I think you are confusing Moldy Oldies and Classic Rock. Due to the crap the album oriented rock station in my area plays, I have been listening to the local classic rock station and I have never heard any of those groups and hope I never do. Those highlighted above can be called R&B, doo-wop, funk, disco, soul, and adult contemporary music. They did not play rock music and have no place on a classic rock playlist.
I used to listen to the local classic rock station at work. Over the course of an 8-hour shift, I was guaranteed to hear:
4 Led Zeppelin songs
4 Boston songs
4 Lynyrd Skynyrd songs
4 Foreigner songs
AC/DC at least 3 times
CCR at least 3 times
Billy Squier 
at least twice
At one point they changed their format to “You’ll never hear the same song twice during the workday!”, and for the first couple months I don’t think I even heard the same artist twice in a day. They even managed to work in an occasional Rush song that wasn’t Tom Sawyer or The Spirit of Radio. I loved it! Eventually, though, they drifted back to the previous format, and I switched to bringing my CD collection to work with me.
Long time Los Angeles DJ Jim Ladd told a story in his book “Radio KAOS” (a thinly veiled account of his time at LA album rock station KMET-FM): Around 1984 or so, he was playing Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile”. The program director came into the booth and told him to pull the record from the rotation as soon as it finished because it was “too abrasive” and it “will turn off the listeners”. Jim replied “But it was a listener request” “Doesn’t matter. The focus group studies prove that listeners won’t like that type of music”:smack:
Even “modern” rock stations fall into the same trap of playing the same “vintage” tracks. In the late 1990s, I played the game of “Can I make it home (45 minutes) listening to Y-107 without hearing The Cure, Depeche Mode, or The Smiths/Morrissey”
I don’t think I ever did.
I listen to K-HITS 96.3 in St. Louis and they won’t repeat a song in a week. They’ve been doing that a little over a year now, as I recall. Here’s what they’ve been playing, if you want to see if they’d appeal to you. They stream live on the internet, if you have the bandwidth for it (I’m on dialup and just listen to them on the air). They run automated from midnight to 6 am, but they don’t pretend there’s a DJ. There’s a morning talk show from 6 am to 10 am; then live DJ’s till midnight. Occasionally a DJ will record some or all of their show, but they mention they’re recorded on the recording, and explain why.
Not directly related (it wasn’t a classic rock station, and it was in the UK). But I knew someone in the UK whose job it was (as intern at a local radio station) to pretend to be a listener and record those little clips.
My point was that even if you stick to mainstream, classic rock that everyone knows you still have a HUGE collection tracks to choose from. You don’t listen to a classic rock to hear some obscure experimental prog rock band from the latter half of 1979, and I realize you going to have a preponderance of certain artists, but even with that said, there is still NO reason to hear “Can’t Fight This Feeling” five times in one day.
This incidentally is why I listen to BBC 6 Music whenever on my PC at work (I’m listening it to now, the just played Simon and Garfunkel followed by some obscure Reggea act).
It depends on the market. R & B has always had a strong following in our market and is part of the mix.
Holy shit, is this ever true. I host a biweekly indie rock-oriented radio show on a community station, and every week I get calls to play something you could probably hear by turning on any other classic rock station and leaving it for a few minutes. Skynyrd and AC/DC are the most commonly requested.