Exactly. In a packed restaurant on a weekend night, playing the tunes from the 40's and 50's (based on the artists you mentioned) in 2013, would scour the place out.....not a chance! Good for Fratelli's. Same should apply to radio with the classics.
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The new krth
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Exactly. In a packed restaurant on a weekend night, playing the tunes from the 40's and 50's (based on the artists you mentioned) in 2013, would scour the place out.....not a chance! Good for Fratelli's. Same should apply to radio with the classics.
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Thomps2525
Guest
I remember when KRTH played Topsy, So Rare, You Were Mine, Adorable, She Can't Find Her Keys, Lavendar Blue, Down By The Station, Got A Match?, Mexican Hat Rock, Oh Julie, The Three Bells, Sad Movies, Liberty Valance, Manhattan Spiritual and hundreds of other songs that have pretty much been ignored since the 1990s. Mister oldies76, for each person like you and me who would love to have a station that played every top-30 1950s-60s-70s-80s hit, there is someone such as Michael who will insist that no station can survive with such a playlist. Nope, they have to play only the 500 songs that "test well." I'm glad we have online channels and satellite radio and don't have to rely on KRTH and KOLA for oldies. Er...I mean "classic hits."
If it was on CHR then, it should be played today. Once a hit, always a hit. Radio is seriously short changing itself, by limiting it's playlists to just a few hundred tunes. Think of the possibilities here.
And I believe radio can survive with larger playlists, the songs just have to played AT THE RIGHT TIME. How many times have I said this?? Michael and David should realize the possiblities. It's been done before, AM's, countless small markets and stations similiar to WLNG are doing it....so should others. It's not rocket science, just play the music. I hear more complaints about limited, repetitious selections than anything else, when it comes to radio conversations. It's the facts and the truth never lies.
Well, maybe 99% of them could be played. I don't believe "An Open Letter to a Teenage Son" from 1967, #10 could be played today. LOL
I think they program out of fear. Understandably - it's a tough business where even a guy like Jhani Kaye can disappear overnight. Not saying he was pushed out - I have no idea - but....
What they don't get is just how bored the general public is by radio. Sure people listen to it when there are no other options (a car with no satellite, an office, a grocery store) but is anyone sitting around listening to KRTH, KLOS, or any of these stations voluntarily? Of course not. It's become common denominator background music.
The only segment of the population excited about radio is, oddly, kids. They LOVE Amp and KISS. Why? Because the music is constantly new and changing. It isn't boring. Tiny playlist, of course. But in 5 months, those songs are gone, replaced by new ones.
Classic rock and oldies do not have that luxury. There are no new "old" songs to play. So it really gets boring fast if you are not careful. Problem is stick people in a hotel ballroom for research and of COURSE they are going to say they like their favorite songs the most. Duh. I like pizza the most. Doesn't mean I eat pizza every day!
The shame is that FM has local energy and superior sound to satellite/on-line options, most of which is pre-recorded or not even hosted.
What they don't get is just how bored the general public is by radio. Sure people listen to it when there are no other options (a car with no satellite, an office, a grocery store) but is anyone sitting around listening to KRTH, KLOS, or any of these stations voluntarily? Of course not. It's become common denominator background music.
The only segment of the population excited about radio is, oddly, kids. They LOVE Amp and KISS. Why? Because the music is constantly new and changing. It isn't boring. Tiny playlist, of course. But in 5 months, those songs are gone, replaced by new ones.
Classic rock and oldies do not have that luxury. There are no new "old" songs to play. So it really gets boring fast if you are not careful. Problem is stick people in a hotel ballroom for research and of COURSE they are going to say they like their favorite songs the most. Duh. I like pizza the most. Doesn't mean I eat pizza every day!
The shame is that FM has local energy and superior sound to satellite/on-line options, most of which is pre-recorded or not even hosted.
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Thomps2525
Guest
Good news, MightyMet! Your local pizzeria just conducted an auditorium test in which eight hundred pizza eaters were asked to rate 150 different kinds of pizza. After taking one bite out of each pizza, they answered questions such as "Do you enjoy eating this pizza?" and "Would you like to eat this pizza more often?" Your local pizzeria now sells only the ten pizzas that "tested well." There isn't as much variety as before...but the pizzeria has to appeal to its "target audience," which wants to eat only the most popular pizzas every day.
Okay.
Declining ratings.
