Idunno. I was able to completely learn “Just Breathe” on one car trip to North Carolina. It’s amazing how a bass/baritone can get a woman to simply melt with that song…
Arbitron does an enormous amount of ratings work for radio.
Remember also that not everyone listens to radio all day long. If you only listen to the radio during your commute, say, you’re not going to realize that songs are repeated throughout the day and be less likely to notice how much they are repeated over the course of a week. You’re just going to be psyched because for that 30 minutes that you are listening, your radio station tends to play songs you like.
I think that might be who the radio stations cater to. At the same time, oddly enough, they encourage people to listen all day long and many of their contests reward people who listen throughout the day.
I don’t think this argument holds up, at least not in my experience. During a given week of commuting, I fully expect to hear the same song five times on a Clear Channel owned station. They seem to switch program blocks about once a week and repeat almost identical orders for each day. I once counted twelve days in a row of driving to or from work and listening to the same damn Smashmouth song. Too bad the other stations in that town were country music. It was a ten minute commute, so tapes and CD’s were kind of pointless.
We used to joke about KROQ in Los Angeles when they sold out (early/mid 90’s). Instead of playing a variety of tunes, it was one “seattle grunge band” song, one “third song of the day”, and one possibly decent tune. The third song of the day was whatever had been deemed popular and was therefore played to death. The three song pattern often repeated for hours.
Wanna know whats just as bad? Cablevision’s new digital systems offers something like 45 channels of music. I was thrilled, at first. Big bands, show tunes, reggae, blues.
Then I discovered (while working at home one day, with the blues channel playing in the background) that the channels were all two-hour loops that replay over and over for weeks at a time!
I really should start “ask the radio guy” over in Café society, shouldn’t I?
Not defending Clear Channel here, but what they are doing is NOT payola in the strict sense of the word.
It is stated on the air that “so-and-so records” is a sponsor of the show and has paid for airtime for their product (the song). That makes it perfectly legal to pay for airplay.
Payola is when a station (or individual) is paid to play a song and does not divulge that information to the listener.
And Gaspode, when you start that thread, count me in - 15 years behind a mic - be glad to help field the questions.
Freudian slip.:smack:
I’m sure that not all stations announce the payola. And even if they do announce it most people won’t hear it among all the other ads they run.
I worked in college radio and I did it because I liked music. I would never want a job in radio where I could not choose all the music I played. I never intended to do radio as a career, I just did it for fun.
This is demonstrable not true. KFOG in the San Francisco/San Jose area has had the same format of a “wide variety of world class” rock for at least ten years, and they’re not only still going strong but I think they’re one of the (if not the) most successful radio stations in one of the biggest markets in the country.
KFOG plays oldies, classic rock, new rock, modern rock, hits, lesser-known songs, and even some blues. I may not like everything that they play, but I never get the feeling that they’re just playing the same old stuff, over and over.
Why other stations have apparently never tried to imitate KFOG’s success is beyond me.
Another semi-counter to the limited playlist is “The Bone”. They play oldie-rock, but at least I sometimes hear something there other than the same old stuff that KFOX recycles day after day.
KPIG (107.5, Freedom CA) is another example of a popular station without strict playlists. Their DJs have a lot of latitude in choosing songs, I’ve never heard the same song twice in one day, and yet KPIG has a cult following and is one of the most popular webcast stations.
Dogface, I know about Arbitron’s customer surveys (indeed, the survey I took part in was likely run by Arbitron). But I can’t imagine their surveys are as valid as the Nielsen boxes for TV. Nielsen themselves had problems when their ratings were done by survey–they found that “Nielsen families” had a tendency to just write that they’d watched the same shows every week, regardless of whether they watched them or not. I suspect the same is true with the Arbitron ratings, and that the ratings do not really reflect actual listener habits.
Former on-air DJ for a #1-rated Arbitron station checking in:
Disclaimer: this was over 20 years ago, and in a small market…
We had 3 bins: twenty 'A’s, forty 'B’s, and ‘oldies’ (the oldies took up the whole wall).
The playlist was: A, B, oldie, A, B, oldie, repeat. I picked the oldies at my own whim. We did UPI news on the hour and read some teletype, but the A’s and B’s went out in order. I don’t think I ever hit the same ‘A’ on my shift.
We also played an assload of commercials, and things have changed a LOT since then (we played vinyl records!)
My family is an Arbitron family (though not me personally). I’m not sure if that contributes to the debate in any way. They just fill out these little surveys saying what they listened to (if anything) and also have a little box to check if they’re listening to it in the car. They fill out personal data on the back. I don’t think it affects their listening habits at all.
There is a relatively obvious solution to this problem. Play short, short playlists during peak commute times, have longer, more diverse playlists for the stretches between 9 AM and 5 PM. That way those of us who listen at work are satisfied, and they can still pump the popular songs of the month to the commuters.
We have basically given up listening to radio at work. It is uniformly horrid in Houston. Our last vestiges of hope, KPFT, recently went to a new ownership which canceled all of the really good programs (or moved them or something). There is always KTRU (Rice University radio), but interspersed with the brilliant shows are 3 hours of Scandanavian death metal and 2 hours of Japanese experimental klangfarben performance art. Which is somewhat disagreeable after a bit.
Actually KFOG has been doing this for over 20 years now.
They do play a wide variety, but for their “10 At 10” program, “ten greats songs from one great year,” they step outside their format even further. It’s great to hear some old chestnuts that you haven’t heard in decades.
A few months back they did a special A-Z run through of the KFOG library, playing all the songs in alphabetical order. It took 10 days to get all the way through.
The best way to check out “10 At 10” is on Saturday mornings, beginning at 6am Pacific time when they repeat all 5 shows from the week. They still broadcast online, so you can catch it anywhere.
Several Years ago, before 2 format changes, WNEW-FM did the same thing, twice actually. The first time, (I think it was spring time) took about 10 days. IIRC, they played all the songs in their “vast library” in alphabetical order, starting with A Day in the Life and ending with Ziggy Stardust. All the songs titles that started with "The’ were lumped together in the T’s and parenthetical titles like (Ghost) Riders (in the Sky) were played in the R’s.
So many people called to complain about all the omissions, they redid it in the fall and I’m pretty sure it took over 3 weeks to finish; From A Beautiful Moning, A Boy Named Sue, etc to Zooropa. The segues were listenable & refreshing & it was good to hear covers next to their original. I think it would be a great format for an internet station
ask RICKMAN (a DJ on WKZQ-FM who loves explaining this).
I’m suprised no one has mentioned St. Louis’ KSHE 95 (94.7…I don’t get it either). A good friend of mine is from St. Louie and apparently KSHE’s been playing rock and roll for a really long time (since the late 60s I believe, check their website www.kshe95.com) and they play a variety of classic and modern rock. I was up there a few weeks ago and I listened to KSHE a good little bit and I never heard them replay a song, or even play a “Clear Channel Cut” as we call them (Another Brick in the Wall part 2, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, the songs that are soo overplayed on the radio). It was refreshing.