KCKC FM - Large Playlist Success ?

[davideduardo]

There's some of that. It depends on the station & format. Audacy classic hits stations typically rest 50 or songs every week, and cycle in another group to replace them.

That is a strange practice. It means they play more often in each "open window", resulting in heavier P1's hearing them too often, and then not playing at all for a while.

Much better is to have the songs play, for example, once every 5 days in a different daypart and hour before coming back again to the same daypart... and then in a different hour. That permits every listener to hear it occasionally in their habitual listening times, and then only having it come up in a different hour in the same daypart after completing the cycle.

And a station's music dayparts don't have to be ratings dayparts. I usually look at "in-and-out" (which is also a good burger practice) cycles and might have 5 AM-8AM, 9-12Noon, 1P-4P, 5P-8P and 9P-1AM as the main dayparts for a station in a market with considerable industry and less pure Nine to Five work listening.

 

[Kelly A]

What do you mean by "noticeable?" I can see very obvious movement in spins for songs and dayparts. It happens every week.

Aka: If Tall_Guy isn't listening at the time, it doesn't count.

 

[TheBigA]

Much better is to have the songs play, for example, once every 5 days in a different daypart and hour before coming back again to the same daypart... and then in a different hour.

It's possible that's' what's happening. When I bring up the station playlist, I'm looking at the 7-day chart. Mediabase offers all kinds of options to examining music scheduling. One of my pet peeves is when a station plays the same song or artist at the same time every day. Lazy scheduling. There's a way to avoid that.

 

[tall_guy1]

What do you mean by "noticeable?" I can see very obvious movement in spins for songs and dayparts. It happens every week.



There's some of that. It depends on the station & format. Audacy classic hits stations typically rest 50 or songs every week, and cycle in another group to replace them.

If it is a current based format, then yes. Gold based generally stays the same.

 

[tall_guy1]

What I am talking about is they added songs like Bad Day by Daniel Powder and I knew You Were Trouble by Taylor Swift which they didn't regularly spin as golds before (not including currents, which had minimal rotation.)

 

[TheBigA]

If it is a current based format, then yes. Gold based generally stays the same.

No it doesn't. As I said, Audacy classic hits stations switch out about 50 songs every week. Theye also shift the number of spins certain songs get. Every week. This is not a hobby.

 

[davideduardo]

It's possible that's' what's happening. When I bring up the station playlist, I'm looking at the 7-day chart. Mediabase offers all kinds of options to examining music scheduling. One of my pet peeves is when a station plays the same song or artist at the same time every day. Lazy scheduling. There's a way to avoid that.

Yes, and the ways are dirt simple to implement. And you can build an "upside down pyramid" in selector or musicmaster where a power gold song is (as an example) protected by 8 hours on either side for the next play, and then the third play stays 8 hours to the side of the second and 4 hours to either side against the first... and so on. The result is that this would give a day and a daypart for the second play this, if you set up an uneven number of dayparts from 5 AM to 1AM (or whatever you think valuable hours are) then you you never repeat in the same daypart until it plays in all others... and then you set each daypart to separate by at least 90 minutes to 2 hours for each successive play.

If you make the rules too tight, you have many unscheduled positions. But you can aim at, for example, five different daypart plays before coming into the same daypart and then five plays at least 90 minutes apart from the last one in the same daypart. So on a recurrent that plays on roughly a day and a daypart rotation, you can go a day or two over two weeks before the song plays again in your +/- 90 minute window.

If you consider gold may be on several days and several daypart separations, you have a month before that 3 hour window sees the same song come up again. And any rotational problems can be "burnt" or accelerated by doing more or less spins in overnights. And you can loosen up Sunday rules to get the gears synchronized again for the next week.

 

[tall_guy1]

No it doesn't. As I said, Audacy classic hits stations switch out about 50 songs every week. Theye also shift the number of spins certain songs get. Every week. This is not a hobby.

Yes, but it is probably the same songs that get shifted on a bi weekly schedule. I am referring to songs which get rotated in and out annually as David pointed out.

 

[davideduardo]

Yes, but it is probably the same songs that get shifted on a bi weekly schedule. I am referring to songs which get rotated in and out annually as David pointed out.

Major market stations used to do two or even three full music tests a year for the gold library. Today, it may be one test or perhaps several tests shared between markets that are very similar in demographics, mood and feel. But in any case, in most majors the gold gets some kind of testing several times a year, and stations make adjustments following them.

Some PDs that think they can fool competitors don't implement the whole test all at once... we pull the songs that don't test well any more (usually the ones that the younger target listeners don't like all that much). Then, a bit later, we add some of the songs we were not playing that passed the test. And then we adjust the categories and rotations to fit the scores of the songs.

