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I wonder what program directors would want to play?

Don CT said:
Do any stations do live requests anymore? And were they actually taking the requests or just the average of the popular songs that people wanted.
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I have worked for very few stations that actually took live requests. I don't think any in rated markets ever played actual requests, except during specialty programming. Even the "All Request, All 80's Memorial Day Weekend," which actually was all request, didn't play every single request it received. Usually, we'd store calls for popular songs we knew would be coming up and would play them back (in full or slightly edited) when they came up.

A couple of the top-40 stations where I've worked have tracked requests on current songs so we could get some idea how popular they were with our audience, but that was only one piece of data, and not, by any means, the most important one, we used when determining how many spins songs would get.
 
Kent said:
Usually, we'd store calls for popular songs we knew would be coming up and would play them back (in full or slightly edited) when they came up.
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Sounds like Delilah syndrome to me! Her affiliates do the exact same thing that your station did.
 
Delilah learned that trick in Seattle when she was working local, most of the stations were doing this in the early 80's. The DJ would run tape when taking calls and save the request for when the song came up in the log.
 
xmtrland said:
Delilah learned that trick in Seattle when she was working local, most of the stations were doing this in the early 80's. The DJ would run tape when taking calls and save the request for when the song came up in the log.
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Stations were doing that in the early 70s. "KKDJ Instant Request", 1973.
 
Don CT said:
Do any stations do live requests anymore? And were they actually taking the requests or just the average of the popular songs that people wanted.
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What do you mean by "live requests," because I know even 30 years ago, most stations recorded and edited any calls for airplay.

Digital editing changed everything. I'm trying to remember the brand name of the device but it made editing quick & easy.
 
xmtrland said:
Are you thinking of VoxPro? Developed in Seattle by Charlie Brown.
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The technology has changed, but recorded calls have been going on for decades. VoxPro is one of the most popular ones. I, personally, have never used it, though. I’m guessing it’s not the cheapest despite its popularity.

I'm going back more than 15 years, but I remember working at a CHR that had Saw built into the phone system and board. If you opened Saw on the computer, it would record as soon as you hit the button on the Telos strip to answer the call. Once you got that call edited, you could play it back by turning the pot on. We also had Cool Edit, which wasn’t wired into the system. Some people preferred it because it was easier to use despite having to start it when you answered the phone.
 
Don CT said:
Do any stations do live requests anymore? And were they actually taking the requests or just the average of the popular songs that people wanted.
Click to expand...
Back in the old days, CKLW had all of to cities and towns in the coverage area on the wall, and since the requests were going to be hits that were playing every hour and 20 minutes anyway, the jock would say "on the hitline for Farmington Hills, Dearborn and Sylvani, Ohio, here's April Wine".
 
Don CT said:
Do any stations do live requests anymore? And were they actually taking the requests or just the average of the popular songs that people wanted.
Click to expand...
Not that long ago WBRF Galax VA had a DJ who would say he got a request from so-and-so of such-and-such city and would play it. It's a classic country station with a tower on a mountain and people listen from all over.
 
Research is why you hear the same songs over and over. One station up here overplays "Jessie's Girl" at least 3 or 4 times daily. There's another station that has a lot wider playlist and you hear stuff no one plays. That's my to go station!
 
Negin said:
Research is why you hear the same songs over and over. One station up here overplays "Jessie's Girl" at least 3 or 4 times daily. There's another station that has a lot wider playlist and you hear stuff no one plays. That's my to go station!
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Is it a rated market?
 
Negin said:
Research is why you hear the same songs over and over. One station up here overplays "Jessie's Girl" at least 3 or 4 times daily. There's another station that has a lot wider playlist and you hear stuff no one plays. That's my to go station!
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"Research" is simply a term for asking listeners to your station or to your format how much they'd like to hear each song on the radio today.

If a song is loved by everybody, it gets played more often than a song that is "liked" by nearly everyone. And songs that have a significant percentage of "dislike" or "hate" scores just don't get played at all.

I've never been in a situation where playing fewer well-researched songs lost to a station playing more un-researched songs. In my favorite case, with an Emmis station in a market of about 18 million, we had over a 20 share with a local rock format and about a 600 song playlist. A competitor came on saying "we play three times more different songs". They did not realize that two out of every three songs they were playing had stiffed out. They never even got a 2 share and lasted just one year.
 
gr8oldies said:
Back in the old days, CKLW had all of to cities and towns in the coverage area on the wall, and since the requests were going to be hits that were playing every hour and 20 minutes anyway, the jock would say "on the hitline for Farmington Hills, Dearborn and Sylvani, Ohio, here's April Wine".
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I knew of a station in Syracuse that did that for the temperatures that accompanied the twice-an-hour weather forecasts. "Right now, it's 24 in Fayetteville, 26 in Liverpool, and 23 degrees in Syracuse at ..."
 
michael hagerty said:
Is it a rated market?
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It's a rated market, but the owners do it for enjoyment and not to make a killing, and they don't subscribe to any rating services.

What they're doing is very rare nowadays. They do have advertising though and their play list is a couple thousand tunes.
 
tall_guy1 said:
102.1 in Kansas City has an "All-Request Hour" where you can text in your request, and they usually play it.
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I worked at an AC that did an “All Request Lunch Hour” that wasn’t. All the names mentioned were fake, and any calls played back were prerecorded days, sometimes weeks, in advance.
 
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