On the way to and home from work I can pull in two FM stations that play hard rock (AC/DC, Ozzy, etc.). On the way to work their programming completely different – one a “morning zoo” style show, the other just songs and banter from the DJ. But on the way home from work they play the same songs, in the same order, just with one starting a minute or so behind the first. Best I can tell from tooling around their respective websites, they don’t appear to belong to the same ownership group. They have different ads and different DJs, so it’s not like they’re both getting the same content from a third source. From where I sit, it sounds like the KSPQ DJ is listening to what KKID plays and just repeating their playlist because fuck it.
Is this typical in the radio industry? Does some sort of agreement keep radio stations from effectively copying others’ playlists (not the songs available, but the songs actually played, in the same order)?
Was it more than one song or only one? If it was several songs in a row, your guess may be right. But if it was only one song, I have actually heard two unrelated stations playing the same song at the same time several times, with perhaps a difference of a few seconds. One time it was simultaneous! Exactly on the beat! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. And that I know was a coincidence. They weren’t two competitive stations.
Radio stations have such short playlists it probably happens more often than you might think.
The two stations sound like they are variations of Classic Rock formats. The playlists for most CR stations are remarkable similar, limited, and repeated.
If the two stations subscribe to the same programming service, it’s possible that the service would send them identical hour-by-hour playlists. In which case it’s possible that the two stations would play the songs in the same order, deviating only in minor things like the length of a newscast, number of commercials in a break, etc.
It’s odd that a programming service would do that for two stations close enough that their signals overlap, but anything is possible, particularly if they’re using a really cheap service that cuts corners.
It might actually be a third source. They could be using Jack FM or something similar. I believe that the stations license Jack-FM and sell their own commercials, According to Wiki, most don’t have DJS- but that means some do.
Are you sure the stations are not related? I long ago stopped listening to radio, one of the main reasons (other than frekkin ads) I stopped is how the genre of classic rock could cover most songs released between like 1950 and 2000, yet you’ll hear the same AC/DC followed by Bon Jovi followed by REM on all the local classic rock stations.
The Wikipedia pages don’t say they are but the last reference to ownership of KKID was from 2012
They are not, according to FCC data. Though 80 miles apart, their signals do overlap somewhere in the middle. There is always the possibility they are using the same consultant, a very lazy consultant, which might account for an identical playlist.
Slight hijack, but your user name implies you might have insight into this. Are the majority of radio stations (maybe classic rock is more inclined) completely programmed song for song? My impression, is that some segments are chosen by the actual DJs, in particular ones where the jocks have been at the station for decades. Those segments are more esoteric so maybe they are under local control.
One time, I heard every radio station in town playing the same song at the same time. Freaky! It was about some guy with a pile of trash or something, it went on for.ever.
When I worked radio briefly in the early 80s, the programming format they used was less constraining. It was like a ala carte menu: play one “hard rock” tune, one “ballad”, one “high rated”, etc, and each category had a few choices. Gave the DJs some leeway to be creative, but no “Johnny Fever I’m going to play Dogs now see you in 20 minutes” freedom.
I can’t speak for the “majority.” There are still a lot of independently-owned stations out there.
But with rare exceptions (and I can’t think of any offhand), the music played on any radio station owned by a mega-broadcaster (iHeart, Cumulus, Audacy and the like) are programmed in advance, song by song. The jocks do not pick their own music, unless they are doing some sort of special segment or feature, like an “All 80s Request Lunch” or something like that, and even then, most of the music is pre-programmed and the jock has a few “request” slots he or she can fill as they please. In smaller markets, at stations owned by local owners, the jocks may have more leeway, but they still have to follow a format.
When I got my first job in radio, 53 years ago, the jocks had to follow a format clock but picked their own Oldies from the singles or LPs on the shelves in the studio. You had access to the entire library. It was the responsibility of the jock to blend the music in a pleasing manner. I haven’t worked for a station that allowed that since 1988. Everywhere I worked after that, in markets ranging from medium to large, all of the music has been pre-programmed. You might play it off a CD but you played what was on the program log. Once it became feasible to put the station’s music library on computer, it became even easier to control because you literally had nothing else to choose from.
Thus, a Classic Rock station in Cleveland owned by a mega-broadcaster will have a music library pretty similar to a sister station in Dallas, with perhaps some differences based on market research. They don’t call it Cookie Cutter radio for nothing.
