The Edge has a new PD & APD

[davideduardo]

And what formats would those be? In Buffalo, there's not one station that relies on cold segues. Sure, 97 Rock and Jack FM may roll one per hour (maybe intentionally, maybe because somebody missed a voice rack slot) but that's it. If and when these stations do roll a cold seg, it's not one of those "Oh wow" segues (Pink Floyd's "Money" to the Beatles' "Tax Man") that might have impressed a few listeners back in the day (and these days are inconsequential), but two hits that most listeners recognize. Most often played between the hits is a bumper/sweeper/jingle/voice tracked rollover, in every format, from WYRK to WBLK. Yesterday while listening to Kiss, I heard a power recurrent ballad, female roll into an uptempo current, male. Between the two was an imaging bumper. No big deal. They were hits. It worked.

I did not say "cold" segues... just segues. There can be a sweeper, "live" name/calls or something brief between songs but there is still a transition that follows a mood or feel.

Djs at clubs get this. They know they have to do mood variations both for variety and to get people to return to tables and order drinks. They don't play all one kind of song, but they know how to do the blend so that the mode shifts... not crashes.

A well programmed station tries to make each segue, each sweep, each hour have a consistent balance and enough tempo and style variety to bear the trademark of the station sound.

Of course, if you don't recognize the need for that, then that may be part of what radio has lost. A computer can't program a station, and thinking it can without intervention makes for just what I mentioned previously... a playlist on "shuffle". There are millions of ways of combining a 300 song typical AC playlist... but nowhere near as many that have the right segues and perfectly balanced sweeps.

 

[SirRoxalot]

I can't believe that some of you think that local PDs simply run the music selection program and do a weeks worth of logs in an hour, based on a predetermined list from corporate. If that was the case, why wouldn't corporate just run it from a hub and do the entire country, or at least an entire region, and push it down to the servers?

Here's why. There's a lot more to it than you think. Are there PDs that do that? To some extent. Why? Because they're lazy, lack talent, or are scheduling multiple stations and simply don't have the time or the familiarity with the music to do the job properly. Do they succeed? Sometimes, if the station is in a position where it's unchallenged in a market and the format alone attracts enough listeners. I'm even aware of some stations where there are enough live bodies on the air who have enough freedom to tweak the presentation to avoid train-wreck transitions and perform actual segues. The songs still get played, but the location of breakers and live inserts can be altered. Songs are added or dropped manually to fit the hourly clock.

Of course, those of you who haven't done the job won't believe that they're more than "music monkeys". There are some people on the sales and management side of the house who actually believe that. Fortunately, there are enough people who know better - including the people who decide who gets paid. On top of that, with the never-ending rounds of staff cuts programmers are asked to wear more hats than ever with thinner and thinner budgets - budgets that they try to keep from getting even thinner.

Good luck to Joe Siragusa. He's now responsible for a new station in a completely different format with a completely different staff. Congratulations to Tiffany Bentley who likely will be a big help with the music scheduling and a lot of the other chores on a PDs plate these days. Let's hope she gets the job herself either at The Edge or another station down the road.

 

[tbolt909]

I can't believe that people like Rox think it's still 1990. Time must have stopped. PDs back then did have more control of the programming. After the 90s mergers, much of that changed. Cookie Cutter formats nationwide became the norm.

The new Edge PD will have little involvement with the playlist. His role is to protect the license. The mundane task of generating music logs will be delegated...

 

[TheBigA]

The new Edge PD will have little involvement with the playlist.

Yes we know. That's why Tiffany was given APD stripes. She runs the playlist. That's her job.

What do you think Music Directors do?

 

[TheBigA]

After the 90s mergers, much of that changed. Cookie Cutter formats nationwide became the norm.

Huh? Cookie cutter formats have existed in radio since the 1950s. A typical Top 40 station in the 60s played the same music coast to coast. They didn't need corporate to tell them what to play. They subscribed to Billboard, Cash Box, and other national trades that printed lists of the hot songs. By the 70s radio companies promoted successful PDs to group PDs. Rick Sklar, who programed WABC, was rewarded with group PD stripes, and his goal was to make all ABC owned stations sound alike. On the FM side, a great example was Metromedia. They flipped all their FM stations to AOR, basically playing the same music. If you listen to KMET, it sounded a lot like KSAN. WMMR sounded a lot like WNEW. The PDs all spoke with each other and co-ordinated what they were doing. In addition to the trade magazines, the PDs and MDs had outside help from major consultants. If you were in a small market, chances were that your station ran a national satellite network from TranStar or Satellite Music Network. The only thing corporate did was put a lot of consultants out of work. They also replaced satellite networks with internal voice tracking. But they didn't really change they way the business was done. Local radio was only about ownership and sales. Programming was all about playing national hits.

