The mistake you make is extrapolating your personal taste to others. That is wrong.
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Los Angeles + Riverside-San Bernardino Radio Ratings: October 2014
- Thread starter pjc1961
- Start date
The mistake you make is extrapolating your personal taste to others. That is wrong.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
I belong here much more than you do, sir.
Yours is an opinion held by one person. Your songs, your idea of variety, your fascination with charts and lists.
The radio folks like BigA, KM, Michael and others represent lifetimes of experience, learning what works and what does not .
The things that you would like to hear on the radio are the things that don't work.
There is no "right" in what you say except for your own personal world of one.
So are you that blind mentioning that I'm the only "one" who enjoys music and that radio should play them? You think I'm the only "one" who prefers that presentation?? A world of one? Yet many small market stations already side with music fans in their presentation. Too bad you are "one" that can't figure that out yet after decades in the business.
And it shows.
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Once again, LA is NOT a small market. No "small market stations" using that presentation here.
Your off the subject by bringing it up here. Go to the Colorado board.
Read the post. I said many small market stations side with music fans. Never mentioned L.A. It's not off topic, because DE mentioned that my presentation is "a world of one" first, so I responded to him. Many topics are crossed on the boards. Why are you singling me out?
If you're not mentioning LA, then it's OFF TOPIC on the LA Market board.
We don't care what small market stations do. That's great for them. Not LA. Understand?
We've been there before.
Small market stations generally have no money to do research. And they are often where less experienced people are employed... people who don't understand many of the things they will, hopefully, learn later in their careers.
So the fact that some stations play deep playlists or songs that were really never hits is not unusual... those stations generally have little over-the-air competition, so they don't notice that they could have more listening if they programmed in a better way.
Those stations are not "siding with the music fans". They are just not able to do the kinds of programming practices that larger stations can do.
And it shows.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
That is also why, in smaller markets, the Drake-Chenault automated formats often out-rated their live, local competitors "back in the day" and why satellite-delivered formats later had the same effect.
The old automated 10½" reels were the product of research, from an organization with its roots in major market radio. The local, live stations had no way of doing proper research, so they fell back on the Whitburn books, which are really nothing more or less than a reference guide to the Billboard charts. As has been explained many times before, those books only show what was a "hit" at the time, with no way of measuring the longevity of a song's appeal over time. It is that latter measure that proper research provides today.
The satellite-delivered formats are nothing more than researched, major market radio formats delivered to small markets that cannot afford to "roll their own".
Bottom line: Relying on the charts at the time a song was current in order to determine playability today is flawed, because the average listener (and I once again acknowledge that oldies76 is not an "average listener") only has fond memories of the absolute biggest hits ... and the lesser hits have faded from their memories, for the most part.
It is all well and good that there are "music fans" out there, but they constitute a very small minority of the radio audience and no one will program to the minority when programming a mass-appeal format. It is probably fair to say that the music fans are considered to be only incidentally part of the audience, because of their relatively few numbers.
And I'll take that a step further.
Setting aside the fact that until the early 80s, Billboard's Hot 100 numbers were based on wholesale, not retail, and thus didn't accurately reflect how many of those copies actually were bought by paying customers....consider this:
A record that peaked at #10....a "top ten hit".....that's how well that record did in its best week. Meaning that in its best week, there were nine records that were bigger. And the average person could probably only name seven hits that week.
Let that sink in and you'll see why "if it made the Hot 100, it was a hit", "If it was on American Top 40, it was a hit", or "If it was Top 20 in Billboard, it was a hit" are not only fallacies, but the shakiest foundation imaginable for determining whether a song is worth playing decades later.
T
Thomps2525
Guest
So in the 1970s the Billboard Hot 100 reflected wholesale numbers, not retail sales? But...but...Disco Duck and The Night Chicago Died each went to number one and each went gold. They had to have been bought by at least a million "paying customers"---they just had to be. Come to think of it, Rick Dees used to joke that only seven people bought his Disco Duck album. Maybe he's right!