If, in addition to all this process, we have some songs that come and go or have irregular rotations, we can make it hard for the competition... even with MediaBase... to totally understand what we are doing. It's worth the effort, as what confuses the competition is perceived as variety by listeners. The "Jack" concept of telling the listeners "you never know what Jack will play next" is a great positioner as it takes "variety" one step further and makes each song a potential surprise for listeners... sorta' like winning $20 with a scratcher; not a big deal but lots of fun at the moment it happens (and radio needs more of that).

 

[TheBigA]

Yes, but it is probably the same songs that get shifted on a bi weekly schedule.

No it's not. Please stop trying to guess how people do their jobs.

 

[tall_guy1]

No it's not. Please stop trying to guess how people do their jobs.

As a listener, I literally do not hear songs rotated in and out every week. There are no Audacy classic hits here, but the classic hits KCMO does not rotate songs in and out on a bi-weekly basis as you claim. Every week the same songs appear on playlists and I check them a lot of times. I do not see the trend you are referring to.

 

[davideduardo]

Yes, but it is probably the same songs that get shifted on a bi weekly schedule. I am referring to songs which get rotated in and out annually as David pointed out.

Have you ever used MusicMaster MusicMaster Scheduling ?
Or Selector GSelector ?

If not, read how flexible, complex and customizable they both are. Nearly all major stations, even in some smaller markets all around the world use them. Thousands and thousands of stations and many of the better streamers, too.

You are making assumptions based on things stations just don't do. And much of the reasoning why they do not is because they have tools like these two.

 

[TheBigA]

Every week the same songs appear on playlists and I check them a lot of times. I do not see the trend you are referring to.

I can put together a detailed spreadsheet laying out exactly what they play. I really don't have time, but you seem unwilling to accept that I know what I'm talking about, and I have access to the facts.

 

[davideduardo]

I can put together a detailed spreadsheet laying out exactly what they play. I really don't have time, but you seem unwilling to accept that I know what I'm talking about, and I have access to the facts.

Let's see... doing the same thing over and over and over and hoping for a different result is the definition of... what?

 

[tall_guy1]

I can put together a detailed spreadsheet laying out exactly what they play. I really don't have time, but you seem unwilling to accept that I know what I'm talking about, and I have access to the facts.

I don't know what you are talking about and I've never heard of a classic hits station that doesn't play certain songs for an entire week.

 

[TheBigA]

I don't know what you are talking about and I've never heard of a classic hits station that doesn't play certain songs for an entire week.

Read what I wrote in post 303.

 

[Kent]

As a listener, I literally do not hear songs rotated in and out every week.

That's the idea. If a station is programmed well, you will not notice when it rotates songs in and out of its playlist. The idea is to keep playing everyone's favorite songs. When that happens, you won’t miss the songs that are no longer among your favorites.

There are no Audacy classic hits here, but the classic hits KCMO does not rotate songs in and out on a bi-weekly basis as you claim. Every week the same songs appear on playlists and I check them a lot of times. I do not see the trend you are referring to.

Cumulus has different managers and programming consultants. Not all of them will be as aggressive as each other, let alone those at Audacy. I listen to KCMO-FM occasionally. I can't vouch for how often it rotates its songs, but it tends to focus more on rock based classic hits. Those songs tend to have longer staying power than pop classics.

I don't know what you are talking about and I've never heard of a classic hits station that doesn't play certain songs for an entire week.

The average classic hits station plays around 500 songs at any given time. There are plenty of songs that were hits in their day that are toxic today. A large number of songs are rested for well more than an entire week.

 

[davideduardo]

I don't know what you are talking about and I've never heard of a classic hits station that doesn't play certain songs for an entire week.

That's because you don't understand rotations. Stations have lots of categories, each rotating in proportion to the test scores and image of the songs and artists.

We used to call one of those rotation categories "lunar rotation" as the songs came up every few weeks, just like a new moon!

 

[tall_guy1]

That's because you don't understand rotations. Stations have lots of categories, each rotating in proportion to the test scores and image of the songs and artists.

We used to call one of those rotation categories "lunar rotation" as the songs came up every few weeks, just like a new moon!

I don't think that happens here. The only time I remember that happening was back when Wilks owned KMXV, there would be gold songs that periodically were played in the middays which weren't usually played, pre-2014 when Steel City bought them. There might be stations which still operate like that, but I do not see that practice being utilized in Kansas City today. In terms of Audacy stations, KZPT and KRBZ at least rotate their gold titles several times a week and currently Steel City rotates most of their golds around during the week with only minor exceptions.

 

[kfbkfb]

In my case, I've been listening to the radio starting with WHB AM 710 in ~1970 so I've already heard the songs KCKC FM plays.

They are all songs I like to varying degrees (since all the songs were previously on the radio and thus went through the song evaluation and classification process) there really aren't any bad songs on KCKC from my POV.


Kirk Bayne