Music stations running syndicated shows vs. automated jukebox

[K.M. Richards]

According to the AT40 site, the show is void in KC. Closest markets are Columbia or Joplin.

Read what I said, A.

Maybe the current version isn't airing, but the 80s replays are.

Just ran a daily log for KCMO-FM at Mediabase and cross-referenced against the cue sheet for the 80s show (which I have by benefit of programming an affiliate). Show aired 6:00-10:00am Kansas City time.

 

[TheBigA]

Read what I said, A. Maybe the current version isn't airing, but the 80s replays are.

My post was specifically about the Seacrest show.

 

[K.M. Richards]

My post was specifically about the Seacrest show.

I think, when posting about AT40, it's probably a good idea to say which version (current or classic) one is talking about ... especially when the questioner didn't specify.

 

[ted chittenden]

The paid spot load is usually so low on weekends that it doesn't matter.


The ratings don't matter at all. No client is specifically planning to buy the time windows when these shows usually air.

Using AT40 with Ryan Seacrest as an example, I looked at the run time for all the stations in the larger New York markets. In NYC, Binghamton, Syracuse, Buffalo/Rochester, Erie (PA), Albany, and Burlington(VT)/Plattsburgh, all start the show at 7am on Sunday. If the show did attract a larger-than-usual audience, that wouldn't be the preferred timeslot.

I'm not sure it was ever the case that these shows were appointment listening. I only remember them airing in fringe times, like early Saturday/Sunday morning or 8pm-midnight Saturday, growing up in the 90s.

They would have been "appointment" shows for some who listened to them. For example, between April of 1979 and April of 1983, I listened to every AT40 show and brailled out the top 20 list (enough to fit on a single braille page) each week, so, for me, at that time, American Top 40 was appointment listening. The problem is, though the appointment listeners (like me) never realized it, there were a lot fewer "appointment" listeners listening.

 

[ted chittenden]

I checked my portfolio of monitored Classic Hits stations at Mediabase (my Excel spreadsheet list of same includes market rank, ownership, and AT40 carriage) and in the top 50 markets, the AT40 80s affiliates in San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Portland, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee are owned by iHeart. That's eight.

As for the suggestion that Casey replays are airing in half of the top 50 markets, I only show six more stations running the 80s version, so there would have to be eleven more (which would have to be airing the 70s version to count), which I think is unlikely as the total station count for the earlier decade's shows has been declining rapidly in recent years. I would especially note that San Francisco (market #6) is the highest ranked market carrying the 80s show ... and that's likely because iHeart's Classic Hits station there is heavily 80s. In fact, you have to get to market #25 before you get to the largest market where the station carrying the show is non-iHeart owned.

FYI (and I know this because I live in the Phoenix metro area and can receive a certain radio station from Tucson as well):

"American Top 40--The 70s" is carried in Phoenix on KAZG (plus FM translator and HD channel) on Saturdays starting at 11am and on Sundays starting at 12AM (noon). In Tucson, KDRI (plus FM translator) is carrying the same show on Sunday mornings beginning at 8am. When Casey goes to the four-hour shows beginning in October 1978, KAZG does not play the first hour. I have not yet confirmed that situation with KDRI. Neither the Phoenix nor Tucson stations are owned by IHeart and Phoenix is ranked (last time I checked) as market #13.

 

[K.M. Richards]

When Casey goes to the four-hour shows beginning in October 1978, KAZG does not play the first hour.

That seems to be the case with most AT40: The 70s stations. Premiere always gives affiliates a three-hour "B" show from an earlier year when those come up in the rotation.

 

[ted chittenden]

That seems to be the case with most AT40: The 70s stations. Premiere always gives affiliates a three-hour "B" show from an earlier year when those come up in the rotation.

Interesting. The show this past week was from the last week of September of 1979. This is how I found out that KAZG didn't carry the first hour of the 4-hour shows.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Interesting. The show this past week was from the last week of September of 1979. This is how I found out that KAZG didn't carry the first hour of the 4-hour shows.