Michael, I vaguely remember a researcher in the late '70s or early '80s working on a series of reference books that would have supposedly been more accurate than the Joel Whitburn books which are based solely on chart positions. The researcher was planning to take each weekly Hot 100 and tabulate actual sales figures. He reasoned, for example, that a number-one song in December might sell twice as many copies in a week as a number-one song in June, and a song that peaked at #2---think about Creedence Clearwater Revival and Blood Sweat & Tears!---might have ultimately sold more copies than a song that reached number one. The guy was going to rank each year's hits according to actual (or so he claimed) sales figures. I don't remember his name or the name of the books. I don't even know if he ever published any. Do you know anything about this?
Michael, I vaguely remember a researcher in the late '70s or early '80s working on a series of reference books that would have supposedly been more accurate than the Joel Whitburn books which are based solely on chart positions. The researcher was planning to take each weekly Hot 100 and tabulate actual sales figures. He reasoned, for example, that a number-one song in December might sell twice as many copies in a week as a number-one song in June, and a song that peaked at #2---think about Creedence Clearwater Revival and Blood Sweat & Tears!---might have ultimately sold more copies than a song that reached number one. The guy was going to rank each year's hits according to actual (or so he claimed) sales figures. I don't remember his name or the name of the books. I don't even know if he ever published any. Do you know anything about this?
As Michael mentioned, the chart was based on wholesale shipments to onestops, rack jobbers and record stores and chains. It did not take into account returns, which could be substantial if a song stiffed.
Steve: I remember the guy, but not the name. I don't think the book ever was published.
But he was right. All number one ever meant was that it sold more copies (wholesale) than any other record that week. So in hot weeks, a lower-charting record could easily have sold more copies than a number one record in a slow week.
As for wholesale versus retail, I can explain a bit later tonight or this weekend.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
For the life of me, I don't know why I didn't think of this additional factor until now.
When you got to the second, third, or fourth single off a particular album, its sales would be affected negatively by those people who had purchased the album and therefore didn't need to also buy the 45. Granted, it would not be a huge factor, but the deeper the label went in issuing singles, the more that factor would impact sales.
The question then becomes whether or not there was a tendency by the wholesale distributors to ship lower amounts of subsequent singles from the same album as they would the first single. And I don't know the answer to that because I have never been in the record business.
We studied Shania Twain's Come On Over, which had 9 singles on it. Sales of the album actually increased as more singles were released. It reached a tipping point towards the end, mainly because the singles weren't as good, and everyone who wanted it had already bought it. We brought up that research when the RIAA came up with their incorrect statement that OTA radio play hurt album sales.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
From what I said ahead of the statement of mine that you quoted, it would seem intuitive that singles sales would drop as album sales increased, A. Did your research show any tendency for that happening (especially with the quality of the single releases declining)?
That's an interesting question...at the time, the focus was more on selling albums. They released singles as part of the strategy to sell albums. Today, with iTunes, it's all about selling singles.
However, the third and sixth singles were the biggest sellers: "You're Still The One" and "That Don't Impress Me Much." The 7th single, "Man I Feel Like a Woman," only sold a million copies. From that point on, single sales slowed down. But it's pretty amazing when the 7th single from an album sells a million.
IIRC, Come On Over went Diamond, selling ten million copies. It was her second album to do that.
T
Thomps2525
Guest
K.M., remember June 6, 1967, when Columbia released Moby Grape's self-titled debut album? Ten of the album's 13 songs were released on 45-rpm singles the same day. Of the five A-sides, Omaha was the only one that made the Hot 100. Buying those five singles would have cost more than just buying the album. To this day, I've never understood Columbia's thinking!
When I was a teenager---last century---an artist would release three or four singles over the course of a year and then put out an album. When, and for what reasons, did record companies start releasing albums first and then release certain tracks as singles?
When I was a teenager---last century---an artist would release three or four singles over the course of a year and then put out an album. When, and for what reasons, did record companies start releasing albums first and then release certain tracks as singles?
Why does any thread with any hint of Los Angeles end up going off-topic and head to the same argument over and over and over and over again about music research.
I'm a former radio guy that spent 20+ years in the business, didn't get to LA or the majors, but I GET it and it makes perfect sense. Just because a song was a #1 in 1972 doesn't make it listenable today. I only want to hear music I have pleasant memories of.
I'm a former radio guy that spent 20+ years in the business, didn't get to LA or the majors, but I GET it and it makes perfect sense. Just because a song was a #1 in 1972 doesn't make it listenable today. I only want to hear music I have pleasant memories of.
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