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Formats used in Radio

Online Radio?
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Radio Formats
in the UK and USA

Radio Programming

RF Formats

There are over 70 basic formats used in radio broadcasting. Most describe the varying output of music-led stations. Many of them have evolved over several years as radio has become increasingly diversified. This has particularly been the case since the advent of Online Radio in the 90s, about twenty five years ago. Note also that many of the formats described have sub-genres too.
Listed below are brief descriptions of the main formats as used in radio in the North American, and the British radio market.
 
We have not listed all the sub-genres which are peculiar to one or two countries or cultures, however many of our colleagues at Worldwide Broadcast Consultants have worked in 28 countries. They can advise you on different formats and their suitability to particular markets and demographic groups.
AAA    -  Adult Album Alternative, a format which is designed to appeal to adults and those with a more developed music taste. AAA stations tend to play more album tracks rather than hit singles.
 
ACTIVE ROCK   This term is used for stations which play mostly hardrock, metal rock  and 'heavy metal' (see below).
 
ADULT ALTERNATIVE   is a format of appeal to adults with more developed tastes but usually playing only current hits.
 
ADULT CONTEMPORARY   These stations will play music from the past ten years or so, maybe twenty, rather than the latest hits. They are 'today's' artistes, but usually their better known recent hits of the last decade or so.
 
ADULT ORIENTED ROCK   This term is not often used today but in the 70s it described stations that played mostly album cuts rather than singles, and usually from the ROCK genre (see below)
 
ALTERNATIVE ROCK  Originally this applied to punk music; which were originally mainly 'thrash' bands who played with great energy and gusto and invariably a lack of melody. In the 90s it began to be applied to rock influenced Top 40 'Brit' bands too. It appeals to the younger demographics and includes current hits and cuts from recent albums.
 
AMERICANA This genre includes overtly North American lifestyle music and includes country-rock, folk-rock, blues and American roots music. Appeals to adults more than to teenagers.
BIG BAND Music industry term borrowed for radio to describe the orchestra-led music that was the mainstay in the 40s and 50s. These huge ensembles were usually fronted by well known leaders such as Count Basie or Nelson Riddle. They often had a lead singer who was of lesser importance than the orchestra, despite their name and status. The style was usually upbeat as their main work was in dance halls; a good example of Big Band music would be Frank Sinatra's “New York, New York”.
 
BLUEBEAT   The word Bluebeat has become a generic terms for early jamaican music thanks to a record label set up by Emil Shallit (Melodisc) which released R&B and pop hits from Jamaica. The name was coined by label manager Siggy Jackson, who explains “It sounds like the blues and it has beat'. Several unlicensed radio stations have used Blue beat in the British Midlands and the north over the years and the term remains popular with Mods.
 
BLUES  Music originally from the 'deep south' of the USA, fusing African and American folk music, often sad, from 'feeling blue' its often based on trance like rythms known as 'the groove'.  See Also R & B  (below)
 
BOY BAND Vocal harmonies from young male singers, usually backed by orchestras or session musicians. Best known artistes are The Bachelors and the Walker Brothers (1960s) The Osmonds in the 1970s, Bros in the 1980s and more recently Westlife, Boyzone, Take That and One Direction.
CHR  Traditionally stands for 'Contemporary Hit Radio' and is a term first used in the late 1970s by 'Radio & Records' (now part of Billboard magazine, the leading American music business paper). The term was coined to describe stations previously known as 'Top 40' which majored on current chart hits. As artistes began to enjoy longer periods of popularity, the description 'contemporary' has now become much wider.
 
Ten years or so can be regarded as contemporary and consequently, the CHR letters have often become regarded as Current Hit Radio. Many CHR stations focus on particular styles of music, and the term CHR has many sub-genres, such as CHR-Urban, CHR-Country, CHR-pop, etc.
 
CHRISTIAN  Popular music that promotes Christianity. Many sub genres exist; Christian Rock and Christian Gospel being the best known in the radio business.
 
CHRISTMAS  Stations playing non stop or predominantly Christmas music, usually a temporary format aimed at shop or restaurant operators to play in their business in the appropriate period.  Playlists are sometimes very limited, one UK Christmas channel on DAB offered only 32 numbers in 2015 (obviously they had programmed only part of a NOW its Christmas album!). In contrast Sky Radio's Christmas channel used over 500 songs. There are now over 1700 Christmas songs commercially issued by various performers available, not including Christmas carols.
 
CLASSIC ROCK   Featuring mainly the best known rock music hits of sixties, seventies and eighties, by major artistes. These are usually both singles and album cuts. The format is known in two American cities as 'Rock Favourites'.
 
 
DANCE   While dance music has existed for a hundred years or more, the recent use of the term in radio programming refers to dance floor hits of the current generation. The term has several sub-genres, such as CHR-Rythmic  and the slightly older-skewed Rythmic AC.
 
DISCO  The term began in France in the early 60s as Discotheque, simply a place where people listened to records. By the late sixties small venues (little more than coffee bars usually) in the UK that had a DJ began calling themselves 'discotheques'. By the early 1970's that was shortened to DISCO. In the USA this term became was used around the mid 1970's for predominantly soul-pop music typified by the Gamble-Huff music from Philadelphia, and later adopted by many pop acts such as the BeeGees in their sound track for the 1976 blockbuster movie Saturday Night Fever.
 
DOO-WOP This genre was developed in Afro-American communities in large American cities and is based on vocal harmonies. It soon crossed over with many black vocal harmony groups such as the Drifters making the big time after beginning as doo-wop artistes. As well as vocal harmonies the genre is known for nonsense syllables, a simple beat, very little or zero instrumentation (which would make it acappella). Often Doo-Wop uses vocal harmonies to substitute for musical instruments.
EASY LISTENING   Easy listening music is often instrument led, with gentle vocals, easy on the ear. Very popular as background music in some places, often referred to as 'elevator muzak' (a derogatory term usually, but also a company who supply). Quite often this comprises anonymous cover versions of hit songs. In Europe the term 'easy' is often termed 'Middle of the Road' (or when its poorly focussed, 'All over the Road'!)
 
ELECTRONIC   Stations formatting electronic are typified by a hypnotic bass line and all manner of synthesizer sounds. Electronic music is often heard as Dance music. Today's leading proponents include many who began as disc jockeys, artistes like Tiesto, Daft Punk and Fatboy Slim. Electronic now ranges from mellow beats to more punchy sounds suited for dance floor action. Sub-genres of electronic music include Acid-House, Breakbeat, Jungle, Trance, Techno and TripHop.
 
ETHNIC    A term often used interchangeably with World Music, it has come to be used for music of one particular nation or region.
FILMTRACKS Soundtrack music from movies were common place in the late 20th century and featured mainly instrumental soundtrack music from well known films or movies.  The BBC used a lot of film soundtrack music on its Radio 2 station for a while.
 
The  owners of the recordings were quite happy to waive copyright payments to encourage radio stations to help promote the film and some commercial stations playlisted film soundtracks as part of other formats. There was even a film music formatted channel on DAB in Surrey for a while and a hundred online stations follow the format. Good examples of the genre are the '1.fm' channel in Switzerland (online and DAB)
 
FOLK Quite simply this is 'the music of the people.' At its most basic, folk is cultural, from the roots and backgrounds of people from around the world. Artists such as Bob Dylan, Donovan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and Cat Stevens fuse their own distinctive music with more traditional styles of yesterday. The genre includes lots of small niche sub-genres based on the different variations of folk heard in various geographical territories as well as acoustic, Celtic, alternative & contemporary folk.
 
FREEFORM This could be called formless, it's where the DJ is allowed to play any kind of music with no fixed format to adhere to. It can include any kind of music, even in the same time period. The Freeform format is common in BBC local radio stations and also markets where formatted radio has not become very competitive.
GLAM A form of rock, Glam evolved from a few British artistes who dressed glamourously in the early 70s to perform pop-rock. David Bowie was the proponent and best known and he has proved to be one of the longest lasting, but others associated with glam rock included Marc Bolan, T Rex, The Sweet, Elton John, The New York Dolls, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople, Mud and Slade.
 
