He assumed the genre emerged organically from music nerds debating on message boards and in the pages of Rolling Stone. Instead:

What I found was a deliberate realignment engineered by music executives chasing an ephemeral advertising demographic. Like many entertainment industry decisions, it was a small (mostly male) group of executives quietly deciding the future of popular culture behind closed doors.

The data shows two concentrated periods when stations rapidly switched to classic rock: the mid–1980s (to capture aging Boomers entering their peak earning years) and the mid–1990s (after the Telecommunications Act enabled Clear Channel to buy up local stations and prioritize low-risk, high-profit formats).

The kicker is that this rebrand was designed around economic incentives that have since eroded. Radio isn’t the default distribution channel anymore. On streaming, music can just exist without being packaged for a hyper-valuable consumer cohort.

Another reminder that so much of what feels like culture is really just business decisions made in conference rooms.