Only about a handful of adult standards stations today are live and locally programmed around-the-clock. Many have affiliated with nationally distributed satellite formats to cut costs; due to advertiser perceptions about the audiences these stations primarily target, a large number of adult standards stations have trouble selling airtime to advertisers, which makes them unprofitable. For example,
KIXI 880 AM, serving the
Seattle market and
KKIN 930 AM, serving
Aitkin, terminated its local airstaff to affiliate with the Music of Your Life network. Many others have simply dumped the format altogether, often for all-talk or all-sports formats,
oldies, or other formats deemed by management more profitable than standards. Music of Your Life is an adult standards format that probably more than any other source defined the format. Music of Your Life, was founded by
Al Ham in 1978 and boasts a roster of well-known personalities including
Peter Marshall, Steve March-Torme, son of the legendary crooner, Mel Tormé, big band leader Les Brown Jr., radio veteran Al Hardee, Lorri Hafer, daughter of founder Al Ham, and weekend host
Pat Boone. Following an internal shakeup in 2008, business developer, Marc Angell took over the fledgling network and moved the company's broadcasting operations to Denver, Colorado, under a distribution deal with Clear Channel Satellite.
Music of Your Life is currently distributed by Music of Your Life, Inc. a publicly traded company listed on the OTC markets under the ticker symbol, MYLI, and is distributed to AM, FM, and HD radio stations using the Barix system. Dial Global (formerly part of
Westwood One) has an adult standards format distributed via satellite; Dial Global's is called "Adult Standards" (known on-air as "
America's Best Music"). Prior to 2010,
ABC distributed
Stardust/Timeless Classics/Timeless. Stardust/Timeless Classics was consolidated with a
middle-of-the-road format owned by ABC—
Unforgettable Favorites/Memories—in 2006, creating
Timeless. Westwood One originally called its format
AM Only and for a time, as the name suggests, offered the format only to AM stations; today, a handful of FM stations also air Westwood One's format. While Music of Your Life has not eliminated all of the big-band and traditional pop music from its playlist, Westwood One and ABC dropped much of the older music in favor of softer pop and rock oldies from the 1960s and 1970s
top 40 era and a good deal of soft AC material as well. Under Dial Global, some of the older-style songs are making a comeback on the Westwood One format. ABC discontinued its Timeless service early in 2010; that same year, Music of Your Life added more 1960s oldies to its playlist.
iHeartMedia's
Format Lab also features at least two adult standards formats. == Adult standards terrestrial stations ==