Since music radio was created in Omaha in 1951 in Omaha, the most liked songs got played more than the ones that were good but not quite as good as the top ones.
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iHeartMedia clusters that have zero local personalities
- Thread starter victorres43
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McDonald's has always had regional products. They serve white rice in Hawaii. Remember McPizza, anyone?
They changed the calls and format for many reasons. The station was sold a few times before it became part of iHeart. They changed formats to country in 1995, and went back to CHR in 1998.
It is absolutely not a rimshot. The signal is city grade in West Palm Beach. The only place where the signal is a tad weak is Boca.
Then let's compare WFLZ, circa 1995, with WAPE-FM. Playlists with significant differences.
No one is arguing that. But it is a little inaccurate to make it sound like Classic Hits stations have wide playlists when a significant number of their playlists hardly get any spins.
Here's the thing: library size is irrelevant to an ordinary listener, because they don't listen all that much. One individual listener tends to listen to the radio (all stations combined) about 90 minutes a day.
Radio is generally programmed for a listener who listens for short periods (20 minutes to an hour), because we know that's how people listen. That's why CHR stations can do well by spinning their top hits every couple of hours.
It would take 2-3 months for our "average" listener to hear every song in a 600 song classic hits library once, the way most classic hits stations are programmed. And by then, the PD will usually swapped some songs out.
Dancing in the Dark? I hear it almost daily. It's got to be one of the top songs played on Classic Hits radio.
A station that's so "compelling" that people stop working to listen to the "compelling" DJ won't be on at the office very long. Aside from that, people who want "compelling" at their desks are probably listening to podcasts.
Okay, non-professional, or amateur-unpaid. Is that better?
As David mentioned, research clearly dictates whether a prior top-20 song lives on or collects dust. I haven't personally seen data, so going back to your example; I'd be willing to bet Dancing In The Dark tests poorly in some surveys because it was an 80's pop song. Many dyed in the wool Springsteen fans saw that song as selling out to pop, and actually thought it a dark stain against Springsteen's iconic status in rock.
The fact remains, if done well your average listener, to which you don't qualify, can't tell, nor pays attention to; is it voicetracked or not?
The number one complaint I hear about music radio in general and Classic Hits stations in particular is the lack of variety and repetitive playlists. While I don't have empirical data to back that up, it is certainly a common complaint. And some Classic Hits stations acknowledge it. Some iHeart Classic Hits stations use a liner about not repeating the same songs during the workday "so you can listen longer."
If one listens to a Classic Hits station at work, he or she will find that the same songs are repeated daily. Some Classic Hits stations spin songs up to 12 or 13 times a week. There is no need for that kind of repetition.
I am guessing it's not an iHeart or Audacy Classic Hits station...
Good jocks are one element that makes a radio station compelling, not the only element.
It sounds like so many people just want radio to be the lowest common denominator. How about radio fulfilling its potential? Aiming to be better? Standing out among the many options for media?
Much better. Thank you.
I find it hard to believe that there aren't more than 150-300 (depending on the market) core songs in a Classic Hits library that test well. I used to love K-Earth 101. That station has become so repetitive that I can't stand listening to it anymore. Playing songs 13 times a week is overkill, especially when there is a treasure trove of other Classic Hits that never get played. And many of these songs might test well in certain markets, but since so much of the testing is regionalized or nationalized, we will never know.
The quality is evident. Contests, call ins, the jock talking about locally important issues...none of that happens with Premium Choice. Listening to Premium Choice jocks spend every break talking about the iHeart Music Festival is, quite frankly, terrible radio.
That technology hadn't reached anywhere near critical mass in 2008-09 when iHeart and Cumulus made massive cuts to their budgets. The iPhone wasn't even two years old when both companies made their second rounds of cuts in early 2009. The App Store and Google Marketplace were even newer. The original iPhone wasn't much more than a phone with an iPod. Yeah, it had a few more nifty features, but the system was closed off to third party developers until Summer 2008. Maybe what we've seen happen would've still happened if those cuts hadn't taken place, but radio began ceding its advantage long before it had that level of competition. I also understand most owners, including the original owners of Clear Channel and Cumulus, want what the rest of us want and had to make changes if they were to take money losers and turn them around. Eliminating duplicate back office functions and warm body jobs wasn't enough to make those operations they were acquiring profitable.
