Does a DJ get to decide what songs to play? If not, who decides this and how? And, does the station manager dictate the playlist for a radio station? (If not, who?)
Almost never, and even then, usually only a handful of songs. Most of the songs a station plays are decided by a music director (either locally or for an entire chain) and, in fact, often programmed into a computer ahead of time, so the on-the-air dj not only is told what to play but also when and in what order.
On some occasions a station will let a dj play a new release, or a hot local band or something like that.
The reason for this, more than anything, is the payola scandals of the 1950s, when record companies bribed disc jockeys to play the label’s songs. When government tightening regulations didn’t really solve the problem, radio stations moved to make a single person accountable for what got on the air. Later on, the notion of a structured, set music playlist became more important and the music director became even more powerful.
The station manager gets to decide the overall direction of the station.
The program director executes the direction (“format.”)
The music director plugs the music into that format
The dj delivers it on the air. It’s all very logical.
Not since Johnny Fever.
What I’ve always wondered is when someone calls in to a radio station and requests a song on the air, how does the DJ find the song, queue it up and play it so quickly? Especially in the days before computers?
Even then, Johnny was told what to play at certain times. I remember one episode in which Herb was summoned to jury duty. Andy temporarily took over as sales director and appointed Venus as program director in his place. There’s a scene in which Johnny is finished playing the record Another One Bites the Dust by Queen and Johnny is bitching over the air about how he only played that song because Venus directed him to.
There are freeform radio stations you can listen to quite easily, with Djs who are knowledgable. They are non profits and usually associated with a college. Radio by automation seems like a cultural backwater to me. These stations are where ideas are shared. You can search for them at college towns, you can get the apps and hear them all over the world. There are no barriers anymore.
WFMU - New Jersey is the prime example.
WMBR - at MIT is one of the greatest ever.
All the College stations in Boston for instance, are part of a great enterprise that we are lucky to have, and now can be heard all over the world. The limitations of radio don’t exist anymore.
Obviously, we do not hear the phone conversation live, but only after the requested song has been located and is ready to be played.
At commercial stations, they’re almost always programmed by a computer based on phone surveys and sales charts and exquisitely designed to return the maximum amount of ad revenue.
There are independent stations out there (KDHX here in St. Louis and at many college stations around the country) where deejays with a passion for the music are given (almost*) free reign to play whatever they want.
*I volunteered with KDHX a few years ago and asked about an album-oriented show. Play one album through, then another, et cetera. I was told that was illegal according to the FCC because it encouraged recording the entire album at home for free. Also, the directors there still want you to pick a format for your 2-4 hour show and not stray too far, so while you can play whatever songs you want, they don’t want you sticking a synth-pop song in the middle of your bluegrass program.
There is a convention now that says that if a station is streaming live they cannot play the same artist more than 3 times in an hour. I have never seen it in writing but I’ve heard it cited. WHRB the harvard station has had “orgy season” at the end of every semester where they would play the complete works of artists all day and night until it was over. Lately they do a lot of stuff that doesn’t focus on one artist. They are still violating a rule if it exists though at some point.
This is not about home taping though because that goes back to the 70s.
Regarding requests: Suppose a certain song is due up in a few minutes, there’s going to be someone who has requested it in the last hour. So, play the request, play the song. Requests for songs not coming up are ignored.
It’s no more “requested” than most reality TV shows are “reality”.
Yeah, I’m not sure exactly what the rule is, I was just told they couldn’t do it. KSHE in the same town plays whole albums at midnight on Saturdays, but I think they had to get a waiver or something.
I could be wrong but I think the bar on radio stations playing whole albums only applies to recent releases. After an album has been out for awhile (I’m not sure how long), they are free to do it. However, this rule was implemented around 1980 when albums accounted for the largest share of recorded music sales. It may not be as strongly enforced today.
Well, I guess that’s how it is in the US.
Also, at some of the more automated stations, the talent may lay their voice tracks down in advance all in one go. It might take them only an hour or two to take care of the whole week. I understand in those cases, the ‘DJ’ may do more than one station to fill their time.
In the '80s, when I was in college, I DJed for two years at our campus radio station. We did have a playlist, after a fashion, selected by our music director (it being the 1980s, you can imagine that it was heavy on the alternative-rock / college rock bands of that era, like REM and the Replacements).
For the three-hour shows that each DJ hosted, we were mandated to play at least 3 songs from that playlist (which had about 30 songs). Beyond that, we were given free rein. The station had a big library of old albums and singles, but most of us DJs also brought our own records in to play.
Stations could always play entire albums. Exhibit A: The Seventh Day, a Sunday evening program on LA KLOS 95.5 where 7 albums were played in their entirety.
True, but as I said earlier, I think that applies to only older releases. Are any of the albums played on The Seventh Day less than 10 years old?
Many. The FCC cannot regulate the content of radio stations save for decency and fraud. The reason stations don’t play albums or even album sides is because deeper cuts might prompt listeners to switch stations.
My son was a DJ at a college radio station, and he was encouraged to carve out a distinctive sound during his air time. One year he did world music, and then he got another slot and did Americana (one day blues, one day zydeco, one day ballads, and so on). Or he could decide to focus on jam bands. The station had a DJ that did Celtic music and another one that focused on trad jazz, among many others that played more contemporary pieces, hip hop, whatever.
The radio station had just about everything musicwise. Finding it was the DJ’s job and recataloguing it after it had been played was the job of interns who wanted to be DJs. This was a job often left undone, so there would be a pile of recently played CDs–I think they also had MP3s by then–and some of these got replayed because they were handy. He did have to write down everything he played, and he had to do PSAs.
I think the station asked for different playlists during finals. He took requests, and he liked when people called him to request stuff because it meant they were listening.
I briefly was a volunteer DJ at a college radio station (KNMC, 90.1 FM attached to Montana State University-Northern, Havre, MT) so I might as well talk about the baling-wire-and-duct-tape experience.
My show was late-night on Monday. I had a tiny audience and no guidance on my playlist; in fact, after a brief tutorial on how to work the equipment my first night, I was alone in the booth and, quite possibly, alone in the building. My show was called The Stochastic Hit Parade, after a show on WFMU which I was streaming online at that time, and I just lugged my CD binder full of CDs into the booth and played what I wanted.
I played Hank Williams, Sr., The Velvet Underground, John Prine, Elvis Costello, The Residents, songs from the soundtrack to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and The Oblio Joes. I played “America” by Alan Ginsberg and “Flash Light” by Parliament, but I don’t know if I ever played them back-to-back. I sprinkled in a few PSAs and I was free. (I even chose which PSAs I ran.)
The station had other shows, but it wasn’t completely programmed: When nobody was in the booth, a program running on an iMac played a pre-programmed list of MP3s, always in the same sequence. (They might have added shuffle later.)
Large-scale commercial radio and small-scale radio (commercial or not) are barely even the same kind of thing anymore, and the fact the former is probably on its way out doesn’t mean the latter has to die, too.