KRTH Top 500 Countdown issues

[TheBigA]

Here's my idea: Start your own radio station, do whatever you want to do, and none of us have to listen.

And spend an entire day doing all foreign songs, like Sukiyaki, Dominique, and Tie Me Kangaroo Down.

It's called musical masturbation.

 

[Zeb Norris]

Fair enough. You raise good points, none of which I can really disagree with.

You have to admit that the "let's play 300 songs for twenty years" is a recipe for doom. Eventually, the audience burns out.

For K-Earth, they were really starting to sink a few years ago in the ratings with their deadly dull list of 250 burnt to a crisp songs. What saved them? Expanding the playlist. They added in an entire decade, and also jumped from 300 songs in the list to about 700. They also began toying with a few specials where they actually played 1000 or even 2000 songs.

Now let's look at the other station in town that does this: KLOS. KLOS perhaps attracts an OK demo of middle aged men, but their overall numbers get lower and lower. They've been playing the same songs for too long. It's just boring.

Eventually, KLOS will have to do something. They just won't be able to keep playing those same 500 titles forever.

What's been an interesting new entry? JACK. With 2000 titles (according to the PD) or 1000 (according to David Eduardo's search of Mediabase), they got huge ratings at first, and are still chugging along.

So here's the basic point: This "play the safe songs" approach makes sense in the short-term to get a huge number of people who will at least tune in a few times a week. But in the long-term, it makes people disenchanted and bored with radio. And this is why people, especially young people, are spending their time on youtube, Pandora, itunes, Last.fm, MySpace, AIM, and all kinds of other places. It's interactive, it's fresh, it's individual, and it's not boring.

A lot of otherwise talented people, perhaps yourself included, are caught up in this radio culture and pressure from above to do certain things.

I'm glad we're having a regular discussion.

Your point about Jack is a good one. One might be able to do well in Oldies with a list bigger than 500. But in any event, they have to be super familiar hits.

Specialty shows certainly can add to the perception of depth, but I'd be careful with that... especially in LA, where in-car listening is so very important.

Another way to keep it fresh is "platooning" songs in and out of rotation. Up in San Francisco that's a technique that helped KFRC FM get past KYA FM back in the 80's or 90's...

As to young people not being big radio boosters, there are an awful lot of factors contributing to that. One is that most stations want to target 25 to 54 year olds, because that's what the ad agencies want. Which does NOTHING to help build radio usage among the 25 to 54 year olds of tomorrow (On that subject, for us older types it would be nice if 35 to 64 was considered a desirable demo; but sadly it isn't... which has led to lots of Oldies stations flipping out of the format).

Also, young people are drawn to cutting edge technology, which helped build up FM back in the 60's when it was a distant also-ran to AM, yet had better fidelity and was in stereo.

But I can assure you with complete confidence that tight rotations on Oldies stations is not a contributing factor to Radio's problem with younger people. As a demographic, they simply don't care at all about Oldies.

 

[oldies76]

- Do all the #1s in order. Or all the #2s. Or the 1s, then the 2s.

KRTH actually did this in the 80's over the Labor Day Weekends

The #100 weekend. All songs charting at a peak of 100. Just from a curiosity standpoint it would be really interesting! (Please don't tell me this is a ratings killer - duh, I know that!)

Maybe Bob Shannon can do this on his Behind the Hits some week.

Funny, the lowest charting single in 1978, peaked at #97 titled "Number One" by Eliose Laws.
The lowest charting single in 1979, peaked at #99 titled "When You're #1" by Gene Chandler.

Looking at all the years from 1955 thru 1977, 104 songs peaked at #100. No songs peaked at #100 between 1978 and 1987. One of my favorite songs from 1973, actually hit #98: "L.A. Freeway" by Jerry Jeff Walker. Maybe KRTH should play that song.

 

[Marv-L.A.]

Doing another one of those 'Number One Songs Of Rock & Roll' weekends would be a blast; I recall hearing everything from 1955's 'Yellow Rose Of Texas' to 1979's 'Year Of The Cat' (which I also heard a few weeks ago during their 'Parade Of Hits' weekend...at 12:55 AM on a Sunday morning) during a weekend many years ago.

For someone who's been doing mornings at KRTH for almost seven years, Gary Bryan's show should have a much larger variety of music than it currently does; he certainly has enough tenure and recognition in the market to merit that consideration, I would think.

