Kind of a bourgeois question but whatever. People do actually listen to these radio stations. They will actively seek out radio stations that really do just play the same five or ten rock hits from the seventies, maybe mixed with some modern garbage. Why do they do this? What is going through their minds on the conscious and unconscious levels?
There is no “test of time”, there is only a self-reinforcing availability bias. Ones that get played more are most familiar, these stations only play what’s familiar, and with each passing year any band or even era becomes a smaller fraction of what is available.
Sure, but there are plenty of Billboard top 10’s from 1960-1980 that no one has ever heard of. Same with stuff from when I was a kid 20 years ago.