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Does anyone besides me think AC today is a joke?

oldies76 said:
And that's you and KM......but others would. You are expected to come to that conclusion in your field.
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Please go back and re-read the dozens of times where I have said my personal tastes don't matter in my professional role as a programmer.

Then go back and re-read the dozens of times David has said the same thing.

Finally, go back and re-read the dozens of times BigA has said it.

Then please come back here and apologize for that remark.
 
oldies76 said:
And that's you and KM......but others would. You are expected to come to that conclusion in your field.
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We don't program based on our own personal likes and dislikes. We program based on what works. And as we've said repeatedly, what we do is working with great success.
 
oldies76 said:
And that's you and KM......but others would. You are expected to come to that conclusion in your field.
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I doubt I'm the only person who feels that way, nor do I doubt there are others who feel differently. And to be clear, there are things from a quarter century ago I listened to that I still do. It was an offhand remark, but one that illustrates the point that where there is a general consensus about what's better left behind--and repeated testing is a far better way to identify a consensus than anecdotes--that's where a business appealing to an "average" or "typical" (neither intended by me to be negative) should be.
 
The thing about it is we do that kind of testing on a song. We want to find out the percentage of people who don't want to hear particular songs again. And when you see the numbers, they're pretty conclusive. Billy Ray Cyrus can tell you exactly what the negatives are on Achy Breaky Heart. He knows. We all do.
 
Wasn't Achy Breaky voted the worst song ever? Or, was that You Light Up My Life? LOL
 
eriedj said:
Wasn't Achy Breaky voted the worst song ever? Or, was that You Light Up My Life? LOL
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Doesn't matter. They've both been tested and retested and no one wants to ever hear them again for the rest of their collective lives. Well, maybe oldies76 does ... he seems to like listening to songs no one else likes.
 
DavidEduardo said:


That's perhaps the best point made in this entire multi-year-long set of threads about playlist length and variety on classic hits / oldies stations.

My early adolescent experience with Top 40 was in a former Top 10 market in the era when FM had no impact or audience. There were 8 stations, including one daytimer. At any given moment, 3 were MOR variants, 3 were Top 40 variants and two, including the daytimer, were r&b stations.

The Top 40's played everything from Dean Martin, Dominico Modugno and Dave "Baby" Cortez to Frankie Avalon, Little Richard and Buddy Holly. I despised the former and loved (most of) the latter. So, given several Top 40's to chose from, I would tune out "Mac the Knife" and look for something more "hip" on one of the other stations. But when I couldn't immediately switch the dial, I got exposed to "Happy Organ" and "Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu" and did, as you say, develop a liking for some and a tolerance for others.

Today, that market has about 20 different formats or variants, as well as all market's exposure to satellite and new media music sources. One can indulge a niche preference much more easily and avoid exposure to less preferred genres.

Again, great point.

I do, based on your observation, wonder when listeners began to be much more focused on one kind of music and less exposed to others. I would guess that it started with Motown, and enhanced by the British Invasion which were points when the MOR and "throwback" genres tended to be eliminated from Top 40. Of course, the beginning of real fragmentation was the time of the FCC's mandate to end most AM/FM simulcasts in 1967. But anyone growing up in the late 50's and early to mid 60's did get the cross-genre exposure you mention.

Good stuff to think about!
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Thank you David, I may just have to frame this one.
 
eriedj said:
Wasn't Achy Breaky voted the worst song ever? Or, was that You Light Up My Life? LOL
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I like both of them.

I don't really know why I ever despised "Achy Breaky Heart". It sounds like I want country songs to sound. Though like "Red Solo Cup", it's just moronic. That doesn't seem to matter to me.
 
K.M. Richards said:
Well, maybe oldies76 does ... he seems to like listening to songs no one else likes.
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KM, look, It may be that many people dislike certain songs and that's fine and dandy. But please, don't say that "No One" dislikes certain songs, because they do. You have your favorites, x listener has theirs, Z listener has theirs and yes, I have mine as well. "Achy Break Heart" may be ranked as one of the worst, so what. You may dislike it, but others do not. Everyone has their personal preferences and yes some songs will appeal greatly to the mass, and others will appeal selectively and that's alright with me, but don't say "no one". I will say it again predictably, EVERY SONG IS SOMEONE'S FAVORITE, some more than others.

You have this conclusion that EVERY low ranked or negatively tested song is a downer with the overall public, and frankly that is not true, at all.
 
A lot of the worst songs are so bad they're good.

I like a lot of songs that have been banished from AC because they're just garbage, even though they were popular there at one time.
 
oldies76 said:
You have this conclusion that EVERY low ranked or negatively tested song is a downer with the overall public, and frankly that is not true, at all.
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Let's say we follow your suggestion of "just two an hour".