Actually, the next-to-last week (9/22/79). And KAZG had the option of running 9/27/75 instead if they had wanted to.

(Yes, the affiliate manual has the schedule for both decades.)

 

[MarcB]

Actually, the next-to-last week (9/22/79). And KAZG had the option of running 9/27/75 instead if they had wanted to.

(Yes, the affiliate manual has the schedule for both decades.)

My local AT 40: The 70s affiliate airs the show Saturdays 7AM-10AM and Sundays 9PM-Midnight. If the 9/22/79 show was originally a 4 hour show this must be when I tuned in at 7AM Saturday and the countdown was already at a song in the lower 30s, rather than number 40.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Here's the original Watermark cue sheet for that show, if it helps:

http://www.charismusicgroup.com/Cue%20Sheets/1979-0922.pdf

(Courtesy of Shannon Lynn, who did all the remastering of the classic AT40 shows for Premiere ... and a really nice guy to boot.)

 

[MrCrumpets]

Back in 2006 at 4VL - Charleville, Queensland (the real outback!) - we had syndicated programming back-to-back-to-back on a Saturday afternoon.
It just gave another point of difference from our regular weekday programming, and it meant they wouldn't be hearing the same station voices (albeit voice-tracked) seven days a week.
We would also take some of the national spots in that barted syndicated programming (like Coca-Cola) and run the spots as a bonus during the weekdays to make our commercial breaks sound like we have more advertisers than we did (during slow periods).

The typical Saturday 6am to Midnight rundown would be...

6am-8am [local] Automated music mix, usually voice tracked by the weekday afternoons guy.
8am-9am [local] Buy, Swap and Sell - Sports guy would take calls of people selling whatever they had (like a newspaper classifieds), usually household items.
9am-11am [local] South West Sports Show - Sponsored by the local car dealer. Sports guy doing interviews and giving their hot takes on local sports
11am-2pm [syndicated] Barry Bissell's Weekly Countdown - Hot AC countdown show with the original host of Take 40 Australia
2pm-4pm [syndicated] Planet Rock - Two hours of Classic Rock with a certain theme each week
4pm-6pm [syndicated] My Generation - Classic Hits show
6pm-12am [local] Jukebox Saturday Night - Sponsored by the local pizza shop. 50s/60s/70s mix, usually voice tracked by me.

There was one syndicated show I wanted to get, but was priced out of... Wolfman Jack.

I heard a station 9 hours away (when I was passing through) called River 94.9 running it in the evening and thought those classic episodes would be perfect for the weekday 6pm-7pm slot - we had a number of pubs in town playing us into their dining sections at night.

However, the syndicator of the show who had the rights in Australia wanted something like $400 a month. Roughly around the money we were paying a high-school kid to come in on Fridays each week on a traineeship. Couldn't justify the cost (or in the budget, booting the kid for Wolfman Jack). A twist on the story, the kid (in his late 30s now) is now a content director for a top rating station in a major metropolitan market!

 

[AMRadioGuy]

Appointment listening... when I was a kid in elementary school back in the late 2000s, I caught the AT40 70s reruns every Sunday morning - around church, of course. I'd load up a cassette in my auto-reverse deck when I left for church so I could listen to the remainder of the countdown. I still have a bunch of those tapes.

Now, that station plays the 80s countdowns and I haven't listened in a long while. Another station has started playing the 70s countdowns on AM radio (which is pretty neat!) and I catch them when I can.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Now, that station plays the 80s countdowns and I haven't listened in a long while. Another station has started playing the 70s countdowns on AM radio (which is pretty neat!) and I catch them when I can.

Enjoy it while you can. The word I get from a couple of sources is the affiliate list for the 70's shows has been dwindling at a higher rate in the past few years.

Classic Hits now has a center around 1985-86, for the most part. Some stations are edging into later decades. 70's titles are generally restricted to the longevity hits which still resonate well with the core audience.

