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Christmas in July? Viable format switch? Will anyone tune in? Will advertisers buy?

michael hagerty said:
By '76, "Stairway" had become a hot item in most Top 40 stations' Gold libraries. The original copies of LED ZEPPELIN IV were five years old and had seen better days. Atlantic was getting a large number of requests from Top 40 stations to re-service the album.
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Correct. By this time, AM Top 40 stations were competing with FM stations that played album cuts like this. One station in particular was WNBC AM, which at the time was programmed by a guy named Bob Pittman. A few years later he started MTV. Now he runs iHeart.

How far from the original topic are we now?
 
cc333 said:
Well, it has nothing to do with Christmas in July, that much is certain :)
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How true. One detail we left out is that the Hot 100 at one point stopped being a singles chart and became a song chart. That happened in 1998. But by that time a lot of music consumption had changed. You might find this article helpful:


November 1998 — the inclusion of non-retail, radio-only songs: For its first 40 years, the Hot 100 was a singles chart. Billboard's ironclad rule was that a song had to be available for sale as a 45, a 12-inch maxi-single, a cassingle or a CD-single to make the big chart — no album cuts, no promotional-only tracks just for radio or DJs.
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So that explains why Beatle album cuts didn't show up in the Hot 100. However, that rule was changed, and that's why album cuts can monopolize the chart.
 
There are two sets of people who give a crap about chart positions:
  • Under-13 year olds, because they still care whether other people like the song they like, and whether their favorite band is better than some other band
  • Radio DJs, who use "and that was the third single from that band's second studio album, which reached #3 in the charts in 1982" in lieu of anything interesting or relevant to talk about
Nobody else cares.
 
Miss Tuned said:
So we're down to the middle-aged DJs with their Big Book O' Charts on the desk, telling us that this song got "knocked off the top spot" by that other song in 1979 while listeners stifle a yawn.
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There are a lot of music fans who are not or have never been DJs, and can be of all ages, some of whom post on this discussion board. I also run into them at music conferences. You'd be surprised how wide the audience is for this information.
 
TheBigA said:
There are a lot of music fans who are not or have never been DJs, and can be of all ages, some of whom post on this discussion board. I also run into them at music conferences. You'd be surprised how wide the audience is for this information.
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I'm a good example: I'm interested in charts because I'm researching and trying to learn how to program my Part 15 station so it sounds good (which someone here, I forget who, calls "Mr. Microphone," even though I don't use one (I'm just playing straight music, no voice tracking or any of that; I hope to change this in time, but right now I'm concentrating on the engineering and programming aspects).

c
 
TheBigA said:
Correct. By this time, AM Top 40 stations were competing with FM stations that played album cuts like this. One station in particular was WNBC AM, which at the time was programmed by a guy named Bob Pittman. A few years later he started MTV. Now he runs iHeart.
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At least in California, "Stairway" was being played in Gold and even recurrent rotations from '72 onward on Top 40 stations. Some dayparted it to nights, but not all did.

There was a long gap between "Rock and Roll" and the release of the HOUSES OF THE HOLY album. A lot of PDs pushed for Atlantic to release "Stairway" as a third single from LED ZEPPELIN IV, but they declined.

TheBigA said:
How far from the original topic are we now?
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Lemme see what the original topic was....


Hmmm..."Christmas in July? Viable format switch? Will anyone tune in? Will advertisers buy?"


Are we any further from the original topic than the Beatles having five album cuts on the Hot 100 in 1964, which is how we got to "Stairway"?
 
I'm not sure why most of these threads devolve into radio history lessons/reminders. I get it; one can't predict the future with certainty, but the future of certain aspects of the industry, given increasing competition from other online media, is pretty clear. I think it's a mistake to fool oneself that history will somehow repeat itself because there weren't devices like smartphones or the public Internet in the past.
 
Kelly A said:
I'm not sure why most of these threads devolve into radio history lessons/reminders.
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I'll just say that the only reason I do it is to correct factual errors. I'm not a chart or ratings freak and I'd love to stop acting like one. But without correction, someday, someone's going to believe something totally wrong written on this site.
 
michael hagerty said:
I'll just say that the only reason I do it is to correct factual errors. I'm not a chart or ratings freak and I'd love to stop acting like one. But without correction, someday, someone's going to believe something totally wrong written on this site.
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Totally get the aspect of correcting the many revisionist history examples, Michael. Or in David's case; putting together an excellent online museum of radio's history.
But without fail, when talking about radio's present or potential challenges, seems like so many are living in the past like it's today. And it's great that folks relive their love for listening or participating in radio's past, but the past is the past. Everything has changed, over time, and it's not just radio. Just because something is new or different, doesn't make it bad.
 
Kelly A said:
Totally get the aspect of correcting the many revisionist history examples, Michael. Or in David's case; putting together an excellent online museum of radio's history.
But without fail, when talking about radio's present or potential challenges, seems like so many are living in the past like it's today. And it's great that folks relive their love for listening or participating in radio's past, but the past is the past. Everything has changed, over time, and it's not just radio. Just because something is new or different, doesn't make it bad.
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The biggest lesson I've learned in 52 years in broadcasting is how quickly circumstances change. What worked last quarter might not be applicable today---much less what worked 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago.
 
michael hagerty said:
The biggest lesson I've learned in 52 years in broadcasting is how quickly circumstances change. What worked last quarter might not be applicable today---much less what worked 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago.
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A very savvy, successful radio programmer once told me: 'Kelly, programming radio is one of those businesses that must evolve with the audience, or it dies a slow death'. The same could be said for all other forms of media.
 
What station is playing Christmas music for the rest of July? Magic 106.3 doesn’t appear to be the station. I recall last year Magic, WLEV, and WARM 103.3 going all Christmas 7/25.
 
TheBigA said:
There are a lot of music fans who are not or have never been DJs, and can be of all ages, some of whom post on this discussion board. I also run into them at music conferences. You'd be surprised how wide the audience is for this information.
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There are a few hundred people, as I've mentioned, who count down the #AT40 rerun on Twitter when it airs on SiriusXM. It's a mix of society at large.
 
gr8oldies said:
There are a few hundred people, as I've mentioned, who count down the #AT40 rerun on Twitter when it airs on SiriusXM. It's a mix of society at large.
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Hell, when AT40 was new, it was only a small audience. All of America did not get up at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday and spend three hours in front of the radio listening to Casey count backwards. It did better than you might expect given the time slot, and it made money.
 
michael hagerty said:
Hell, when AT40 was new, it was only a small audience. All of America did not get up at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday and spend three hours in front of the radio listening to Casey count backwards. It did better than you might expect given the time slot, and it made money.
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I've had to explain some of the "extras" from the early years being the likes of Jack Jones or Perry Como, being an attempt to help stations convince potential advertisers that the audience wasn't all teeny-boppers.
 
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