• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

KPWR playlist unreal

oldies76 said:
It is a common and natural human reaction to avoid things that repeat over and over that causes one to tire and cause boredom as a consequence. Music is one of them. Don't need stats, it happens with nearly everyone including you.

.
Click to expand...

The story has it that Top 40 was born in 1952 in Omaha when the owner and programmer of a radio station noticed that every time the waitress got a tip, she would use a nickle to play the same song. Over and over, all day long.

When those of us who grew up in the 50's and 60s were kids and we got a new 45, we take it home and play it over and over and over. 20 or 30 times the first day was not enough.

So aCHR radio station doing a promotion with constant repetition for a day or during a show is a good idea!
 
DavidEduardo said:


The story has it that Top 40 was born in 1952 in Omaha when the owner and programmer of a radio station noticed that every time the waitress got a tip, she would use a nickle to play the same song. Over and over, all day long.

When those of us who grew up in the 50's and 60s were kids and we got a new 45, we take it home and play it over and over and over. 20 or 30 times the first day was not enough.

So aCHR radio station doing a promotion with constant repetition for a day or during a show is a good idea!
Click to expand...

I say then let's do it. What works then should work now, and clearly Power 106 has stats that say the listeners want this, David has the relevant history, so Oldies and his silly notions of variety can take a hike. Play the song 20 times in a row. Then take the next song and play it ten times in a row. Play the #3 song five times in a row. Then repeat.

If only I could patent the methodology instead of giving it away here for free...
 
TheBigA said:
No one is doubting that they're doing this. But my point is they're doing it for a reason.
Click to expand...

Maybe they're trying to post the playlist link at Mediabase as often as the song plays on KPWR. :rolleyes:
 
DavidEduardo said:


During the glory years of WABC in New York... when it had the highest cume of any station in the nation... the #1 song played every 90 minutes. The rest of the current rotations were nearly as tight.
Click to expand...

I remember those days well David. Its why I gravitated to WIBG in Philadelphia and while they had some repetition, nothing in the amount fostered by WABC. Even WMCA was better, and you'll say of course who was #1 in NYC and of course the answer is WABC was (I'll save you the trouble David). Not everyone wants to hear such repetition but those of us in that category I realize are in a tiny minority.
 
This whole thread just underscores my belief that this type of programming experiment/trick/stunt/or otherwise is Music for the Moron Masses. People are MORONS, just watch any of the "people in the street"-type segments on TV shows like Letterman etc. Most of them CANNOT even name the VP of the US!!!! Many, maybe most, music radio listeners are MORONS!! Thank Goodness (God and maybe Al Gore) for the Internet so I can actually listen to programming I can enjoy (mostly from out of market over the air real radio stations whose audience has an average IQ at least in triple figures unlike those listeners in SoCal).
 
SuperRadioFan said:
I remember those days well David. Its why I gravitated to WIBG in Philadelphia and while they had some repetition, nothing in the amount fostered by WABC. Even WMCA was better, and you'll say of course who was #1 in NYC and of course the answer is WABC was (I'll save you the trouble David). Not everyone wants to hear such repetition but those of us in that category I realize are in a tiny minority.
Click to expand...

You got it: very tiny majority.

I believe I fit the triple-digit IQ qualification, yet I love having a station that just plays all the biggest current hits without the drek. Those stations, whether ones like KIIS or Z-100 now or KHJ and WLS and WABC in the past are so exciting and fresh and new that they don't need the added cuts.
 
WABC was not the only station that played the number one song every 90 minutes. In the latter half of the 1960s, KHJ played each of the current top three songs every 90 minutes, usually on the hour or half-hour. I vaguely recall reading a late '60s Billboard story about a program director---I believe the station was in Seattle or Portland---who said that the ideal top-40 playlist should have only 17 songs. There was one week in 1969 when KRLA's playlist had only 27 songs but 30 was the norm. Have there been any top-40 stations with a playlist of 25 or fewer?
 
I do not know the precise number of songs they played, but for some time in the earlier 1980s KSJL 760, a 50 kw, in San Antonio had the tightest rotation of any top 40 I ever heard. The currents repeated very frequently...about 70 to 75 minutes. They played only 1 recurrent an hour and that was a custom mix montage of about 4 or 5 monster recurrents blended to a 5 minute mix that aired in the 4th quarter hour. These 'recurrent' medleys were repeated every few hours. I recall about 3 to maybe 5 or 6 in rotation at one time. News was '76 second updates' in drive times. Time and temperature a couple of times an hour in Spanish, in English at other times. Top notch high energy jocks and mostly shotgun jingles. They did pretty well especially with the other top 40s on AM and FM, some with very long track records in the format (KTSA, KONO, KTFM and others). For example I recall hearing Oh Sherry by Steve Perry 6 times in 7 hours.

