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How would you program a station?

PCRadio

PCRadio

If you had a station, how would you program it?

Mine would be a little of everything:

12AM-6AM: The Quiet Storm (Jazz, Ambient & Slow mellow music)
6-10AM: Classic Rock (93.5 type stuff)
10AM-2PM: Country (from Patsy Cline to current artists)
2-5PM: Contemporary Christian
5PM-10PM: 50s-90s. An hour of music from each decade (All formats)
10PM-12AM: 2000-Today (All formats)

Weekend rotation would be all over the place from all of the above formats. Meaning, you could hear the new Lady Gaga, followed by Garth Brooks, Nickelback, Buddy Holly, Chris Botti, Twisted Sister, Michael W Smith and Eminem.
 
PCRadio said:
If you had a station, how would you program it?

Mine would be a little of everything:

12AM-6AM: The Quiet Storm (Jazz, Ambient & Slow mellow music)
6-10AM: Classic Rock (93.5 type stuff)
10AM-2PM: Country (from Patsy Cline to current artists)
2-5PM: Contemporary Christian
5PM-10PM: 50s-90s. An hour of music from each decade (All formats)
10PM-12AM: 2000-Today (All formats)

Weekend rotation would be all over the place from all of the above formats. Meaning, you could hear the new Lady Gaga,

followed by Garth Brooks, Nickelback, Buddy Holly, Chris Botti, Twisted Sister, Michael W Smith and Eminem.
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Good luck making a living doing that. I guess I'm out of luck if I want to hear some country tunes at 5 in the afternoon.
Oh wait........there are actually stations that play country ALL THE TIME. Guess I'll listen to one of them because I;m too lazy to remember to tune to your station at 11am. And of course, I don't have other distractions in my life....job, family, bills,....

Ok--I hope you get the point. Don't make it difficult for me to listen.
 
Good luck making a living doing that. I guess I'm out of luck if I want to hear some country tunes at 5 in the afternoon.

Not really. Between the hours of 5-10, you'd still hear country from all the decades. You'd just tune into the dacade hour you'd want to hear. I should also mention that requests would be taken 24/7 for all the formats.

I'm not saying those would be the hours for everything other then 5-10PM format. Especially the 50s. Does anybody even play them anymore?. 96.1 used to be a great oldies station when they started, playing the 50s and 60s like Kool used to. Once they started adding 70s and 80s, they stopped playing the 50s. If you want a true oldies station, play the 50s as well. In my opinion, the 80s shouldn't be considered oldies at least until we pass this deacade.

Now, I'm not a program director, nor am I in radio. I used to do overnight at The Rose on weekends though from 2008-2010. I do have an online station playing everything from the 50s through today in all formats, a show of my own at night doing 50s-80s and a few talk shows overnight. It's been doing well since it start back in 1989 and I get alot of positive email feedback.
 
I'd play all the cool songs you hear on those TV commercials. The ones that the kids all rush to download on their phones. I'd play Death Cab for Cutie, a best-selling band that radio around here ignores. Same with Radiohead.

Mainly indie rock with a mix of alternative. Perhaps a show with some older tunes, kind of like Sirius XMU does. I know it would be a hit, I just know it!
 
RockMustLive you'd probably enjoy 104.5 out of Philadelphia. Very similar to what you're talking about. We catch that on our trips down the turnpike. Pretty cool station. It's probably a little more accessible than XMU on Sirius.
 
Dan Shoe said:
RockMustLive you'd probably enjoy 104.5 out of Philadelphia. Very similar to what you're talking about. We catch that on our trips down the turnpike. Pretty cool station. It's probably a little more accessible than XMU on Sirius.
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Thanks, I'll check them out! XMU was amazing before the Sirius merger. Now they seem to play a bit more off the wall stuff, and of course got rid of the old program director.

I honestly wouldn't mind something like WRNR in the Baltimore/DC area. That is the only terrestrial station I've ever heard that has that type of format.
 
I am not sure I could program a station today, UNLESS I owned it. Ok, why you ask? I have some very definate feelings about operating a "FULL SERVICE" station, with live people etc. HOWEVER, that being said, I am not sure that any monster media outlet, or even a small group would be willing to give me the time and money to eventually make the station successful. So therefore, I would need to be rich and own the station myself. It was much easier to make a quick turn around before there was a flood of stations in even the 150+ size markets, so I guess that I probably will never get the chance.
 
RockMustLive said:
I'd play all the cool songs you hear on those TV commercials. The ones that the kids all rush to download on their phones. I'd play Death Cab for Cutie, a best-selling band that radio around here ignores. Same with Radiohead.

Mainly indie rock with a mix of alternative. Perhaps a show with some older tunes, kind of like Sirius XMU does. I know it would be a hit, I just know it!
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Would love for an alternative format in central PA, but it's not going to happen.

In the meantime, don't forget about WXPN. 99.7 in Cumberland county and 88.7 everywhere else.
 
