See above. David answered that. The majority of their spins are '78-91.
-
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
KCKC FM - Large Playlist Success ?
- Thread starter kfbkfb
- Start date
I stand by what I reported. Those 70s and 80s songs get on average 1 spin a week. The newer songs get from 4 to 17 spins a week.
So they're playing a large group of older songs once, and a smaller group of 90s 00s & 10s songs more often.
Last edited:
I feel like the only way these songs have an excuse to get played are on AT40 replays. Even with each show having at least a few clunkers (and some having a lot), there's something about the appeal of those 70s and 80s Casey shows that draws people (and ratings) despite the music not being the tight playlists.
Actually, the chart / airplay services analyze airplay and assign stations to the appropriate format category based on current vs. gold, speed of current rotation and the songs themselves.
I'll bet the folks at MediaBase and BDS had considerable discussion on what format to assign this one to. It is definitely a hybrid.
Hmmm...that's interesting but kind of crazy. Their main competitor spins those songs every day. Maybe the way to get their numbers up is to tell them to "don't stop believing."
McDonald's main competitors also sell hamburgers. The difference is the presentation. KCKC is not a classic hits station even though they play classic hits, because they also play currents and recents. That is the definition of AC.
On the Twitter chat that informally accompanies the noon EDT Saturday AT40:70s airing on SiriusXM, some participants refer to the bottom parts of the chart as the "Dirty 30"
That seems to be their main style of music though. If I were asked the primary type of music they play, I could answer, but it wouldn't be those 00s/10s hits. To me, Justin Bieber seems like an outlier for the station.
And yet they play Peaches 7 times a week. Which is more than they play any song by Fleetwood Mac.
I don't know about that. Replaying old AT40 shows from thirty or forty years ago are mainly filler, not exactly ratings juggernauts.
Small, independent or stand-alone stations are usually run on a shoestring budget. Many times the community they're serving is 20,000 persons or less. They can't afford things like music research, and as you pointed out; might have the AM drive personality, PD, Music Director, GM, Production Director, Sales Manager, and owner, the same person. Many on this board like to romanticize that this sort of structure would work well in the larger markets. There's is a multitude of reasons why it doesn't. Access to music research and divided sets of responsibilities are just one.
Apparently you don't listen often enough. Mediabase is correct.
Seriously though, in spite of all the arguing about formats and assumptions you frequently post, I applaud the fact you want to talk about radio in the present, not just about things that happened forty years ago. I'm confident you're actually learning something from professionals here. It's just taking a lot of time.
That's a fair point, and, like Kelly, I can appreciate that you want to talk about radio the way it is and about the way it will be in the future. I also agree that you seem like you want to learn about the way things work in the business.
Something to keep in mind is that large playlists might've worked at one time because there were fewer stations on-air and fewer alternatives. Prior to the early 1980's, most markets didn't have very many stations. You mentioned you lived near Joplin. So, I'll use the Joplin area as an example. In 1975, Joplin and Pittsburg only had one commercial FM each. Pittsburg had two commercial AM's while Joplin had four. Carthage had an AM/FM combo while Neosho and Parsons had daytime-only AM's. You could likely only hear the Carthage and Neosho stations in Joplin, and, maybe, the Parsons station in Pittsburg. KGLC 910 covered the bulk of Joplin, too. Those were about your only daytime options. At night, you could get WHB and KCMO as well as many of the other distant "clear channel" AM stations of the time, but many of them followed a similar pattern to your local stations because they were in a similar situation. They had a little more competition, more FM penetration, and new music arrived sooner, but their situation wasn't THAT different. Your car didn't have a record player, cassette decks were still a few years from most cars, and 8-track players were expensive.
A little more than 15 years ago, I was working for a company that owned more stations in the Joplin area than the entire city had the day I was born! In the 1980's, what happened in Joplin was happening everywhere. These new stations being licensed started playing to narrower niches. There's a reason you mostly stopped seeing country songs on the pop top-40 charts after about 1983, and crossover country, for the most part, wasn't a thing by the middle of the decade. I mean, certainly, some people who liked pop also liked country, but they found they liked going to pop stations when they wanted pop and country stations when they wanted country. The new stations ran shorter playlists, had less overlap, and the people listening to the legacy stations found themselves saying, "God, this sucks!", and turning them off. Those legacy stations that felt they could compete scaled their playlists back and continued trying to compete, but a lot of them saw their audiences had already gone and went to pursue new niches. Plus, AM had coverage problems in larger market as suburbs grew and metro areas outgrew their coverage, especially after dark. The result was AM becoming increasingly nonviable, and the more narrowly focused FM stations continued their newfound successful formula.
This station near the coast and has very few people in its listening area.
It might reach the Outer Banks which has tourists and more permanent residents but its signal probably isn't ideal there.
And it's not the only station trying to do everything in that area.
Is this that little LPFM on 101.5? We vacationed about a quarter of a mile from their site. Very eclectic mix of old and new rock with generic liner-voicetracks. Seemed like more of a hobby station than a serious part of the community.
No, it's a full-power small town FM.
No, we were both right. The majority are from the 70s-80s but they mainly only get 1-3 spins a week. The later a song is, the more they spin it, but there are less songs on the playlist from later on. An interesting strategy, though I'm guessing they're forced to spin the currents that much to stay on the ac panel.
That would be the tail wagging the dog. Stations are not compensated to be in any of the airplay panels, so the only reason to stay is prestige. And prestige doesn't pay the bills.
I'm thinking that's the case though for whatever reason. It's also because of the fact that they only have a small number of currents which disappear usually after playing it for a period of time (for example "watermelon sugar" was hardly played at all, and I don't think adore you is still on the playlist despite being on other acs.)
- Status