I recall this as I was programming a top 40 on the border at the time (we ran 42 currents). Our commercial load was massive due to spots sold for pennies across the border, so 24 units an hour was about average until about 9 at night when it faded to almost nothing. As the only English station on the dial playing top 40, we had a very long rotation because more often than not our listeners were exclusively listening to us. We heavily dayparted too. And my night guy used to complain he had to play the top songs twice in his shift from 6 to Midnight.
 
But what's the point about playing a song on KPWR every 15 minutes, meaning 6 times in 90 minutes, 8 times in 2 hours? That sounds like a lot of people pressing the SEEK button on their radios, in my opinion. No one wants to hear the same song on the radio 4 times/hour. That's practically torture for listeners that have to deal with Power 106 at work because their co-workers like it.

-crainbebo
 
When the April Nielsen Audio ratings come out, I'm guessing that KPWR's TSL (time spent listening) numbers will be way down.
 
LARadioRewind said:
There was one week in 1969 when KRLA's playlist had only 27 songs but 30 was the norm. Have there been any top-40 stations with a playlist of 25 or fewer?
Click to expand...

It is generally accepted that the original concept of Adult Contemporary was "top-40 without the hard rock, bubblegum, and novelty songs". At the first AC in Oxnard-Ventura to adopt that format in 1978, we had between 20 and 25 currents in rotation (plus about 60 recurrents). That resulted in a turnover of 3½ to 4 hours on the currents and about one day, six hours on the recurrents. Is that close enough?

crainbebo said:
But what's the point about playing a song on KPWR every 15 minutes, meaning 6 times in 90 minutes, 8 times in 2 hours? That sounds like a lot of people pressing the SEEK button on their radios, in my opinion. No one wants to hear the same song on the radio 4 times/hour. That's practically torture for listeners that have to deal with Power 106 at work because their co-workers like it.
Click to expand...

Tell you what ... I'll dig up Gordon McLendon's body and see if I can bring him back to life and explain why, when he purchased KROW in Oakland in 1959, he played the song "Gila Monster" over and over again -- with no other songs at all -- for two weeks before changing the call letters to KABL and the format to Beautiful Music. Actually, I don't need to desecrate the old Scotsman's grave, because I know the answer: It's called a "stunt", sir.

Any minute now, I expect Power to put liners on the air heralding that "you hear the hits more often on WAB ... er, Power 106".

And let's not forget that a lot of listening comes in 15- to 20-minute chunks anyway, so if you couple the fact that the audience comes and goes constantly anyway with the fact that the songs being repeated are hot currents you're not going to find a lot of "seek" button pushing. I certainly wouldn't if I were a listener to current-based radio and one of the hottest hits was playing every time I tuned to that station.

At-work listening has been proven to be more subliminal than active (because -- duh -- the listeners are more focused on doing their jobs), so I don't think you're going to see a major change in the amount of that either. In fact, this might be a good thing for the at-work listeners as their subconscious is going to create a "comfort food" feeling from those familiar, currently hot songs playing so often.

LARadioRewind said:
When the April Nielsen Audio ratings come out, I'm guessing that KPWR's TSL (time spent listening) numbers will be way down.
Click to expand...

See above, Steve. No, they won't.

I sort of wish I'd thought of this idea.
 
crainbebo said:
No one wants to hear the same song on the radio 4 times/hour.
Click to expand...

No one? Or you?

We've already pointed out who the average listener to KPWR is, and frankly, you don't fit the profile. So the fact that it's a turn off to you doesn't matter to them.

You don't even live in LA!!! Why do you care what they do?
 
I live in L.A. and there are very few songs I'd want to hear more than once a day. Of course I don't fit KPWR's profile either. So, K.M., you don't think KPWR's listeners will become so sick of hearing Often so often (cute?) that they will start listening for shorter periods of time? Crain says that no one wants to hear the same song four times an hour. KPWR is playing one song four times an hour...but does that mean that KPWR's listeners want to hear it four times an hour? I'd love for someone to poll those listeners.
 
LARadioRewind said:
I live in L.A. and there are very few songs I'd want to hear more than once a day. Of course I don't fit KPWR's profile either.
Click to expand...

Yes we know. So why do you care? Have you formed your own Posse Comitatus?

The question isn't do they want to hear it four times an hour. Not everyone listens for a full hour.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom