-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
K.M. Richards New Gig
- Thread starter semoochie
- Start date
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Ratings don't tell me anything I need to know to tweak programming. In fact, I believe ratings are of little importance other than to agencies, and a standalone 10kW AM is not going to get any national buys anyway.
When you know your target demo from experience, the tweaking is minimal anyway.
I'm mostly doing this station because Don asked me to (technically, my services agreement with him only covers New Mexico), and it's fun to be able to do a real Oldies format these days. Probably going to be my last opportunity to do one.
i agree, but i didn't actually mean the ratings. i meant the specific tune-out data that PPM gives you.
when i had my station on Live365 it was #1 highest TLH station, with (according to arbitron) over 50,000 separate tune-ins a month. at that time live365 had data on individual tracks, and i used it to pull titles that were getting high tune-outs over time. it wasn't an exact science, but it worked for me.
Actually, AC had been topping the charts since the beginning of 1970 and I would even argue before the decade began. B.J. Thomas had two #1s on the pop chart; both Tony Orlando and Dawn and The Carpenters had three; Olivia Newton-John had three, including her duet with John Travolta; John Denver had four; and so on. While many classic hits stations focus more on the rock-oriented tracks from that decade, it was really AC that was topping the singles charts throughout the entire period, suggesting that older people were also buying and playing 45 rpm records back then and they were much more interested in the softer side of things.
Was disco a distraction? Well, maybe. But I have to agree with James Petersen when he wrote in The PLAYBOY History of Rock & Roll in the late 1990s that disco, with all its flashiness, was really a statement by minority populations about a music industry that appeared to be turning its back on them during the early and mid-1970s. I note with interest that African-americans had more hits in Billboard's top 100 singles of the year for the years 1979 and 1980 than previously or after and those numbers would not be topped until the popularity of rap music in the early 1990s.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
And I mean that a standalone 10kW AM is not going to subscribe to Nielsen just to get that information.
Underlined part of my sentence being the definitive statement.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
The 70's were also known as the height of the "all-inclusive" top-40 format. Disco upended that, A/C got stronger on the rebound, and it wasn't until MTV changed the scene that we recovered.
Your thesis is flawed as a result and I refuse to respond to that drivel you cited about Disco. The ethnicity of the artists having hits is not a valid basis for comparison; there were a lot of Soul crossovers in the 70's.
Absolutely not! However, I have heard stories of people who enlisted voluntarily to avoid being drafted, so they could have some say about where they'd be deployed, in hopes of avoiding combat.
And what we're going through now isn't worse?
You have a point there. Despite all the problems we have now, that isn't one of them, at least for the US (the rest of the world is hurting quite a bit, though, I've read, particularly Asia).
I actually don't hate disco, and although I'm not a huge fan of it, I've never understood why people hate it so much.
No thanks. Even I have my limits!
Calling what @ted chittenden said 'drivel' seems a bit harsh, because he does make some sensible points, flawed though is thesis may be.
This is true, but there's always been the noisemakers who like to insist that the contrary is true (what's done is done, and this country has done many bad things to various minorities over the course of its history, but great strides have been made to reverse or make amends for many of those bad things. I get that they're still feeling sore and distrustful. It's understandable, and I would probably feel similarly if I were in their place. But why can't we all move on? Easy for me to say, I know...).
Those are some good songs there. I don't know much of the Cars' hits (other than Drive), but I have at least heard of Two Tickets To Paradise, and I like the others.
If you don't mind, I think I'm going to observe how you programmed KOSL and model some of my programming after yours. I'm liking what you're doing so far.
c
Disco still has some popularity, since my local large market Classic Hits outlet, still plays titles like Gloria Gaynor "I Will Survive", as well as K.C. and the Sunshine Band, and the Bee Gee's. Also heard Donna Summers "Bad Girl" last weekend.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Point of order, Mr. Chairman. I did not directly criticize what Ted said, I criticized the drivel he cited. And I said that his conclusion was flawed as a result of the dependence on that drivel.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
And those are in the KOSL library. The biggest Disco hits transcended the life of the genre itself.
But when was the last time anyone played "Get Off" by Foxy?
oh of course you're right. just saying it would be nice to have the data.
For the record, and this would be off point, except that it was mentioned here. Nobody volunteered for the Vietnam draft. One may have volunteered to serve, but the draft was involuntary.
No, you're right. AT THE TIME, we had no choice about registering for the draft, it was mandatory to do upon hitting your 18th birthday (if you were a male). But I was asking cc if he would voluntarily want to go back to those times and be subjected to the draft, with the concomitant risk of getting sent to Vietnam as canon fodder if his number came up. To his credit, he recognized that being born a few decades earlier became less attractive when you considered it that way.
@Weiserguy Of course!
However, – hypothetically speaking – if I were born in, say, 1959, the draft wouldn't have affected me, given the last one was in 1973 (which, of course, nobody at the time knew would be the case), and I wouldn't have turned 18 until '77.
I would've hopefully been shielded from the worst of the oil embargo of '73 (wouldn't have been driving until '75), and I wouldn't have had to worry about losing my job (because high inflation and slow economy, aka stagflation) because I would've been too young to have one and my family would have had plenty of savings from working and investing before the embargo took hold.
Plus, in retrospect, the ultra high inflation back then, plus a relatively strong dollar, meant that it was a superb opportunity for smart investors and savers to make lots of money because the interest rates were so high.
It's all about the timing!
c
However, – hypothetically speaking – if I were born in, say, 1959, the draft wouldn't have affected me, given the last one was in 1973 (which, of course, nobody at the time knew would be the case), and I wouldn't have turned 18 until '77.
I would've hopefully been shielded from the worst of the oil embargo of '73 (wouldn't have been driving until '75), and I wouldn't have had to worry about losing my job (because high inflation and slow economy, aka stagflation) because I would've been too young to have one and my family would have had plenty of savings from working and investing before the embargo took hold.
Plus, in retrospect, the ultra high inflation back then, plus a relatively strong dollar, meant that it was a superb opportunity for smart investors and savers to make lots of money because the interest rates were so high.
It's all about the timing!
c
I just watched the 1950s movie version of "1984" and it occurred to me how close we are to that point, something I never thought I would live to see or anyone else, for that matter!
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
And this proves that it only takes one cultural reference in a thread to send the train down a siding in the wrong direction.
BTW, the congress recently passed an act requiring all men 18-25 to register for military service. So while there is no draft today, one must still register
Automatic military registration for eligible US men to begin in December
The change will not reinstate the draft but shifts responsibility away from the individual to register, the agency says.
www.newsweek.com
Just meant as a point of information, not to further derail the thread.
True. Sorry for derailing the thread. But hey, congrats on the new gig.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Thanks for the kind words. It's nice to know I'm not as much of a dinosaur as someone my age might be thought of as.