I remember seeing research that indicated the most popular Fleetwood Mac songs today (by "today," I mean about 15 years ago) were mostly stiffs in their original days. Only a couple or three were top-10 hits when new, and only a few more had even cracked the top-20. Whether or not a song was popular when it was new doesn't necessarily correlate with it being a hit today. Like you said, that's why playlists are researched.
I frequently listen to classic hits at work, and I do often hear the same songs from day-to-day. When I get tired of those songs, I don't listen to classic hits. There are other formats and stations I like, too, and I have access to as many of them as I want. Now that hardly anybody's in the office since COVID, I don't even have to be too careful about which genres I listen to at work. Rule #1 in marketing is that you always segment the market. By playing different formats/genres, you're already segmenting the market. You segment it further by filtering down the playlist to cater to the group you're wanting to reach. Most operators know we listen to multiple styles of music, and they have other stations that cater to me when I need a break from classic hits (or whatever else I might be listening to and starting to get tired of). They have AC and Hot AC for the women my age. There's classic rock and AAA for me. Adding songs I don't like or am not particularly familiar with isn't going to keep me listening to classic hits.
I'd rather hear more songs, including some that I do not like, than the same songs day in and day out. Maybe that makes me odd or different. But even over-saturated songs sound better when I don't hear them every day.
As mentioned, most Classic Hits stations are running 400-600 active cuts being rotated in and out. Larger markets, or national libraries re-test some of the ones that have been out of rotation for a while to make sure they're still relevant. A lot depends how they score. There are some that are so sure fire with positives they really don't need retesting, while other's might have been more obscure, or only held a top twenty position for a limited time.
But here's the thing, including brutal honesty: An audience that cares about the old days of radio with contests and consider jocks entertaining, are simply aging-out of the media landscape. In your example; iHeart concerts and festivals makes the company a whale of a lot more money, than just the spots inside of that jocks shift, let alone probably what an entire station bills in a year. Radio has always been number one a promotional tool for the parent company products and services, then selling advertising next. More and more advertisers are leaving, than new ones coming into radio, and ad agencies aren't interested in the demographic that remembers yakking jocks between songs, or expensive contests that yield diminishing results.
McPizza was a nationwide rollout that bombed, wasn't it? Surely they weren't stupid enough to offer it only in places with a high percentage of Italian-Americans! McPizza was basically ketchup and cheese on soggy bread. Maybe that would fly in North Dakota or New Mexico, but not New York or Connecticut, where there are mom-and-pop pizzerias everywhere.
"Active" is a little generous. There's a huge difference between playing a song twice a week and 13 times a week. Looking at songs in heavy rotation is a bit more accurate.
I am not arguing about this, but things like contests and call-ins/text-ins are ways to engage the listener. That's not happening anymore.
And while what you say is true about the iHeart Music Festival, I want radio to be better than a series of ads, in between songs, for the iHeart Music Festival. It's boring. It's not compelling. And the medium can do better.
I am not sure that it was ever a nationwide roll out. I remember it from the Orlando location that has always claimed to be the world's largest McDonald's (on Sand Lake Road, for fellow Floridians). In fact, that Orlando location still serves it. Check this out: McPizza
Vague.
AFAIK, the full-size McPizza was never introduced in Connecticut, but I remember well the personal-size item. Whether the "500 markets" applied to one or both versions is unclear, and the way the article is worded, it's impossible to even guess how many markets the personal-size was in after 1991.
And you don't think there's a reason for that? Could it be listeners just aren't interested in that sort of thing anymore?
Even older generation communicate not by phone, but by social media like Facebook. Doing phone contests would be a waste of resources that radio can ill afford.
Frankly most of the people who attend music festivals are probably younger anyway, and being reached via social media. Increasing the ambiguous sizzle to aome radio spot/promo isn't going to make a difference in interest in the event. Knowing what bands or artists are all what typical people want to know.
When top 40 stations were doing Miss Whisper, the Zodiac contest, guess the DJ, we weren't talking about a largely listen-at-work audience, but what we used to call housewives ("Dave Schaefer gets it on for the ladies, 9 to noon").
I remember my first non-radio job, working in an office where the radio was on all day, tuned to a station with live jocks, and absolutely no one paid attention. But if the jocks were doing comedy bits all day, would the office have stopped while everyone listened to the comedy bit? Doubt it. This was 1988.
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