KRTH 2013 Labor Day Countdown

[oldies76]

Yes, but the day was 40-45 years ago. And a Classic Hits radio station isn't a museum, it's a format for today's 40-something adults based on songs they like now, not what their parents liked then.

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[oldies76]

but Top 500 lists are obviously not "retrospective"---they apparently include only the songs that the program director thinks listeners will still want to hear and not all the songs that the listeners actually voted for.

You got it man! A travesty that "Hey Jude" was ignored this year. That's ok though, I heard it on "another" special that aired, once upon a time.

 

[landtuna]

"Hey Jude" is my "Brown Eyed Girl".

 

[michael hagerty]

Mr. Hagerty, we've been through this 576 times since 2008 (my guess anyways..). Classic hits stations are that....classic hits stations, and what do classic hits stations play?? You guessed it..CLASSIC HITS, not just 600 of them....all of them....at the right times though (that's all I ask).

You cannot limit classic hits to just a few hundred songs.

I've said it before, I guess I have to say it again. Unlimited availability is great when you have one of those big fountains like at 7-11, Circle K, AM/PM, QuickTrip....that has sixteen different flavors of soda that sixteen different people can pour themselves all at the same time.

But you'll notice, the line gets longest behind Coke and Diet Coke. Never have to stand in line for a 44 ounce Squirt.

Radio isn't one of those fountains....it's a garden hose and only one thing comes out of it at a time. So you have to make sure that whatever comes out appeals to the largest number of people possible. And you know that because they tell you.

Radio stations don't limit the format to a few hundred songs, the audience does.

 

[michael hagerty]

You got it man! A travesty that "Hey Jude" was ignored this year. That's ok though, I heard it on "another" special that aired, once upon a time.

This is what I talked about a week before the countdown when I wondered if you'd take issue with the final result.

How surprising can it be that "Hey Jude" didn't make quite enough people's three favorite songs to make a list of 500 (given that with 20,000 or so voters, even #500 had to have thousands of votes)? At no point in the past 45 years would it have made my three favorite songs. Would it make yours?

It's not a travesty. It's a snapshot of what people in Los Angeles like to hear.

 

[landtuna]

But you'll notice, the line gets longest behind Coke and Diet Coke. Never have to stand in line for a 44 ounce Squirt.

Dammit man.....I LOVE Squirt!

Radio stations don't limit the format to a few hundred songs, the audience does.

I wouldn't think a station would do a special survey before building a holiday-type countdown show, especially one that covers a specific period. So they either must go by the hits as they were in the old days or by some other survey which they normally play during non-countdown times. For instance:

If my Classic Hits station advertised "the top 1000 hits of the modern era" there would be at least one song by Sinatra in there (UGH!) but he wouldn't get even one spin during their normal playlist rotation.

 

[michael hagerty]

Dammit man.....I LOVE Squirt!



I wouldn't think a station would do a special survey before building a holiday-type countdown show, especially one that covers a specific period. So they either must go by the hits as they were in the old days or by some other survey which they normally play during non-countdown times. For instance:

If my Classic Hits station advertised "the top 1000 hits of the modern era" there would be at least one song by Sinatra in there (UGH!) but he wouldn't get even one spin during their normal playlist rotation.

Okay, so you and I have to wait for each other at Circle K.

A listener poll like KRTH did for Labor Day is very easy to do because of software. It can be set up to block duplicate votes and it tabulates itself instantly. There are several songs that haven't been heard on KRTH on the countdown, so we know they didn't work from their usual playlist and (as we've said so many times) charts from decades ago are irrelevant.

 

[oldies76]

This is what I talked about a week before the countdown when I wondered if you'd take issue with the final result.

How surprising can it be that "Hey Jude" didn't make quite enough people's three favorite songs to make a list of 500 (given that with 20,000 or so voters, even #500 had to have thousands of votes)? At no point in the past 45 years would it have made my three favorite songs. Would it make yours?

It's not a travesty. It's a snapshot of what people in Los Angeles like to hear.

So, the fact that "Hey Jude" was #9 in 2011's countdown:

http://kearth101.cbslocal.com/2011/...h-101s-2011-top-500-memorial-day-countdown/6/

and not in this year's is the result of that many people suddenly disliking that song to cause it to rank below 500 in just TWO years??