Dan said:
Would love for an alternative format in central PA, but it's not going to happen.

In the meantime, don't forget about WXPN. 99.7 in Cumberland county and 88.7 everywhere else.
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I do like XPN, lots of good stuff to listen to. Sometimes a little soft for my personal taste but they certainly are eclectic.
 
Dan Shoe said:
RockMustLive you'd probably enjoy 104.5 out of Philadelphia. Very similar to what you're talking about. We catch that on our trips down the turnpike. Pretty cool station. It's probably a little more accessible than XMU on Sirius.


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Seriously dude what is your attraction to radio 104.5? It is probably the worst, most predictable commercial "alternative" station I have ever heard. It only survives here in Philly because of the all of the colleges and lack of other options. If Y-100 would come back it would clean their clock in about one book.
Their imaging is awful, their product is safe. Hardly a true alternative. Frankly I would listen to the X before 104.5
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You know what Y-100 would sound like if they came back today? They'd sound like Radio 104.5. That's alternative music in 2011. Simple imaging, low-profile jocks and a focus on music with a mix of newer and older with a bunch of deep cuts. It's a good station that's broad enough to attract a pretty sizable audience and doesn't drive away older listeners by being too unfamiliar. It's actually one of my wife's favorites too. That's probably a big reason for their success. They appeal to men and women. If i wanted to listen to a bunch of angry rock and wannabe Howard Sterns, i can always listen to 'YSP. Oh wait...no i can't.

"they only do good because of all the colleges" You might as well say "they only do good because they appeal to a select group of core listeners who seem to like them and give them good ratings".

Damn them for their success!
 
PCRadio....the reason you are doing well on the internet is because you are on the internet where you have the freedom to be as eclectic as you want to be. What you are suggesting is the kind of format I listened to (and programmed) in college 25 years ago. We had no advertisers to answer to and didn't care about ratings (heck, we didn't know what ratings were).

This is a lovely little thread but one that seems to ask us to suspend our sensibilities about radio today and step into a "fairy tale machine" that will take us to Never-Never Land.
 
Kelly: I was a radio brat. I grew up in the halls of the old WWBZ in Vineland, NJ, went to a college with a great radio station and very good Mass Comm. program, then worked at a variety of stations as I watched the decline and fall of our business.

I don't want to see real radio go down without a fight.
 
Dan Shoe said:
You know what Y-100 would sound like if they came back today? They'd sound like Radio 104.5. That's alternative music in 2011. Simple imaging, low-profile jocks and a focus on music with a mix of newer and older with a bunch of deep cuts. It's a good station that's broad enough to attract a pretty sizable audience and doesn't drive away older listeners by being too unfamiliar. It's actually one of my wife's favorites too. That's probably a big reason for their success. They appeal to men and women. If i wanted to listen to a bunch of angry rock and wannabe Howard Sterns, i can always listen to 'YSP. Oh wait...no i can't.

"they only do good because of all the colleges" You might as well say "they only do good because they appeal to a select group of core listeners who seem to like them and give them good ratings".

Damn them for their success!
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Well I could have said that but I didn't. I programmed some of the top rated alt stations in the country and consulted others. What "deep cuts" do they play? I've never heard anything deep on that station. Shallow is a better word to describe their playlist. While I don't fault them for that given today's radio climate, it just isn't a true alt. station. More like a alternative-lite station. Y-100 would sound nothing like it if it were to return.
 
Pab Sungenis said:
I recently went in-depth about how I'd approach programming a station (again) in my blog: http://cnx.com/?p=1504

Anyone who wants to take a chance? Contact me.
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A larger playlist would be nice. But I'd cut it off at 600 songs with some oh wow categories for weekends. Just because a song finished in the Top 100 for the year doesn't mean it's air worthy now.
 
Seltzer said:
A larger playlist would be nice. But I'd cut it off at 600 songs with some oh wow categories for weekends. Just because a song finished in the Top 100 for the year doesn't mean it's air worthy now.
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A large playlist is what I've got with my online station. I cover every format and have a total of 6900 songs.
 
Pab Sungenis said:
Kelly: I was a radio brat. I grew up in the halls of the old WWBZ in Vineland, NJ, went to a college with a great radio station and very good Mass Comm. program, then worked at a variety of stations as I watched the decline and fall of our business.

I don't want to see real radio go down without a fight.
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Pab, I grew up hanging around WMPT in south Williamsport, Pa. hanging out at record hops with the d.j.'s and actually started my senior year in high school at WLYC in Williamsport. I managed to stay active in the business for 46 years full or part time. These days I live in a community of 15,000 that has one AM and two LP-FM's I occassinally do some "underwriting announcements" for one of them KCMA. When I first arrived in AZ over 7 years ago I did mornings on KMOG AM and an oldies show on KRIM LP. I has been interesting only things I have never done is be an owner or a Chief Engineer.
 
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