Format Changes You Hope To See In New York

[davideduardo]

I say get rid of the consultants and let the damn DJs program their own music and go free form again. No more tight playlists, no more consultants and their suggestions, and no more big radio bosses. Let's blow up Clear Channel, Entercomm, CBS, Radio One and Cumulus; spin off the stations to local owners and let them program their music for their city. What do you say?

In big markets like New York, consultants and PDs don't pick the music... the listeners do by means of research.

Pop formats quit letting the DJ pick the music back in the 50's when better focused stations cleaned their clocks. They used record sales and juke box plays to make up iron-clad playlists.

The free-form progressive stations were decimated by tighter, more formatted and researched AOR stations such as Abrams' Superstars concept. From the early to mid 70's, DJ choice disappeared for the most part on FM, too.

In a PPM era, playing deep cuts, too much new music (or any at all in most formats) or not playing the big hits often is death. It does not matter who the owner or PD is... we can now see the effect of every song every time it plays. And freedom of choice for DJs is not going to work.

 

[oldies76]

let the damn DJs program their own music and go free form again. No more tight playlists, no more consultants and their suggestions, and no more big radio bosses.

I agree with you 100%. It's rediculous that as classic hits moves away from the 60's (unfortunately) and enters the 80's. We are STILL hearing only a fraction today of what was aired on Top 40 CHR, then!! Even huge top 10 singles then, are not even aired much, if at all today.

It seems that radio forgot many big hits of the 1980 - 1984 time period, yet the early-mid 80's is by far the "classic period" of the 80's.....ever heard of new wave??

Who's to dictate what we hear on the radio? How many song requests go unanswered or ignored by radio today, only because "they don't have that song" in their playlist? Well guess what, every song that was popular on the radio back in the day, IS available today.....they just refuse and purposely avoid certain songs.....even though many listeners enjoy them. Classic hit radio is not for the people....it's for themselves! CBS-FM may be the only exception for a major market station.

 

[oldies76]

In big markets like New York, consultants and PDs don't pick the music... the listeners do by means of research.

Exactly...that less than 1/1000 of the population who actually participate in an actual music tests, in a given city...will represent the opinions of the remaining 99.999% who will never fill an auditorium to perform an actual test and give THEIR opinions on THEIR favorite music.

That these "lucky" folks who actually perform a test and "represent" the rest of the listening world with THEIR favorite chosen songs and assume that the rest of us will agree, no matter how many times, over and over and over....is just hogwash. You need to think of that from a listeners point of view, really!

 

[Ai4i]

Upon WFMU's Tomorrow Radio link many of you may wish to click for some interesting thoughts.

 

[davideduardo]

Exactly...that less than 1/1000 of the population who actually participate in an actual music tests, in a given city...will represent the opinions of the remaining 99.999% who will never fill an auditorium to perform an actual test and give THEIR opinions on THEIR favorite music.

That these "lucky" folks who actually perform a test and "represent" the rest of the listening world with THEIR favorite chosen songs and assume that the rest of us will agree, no matter how many times, over and over and over....is just hogwash. You need to think of that from a listeners point of view, really!

Political polls can predict results within a few percent. While in politics, that may be the difference between winning or losing, in radio that amount is trivial and insignificant.

And what it means is that a sample of a hundred listeners to a specific format or station proportionally distributed among the station's target demographic can yield results that are quite near a perfect representation of the overall tastes of the target.

The desired result is to find out which songs everyone will enjoy or even love, and to eliminate all the songs that will cause significant attrition. This is a simple "separate the wheat from the chaff" operation.

Major companies operate based on the results of research such as that which radio uses. Product lines are launched or aborted and all manner of marketing decisions are predicated on research. Trillions of dollars are "bet" on the results of research.

It might be to your benefit to study the sciences of statistics and polling. And you might learn that statistics is the only science where error is permitted and excepted and can even be defined and quantified.

Of course, the simpler analogy is that about the blood test: it's not necessary to look at every blood cell in the body to run tests. A tiny, tiny sample is more than enough, because once you have more than just a few, all the rest will have identical characteristics.

(And I've explained "replication" to you several times... where you conduct the same test multiple times, and if you get the same results over and over, you have an adequate sample. Music tests tend to replicate at around 80 persons or so.)

 

[Laura151]

Of course, haven't any of the companies that operate radio stations today realize that, with this up and down economy, the older demographic groups may be the only people who have any money to spend? After all, some of the younger people have had to move back home with their parents.

 

[davideduardo]

Of course, haven't any of the companies that operate radio stations today realize that, with this up and down economy, the older demographic groups may be the only people who have any money to spend? After all, some of the younger people have had to move back home with their parents.

