I don't understand the draw of the format. I can think of only two reasons: (1) People are conditioned that wall-to-wall repetitive rotations are what they expect from a radio station; (2) They hate the core format by December want to hear ANYTHING else for five weeks. Either way.....not a very good commentary on the overall product!!!
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It's Beginning to Sound a lot like Christmas!
- Thread starter discjockeyj1964
- Start date
3) Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
You have a fundamental and fatal understanding of both human behavior and the origins of hit-based radio formats.
https://www.americanradiohistory.com/KOWH_Birth_of_Top-40.htm
First, the Top 40 format that consisted of repeating the biggest hits of the day over and over was created, if we choose to accept the anecdotal evidence, by observing people playing the same "big" songs over and over on the jukebox in the very early 50's.
The conclusion is that people want to hear their favorite, familiar songs when they listen to the radio.
In fact, and in the experience of all programmers, we see examples of two stations in the same format where one plays a deeper playlist and one plays a tighter and more focused one. In all but cases where there are other factors involved, the tight format wins.
I programmed a classic rock / AOR hybrid in a metro of 17 million, and we made our debut at a 22 share in a market with over 200 stations. We played about 450 titles. After about a year, a competitor changed to "our" format and proudly said "we play more than three times as many different songs as the other station". After 6 months, they had less than a 2 share, and we still had the #1 rating in the market.
Nobody "hated the core format". Nobody wanted a change. Everybody who liked the format and musical genre wanted to hear the really good songs, not a bunch of stiffs.
Nobody is conditioned to listen to music in any particular way. Everywhere in the world, and in any musical genre, we find that there is a finite set of songs that have broad consensus appeal. When stations deviate from playing those core, consensus songs, they lose.
And those "core" songs are determined by asking listeners to score a huge array of songs; it's an audience based approach that shows what is acceptable and what is not.
Now to Christmas: there is a definable "mood" in the holiday period that makes seasonal music temporarily but very broadly even more acceptable to a huge group of listeners. So, one or two stations may find it appropriate to play only that music because it is both very popular and their own listeners may want that format seasonal deviation.
When you have, for example, over 40% of all listeners in Los Angeles listening to all-Christmas music during some weeks of the holiday season, you know that KOST is doing the right thing because listeners want it, seek it out and listen for longer than normal periods of time. But after the holidays, that station goes back to its pre-season format but they generally enjoy a halo effect of new listeners who stick with them.
As usual David, that was a very good post. My question is, has there been any research saying that a particular date for going all Christmas is too early? I've talked to a few people who would be okay with stations going the day after Halloween, but the vast majority would prefer that stations wait until the day after Thanksgiving. I, like the majority you describe, enjoy the Christmas music in December, but with the exception of an hour or so here and there beforehand, I tend to wait until the first Friday in December, partially because of when my birthday falls.
I agree on timing. Too early is too early.
But much has to do with sales and with the timing of the Nielsen surveys.
Most of these stations use the current year ratings for next year sales (since they come out too late to influence the present year sales) so they have to consider what makes them look best for that purpose.
And there is an element of getting in before some other station suddenly makes an unexpected flip.
Sorry, but 100K persons are not listening to Christmas music in November in that market. Maybe by Dec 15.
How do you know?
You are not in their target.
And the figures for other markets where stations start all-Christmas early prove you are wrong.
Well if you bothered to go back and read the thread rather than firing drive-by replies to pad your post count, you'd have found that there aren't even 100,000 people IN THE MARKET.
There is no "radio market" defined for the Aberdeen area. It's not rated.
But looking at the area, from Olympia to Aberdeen and including portions of Grays Harbor, Pacific, Thurston and Mason counties, there are around 300,000 persons.
Radio stations don't stop covering at city limits or county lines. Since we don't know which station "might flip" all of this is speculation, anyway.
This is an example of one having to actually live in an area rather than doing analysis from Google searches. 105.7 can barely be heard in Eastern Grays Harbor County let alone Thurston and Mason Counties. Plus its owner targets the station as "locally owned" (which it is) so those counties don't matter. And nowhere did I mention Aberdeen was a rated market. That is NOT speculation.
There is at least one company that offers or at least, at one time, offered a ratings service, in some communities, where Neilsen doesn't have service. Whether or not Aberdeen is one of those places, I have no idea.
That would have been Eastlan (formerly Wilheight*). They don't serve any part of the area now.
* Apologies to the spelling police... I don't remember how it was spelled
I am just going by the posted rumor that a station in the area might be "going Christmas" and the snarky, negative "does anyone care?" response to that.
I looked at the area and went by the calculated 60 dbu coverage of the best of the signals, which is in the 300,000 person range per my mapping and demographic software. You should be aware that there are apps that can look at both the FCC protected contours and the more sophisticated models like Longley-Rice and give you population data, right down to different ethnicities and ZIP code breaks. }
Of course I was using approximate numbers, because the station was not specified.
And the "origin" of the whole thread sidebar was a post that "nobody" would be listening anyway... which is far removed from the truth. Whether a cume of 100,000 or 25,000 or 50,000 might be reached, the real point of this is that all those figures are far removed from "nobody".
And just because a bunch of older males don't like the seasonal format does not mean that there are not a huge number of people who do love it and use it.
Go right ahead and give us some more "bah, humbug" retorts. It's still a huge format variant at this time of the year.
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Very close, it's "Willhight".
Yes, and never did find out what station actually flipped. What station were you looking at that ou got the 300K estimate? The only station coming rom the harbor with any shot at having regular listeners in Olympia is KGHO due its 101.1 translator. I really wish they would stream, as I've liked what I've heard from them but have never listened for that long. The other sticks in the area don't hit Olympia with anything more than a DX signal.
Assuming that they're still on the air, Olympia has a station that regularly plays pop music as far back as the 1920s. That's pretty unusual!
I also looked in the reverse direction, as there are some Olympia stations with signals at least partially covering Grays Harbor County. I took the rumor to be vague enough to assume it might be an area station, not necessarily one in Aberdeen itself.
Again, the point was that... no matter where the station was... somewhere between 35% to 45% of all persons in the coverage area of those Christmas formatted stations cume it during the season. So the answer to the "Does anyone care?" question is "Yes".
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