I don't believe that. Besides that huge #1 song is from 1968 (the upper reaches of their target demo), so why would it be disqualified? The fact is that KRTH just happened to feature two conveniently-spaced 60's songs every hour during this years special. And "Hey Jude" was simply ignored. If you're gonna pick and choose which 60's music to play, that's not one to bypass. The biggest Beatles hit of their career and it's not aired in a countdown like this?? Yes, it's a travesty.

 

[oldies76]

This is what I talked about a week before the countdown when I wondered if you'd take issue with the final result.

How surprising can it be that "Hey Jude" didn't make quite enough people's three favorite songs to make a list of 500 (given that with 20,000 or so voters, even #500 had to have thousands of votes)? At no point in the past 45 years would it have made my three favorite songs. Would it make yours?

"Hey Jude" is one of my favorite songs from the rock era. It's in my top 10, but I would have voted for it anyways, since it's such a good song.

 

[michael hagerty]

So, the fact that "Hey Jude" was #9 in 2011's countdown:

http://kearth101.cbslocal.com/2011/...h-101s-2011-top-500-memorial-day-countdown/6/

and not in this year's is the result of that many people suddenly disliking that song to cause it to rank below 500 in just TWO years??

I don't believe that. Besides that huge #1 song is from 1968 (the upper reaches of their target demo), so why would it be disqualified? The fact is that KRTH just happened to feature two conveniently-spaced 60's songs every hour during this years special. And "Hey Jude" was simply ignored. If you're gonna pick and choose which 60's music to play, that's not one to bypass. The biggest Beatles hit of their career and it's not aired in a countdown like this?? Yes, it's a travesty.

Different methodologies. You're the one a few weeks back who suggested something wasn't right with the 2011 and 2012 countdowns because the results were so similar. I checked and found that KRTH didn't take listener votes for those, nor did they suggest they did...promoting them as "500 of the greatest hits on earth."

This time, people voted. And the results were dramatically different.

 

[Thomps2525]

How is it that from August 26 to August 30 when KRTH let us pick our favorite from among the 20 songs that got the most votes, Here Comes The Sun was in the top 20...but, after another week of voting, it wound up at #163. And with only six Beatles songs in this year's Top 500, the results truly were "dramatically different." Get ready for the day when Elvis Presley and the Beatles, the two best-selling acts of the rock'n'roll era, are no longer played on radio!

 

[michael hagerty]

How is it that from August 26 to August 30 when KRTH let us pick our favorite from among the 20 songs that got the most votes, Here Comes The Sun was in the top 20...but, after another week of voting, it wound up at #163. And with only six Beatles songs in this year's Top 500, the results truly were "dramatically different." Get ready for the day when Elvis Presley and the Beatles, the two best-selling acts of the rock'n'roll era, are no longer played on radio!

Given that every other song that made up the first-round Top 20 made the final Top 20, I'm going to guess that there was an error. Either "Hungry Like The Wolf" should have been listed in the first-round Top 20 or "Here Comes The Sun" should have been #18 in the final.

 

[Thomps2525]

Michael, in the early 2000s when so much contemporary music was rap and hip-hop, I quit listening to top 40 and mostly listened to talk, country and oldies. The songs I'm now sick of are ones that I heard day after day after day. You and David didn't spend so much time listening to oldies so you aren't sick of those songs.......yet.

Here are the Top 500 Rock & Roll Songs that WBIG in Washington DC counted down during Labor Day weekend...and number one is what I consider to be one of the most overplayed burned-out rock songs in history, Sweet Home Alabama. At least there was no Brown Eyed Girl:

http://www.wbig.com/pages/big-500-memorial-day-2013.html

 

[michael hagerty]

Michael, in the early 2000s when so much contemporary music was rap and hip-hop, I quit listening to top 40 and mostly listened to talk, country and oldies. The songs I'm now sick of are ones that I heard day after day after day. You and David didn't spend so much time listening to oldies so you aren't sick of those songs.......yet.