Songs that do not get past a music test will, at best, be liked a lot by less than one out of five listeners. They will be disliked by three out of four.

So you have, two times an hour, songs that piss off two thirds of your listeners. Cumulatively, in a couple of hours, you annoy every listener several times. They will go away. And if the same thing happens the next time and the next, they eventually do not come back ever.

We see how bad these songs are via MScores. We know how many listeners just go away when they hear them.

So, if 10% of listeners still like Achy Breaky, you drive away 90% of your listeners. Some will never come back.

If I go to a grocery store and find they have a smaller assortment of fresh vegetables because in half the produce section they put a donut shop and I don't eat donuts because of the fat and the carbs, I will start going to a different market eventually.
 
oldies76 said:
KM, look, It may be that many people dislike certain songs and that's fine and dandy. But please, don't say that "No One" dislikes certain songs, because they do. You have your favorites, x listener has theirs, Z listener has theirs and yes, I have mine as well. "Achy Break Heart" may be ranked as one of the worst, so what. You may dislike it, but others do not. Everyone has their personal preferences and yes some songs will appeal greatly to the mass, and others will appeal selectively and that's alright with me, but don't say "no one". I will say it again predictably, EVERY SONG IS SOMEONE'S FAVORITE, some more than others.

You have this conclusion that EVERY low ranked or negatively tested song is a downer with the overall public, and frankly that is not true, at all.
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But the key word there is "overall." And poorly testing songs could be fairly described as "overall" disliked. Overall doesn't mean literally every single solitary problem....and I have no problem differentiating when someone uses a phrase like "no one" offhandedly.
 
Y'all need to stop making fun of songs y'all hate because music is personal to people.
 
So what. Achy Breaky Heart was a big hit in 1992. #1 on the C/W charts. Teen/young adult C/W listeners loved it.
Out here in Yakima, 92.9 The Bull and 104.1 KXDD have been dissed by the older 50+ crowd by ignoring practically all 90s music and lots of 2000s country songs. The new country stations think that no one under the age of 55 knows who Garth Brooks is, but that is practically not true. He'll be on the ACMs!

-crainbebo
 
crainbebo said:
So what. Achy Breaky Heart was a big hit in 1992. #1 on the C/W charts. Teen/young adult C/W listeners loved it.
Out here in Yakima, 92.9 The Bull and 104.1 KXDD have been dissed by the older 50+ crowd by ignoring practically all 90s music and lots of 2000s country songs. The new country stations think that no one under the age of 55 knows who Garth Brooks is, but that is practically not true. He'll be on the ACMs!

-crainbebo
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They DON'T WANT 55+ listeners! They hurt their ability to sell the station to advertisers! That 35-year-olds know who Garth Brooks is is irrelevant. All that matters is that they're listening to the country music of the current decade. If the station starts playing Garth and Alan Jackson and Mark Chesnutt and Patty Loveless just because some of those 35-year-olds say they remember and like that music from their childhood, the station will start attracting the geezers that it and its advertisers DO ... NOT ... WANT ... LISTENING.
 
oldies76 said:
You have this conclusion that EVERY low ranked or negatively tested song is a downer with the overall public, and frankly that is not true, at all.
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Radio is not programmable to individuals. Understand? So I can't play certain songs for certain people, and certain songs for others. It's the same songs to all people.

Are you understanding me so far? OK.

What that means is I can't play a song that 10% of the people like. I can't play a song that 90% of the people hate. I can't do that. I can't do it even if I personally love the song. Even if it was my wedding song and my personal all time favorite.

Do you understand this? OK

So what that means is if I play a song that 90% of the people hate, then those people may turn the radio off. If they turn the radio off, I may lose my job.

Understand? We're talking about my job.

So it becomes a gamble every time I play a song. It's a roll of the dice. Play two low ranked songs together, and that's twice as much reason to tune out.

Do you understand that part?

So what I'm saying is I don't program to individuals. Individuals have the opportunity to listen to their personal songs any time they want by either downloading them, streaming them, or buying them. That way, they can enjoy them in the privacy of their own home without bothering anyone else.

In the meantime, we play the songs that a majority of the people like. We play them a lot. We keep testing them to be sure the majority of the people STILL like them. And the best news is that if we do our job right, we end up with a radio station that appears at the top of the ratings. And last time I checked, the stations I'm responsible for ARE in fact doing great, regardless of what you think.

And that's really all I care about.
 
oldies76 said:
KM, look, It may be that many people dislike certain songs and that's fine and dandy. But please, don't say that "No One" dislikes certain songs, because they do.
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Why can't I make generalizations about "wide spectrum" music listeners? You make generalizations about radio programmers and consultants ...
 
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