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Star vs. Lake

T

tblanks

With recent format tweaks by both stations, WDOK Star 102.1 and WHLK the Lake 106.5 now actually have similar formats. Both are heavy on the 80's and 90's, with some newer music as well (Star has more 2k, but the Lake also adding more to the playlist).
Lake more rock oriented with some pop, while Star is more pop oriented with some rock.
Which station do you listen to more? Which one is doing better with the mix?
 
I actually heard Gin and Juice by Snoop Dogg earlier this evening on The Lake, so it seems that 106.5 has the better mix.

Star has gotten better since the slogan change (along with a new imaging voice). Less new music and more older tunes.
 
Lake has less clutter when it comes to "DJs" (it doesn't have any. It's just music and sweepers without nonsense, except the obligatory spots).

Star's personalities just..... aren't. And that could have been another song they played instead of yap yap.
 
Gin and Juice by Snoop Dogg on an Adult Hits station? Yes. Every couple of hours, Adult Hits stations, such as Jack-FM and The Lake, will play an urban hit from the last couple of decades. But it borders on a novelty song. Can't Touch This, She's A Bad Mama Jama, Low Rider, Hypnotize, Funky Cold Medina. I don't think it's ever a female artist, no Beyonce or Rhianna. It's something that will make you take notice and it reinforces the slogans "We Play Everything", "Playing What We Want," or in the Lake's case, "We Play Anything."

Of course, Adult Hits stations do NOT play anything. The playlist is carefully selected. But yes, an occasional Urban song is heard if it's memorable.
 
MediaLover said:
I actually heard Gin and Juice by Snoop Dogg earlier this evening on The Lake, so it seems that 106.5 has the better mix.

Star has gotten better since the slogan change (along with a new imaging voice). Less new music and more older tunes.
Click to expand...
I heard "California Love" by 2Pac today. I think as the core of the 90's becomes "Adult Hits", they had no choice but to add some rap titles to the playlist. I like the addition of more pop and rhythmic on the Lake, we have enough classic rock stations in the market.
 
The adult hits format has seemingly been centered and cemented on 80s gold since the rise of JackFM 20 years ago. It didn’t matter how overplayed and burned into husks of carbon those tracks were (“Come on Eileen”, “I Melt With You”, “She’s A Beauty”, “Turning Japanese”, “Tainted Love”, etc., &c.) or of how classic hits has made 80s and 90s central to their playlist scope.

The Lake’s playlist is shared with all other iHeart-owned adult hits stations so if they seriously are shifting to the 90s—something that should have happened 10 years ago—it’s happening chainwide.
 
I'd always put Majic 105.7 and 106.5 The Lake closer to having similar playlists than Star 102 to either of them. 105's shift towards '80s music lines up perfectly with all of the '80s blocks that 106 plays throughout the day. Star 102's still the same station it's always been since the format change, but they're probably letting more of those overnight "we don't really care" tracks get playtime during the day, so that's likely the only real difference. Q104, on the other hand, is becoming more akin to Kiss 107.9 from Sacramento ("90s and 2000s") while still keeping modern tracks in the mix.
 
Adult Hits is really a format that is heavy on Pop, Rock and Adult Contempary songs from the 80's 90's and some 2000's. WHLK is why WMJI will never play music past the 80s
 
CassChopper96 said:
Adult Hits is really a format that is heavy on Pop, Rock and Adult Contempary songs from the 80's 90's and some 2000's. WHLK is why WMJI will never play music past the 80s
Click to expand...
I was pretty sure that WMJI would add some 90's music to their playlist and slowly move away from the 70's a few years back, much like what they did shortly after 2010 when they moved into the 80's and phased out the remaining songs from the 60's. Within the last couple of years, the only thing I've noticed (aside from the same repetitive playlist), is that many of their songs have been trimmed down to shoehorn in more commercials. They even go as far as to trim down radio/single versions, which have already been trimmed down from the record company for airplay.

I still remember WMJI best during the 90's with their oldies format, mainly consisting of songs from the 50's & 60's, along with some 70's thrown in. At one point they offered Real Oldies on their HD2 channel as sort of a throwback of their oldies format from back then, but they dropped the network several years back, and Real Oldies now focuses more on mainstream hits from 60's & 70's instead of pop/dance hits from primarily the 60's.
 
Yabadabado1 said:
Should read "We play anything*" [*As long as it fits our incredibly tight and limited playlist as handed down by corporate bosses.]
Click to expand...

"as handed down by the listeners themselves in professionally done music tests" is the right way to say this.
 
WDOK has started playing a lot more rhythmic songs from the 90s as of today. I have been hearing TLC's "Creep" and Montell Jordan's "This is How We Do It" on the station.
 
snowdog88 said:
Within the last couple of years, the only thing I've noticed (aside from the same repetitive playlist), is that many of their songs have been trimmed down to shoehorn in more commercials. They even go as far as to trim down radio/single versions, which have already been trimmed down from the record company for airplay.
Click to expand...

Are you sure about this? WMJI is a Classic Hits station, so it would likely play the single (Top 40) version of songs. Sometimes a Classic Hits station will play the album version but that's not usually the case. Classic Hits is based on the Top 40 stations we heard in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, not the Album Rock stations.

