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Fully agree. In addition to the author's statement, how can you assume that a listener will like or KNOW all the hits that were popular for a particular era. To illustrate how many listeners of a particular demographic remember Reparata's "Captain Of Your Ship" at the same time as David Bowie's "Space Oddity" or R. B. Greaves' "Send A Message Maria"?
Then the hackneyed hits-and-memories/golden oldies/classic hits formats on air now have a narrow subset of the hits such that not all the music of a particular era for a particular demographic is off air.
As time moves on, the 'classic hits' will move into the era of the 1990s, 2000s onwards. Such formats are reflected on DAB+ channels. But not all genres of that era are reflected on these channels. An exception may be Coles radio airs contemporary, 'hits-and-memories' and electronic. The issue is that is you niche and sub-niche a category, there'll be nothing else to niche.
But as time moves on, what will the mainstream channels do to respond to listeners' tastes? The author states that the listener will remember some music and forget other music for that particular era.
I add that the listener will not want to remember the hits or never heard the hits of that era because the listener may not like the music of that era or may have emotional issues that occurred to the listener during a particular era.
Thus we cannot assume the normal stimulus-response scenario of whatever was played in the particular era will be recalled by the listener.
Consequently, the author's mention of the listener not paying any attachment to a particular song for a particular era, means that song is irrelevant.
It may well explain why people listen to talk radio, but other factors are the availability of other sources of music other than radio stations including YouTube, Spotify, iTunes and even purchasing vinyl new or used online.
Then as I said on this site, people may well have wider tastes that is provided by the broadcaster. People whom I studied with at University whose target market may well be JJJ or Nova do listen to classical music, David Bowie and the Beatles which is outside the audience of JJJ and Nova; I even overheard one first year student in the cafeteria discuss the music of Serge Ginsbourg of "Je T'Aime" fame with her friends.
Thank you,
Anthony of exciting, dynamic and thinking Belfield