 

[davideduardo]

I can't believe that people like Rox think it's still 1990. Time must have stopped. PDs back then did have more control of the programming. After the 90s mergers, much of that changed. Cookie Cutter formats nationwide became the norm.
.

That's just all wrong.

The only difference, as I have told you before, between the 60's and today is that companies back then could only have 7 stations (FM didn't matter in that decade). So they hired consultants to help with programming.

Folks like Mike Joseph went around the country taking care of the new music formats that came out of the innovations of the 50's. Many owners, single uniform "cookie cutter" format.

Today, the contemporary "Mike Joseph" would be the national PD or the national format head for CHR a large group. Same function, different way of compensation.

I see only one effect of the mid-90's consolidation: groups with 8 stations in a market could launch complementary formats, so instead of 3 CHRs in the same market, we got one or two and an Urban or a country station instead. The effect of consolidation was to increase the variety of format offerings.

The effect of one company with many stations in the same format and a good national format manager was to allow local PDs to do more original thinking as they had a person who knew the format to bounce ideas off of. I did that for stations in 6 of the top 10 markets and 9 of the top 20 starting in '95 and watched some terrific PDs at the local level grow out of the collaborative environment that consolidation produced.

 

[davideduardo]

I can't believe that people like Rox think it's still 1990. Time must have stopped. PDs back then did have more control of the programming. After the 90s mergers, much of that changed. Cookie Cutter formats nationwide became the norm.

There you have it... two extensive but varied responses showing how unified formats were back to the 50's.

I'd really like to know: Where do you get these inaccurate ideas from?

 

[TheBigA]

Today, the contemporary "Mike Joseph" would be the national PD or the national format head for CHR a large group. Same function, different way of compensation.

Since this thread is supposed to be about Cumulus, the way they handled it after the Dickeys left was to hire Mike McVay, a respected national consultant, to oversee programming. He in essence became an in-house consultant, saving the stations the expense. Mary Berner was clear about his role: He was to be used as a resource. He could help analyze the ratings, evaluate music trends, assist with hiring on air staff, and represent the company with record labels. That's another important change between the 70s and now. In the old days, there were lots of small record labels. Now you basically have three or four international conglomerates. As radio consolidated, the same thing was happening at the record labels. MCA, Mercury, and Capitol are all owed by the same company. Same with Columbia, Arista, and RCA. Sure the labels have regional reps (in most formats), but if you want to put on a big festival, as Townsquare did, you need a bigger footprint. Radio consolidation gave radio more equal footing when it came to dealing with the record labels. That's not as simple as it sounds.

 

[tbolt909]

There you have it... two extensive but varied responses showing how unified formats were back to the 50's.

I'd really like to know: Where do you get these inaccurate ideas from?

It depends on what format you are talking about. Your blanket statement is misleading. If you mean Top 40, then you're correct. Album Rock stations in the 70s, 80s and 90s had diversity. Yes, many of the artists/titles would be shared. Different regions had differences in the sound of the station. West Coast stations had a certain vibe.

You tend to defend the industry at all costs, so it's no wonder your bias is apparent in your responses...

 

[davideduardo]

It depends on what format you are talking about. Your blanket statement is misleading. If you mean Top 40, then you're correct. Album Rock stations in the 70s, 80s and 90s had diversity. Yes, many of the artists/titles would be shared. Different regions had differences in the sound of the station. West Coast stations had a certain vibe.

You tend to defend the industry at all costs, so it's no wonder your bias is apparent in your responses...

I defend facts. As you likely have observed, I have the largest radio history website and document collection that exists. So I have sources galore for those facts, too.

And I was doing multiple formats, not just Top 40, at my own stations back in the 60's. One of the stations was what we would call "rock". Another was CHR. Another was Beautiful Music, another was the equivalent of country, and another was ethnic and the final one was news and talk and sports (Yes, I was in a place that allowed consolidation back 65 years ago).