Falling revenue.
Staff cuts.
Format change.
Got it.
As for "once a hit, always a hit", um...no.
Times change, people change and there are few art forms more disposable from the outset than popular music.
As I've said before, especially with female listeners, the flavor-of-the-month thing is a huge factor.
That's like suggesting that the homecoming queen is still the most popular girl at your 20th reunion because she was back in high school...never mind that everyone else in the room has grown while she's stuck in 1993.
The number of people who listen to KRTH in any given 15 minute period > the people you converse with about radio.
The amount of advertising revenue KRTH needs to continue > that of a small town AM or WLNG (department of redundancy department).
There is no right time for a song to cost you a quarter, a third or more of your audience.
Oh, and the "glory days" of KRTH? 12th place with a 2.5.
Very poor analogy and here's why:
A pizza place does not require anchovy haters to eat anchovy pizzas. The customer who wants a pepperoni pie does not have to eat the anchovy-laden one first and hope that the pepperoni one is next out of the oven.
Radio serves the same song to everyone at each point in time. You can't choose the ones you want to hear, and ignore the "anchovies". So radio can only serve up the things everybody likes.
At the pizzeria, each customer skips all the possible combinations they do not want. In radio, you have to take them all.
76, we've told you over and over about how stations that had PDs that thought they would win the "variety" crown by expanding the playlist have almost uniformly seen ratings drop and been fired. Some of us here learned that the hard way, by expanding lists and suffering the consequences.
Those small town stations are either in non rated markets or are rimshots or dismal-signal AMs. They don't get much billing, and most are futile efforts to keep an AM from losing too much money within a cluster where the FMs are the money makers.
WLNG is not a music station. It plays songs in between swap shop and the lost dog announcements in a market of just over 100,000.
You will never win this argument, as it is proven, time and time again, to be vehemently wrong.
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I've never been a fan of mandatory drug testing, but...
Jhani Kaye "disappeared overnight" and you "don't know whether he was pushed"?
Seriously?
After 8 years programming KRTH (a time equal to Bill Drake's entire run at KHJ, during which he had 5 PDs), Jhani publicly announced his retirement four months in advance, consulted on the process to choose his successor, and worked alongside Rick for a couple of weeks to get him up to speed.
Program out of fear? No, they program to get ratings and revenue. And Jhani took a station CBS could very well have killed in 2005 and put it in a position to have a future.
You may be bored with Classic Rock and Classic Hits, but millions of Los Angeles listeners aren't. When they push the preset, they're looking for familiarity and consistency.
You just named all the reasons why I only went once to Fratelli's, despite having worked in Glendale for 13 years and lived in the city for half of that time. Not only do they play artists who take away my appetite, but they play them just loud enough that I can not ignore it.
Yes, it's a "mood" but it is an intrusive, invasive and irritating one for me.
N.B: I love Italian contemporary music from the early CHR era... Nicola di Bari, Dominico Modugno, Rita Pavone, I Pooh, Camaleonti, Al Bano, etc., etc., but that's a different story.
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No s--t!!!!!
And just to show that David and I don't see eye to eye on everything, Fratelli's sounds like exactly the kind of place I could spend a delightful evening in, having Italian food, good wine and swapping stories with the lovely and talented Alison Martino (Al's daughter).
But I like the artists David mentions too. So if we were to have a meal together, the compromise would be that I let David choose the restaurant. If I wanted to introduce David and Alison and hoped for it to go well, Fratelli's would be a poor choice.
Tell that to the artists Michael...... If I were featuring a special, playing the top 50 HITS of 1977, that's how the show would be labeled today...the top 50 HITS of 1977. "Hotel California" is a number one song from 1977 and still is today a number one song from 1977, as are the other 27 titles that made #1 that year.
You are not seeing it the way I am trying to present this to you. And from your perspective, it all about research. My view is what the listeners would love to hear and what they have been missing for so long. We disagree.
Exactly why they have been happily serving customers since 1998, because of their ambience and mood....and food selections. They'd be out of business if everyone dining there thought like you. You are in the tiny minority.
Millions??? Exaggeratation. Like I said, everyone I have discussed radio with, when it comes to repetition and not enough songs being played ALL have said the same thing....they are tired of it and are not satisfied. That's 100% feedback. Multiply that by the population that still listens to the radio and see what you get. Of course we'll never know, but I'll bet it's over 90%, easily.
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