And I know that commercials are annoying. But most FM stations play two breaks of five or six minutes. You can't shoehorn more commercial minutes in because people will switch to streaming. Today's FM station is not just competing with crosstown FM stations, it's competing with Spotify, Apple Music and Accuradio. I don't think WMJI or any iHeart station is playing more commercial minutes than it did five or ten years ago. The difference may be that 60 second spots have been replaced by 30 second spots over the years. It may SOUND like there are more minutes of spots but it's really that in a six minute break, there are 12 thirty second spots.
 
Gregg. said:
Are you sure about this? WMJI is a Classic Hits station, so it would likely play the single (Top 40) version of songs. Sometimes a Classic Hits station will play the album version but that's not usually the case. Classic Hits is based on the Top 40 stations we heard in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, not the Album Rock stations.
Click to expand...
Some examples...

The bridge in Take It On The Run (REO Speedwagon) has been trimmed down significantly.

The beginning of Like A Prayer (Madonna) has been shorten, after "feels like home". This is also the radio version that's played where the intro has been cut and the ending has been trimmed down by approximately 40 seconds.

The second verse of Lyin' Eyes (Eagles) has been cut. Later I found out that this was a single edit, though I'm pretty sure that WMJI, as well as others, used to play the full album version at some point.

The last minute and 20 seconds of Man In The Mirror (Michael Jackson) is cut.

WHOF, also iHeart, played a version of Best of My Love (Eagles) where the lyric "here in my heart, I give you the best of my love" near the end was cut, which resulted in a jump cut from "I guess that wasn't enough, but" to "Ohhhh... Sweet darling". This was kind of odd on as the station at that time played the full album versions of several songs instead of their shorten single versions. Prince's When Doves Cry and KC & The Sunshine Band's Get Down Tonight are two examples that I remember hearing.

There are a few others that I can't think of at the moment. However, none of these edits, except for Lyin Eyes, were present in the past or heard on other stations that I've listened to.
 
Use a stopwatch and time songs and see how that compares to the original listed time for the track. Digital speeding up is common for music and TV shows. A 5% digital speed up that keeps the same timbre and pitch is almost unnoticeable and over an hour can add several more minutes for commercials.
In the heyday of Top 40 "more music", WIXY used to speed up the 45 rpm records by wrapping friction tape around the turntable motor capstan so they could boast playing more songs an hour than WHK or WKYC. This also made the songs sound more uptempo and exciting. At least the PD thought so!
 
Santa fe said:
Use a stopwatch and time songs and see how that compares to the original listed time for the track. Digital speeding up is common for music and TV shows. A 5% digital speed up that keeps the same timbre and pitch is almost unnoticeable and over an hour can add several more minutes for commercials.
Click to expand...
I don't even need a stopwatch. I can tell by ear that the songs are playing much faster than they should.

Play a digital copy of the same song and sync it up precisely with the one being played on the radio. Within seconds, the two will immediately start to lose sync.
 
snowdog88 said:
Some examples...

The bridge in Take It On The Run (REO Speedwagon) has been trimmed down significantly.

The beginning of Like A Prayer (Madonna) has been shorten, after "feels like home". This is also the radio version that's played where the intro has been cut and the ending has been trimmed down by approximately 40 seconds.

The second verse of Lyin' Eyes (Eagles) has been cut. Later I found out that this was a single edit, though I'm pretty sure that WMJI, as well as others, used to play the full album version at some point.

The last minute and 20 seconds of Man In The Mirror (Michael Jackson) is cut.

WHOF, also iHeart, played a version of Best of My Love (Eagles) where the lyric "here in my heart, I give you the best of my love" near the end was cut, which resulted in a jump cut from "I guess that wasn't enough, but" to "Ohhhh... Sweet darling". This was kind of odd on as the station at that time played the full album versions of several songs instead of their shorten single versions. Prince's When Doves Cry and KC & The Sunshine Band's Get Down Tonight are two examples that I remember hearing.

There are a few others that I can't think of at the moment. However, none of these edits, except for Lyin Eyes, were present in the past or heard on other stations that I've listened to.
Click to expand...
The edits you mentioned were indeed either record company "single"/"radio edits" -or- edited by station groups.
Such as the REO Speedwagon: primarily so AC stations could play it.

I know all the versions of these songs because I lived through all the
iterations/versions of these songs since they were originally released.
Yes, it would be "nice" if all long, unedited versions were played, but I realize the realities/conformities of radio formatics.

I *do* realize it can be confusing if a particular station plays the longer version of one song while playing the shorter version of another song.
 
Santa fe said:
Use a stopwatch and time songs and see how that compares to the original listed time for the track. Digital speeding up is common for music and TV shows. A 5% digital speed up that keeps the same timbre and pitch is almost unnoticeable and over an hour can add several more minutes for commercials.
In the heyday of Top 40 "more music", WIXY used to speed up the 45 rpm records by wrapping friction tape around the turntable motor capstan so they could boast playing more songs an hour than WHK or WKYC. This also made the songs sound more uptempo and exciting. At least the PD thought so!
Click to expand...
The pros did it very, very slightly. The amateurs overdid the speedup.
 
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