In large markets, and they don't come any larger than New York, the significant stations get nearly all their revenue from advertising agency-managed accounts. Agencies serve as intermediaries for their clients, who specify the target age and other demographics for advertising.

Essentially no advertising to persons above age 55 is specified in the NY market, meaning there is practically no money to be had for stations appealing to 55+ listeners.

And while you find there are many stations with big 55+ groups among their total listenership, their advertisers are buying based on the under-55 performance.

This is not something radio can change, as the cold facts of the matter are based on the cost of making each sale... and selling to over-55's is much more expensive, often negating the potential for profit on the sale.

 

[oldies76]

Of course, the simpler analogy is that about the blood test: it's not necessary to look at every blood cell in the body to run tests. A tiny, tiny sample is more than enough, because once you have more than just a few, all the rest will have identical characteristics.

That analogy does not work with a group of people....each person has different thoughts, different ideas and different conclusions. Each person enjoys different songs. The only reason the results are the same in music tests, due to replication and so forth, is because the same songs are always up for grabs, so the group has no choice but to approve of the same songs, each time.

I personally would not choose a song, that I've heard hundreds of times and tired of hearing or dislike.

If other titles were listed, most of those would approve too. The "oh wow" factor or the "I have not heard this is a long time, nice song" thought would come to play among some in the group. It has to, it's the law of averages.

 

[frozenfiresb]

Greatest Hits stations and Classic Rockers are beginning to sound as though they share half each other's playlists.

As a rock fan, I'm glad this is not unnoticed.

 

[Jersey Maiden]

Greatest Hits stations and Classic Rockers are beginning to sound as though they share half each other's playlists.

As a rock fan, I'm glad this is not unnoticed.

I don't get why rock stations in the suburbs do that either. Why would they want to compete with the Q? Let's take at look at the rush hour playlists from active rocker WDHA and its Philly sister WMMR.

WDHA (all times are PM)

5:01 Thunderstruck- AC/DC
5:06 Say You'll Haunt Me- Stone Sour
5:10 Trampled Under Foot- Led Zepellin
5:16 Casual Sex- My Darkest Days
5:26 The Spirit of Radio- Rush
5:31 Crazy Bitch- Buckcherry
5:34 We're Not Gonna Take It- Twisted Sister
5:38 Bottoms Up- Nickelback
5:48 Comfortably Numb- Pink Floyd
5:55 Whiskey in the Jar- Metallica


WMMR

5:02 PM "PLUSH" - STONE TEMPLE PILOTS
5:08 PM "THESE DAYS" - FOO FIGHTERS
5:20 PM "EVEN FLOW" - PEARL JAM
5:25 PM "INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN" - TOM PETTY
5:29 PM "BULLY" - SHINEDOWN
5:34 PM "LIGHTNING CRASHES" - LIVE
5:39 PM "POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME" - DEF LEPPARD
5:44 PM "LIES OF THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE" - SIXX: A.M
5:48 PM "DANCING WITH MYSELF" - BILLY IDOL
5:51 PM "I STAY AWAY" - ALICE IN CHAINS
5:55 PM "WE WILL ROCK YOU/WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS" - QUEEN

I can't understand why DHA would have more classic rock then MMR. It's a weird choice on Greater Media's part. You would think that with former RXP fans searching for new rock, DHA would play more of what makes them different. It really pissed me off that in the first 3 weeks after Thanksgiving, most of the Xmas songs they played were the same things you could hear on Lite FM. Granted, they did get better in the last week before Christmas but still. I really missed RXP in December.

 

[Danfm]

Greatest Hits stations and Classic Rockers are beginning to sound as though they share half each other's playlists.

As a rock fan, I'm glad this is not unnoticed.

I don't get why rock stations in the suburbs do that either. Why would they want to compete with the Q? Let's take at look at the rush hour playlists from active rocker WDHA and its Philly sister WMMR.