I mention this because I have never done just one format. As a matter of fact, I programmed the most listened to Rock station in the hemisphere for a while.

Anyway, beyond the little ego trip, my point is that, again, you are wrong.

While rock stations in the very late 60's were all over the place, it did not take long for Abrams to come up with Superstars and jump to a national system after amazing success in Raleigh. The other consultants developed their versions, all with the same AOR classification in the trades and all with amazingly similar playlists. Yes, there were some differences that came out of research. More Capricorn stuff in the Southeast, more ZZ Top in Texas, and so on. But overall, the same thing happened in all formats and the major songs were the same.

But in all the national formats, nearly all the playlists overlapped.

As the Internet developed, and listeners could get videos and streams and hear songs and download them, the regional differences melted. So if there is a bit greater similarity between lists today, blame the Internet for most of it. Oh, and blame the record labels a little bit as well for becoming far more focused on bringing home songs everywhere than they had been in prior decades.

Addendum:

Here is an independent source's comments about the role of consultants in AOR and all formats.

https://worldradiohistory.com/hd2/IDX-Encyclopedia/IDX/Encyclopedia-of-Radio-OCR-Page-0418.pdf

And if you want an extensive story on AOR, try this:

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive R&R/R&R-AOR-Story.pdf

 

[TheBigA]

Album Rock stations in the 70s, 80s and 90s had diversity. Yes, many of the artists/titles would be shared. Different regions had differences in the sound of the station. West Coast stations had a certain vibe.

I think you're over-generalizing the album rock format. Burkhart-Abrams took away a lot of the diversity in the format in the 80s. You could hear their style a mile away. And it worked. Right on down to the production and promotion. People use cookie cutter as a negative, but it worked!! That's why programmers did it. A successful local radio station had power in their local market, and the record labels used that power to sell records. Record labels didn't sign artists to be local stars. They wanted to build a national act, like Tom Petty or Journey. They were both west coast bands. Having a regional hit or regional star didn't make money, so the labels used radio to take that local act national. That was the story with Springsteen. He was huge in NY and Philly, but nowhere else. Columbia kept hitting stations across the country to break him outside the east coast. Metromedia owned rock stations in NY & Philly, so they could help break him at WMMS or KMET. It was a long slow process, taking ten years! But they weren't going to settle for a local act, and radio was a key part of that. Ultimately what made Springsteen explode was having a few pop hits that took him beyond the rock format. Same with Journey or any of the arena rock bands. Today it's less about radio, and more about breaking directly on national streaming sites, but local radio still has the relationship with the local audience that Apple or Spotify will never have. My point is when you talk about music radio, you NEED to talk about the music. And the music that drives radio is NATIONAL, not local.

 

[SirRoxalot]

I can't believe that people like Rox think it's still 1990. Time must have stopped. PDs back then did have more control of the programming. After the 90s mergers, much of that changed. Cookie Cutter formats nationwide became the norm.

At iHeart that might be true - especially in small markets. It's not the case in Buffalo, at least at the major players here.

The new Edge PD will have little involvement with the playlist. His role is to protect the license. The mundane task of generating music logs will be delegated...

His role is to oversee personnel, budgets, promotions, music, communication with local and corporate management, and myriad other tasks now delegated to a "Program Manager".

MDs are also responsible for proposing new music adds, helping to determine rotations, and keeping an eye on relevant research. Since little research is done locally these days the MD and PD have to use information from corporate, from similar markets, and whatever other sources they've developed for local input. You just don't want to admit that good PDs and MDs do more than just run the scheduling software. Like I said before, if that's all they did, why would corporate not simply do it themselves and save a few bucks? Somebody up there recognizes that it requires a certain amount of local knowledge, talent, and effort.

When was your last stint as a PD, 'bolt? What I'm hearing from you has no relation to reality locally.

 

[Rusty Bridges]

A well programmed station tries to make each segue, each sweep, each hour have a consistent balance and enough tempo and style variety to bear the trademark of the station sound.

Concur. But rules settings are often established with flexibility (if/then) to allow disparate segues of a certain degree depending upon music categories, "hits-to-hits" regardless of tempo.

Of course, if you don't recognize the need for that, then that may be part of what radio has lost. A computer can't program a station, and thinking it can without intervention makes for just what I mentioned previously... a playlist on "shuffle". There are millions of ways of combining a 300 song typical AC playlist... but nowhere near as many that have the right segues and perfectly balanced sweeps.

