I'm surprised that you don't know "Mandy". It was a big production number in "White Christmas"!
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The ratings are out for los angeles.
- Thread starter hotpatrick2004
- Start date
I'm surprised that you don't know "Mandy". It was a big production number in "White Christmas"!
Never watched a millisecond of "White Christmas," so I plead ignorance on that. Thanks for the correction.
It's my favorite movie, as well as my daughter's. As far as I know, I've watched it every year since I became aware that NBC was running it. A few years ago, It ran in a local theater(The spell check wouldn't accept "theatre".). The place was packed and all the funny lines that I had long since just smiled at, received belly laughs from the audience, all through the movie! This surprised me because I assumed that they'd all seen it many times as well.
I'm a latecomer to it as well. Saw it for the first time just two years ago.
I won't dwell on this but the DVD release has commentary by Rosemary Clooney that's quite interesting.
Before PPM, KROQ would often spin some local artists and other cult favorites (think System of a Down and the like) every once in a while, eventually turning many of these artists into national acts.
My guess is that without PPM, radio stations were a bit more patient with certain titles if they did well with the subjects in their music tests.
Back on my original statement, I will say that this is one of the more popular music festivals in Los Angeles, but goes to show that even bands that have some popularity in the area are not played on that city's Alt Rock radio station.
My point is that alternative rock music is very fragmented in terms of what works on a station like KROQ, because there's more risk involved when a new title is played.
In a way, this is probably why the format is not as dyanmic as it was in the '90s
It's not PPM that makes stations more cautious about new music. It is the existence of many alternatives to radio which will take audience if a station is not always playing a broadly popular song.
Coincidentally, the PPM began in LA the same year that the smartphone was introduced. And many years after the iPod became a competitor to radio for listening time.
The use of music tests does not help with new music. It only helps with established tunes. And the methodology of tests (other than sometimes administering them online) has not changed. What has changed is the need to always be playing a top song.
When you're talking about music radio, it all begins with the music and the community. At one time, not long ago, music was something that brought people together. Now music can be something that pushes people apart. That's not good if you're a radio station, where the business is based on attracting a mass audience.
What you conveniently leave out is that this is entirely radio's fault. Like David said, you always gotta be spinning a hit. There is no time or patience for ingenuity, creativity, spontaneity or, God forbid, a (non-tested) clunker.
Every new song is a potential clunker. There is no form of research that can tell if a song will be a hit.
I do a "new music" service for Latin America, as I have for the last 26 years. I get an average of 60 new pop/contemporary songs each week, ranging from ballads in traditional style to hip hop, trap and alternative. Of the 60, I have trouble finding 20 that seem like they either have local ("breaker") airplay somewhere or potential. And I track the songs I do include; less than 5 every week become true hits in either rhythmic, CHR, Hot AC or AC formats.
So, out of 60, 5 are hits. 55 are not. Record labels do not intentionally release stiffs. But the only way to "test" a song is to release it and see what happens.
Radio stations are part of the cycle. Much of what we pick does not end up working when we have played the songs enough to actually test them.
So any station that plays currents is going to have to play one or two still-untested and unproven songs a week, based only on the "it sounds like a hit" criteria. Sure, we can measure on-demand streaming and trending and the like. But those metrics are not specific to our station or even our format or our target age. So we take the risk and learn from our mistakes. And that is partly why we don't play lower scoring older songs that have been tested... why purposely drive away the audience.
In the early 70's a young PD in North Carolina took the free-form progressive "dj picks the songs" format and cut it down to just hits and controlled rotations. The PD was Lee Abrams and he called the format Superstars and the AOR format was born. He destroyed or marginalized the broader playlist progressive stations because he realized people... nearly 50 years ago... wanted to mostly hear the big hits.
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Because it's NOT radio's fault. Radio doesn't make music. It merely plays whatever's popular to whatever fan base exists. The problem with alternative is the music is fragmented, and the audience is becoming too small to appeal to advertisers. This kind of music works well in a subscriber based system, but a station like KROQ will never have the ratings it once did if it stays with the format.
Same with the "creativity, spontaneity, or God forbid, a (non-tested) clunker." All of that appeals to specific individuals, but not to a mass audience. If there's no mass audience, then advertisers aren't interested. No advertisers, then no business. You can do that kind of radio if you want, but it requires the listeners to pay for it. That's why KCSN operates with different programming rules than KRTH. Different business model, different financial base.
People will often ask about the changes in radio between the 70s & 80s and now, and the answer is the change in business model for record labels. Today, record labels just release music. They don't slave over picking singles the way Berry Gordy did in the 60s. They just release singles and let the people decide. That's becoming a problem for radio, because there are a bunch of songs being released that radio doesn't play because they aren't popular. This is particularly a problem for female artists. There are fewer female artists having hits today than there were 20-30 years ago. Why? Because the male stars keep releasing popular hits and they're crowding out the women. If you have a chart, the numbers don't change. The songs do. If all of the popular songs happen to be by male artists, they prevent women from advancing in the chart. This isn't done on purpose. It's a byproduct of the number of men releasing songs, and the frequency that their labels release them. If the record labels slowed down their release schedule, or even stopped releasing male artists for a few weeks, it would open the charts for more females to advance.
But it's not strictly a male-female thing. In Top 40 now, we have a situation where Ariana Grande has three songs in the chart. She's occupying spaces that are blocking other artists. But the record labels keep releasing music because they're not limited by physical product any more. They can release thousands of songs and they don't occupy any space in a warehouse or on a store shelf. But they occupy space on a chart.
But if an artist has pulling power to fill a 15,000 seat venue, isn't that representative of a greater audience (those who didn't show up but still are fans of the artist)?
You're still talking about two very different things. Unless the fans of that artist are also paying for the radio station.
If they're depending on advertisers to pay, the advertisers set the rules and the metrics.
WDJO is more or less a hobby project (and always has been). John Nolan (of John Nolan Ford) is the principal owner, and you hear his ads all the time, but you can bet your bottom dollar Nolan advertises everywhere else on radio and TV. He wouldn't get nearly enough leads from WDJO. The on-air staff voicetracks for something like $100 a week. It's all but donated time. I personally like WDJO, but there's a reason it's on a weak AM and 2 translators and not even a 6kW FM.
Those 15,000 fans of an artist who go to a show may have a half-dozen or more favorite stations and be Spotify or Pandora subscribers. The folks at the concert may not even like the main stations that play the artist because they are not fans of the rest of the music on those stations.
A country fan who likes Toby Keith may not listen to the country station because they hate Jason Aldean or FGL or Kane Brown because they "aren't country enough".
If it stays with the format? That made me laugh. Kroq will never change format. The odds are better kabc would get a 10 share.
Wouldn't Jimmy Buffet be a perfect example of the difference? From what I gather, he fills up arenas all over the country...at least he was a few years ago, but as far as I can remember, he had only one hit song - "Margaritaville."
The Grateful Dead are another example. Even Bruce Springsteen could be in that category. They built their fan base on the live show experience, not listening to a format on the radio. Those are two different things. Their fans don't think in terms of hit songs or even a genre of music.
Springsteen and the Dead have their own bought-and-paid-for channels on Sirius XM, both of which air concerts from an extensive library of live shows several times a day. Both artists' management must realize just as you do that that's what the diehard Deadheads and Brucies want more of. As for Buffett -- TWO T'S! HE'S NOT A RESTAURANT! -- also has a satellite channel that carries archived and live shows, but the recorded music only features the payola provider's songs one in every four, the others being songs by artists that "curator" Jimmy likes. The songs played on the Dead and Bruce channels are nearly 100 percent the proprietor's.
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