 

[AMRadioGuy]

Enjoy it while you can. The word I get from a couple of sources is the affiliate list for the 70's shows has been dwindling at a higher rate in the past few years.

Classic Hits now has a center around 1985-86, for the most part. Some stations are edging into later decades. 70's titles are generally restricted to the longevity hits which still resonate well with the core audience.

Yup, I realize that for sure. It's unfortunate, but I don't deny that it's a reality. I don't really enjoy 80s music as much (sorry, I know that's the format you program) so I don't have much interest in Casey from that era. Whereas I enjoy pretty much anything pre late-70s, my taste gets much more constrained as that decade draws to a close, so a general countdown like AT40 isn't my cup of tea, nor are "classic hits" formats at this point.
Heck, even the station I was listening to 70s AT40 on as a kid was largely 80s at that point format-wise and I pretty much never listened to it aside from when AT40 was on. It's pretty much the same for the station in my area currently airing the 70s countdowns now, and once they vanish from that station, my dial probably won't ever rest there again...

To bring things back on topic, I typically would prefer a specialty show as opposed to just a jukebox because a specialty program is more likely to play music that's not completely within the format.
With AT40, for example, it was #40-#25 that I always loved because I discovered so much great music that way! Lots of those songs never got frequent airplay again. That's entertaining to me as a listener. "Breaking format" works better on a specialty show because there's usually a host to give context, etc. whereas breaking format on a jukebox just doesn't fly as well.

 

[ted chittenden]

While I've heard promotions of stations offering lots of syndicated shows during the weekends in the past, I tend to not hear those kinds of promotions anymore. That said, one station that plays a lot of syndicated shows over the weekends is KZRO-FM, licensed to Dunsmire, CA, off of Interstate 5 between Redding, CA, and Medford, OR. Here is a link to the station's current schedule:

Z-CHANNEL DAILY PROGRAM GRID

The best 60s, 70s & 80s music on radio or web, live requests daily, great weekend shows. Listen live now!!!

www.zchannelradio.com

Starting with the Real Don Steele's "Live From The Sixties," on Fridays, the station, with the exception of midnight-6am, plays nothing but syndicated shows in the oldies, classic hits, and classic rock genres through Sunday evenings. And I've never found any other station with a schedule as packed with syndicated fare as KZRO. And they stream, too!

 

[K.M. Richards]

While I've heard promotions of stations offering lots of syndicated shows during the weekends in the past, I tend to not hear those kinds of promotions anymore.

While there are a lot of syndicated shows focusing on the 80s, we only run AT40, because it's not only compatible with the regular format (and I agree with @AMRadioGuy that often those songs in the first couple of hours are fun to hear again) but we can promote Casey Kasem as a legend.

The rest of the shows would do little more than play most of our regular playlist, but with a lot more talk than our listeners are accustomed to ... Casey, they understand, but the others aren't as instantly recognizable, with the exception of Nina Blackwood (and she hasn't done a new show in many years now).

And before anyone asks about Nina's "New Wave Nation", we do a much better job of covering that genre, with more than three times the number of hours per week, with our own Friday and Saturday night "Flashback Weekend" with ex-KROQ air personality Freddy Snakeskin (and he's pretty recognizable because of his stints on SiriusXM in the past).

@ted chittenden referenced KZRO as his example of still doing what stations did more of. It's not in a rated market, being (as he said) in the next county north of the Redding market. When you're too small a station to be part of even market #216, the idea of running all syndicated programming on the weekends is a much better option than running jockless or with what air talent is available.

Hell, back in 1979-80, in what is market #124, I had trouble finding decent part-timers. It was even worse in 1987-88 when I was in market #206 (which is actually why I managed to get that weekends/utility gig full-time, which turned into afternoon drive within a year).

