Album-oriented Rock - Album-oriented Rock

Album-oriented Rock

In the mid-1970s, as program directors began to put more controls over what songs were played on air, progressive stations evolved into the album-oriented rock format. Stations still played longer songs and deep album tracks (rather than just singles), but program directors and consultants took on a greater role in song selection, generally limiting airplay to just a few “focus tracks” from a particular album and concentrating on artists with a more slickly produced "commercial" sound than what had been featured a few years earlier. Noted DJ "Kid Leo" Travagliante of influential station WMMS in Cleveland observed the changes in a 1975 interview: "I think the '60s are ending about now. Now we are really starting the '70s. The emphasis is shifting back to entertainment instead of being 'relevant'...In fact, I wouldn't call our station progressive radio. That's outdated. I call it radio. But I heard a good word in the trades, AOR. That's Album-Oriented Rock. That's a name for the '70s." The term "album-oriented rock" was coined by Radio & Records editor Mike Harrison, who developed the format while program director at KPRI in San Diego from 1973 to 1975.

By the late 1970s, AOR radio discarded the wide range of genres embraced earlier on to focus on a more narrowly defined rock sound. The occasional folk, jazz, and blues selections became rarer and most black artists were effectively eliminated from airplay. Where earlier soul and R&B artists like Stevie Wonder, War, Sly Stone and others had been championed by the format, AOR was no longer representing these styles, and took a stance against disco. In 1979, Steve Dahl of WLUP in Chicago destroyed disco records on his radio show, culminating in the notorious Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park.

What links the freeform, progressive, AOR and ultimately the classic rock formats are the continuity of rock artists and songs carried through each phase. Programmers and DJs of the freeform and progressive phases continued to cultivate a repertoire of rock music and style of delivery that were foundations of AOR and now classic rock. Those AOR stations, which decided to stay "demographically-rooted", became classic rock stations by eschewing newer bands which their older listeners might tune out. Those that did not fully evolve into classic rock generally attempt to hold onto their older listeners through careful dayparting—playing large amounts of classic rock during the 9–5 workday with more adventurous, newer songs "baked into the mix" as the listener base skews younger at night.