WDHA (all times are PM)

5:01 Thunderstruck- AC/DC
5:06 Say You'll Haunt Me- Stone Sour
5:10 Trampled Under Foot- Led Zepellin
5:16 Casual Sex- My Darkest Days
5:26 The Spirit of Radio- Rush
5:31 Crazy Bitch- Buckcherry
5:34 We're Not Gonna Take It- Twisted Sister
5:38 Bottoms Up- Nickelback
5:48 Comfortably Numb- Pink Floyd
5:55 Whiskey in the Jar- Metallica


WMMR

5:02 PM "PLUSH" - STONE TEMPLE PILOTS
5:08 PM "THESE DAYS" - FOO FIGHTERS
5:20 PM "EVEN FLOW" - PEARL JAM
5:25 PM "INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN" - TOM PETTY
5:29 PM "BULLY" - SHINEDOWN
5:34 PM "LIGHTNING CRASHES" - LIVE
5:39 PM "POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME" - DEF LEPPARD
5:44 PM "LIES OF THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE" - SIXX: A.M
5:48 PM "DANCING WITH MYSELF" - BILLY IDOL
5:51 PM "I STAY AWAY" - ALICE IN CHAINS
5:55 PM "WE WILL ROCK YOU/WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS" - QUEEN

I can't understand why DHA would have more classic rock then MMR. It's a weird choice on Greater Media's part. You would think that with former RXP fans searching for new rock, DHA would play more of what makes them different. It really pissed me off that in the first 3 weeks after Thanksgiving, most of the Xmas songs they played were the same things you could hear on Lite FM. Granted, they did get better in the last week before Christmas but still. I really missed RXP in December.

I have a very simple answer to that. Greater Media wants to minimize the overlap sister station Classic Rock 102.9 WMGK . (Some classic Rock is also played on another MMR sister station 95.7 Ben FM) Greater Media does not own any Classic Rock stations in the North Jersey so they have nothing restriting them at WDHA.

 

[Jersey Maiden]

I forgot to mention that MMR sometimes mixes in alternative like Black Keys, Weezer and Coldplay while DHA would never do that. I know there are people who would grumble and whine that artists like those don't belong on an active rock station but it doesn't seem to hurt the ratings for MMR. Again, that's a weird choice when there's already an alternative station in Philly and nothing over here.

 

[klutch00]

Steve Green and MusicRadioUSA say the return of Pop Standards. I've posted this numerous times in the early 2000s on the NYRMB the return of the institution of WNEW-AM 1130 "Where the Melody Lingers On" a slogan they've adopted in 1982. Today the return seems like a pip dream, although CBS Radio has brought back both WNEW-AM & WNEW-FM as all news stations serving the Washington D.C. area.

The return of WNEW-AM back to New York would be the best thing that could happen in New York radio.

If ESPN acquires an FM station in whether it's WFME or WBLS (which may be less likely out of the two), and sell 1050 AM there's a chance of the possibility of something happening at that frequency.



Thanks,
Kevin L. Sealy

While it may not be as good, perhaps WHLI 1100 AM could be considered the successor to the old WNEW 1130. Though they are on air daytime only (the online stream is 24/7) their signal is decent in many parts of the metro area.
Also, WVIP 93.5 HD2 broadcasts Music of Your Life, 24/7. I think it actually plays more of the adult standards than does WHLI.

With Multicultural putting Music Of Your Life on its numerous owned stations in major metropolitan areas, I was thinking WPAT (930) would be the ideal affiliate in New York.

 

[njradionj]

Top pick is a full time sports station on FM. Don't care where, though 94.7 has killer coverage. It's so great near Philly to have not only 97.5 but a choice now....

 

[XCountry285]

94.7 would be a huge waste of a signal if it was given a sports simulcast or news or something.

 

[DJ Mo]

A pure Dance station or Rhythmic AC (more like 93.9 Jamz in Hawaii) with me as Music Director, On-Air Personality, & Mixshow DJ!
Wishful thinking, but hey, you'll never know in a few years time.

 

[badjef]

I say get rid of the consultants and let the damn DJs program their own music and go free form again. No more tight playlists, no more consultants and their suggestions, and no more big radio bosses. Let's blow up Clear Channel, Entercomm, CBS, Radio One and Cumulus; spin off the stations to local owners and let them program their music for their city. What do you say?

In big markets like New York, consultants and PDs don't pick the music... the listeners do by means of research.

Pop formats quit letting the DJ pick the music back in the 50's when better focused stations cleaned
their clocks. They used record sales and juke box plays to make up iron-clad playlists.

The free-form progressive stations were decimated by tighter, more formatted and researched AOR stations such as Abrams' Superstars concept. From the early to mid 70's, DJ choice disappeared for the most part on FM, too.

In a PPM era, playing deep cuts, too much new music (or any at all in most formats) or not playing the big hits often is death. It does not matter who the owner or PD is... we can now see the effect
of every song every time it plays. And freedom of choice for DJs is not going to work.

The days of "FM" were over long before the movie came out.
WNEW-FM, although respected through the industry, came in a distant 2nd to WPLJ when they were competing against each other.

- and don't get me started on WHTG-FM in the 80's.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!