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

>< over the weekends is KZRO-FM, licensed to Dunsmire, CA, off of Interstate 5 between Redding, CA, and Medford, OR. Here is a link to the station's current schedule:>

KZRO has been for sale for years, has had 3 CPs go unbuilt to upgrade into Redding, and Redding needs more radio stations like you and I need holes in our head.. and i can speak to that personally, having worked in the market. The station is literally one guy..... and maybe a sales person. And egads... parts of the morning show and almsot all of the evening show are voicetracked.

 

[ted chittenden]

KZRO has been for sale for years, has had 3 CPs go unbuilt to upgrade into Redding, and Redding needs more radio stations like you and I need holes in our head.. and i can speak to that personally, having worked in the market. The station is literally one guy..... and maybe a sales person. And egads... parts of the morning show and almsot all of the evening show are voicetracked.

That explains why I've ever only heard one voice on the radio station outside of the syndicated shows.

Funny thing about Redding (and I know this is off this specific topic but I'm going in anyway). The first time I visited there was at the tail end of December, 1979, just after Christmas. We spent the night there in our 1973 Dodge truck with a camper in the back. I had my Panasonic RF-2600 receiver with me and I was definitely taking radio notes. There were five AM outlets, two of which (540 and 1330) signed off at night. Two of the remaining three were strictly top 40 (600 and 1230), and the third station (1400) was basically ac with oldies (that was my favorite station in town).

The FM band had only one licensed station at the time, KVIP (I think the callsign was the same back then as it is now), the religious outlet at 98.1 mHz. The only top 40 FM station in the area was the Red Bluff station licensed at 95.7 and that was definitely automated.

When I visited the city in 2000, everything had changed. 540 was on nights and was (mostly) simulcasting KVIP-FM, which was the only station with the same format as it had in late 1979. 1230 was satellite nostalgia (WW1, if I remember correctly), 1400 was conservative talk, a new 1670 (replacing the 600) was carrying sports, and both 600 and 1330 were no more.

The FM, which had but one station in late December of 1979, was crammed with both full-power stations and translators by the time I returned in 2000. And since then, per Internet sources, both the AM and FM bands have had additional occupants. And Redding is *still* not really that large of a town, making @SomeRadioGuy's comments quite accurate.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

That explains why I've ever only heard one voice on the radio station outside of the syndicated shows.

Funny thing about Redding (and I know this is off this specific topic but I'm going in anyway). The first time I visited there was at the tail end of December, 1979, just after Christmas. We spent the night there in our 1973 Dodge truck with a camper in the back. I had my Panasonic RF-2600 receiver with me and I was definitely taking radio notes. There were five AM outlets, two of which (540 and 1330) signed off at night. Two of the remaining three were strictly top 40 (600 and 1230), and the third station (1400) was basically ac with oldies (that was my favorite station in town).

The FM band had only one licensed station at the time, KVIP (I think the callsign was the same back then as it is now), the religious outlet at 98.1 mHz. The only top 40 FM station in the area was the Red Bluff station licensed at 95.7 and that was definitely automated.

When I visited the city in 2000, everything had changed. 540 was on nights and was (mostly) simulcasting KVIP-FM, which was the only station with the same format as it had in late 1979. 1230 was satellite nostalgia (WW1, if I remember correctly), 1400 was conservative talk, a new 1670 (replacing the 600) was carrying sports, and both 600 and 1330 were no more.

The FM, which had but one station in late December of 1979, was crammed with both full-power stations and translators by the time I returned in 2000. And since then, per Internet sources, both the AM and FM bands have had additional occupants. And Redding is *still* not really that large of a town, making @SomeRadioGuy's comments quite accurate.

The station i worked for was owned by Flinn broadcasting and was sold to JPR in OR.. and that was the best hope for its successful, stable future.

 

[ted chittenden]

The station i worked for was owned by Flinn broadcasting and was sold to JPR in OR.. and that was the best hope for its successful, stable future.

Would I be correct in guessing that it was the 1330 outlet? It was a day-time only country operation in late 1979, wasn't on the air when I visited in 2000, and is now part of JPR's news and talk outlet. (I think it returned to the air in 2002 or 2003.)