Of course, a jock who’s a market legend might have a bit of leeway, but even they would not be allowed to pick their own music like they did in the olden days. “Free Form” radio had its drawbacks. I knew a guy who worked for a Free Form Rock station like that in the 1970s. He liked about a dozen bands and every time he was on, he played at least a song or two from those bands, guaranteed. He didn’t play bands he didn’t like, even if requested. There’s where that kind of radio goes off the rails.
Thanks to advances in computer automation, it’s easy for pretty much any radio station except for the very smallest to program their music 24 hours a day. The DJ’s may be given some freedom to program some of their own music, as well as make their own comments between songs.
There’s nothing really new about this. Going back to the Payola scandals of the 1950s, control of music has gradually been removed from the individual disc jockey - first to a single music director for a station, then to a single music director for a group of stations, then to paid program consultants, then to automated music services, etc.
Still, exactly identical songs in the same order is a very odd coincidence. I remember a prank decades ago at the height of the WLS/WCFL rivalry in Chicago when WCFL would play a song, then call WLS and request the same song. But it only lasted for an hour or so before WLS caught on.
There is a fully automated station in Arizona that acts like it is the owners personal Ipod. He just plays whatever he wants, no commercials, no announces, nothing. The weird thing was one time, for about two weeks(!) the station played the same songs in the same order, at the same time, all day. You could view the logs on line to confirm. You know how difficult it was to contact the station when there are no humans there? Finally someone read my emails or woke up, and it went back to normal.
Interestingly, the songs did not play at the exact same time, but they didn’t drift consistently either. Bon Jovi would be at 7:02 today, 7:04 tomorrow, 7:00 the next day. The computer must have been varying it a little, but why?
So today on the way home from work, the same thing was happening. But then I decided to pay attention to the inane banter from the DJ. Brian Jester introduced himself, then an aumsing anecdote, followed by local commercials/weather. Then a few minutes later, on the other station, same guy, same amusing anecdote, break for local commercials/weather.
So I looked up this Brian Jester fellow, and he’s a radio personality on FM stations far and wide.
What I think is happening is that, because reasons, both radio stations are getting their “drive home” programming from an anonymous third source, and there’s a guy at a computer somewhere in West Plains and a guy at a computer somewhere in Salem hitting “Play” on the local commercials/ local weather mp3 files, then they cut it back over to the programmed … uh, programming.
**I just saw a new comment which reveals Brian is on Westwood One’s network. That would explain the duplication of music. Both stations are picking up the network off the bird. This is what I was writing before I saw that:
Voice tracking from talent outside the market is quite common nowadays. There are people who make a living at it. It’s surprising he’s on two stations so close together, and that he doesn’t tailor his tracks to the specific market. No one is sitting at a control board at either of these stations playing those tracks. That person would have to be paid! “Brian” can probably log into the station’s software from home and insert them himself. Even if he sends them all via email, there is someone at the station who inserts them ahead of time, and the automation plays them.
I did some voice tracking at one station, but I worked there, and it was because I wasn’t going to be available on a weekend day. I actually spent time prepping content so I would have something interesting to say, and between that and the actual recording, it took me about 90 minutes to track a five-hour show. If you’re lazy, you can do it in a lot less time. I knew one guy who could track a five hour show in 20 minutes. I should point out that I was not paid for a five-hour show. I was only paid for the time it took me to prep and record it.
Voice tracking has replaced local DJs in market after market. Pretty soon, artificial intelligence using synthesized voices will replace the voice trackers. It’s already been successfully tried in a few markets.
Because he recently passed and he was the voice of my teenage years in SoCal, I have to recommend Jim Ladd’s Radio Waves. If you can find a copy. He details the rise and fall of free-form radio in great and loving detail.
I used to occasionally drive past a sign shop at an intersection. Sitting at the light I saw the sign shop’s sign, urging me to tune to some radio station number (AM iirc).
When I did one day while waiting for the light, I heard the sign shop owner talking about his signs! It was a personal radio station that my radio only received in the area immediately around the shop.
There is a house nearby that has a Christmas light display that is synched with music that they broadcast on a low power FM frequency. It has a range of about 100 yards.
I feel a little bad for their neighbors, because (being so awesome) it attracts a lot of traffic. At least it’s not a cul-de-sac.
My first husband was convinced that radio stations did this deliberately. Like one station would have someone listening to the other station, and that person would tell the DJ what to play next