To take an arrow from your quiver, I did not say (or imply) that. In fact, earlier in this thread I made note of and gave credit to the PD/MDs who massage the log. This having been noted, there are disparate segues involving mood/tempo conflicts that work. Not to diminish the role of the PD/MD and the importance of reviewing the music log, but "perfectly balanced sweeps" are often the exception rather than the rule these days given the nature of formats and the current/re-current hit music available to those formats. The cold question is, do listeners to most formats even care about tempo coding as long as the songs they hear are hits?

Roxalot earlier noted that some stations may have allowed the on-air talent, such as it is these days, to judiciously move a song to minimize tempo disparity. To be truthful, I know two PDs who strongly advise (cough) their talent against such manipulation ... under penalty of fingers being removed.

On a related topic, not so long ago I read an amusing but incisive commentary (followed by a healthy discussion) from a CHR/Hot AC PD who asked why there were so many new songs that had no intros... songs that began voice cold.

 

[TheBigA]

I read an amusing but incisive commentary (followed by a healthy discussion) from a CHR/Hot AC PD who asked why there were so many new songs that had no intros... songs that began voice cold.

I notice that too, and my guess would be that because the songs are so much about rhythm and lyric, rather than about establishing a melody, they figure they'd concentrate on what they know. No need for a talk-up anymore.

Kind of a return to songs from the 30s when they'd begin cold with a verse, then go into the full melody. George Gershwin and Cole Porter did it. So today they begin with the verse, and just go on to more verse.

 

[Delete My Account]

My point is when you talk about music radio, you NEED to talk about the music. And the music that drives radio is NATIONAL, not local.

As production quality has improved, there can be a place for local or "regional" music. Now, in many cases this isn't a commercial station capitalizing on it but it's not out of the question. We've discussed WRLT on other threads. For an independently owned station with those local connections, tapping into a local scene can be profitable. And non-comm stations have often succeeded with it as well - take The Current and their connection to the Minnesota music scene. And they're surprisingly decently rated.

Will the mass audience suddenly crave "local" music on a CHR? No, but that doesn't mean there's not a niche for it and ways to include it, in some markets.

 

[TheBigA]

We've discussed WRLT on other threads. For an independently owned station with those local connections, tapping into a local scene can be profitable. And non-comm stations have often succeeded with it as well

The examples you give have very active local music scenes. That would help. I wouldn't compare Buffalo with Nashville or Minneapolis.

I've talked here about KEXP in Seattle, how that station was able to raise $15 million from its listeners to build a huge local performance hall for the broadcast of local music. If Buffalo could raise that kind of money, it would be worth pursuing.

 

[davideduardo]

The cold question is, do listeners to most formats even care about tempo coding as long as the songs they hear are hits? .

With the exception of current only formats (and even CHRs today play recurrents and gold), the sound of a station can be improved by careful positioning of the flexible rotation songs. Radio is not YouTube where the listener selects each song, but both the individual songs and the way they are played.

Remember, Drake even identified "radio hits" long before research showed there was not even a correlation between sales and likability on some singles. The purpose of going to the point of finding radio hits was to give balance to both the playlist and each hour and half hour (even though they seldom did multi-song long sweeps).

There is a reason why "plating" is so important at restaurants; food seems to taste better if it is artfully presented. And customers like the restaurant more if food has a nice presentation. Same goes for skillfully adjusting the songs... it can be as little as moving one or two around in the sweep or as much as skipping a song and finding a different one.

 

[four4rock]

With the exception of current only formats (and even CHRs today play recurrents and gold), the sound of a station can be improved by careful positioning of the flexible rotation songs. Radio is not YouTube where the listener selects each song, but both the individual songs and the way they are played.

Remember, Drake even identified "radio hits" long before research showed there was not even a correlation between sales and likability on some singles. The purpose of going to the point of finding radio hits was to give balance to both the playlist and each hour and half hour (even though they seldom did multi-song long sweeps).

There is a reason why "plating" is so important at restaurants; food seems to taste better if it is artfully presented. And customers like the restaurant more if food has a nice presentation. Same goes for skillfully adjusting the songs... it can be as little as moving one or two around in the sweep or as much as skipping a song and finding a different one.

I probably could not agree more. Ask anyone that has had to produce a formal tour.