It On – Marvin Gaye

And this was #1…