Periodic playlist updates?

[tall_guy1]

I've seen this happen, where stations have a set time to update their playlists. I know a lot of Entercom stations do this once or twice a year (99.7 The Point in KC does this 1-2 times a year); I'm not just talking about adding one or two different songs, but rotating a group of songs in and out. Are there stations you are aware of who have kind of a habitual schedule of updating their playlists?

 

[TheBigA]

Are there stations you are aware of who have kind of a habitual schedule of updating their playlists?

Yep. Lots of them. All the time. That's what you're supposed to do.

 

[davideduardo]

I've seen this happen, where stations have a set time to update their playlists. I know a lot of Entercom stations do this once or twice a year (99.7 The Point in KC does this 1-2 times a year); I'm not just talking about adding one or two different songs, but rotating a group of songs in and out. Are there stations you are aware of who have kind of a habitual schedule of updating their playlists?

Usually large changes in a station playlist happen at stations that do their own music testing. After each music test, the songs that don't pass the criteria station programmers establish will be removed, while any other songs that passed that were not in play are added.

Some programmers in competitive environments will gradually phase out the songs that "went negative" over a period of weeks, while gradually adding the newly found playable songs. This is done so that the competitors will not see lots of changes in one week and say, "they did a test" and react with their own changes.

In today's budget-sensitive environment, stations that tested twice a year likely now test once a year. We used to test right ahead of the diary-market Spring and Fall books, but with PPM being 13 books a year, the timing is less rigid now. A test may include from 500 to over 1200 songs, depending on the format, target demos, programming style of the station, etc.

Here is an example of a local "come to us" test being conducted. Stations may also do all or part of the testing online, but the procedures for recruitment are the same.