The 'Glam' artistes paved the way for Punk and Heavy Metal. Sub genres of Glam include Garage, Psychedelic, Rockabilly, Surf and the founders of the genre, British Invasion. The Glamrock JunkShop epitomises the movement with their  'Bopping with the Ballrooms of Mars' and 'Bubblegum Rock' programmes.
 
GOSPEL Christian influenced music, often up-tempo and with a large choir either leading or backing the vocals. Gospel is a traditional music genre as well as a radio format. Among the many sub-genres of gospel radio format are Southern Gospel, Contemporary, Adult Black Gospel, traditional, inspirational, contemporary hit gospel and rock gospel. One of the best and most easily accessible examples of a gospel radio station is 'Mexican Soul Food', which is available terrestrially and online.
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HARD ROCK  This is the format for rock fans who like to feel their music loud, somewhere up past mark 11 on the volume control! From Black Sabbath to Metallica; Led Zeppelin to Foo Fighters; Van Halen to Tool. Sizzling guitars and thumping drums, often augmented by powerful blasts on Korg Keyboards. There are at least a few hundred hard rock stations online and at least two on the FM dial. Hard Rock has spun off its own sub-genres; Jam, Prog / Art Rock and Psychedelic to name but a few.
 
HEAVY METAL A very popular sub-genre of Metal, (see below) Heavy Metal now has around 60 online radio stations and two FM outlets playing the sub-genre. Heavy Metal  has its origins in blues and includes artistes such as Led Zeppelin, Iron Butterfly, Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.
 
Hip hop music is often called rap music. It is a music genre of very stylised rhythmic music over which artistes usually chant. Hip-Hop is a sub-culture which incorporates beatboxing (making instrumental sounds with the mouth into a microphone) and MCing as well as occasionally graffiti painting while doing so!
 
HOLIDAY An alternative name for the format of playing predominantly Christmas music, usually as a temporary format aimed at shop or restaurant operators to run up to the Christmas holidays.
 
HOT (ADULT) AC  There are now several different versions of Hot AC in use. It originally meant stations playing current hit music that is more energetic or upbeat than the average Adult Contemporary station, but over the last five years has increasingly meant stations that play a larger proportion of the very latest releases.  Billboard's Adult Top 40 chart includes new releases played on rock oriented CHR stations as well as Hot AC stations.
 
HOUSE A sub-genre of electronic dance music that has heavy bass chords and its origins in Chicago. The sound has repetitive 4/4 beats, lots of off-beat hi-hats and urgent pounding basslines. The style was popularised by MARRS, S Express, Grandmaster Flash and Sylvester, who each had huge hits in many countries with the genre. Its popularity continues with the likes of Robin Schulz and Duke Dumont and there are several dozen house music based radio stations around the world.
CLASSICAL  Not so popular as a radio format as consumption usually demands very close listening, but it is highly regarded by some. Intellectually it has the high ground in music. Tracks often have lengthy complex arrangements and is often revived or plagiarised into contemporary music. Classical music is invariably instrumental. Purists will call it 'serious' music.
 
COUNTRY One of the most popular music formats in the USA, it's based on traditional folk music of north American white settlers, particularly from the rural south areas. Vocally led it features traditional instruments such as fiddles, banjos and pedal steel guitars. Often derided as cowboy music, its lyric content does often feature sad episodes in life, and generally romantic or melancholic.
 
Country music is often parodied by a lone trucker lamenting the fact that his wife has run off while he was away, and even worse, she took his dog with her!  Many sub genres now exist: Country & Western, Country Gospel, etc. The most widely heard is Contemporary Country. It accounts for 7.3% of all radio listening in the USA in 2019.
 
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RADIO FORMATS
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