 

[oldies76]

Doing another one of those 'Number One Songs Of Rock & Roll' weekends would be a blast; I recall hearing everything from 1955's 'Yellow Rose Of Texas' to 1977's 'Year Of The Cat' (which I also heard a few weeks ago during their 'Parade Of Hits' weekend...at 12:55 AM on a Sunday morning) during a weekend many years ago.

Those were the days for sure! Actually, they'd always begin with "Let Me Go Lover" (Jan 1955) and go thru Sept. 1984 (What's Love got to do with it"). Eventually they scaled back to 1979, then I believe 1973 on the last one aired.

And remember, they also aired all the #2's in chrono order, the weekend before. "Runner's up of Rock and Roll Weekend".
They used the KHJ charts to some extent.

Yes, it was a blast and very enjoyable to hear back in the day. Wish they'd bring these specials back again.

 

[scooty430]

Here's my idea: Start your own radio station, do whatever you want to do, and none of us have to listen.

And spend an entire day doing all foreign songs, like Sukiyaki, Dominique, and Tie Me Kangaroo Down.

It's called musical masturbation.

I have a better idea. Just turn on any terrestrial radio station. They might as well be spankin' the monkey too, because nobody is really listening.

Wake up.

 

[scooty430]

Fair enough. You raise good points, none of which I can really disagree with.

You have to admit that the "let's play 300 songs for twenty years" is a recipe for doom. Eventually, the audience burns out.

For K-Earth, they were really starting to sink a few years ago in the ratings with their deadly dull list of 250 burnt to a crisp songs. What saved them? Expanding the playlist. They added in an entire decade, and also jumped from 300 songs in the list to about 700. They also began toying with a few specials where they actually played 1000 or even 2000 songs.

Now let's look at the other station in town that does this: KLOS. KLOS perhaps attracts an OK demo of middle aged men, but their overall numbers get lower and lower. They've been playing the same songs for too long. It's just boring.

Eventually, KLOS will have to do something. They just won't be able to keep playing those same 500 titles forever.

What's been an interesting new entry? JACK. With 2000 titles (according to the PD) or 1000 (according to David Eduardo's search of Mediabase), they got huge ratings at first, and are still chugging along.

So here's the basic point: This "play the safe songs" approach makes sense in the short-term to get a huge number of people who will at least tune in a few times a week. But in the long-term, it makes people disenchanted and bored with radio. And this is why people, especially young people, are spending their time on youtube, Pandora, itunes, Last.fm, MySpace, AIM, and all kinds of other places. It's interactive, it's fresh, it's individual, and it's not boring.

A lot of otherwise talented people, perhaps yourself included, are caught up in this radio culture and pressure from above to do certain things.

I'm glad we're having a regular discussion.

Your point about Jack is a good one. One might be able to do well in Oldies with a list bigger than 500. But in any event, they have to be super familiar hits.

Specialty shows certainly can add to the perception of depth, but I'd be careful with that... especially in LA, where in-car listening is so very important.

Another way to keep it fresh is "platooning" songs in and out of rotation. Up in San Francisco that's a technique that helped KFRC FM get past KYA FM back in the 80's or 90's...

As to young people not being big radio boosters, there are an awful lot of factors contributing to that. One is that most stations want to target 25 to 54 year olds, because that's what the ad agencies want. Which does NOTHING to help build radio usage among the 25 to 54 year olds of tomorrow (On that subject, for us older types it would be nice if 35 to 64 was considered a desirable demo; but sadly it isn't... which has led to lots of Oldies stations flipping out of the format).

Also, young people are drawn to cutting edge technology, which helped build up FM back in the 60's when it was a distant also-ran to AM, yet had better fidelity and was in stereo.

But I can assure you with complete confidence that tight rotations on Oldies stations is not a contributing factor to Radio's problem with younger people. As a demographic, they simply don't care at all about Oldies.

Again, I pretty much agree with you.

I wonder if the thinking on demos will ever change. Today's 40 or 50 or 60 year old is not the same as its equivalent in 1955, yet we are still using the same mentality, that they are not worth reaching. That puzzles me.

You'd be surprised how many younger people like oldies. They are somewhat timeless. They're helped by exposure in movies, at baseball games, on TV shows, in ads. The problem is that one can get these oldies instantly online, so why sit around listening to some boring radio station that plays the same set of them all day.

