Having no experience with music scheduling, I was wondering if stations play the same exact music on the weekends as they do during the week? I'm not talking about one-time specials but just a different rotation. More fast songs versus slow ones, fewer recurrents than currents or maybe more gold than during the week? And for stations playing 60's and 70's, do they add more "surf music" during the summer?
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Music on the weekends
- Thread starter xkxrx
- Start date
Other than something like a "block party weekend" or other special weekend, not much that I'm aware of us. When there were more oldies stations, they would often have a weekend feature "Best of the Beach" "British Invasion", "Motown and Soul", but I don't know that classic hits stations do now so much,
I couldn't tell you what present-day CHRs do, but I would have sworn that during my brief time in Florida (mostly listening to Tampa-St. Pete), the music was a little hotter, with a couple of different titles ("Baby Talks Dirty" by The Knack....which was "My Sharona" re-done, was on the radio a lot there but stiffed everywhere else) comes to mind. Some of the classic AM top 40s in the 60s had "Million Dollar Weekends" with more gold and a re-arranged clock.
Most people don't work on the weekends, so their schedule is different. They might sleep later, they likely aren't commuting to work, and so there's no need for the traditional morning show. Statistically we see that people tend to listen longer on the weekends. TSL is higher in most formats. Station staffing is lighter on weekends, so most stations are more music intensive. The format tends to be the format, so in most cases the rotation is the same. Some currents-based stations may play more currents at certain parts of the day to drive up their percentages. But like anything, you have thousands of radio stations and everyone does things differently.
What I often see is that stations tend to have a lighter commercial load on weekends, so they may play more from the secondary gold category or something similar.
So, if you can play a song or two more each hour, and don't want to mess with currents, recurrents and the power gold, you play more of those lowest researching songs, making it seem like there is a greater variety on those days.
In the mid 2000s our cluster didn't really do a whole lot outside of the Classic Rock station. Our Hot AC and Country stations didn't do anything different with the local hours, although like David suggested, we did have one extra song an hour on both formats that made for two golds an hour. And since the one scheduled gold on weekdays was also the drop for time song, even some of the golds that got scheduled a fair amount didn't always get played, but they did on weekends.
The Classic Rock would do the standard double shot and/or block party weekends, as well as an occasional weekend featuring one or two live tracks an hour. We also did a local Saturday night "Big Hair Saturday Night" from 9p-12a, but the harder music would start to play a few times an hour in the 6p hour on Saturday.
We also had AT20 with Casey Kasem, Backtrax USA, Bob Kingsley, another classic country show, and Flashback on Sundays. The country station also had a true request show on Saturday nights (that I got to host for a couple years!) that allowed for I believe half the hour to go to requests, and in a small rural market we typically skewed quite old on most of those requests - which were honored as long as we had them!
The Classic Rock would do the standard double shot and/or block party weekends, as well as an occasional weekend featuring one or two live tracks an hour. We also did a local Saturday night "Big Hair Saturday Night" from 9p-12a, but the harder music would start to play a few times an hour in the 6p hour on Saturday.
We also had AT20 with Casey Kasem, Backtrax USA, Bob Kingsley, another classic country show, and Flashback on Sundays. The country station also had a true request show on Saturday nights (that I got to host for a couple years!) that allowed for I believe half the hour to go to requests, and in a small rural market we typically skewed quite old on most of those requests - which were honored as long as we had them!
Especially THIS year.
At the current country stations, since there are fewer spots on the weekends (because of less demand from advertisers) PDs are jamming in their Top 5 currents, especially on Saturday. The #1 song might get 8 spins a day during the week, and it could jump to once an hour on the weekend. But that's just country. I doubt you'll see that in Top 40 or Hot AC.
Unless things have drastically changed, weekend formats are closely similar to weekdays. Of course weekend specialty shows are the exception.
There's a Class A station out of Gloucester County, VA, that is AC during the week, but switches to Good Time Oldies during the weekend. It amounts to two different formats, but I guess it works since they've been doing it for a while.
Reminds me that New Jersey 101.5 is talk during the week and does a locally based oldies format on the weekends.
I listen to a station that has the opposite situation. During football season, you're unlikely to hear the regular music. There is a syndicated beach music program on Saturday morning. Then there are games much of the time. Sunday morning is church services and then there is football in the afternoon if the Panthers play at their usual 1:00 time.
I remember before there were oldies stations hearing oldies on the weekend.
I remember before there were oldies stations hearing oldies on the weekend.
I've heard of some music stations running brokered talk over the weekend sponsored by vendors: Garden talk, auto repair talk, home improvement talk...
we would use the afternoon drive rotations, thru much of the weekend...
Radio rules have indeed changed, especially for AM. Sure, there are still big AM’s that can still bill, many are suffering as the audience changes.
Again the future is not likely to be kind to AM’s. FM’s may need to be concerned as well with a an increasing audience who prefer online or podcasts or getting their music from alternative sources. I am an old guy but I can see this quite clearly.
Again the future is not likely to be kind to AM’s. FM’s may need to be concerned as well with a an increasing audience who prefer online or podcasts or getting their music from alternative sources. I am an old guy but I can see this quite clearly.
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