Can't speak for David, but I won't likely be. I listen to Oldies/Classic Hits about the way the typical listener does, maybe a bit less because I go wider and deeper in terms of additional stations and sources. Burnout is just not an issue.

Here are the Top 500 Rock & Roll Songs that WBIG in Washington DC counted down during Labor Day weekend...and number one is what I consider to be one of the most overplayed burned-out rock songs in history, Sweet Home Alabama. At least there was no Brown Eyed Girl:

http://www.wbig.com/pages/big-500-memorial-day-2013.html

And that's a Classic Rock station, which, as we've discussed here before, is a format that is in danger of the same kind of calicification that Oldies went through a decade ago, with an audience that takes a "pry my cold, dead hands" attitude toward their 60s and 70s album rock.

If you look at the KRTH countdown, it's actually remarkable how diverse and fresh that 500-song list is, especially compared to pre-concieved notions of what KRTH was all about. But Classic Rock (with certain exceptions) is still all about rounding up the usual suspects.

 

[Thomps2525]

You're right---I can't imagine hearing WIBG's Fat Bottom Girls and *** On Feel The Noize on KRTH---the RD software will not allow the actual word there---but John Cafferty's On The Dark Side was a surprise in this year's countdown. I'd love to know if any 1950s-60s Elvis Presley songs or 1990s-2000s hits got enough votes to be among the top 500 but were rejected because they aren't part of KRTH's 1964-86 focus.

 

[michael hagerty]

You're right---I can't imagine hearing WIBG's Fat Bottom Girls and *** On Feel The Noize on KRTH---the RD software will not allow the actual word there---but John Cafferty's On The Dark Side was a surprise in this year's countdown. I'd love to know if any 1950s-60s Elvis Presley songs or 1990s-2000s hits got enough votes to be among the top 500 but were rejected because they aren't part of KRTH's 1964-86 focus.

One more time:

There is no reason to assume the KRTH countdown is anything other than what it said it was.

KRTH's core audience sent "Satisfaction" and "Light My Fire" below the 100 mark. The last group of 40-year-old women Elvis did especially well with are 76 now.

And there simply isn't enough nostaligia built up about the 90s yet for consensus to form around a group of hits and get the thousands of votes required to make #500.

 

[Thomps2525]

Maybe next year's countdown, depending on what Rick Thomas does to the playlist, will include Madonna, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Ace Of Base and Boyz II Men.....but let's agree right now that we'll draw the line at Michael Bolton.

 

[michael hagerty]

Michael, I know you think I'm obsessed with Brown Eyed Girl but so are many others. When we listen to KRTH, we change the station as soon as we hear that song start. If KRTH were to quit playing it, do you honestly think anyone would decide, "KRTH no longer plays Brown Eyed Girl and I like that song so I'm never going to listen to KRTH again"? Remember the old adage that a station is hurt by what they do play, not by what they don't play. When there are more people who hate a song than there are who like it, it's time to drop it from the playlist. I'm still waiting to hear from any people who aren't sick of Brown Eyed Girl---I'm sure there are two or three.....maybe.

Which is why stations don't program on anecdotal evidence.

KRTH gets rooms full of people several times a year who are fine with "Brown Eyed Girl". Fewer than before, which is why it gets fewer spins, but still enough to be a positive record for their audience.

Short version: You're in the minority. At least for the KRTH core audience, which you're not a part of anyway, so none of this should be especially surprising.

People do hit the button when they hear a song they don't like. They also become dissatisfied and listen less when they don't hear their favorites as often as they once did...or at all.

 

[michael hagerty]

Maybe next year's countdown, depending on what Rick Thomas does to the playlist, will include Madonna, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Ace Of Base and Boyz II Men.....but let's agree right now that we'll draw the line at Michael Bolton.

I knew I liked you, Steve.

 

[oldies76]

Which is why stations don't program on anecdotal evidence.
They also become dissatisfied and listen less when they don't hear their favorites as often as they once did...or at all.

And those favorites are any song that they may have heard when they were young, or as recently as last year.....In other words....any song is someone's favorite. Please name any song that was a hit in the past.....it's someone's favorite today.


Come on Mr. Hagerty...keep singing, "Will it Go Around in Circles.........