Maybe they're #1 in Buffalo as one of the few oldies stations (what about WHTT?) but the biggest oldies station in the U.S.?

That's one even Pinocchio wouldn't tell.  

paterson1 wrote:

See there's the thing. WHTT is way ahead in the ratings but they or at least Arbitron classify them as Classic Hits and not oldies. Oldies for whatever reason is not used nearly as much as it was about 10-15 years ago. Maybe programmers felt the term was making the station sound like they were skewing even older than they intended? Or possibly people equate oldies with 50's-60's gold and not so much from 70's and 80's..  Could be that almost all of the stations that still use the "oldies" name are AM. Who knows?

Yes, I believe most people tend to associate the term "oldies" with an era prior to the mid-70's which most gold-formatted stations have mostly moved away from. Since most stations are going with "classic hits" while there appears to be only one station in the market branded as oldies they can rightfully call themselves the number one oldies station. It's all about semantics. 
On the other hand, some brands are automatically accompanied by such a slogan. Listen to Virgin in any market and they're that city's number one hit music station. The other thing to keep in mind is most listeners are not aware of actual ratings numbers so if a station says they're number one it must be so.

AM 740 Face the Music Trivia program is pretty good. Ben Mercer and Norm Edwards do a great job and have an easy rapport with the callers, they keep it light and fun.  I think AM 740 is a great station that is still mostly  music oriented and pretty much full service. Even they don't use the term oldies but rather The Best of the Best.

Interesting here in Kitchener/Waterloo, 105.3 Virgin Radio's sell line is KW's New Number One Hit Music Station.
The Beat 91.5 has the sell line #1 Hit Music Station, and they really are, since they have higher numbers and share in KW Central Market.  105.3 has a much stronger signal and larger coverage area but The Beat came out on top last fall full coverage as well.  As you say Kevjo, it is semantics since, technically Virgin is the newer of the two stations with the "hit music" format. 
 

paterson1 wrote:

    they have higher numbers and share in KW Central Market   

KW Central Market used to be a butcher shop, opposite KCI
 

In Kitchener / Waterloo, CKWR used to call themselves " Waterloo Region's # 1 community station" maybe they still do. I think they are the only community station in KW.

Lee Marshall wrote:

#1 at 12:30 AM.  That's pretty late in the night/early in the morning.  But hey!!!  If the 'president' lies umpteen 1,000's of times then surely the loyal subjects can chip in with a whopper or 2?

I mean really!!!  Was CKFH really the 2nd greatest radio station in the world?  Probably.

That was one of the cleverest anti-slogan slogans. "We're #2 because everybody else is #1". The BS around rankings has been around a long time but at least CKFH was trying to have some fun with it.