Classic Rewind plays a later blend of classic rock. Most of their playlist is roughly from 1977 to 1991.
The Pulse is an interesting channel. About a third of the playlist is solidly Hot/Modern AC, while a third is that of a '90s decade channel, with the remainder being the intersection of these two. My research then has to contort itself to get around those constraints (my focus is not so much on changing the playlists, just expanding them a bit).
The research showed a strong tendency towards new singer-songwriter and such material (as well as Norah Jones and her ilk). My impressions of The Pulse are that it's normally a bit more energetic than that, so I'm not including those here. It does indicate that the next great AC format, perhaps alongside the more rhythmically-focused Movin', is something built around the new crop of singer-songwriters (Anna Nalick, The Fray, etc.), a sort of modern version of The Bridge (which plays mellow rock) who appear to be having strong under-25 appeal. Many of these artists may have the potential to remain core for female audiences for 15-20 years.
Some might say that this is just a relaunch of Modern AC, but Modern AC's problem, to my mind, was that to too great an extent, its artists were shared with Modern Rock. I don't hear very many rock/alternative outlets playing the new singer-songwriters, outside of some AAA outlets.
Anyway, on with my recommendations:
Lots of new wave here.
Now for the channel covering the decade that taste forgot...
While I'm not prepared to advocate this, a tendency towards jazz was noted in my research. Not sure what to make of this...
Moving a few spots up the dial, we come to '60s Vibrations.
These are mostly of a rock orientation. The Brian Wilson track wasn't released until recently, but it was written in the '60s and if there's an artist who helped define the decade it was Brian Wilson.
So here goes. These are recommendations based on my proprietary research methods (a magician doesn't reveal his secrets!)
Most are from earlier this decade, but they generally stylistically fit in with the more rock-oriented approach to CHR that Hits 1 takes. I'm not advocating that these become major parts of the playlist, but these could improve the recurrent selection somewhat.
Most of these are recurrents... the Gnarls Barkley track hasn't received much (if any) radio play, and the K'naan track has a phenomenal beat behind it and was included in the soundtrack to the FIFA Football 2006 video game. I'm somewhat surprised that Hits 1 hasn't touched the Danity Kane track (given that it's a product of an "Idol"-style competition with Diddy's imprimatur).