As for JACK, it is essentially the "new" version of an Oldies station, except it's 80s. All of the songs are pretty familiar, but they draw from several different formats. They are basically stitching back together the fragmentation we had at the time. A lot of people had a pop station, a rock station, a classic rock station, an oldies station, and a modern station on their presets back then. Each station never left its format. But we all heard all those songs. JACK takes the top hits from all of them, and voila: big playlist. Smart move, and you can listen fairly regularly and not get bored.

But we need more sources of music than just JACK, and JACK has a horrendous jaded announcer voice and phoney self-mocking attitude that is nauseatingly juvenile. How can the same society that sits and listens to Obama's soaring oratory tolerate this garbage from JACK?

Differnet subject....KRTH definitely uses the "platooning" method you describe. I'll use "Classical Gas" as an example. That chestnut pops into their playlist every so often, then promptly disappears. It's a good strategy.

But nothing substitutes for an authentically deep playlist. Keep it small, and you will eventually die.

 

[TheBigA]

I have a better idea. Just turn on any terrestrial radio station. They might as well be spankin' the monkey too, because nobody is really listening.

Wake up.

Hmmm...then how is it you know so much about what they do?

 

[davideduardo]

I wonder if the thinking on demos will ever change. Today's 40 or 50 or 60 year old is not the same as its equivalent in 1955, yet we are still using the same mentality, that they are not worth reaching. That puzzles me.

Go fight this one with Lever and P&G and COke and McDonalds and...

The decision to focus on 18-48, 18-34 and 25-54 as the buy demos (or some subset of them) is an advertiser dictate, handed to the agency with the instructions, "buy against this group."

You'd be surprised how many younger people like oldies. They are somewhat timeless. They're helped by exposure in movies, at baseball games, on TV shows, in ads. The problem is that one can get these oldies instantly online, so why sit around listening to some boring radio station that plays the same set of them all day.

The thing is that under-45's nearly don't listen at all to oldeis, and uder-35's don't listen to classic hits, and when we find the exceptions, it's mostly people who had no choice... in an office or workplace, in the car with family, etc. And, for whatever the reason, the listening by out-of-demo listeners is so minute as to be insignificant and unsalable.

As for JACK, it is essentially the "new" version of an Oldies station, except it's 80s.

No, it's not 80's. It's 70's, 80's, 90's, this decade and even an occasional 60's tune. That is why it is called "Adult Hits" by the industry.

The playlist is a mile wide and an inch deep.

But we need more sources of music than just JACK, and JACK has a horrendous jaded announcer voice and phoney self-mocking attitude that is nauseatingly juvenile.

The listeners who like the Jack music have been pretty much found to hate DJs, and they like the "anti-jock" attitude. The music and the attitude go together. When Jack station, like Chicago, have tried high profile personalities, they tank.

Differnet subject....KRTH definitely uses the "platooning" method you describe. I'll use "Classical Gas" as an example. That chestnut pops into their playlist every so often, then promptly disappears. It's a good strategy.

To me, it looks like a fill song. Maybe a manual fill... "fill" meaning a song you use if the scheduler does not come up with something and gives an unscheduled position. I know one station where this kind of category has a median turn of 79 days, but the low end is about 12 days and the high end a whopping 210 days.

But nothing substitutes for an authentically deep playlist. Keep it small, and you will eventually die.

Substitute "deep" for "tight" and "small" for "broad" and you are right. Your statement, as is, is a sure-fire, guaranteed formula for ratings disaster and the industry history is littered with fine examples of changed formats and fired PDs who were the results of a deep library format.

 

[radioresearcher]

I wonder if the thinking on demos will ever change. Today's 40 or 50 or 60 year old is not the same as its equivalent in 1955, yet we are still using the same mentality, that they are not worth reaching. That puzzles me.

Go fight this one with Lever and P&G and COke and McDonalds and...

The decision to focus on 18-48, 18-34 and 25-54 as the buy demos (or some subset of them) is an advertiser dictate, handed to the agency with the instructions, "buy against this group."

You'd be surprised how many younger people like oldies. They are somewhat timeless. They're helped by exposure in movies, at baseball games, on TV shows, in ads. The problem is that one can get these oldies instantly online, so why sit around listening to some boring radio station that plays the same set of them all day.

The thing is that under-45's nearly don't listen at all to oldeis, and uder-35's don't listen to classic hits, and when we find the exceptions, it's mostly people who had no choice... in an office or workplace, in the car with family, etc. And, for whatever the reason, the listening by out-of-demo listeners is so minute as to be insignificant and unsalable.

As for JACK, it is essentially the "new" version of an Oldies station, except it's 80s.

No, it's not 80's. It's 70's, 80's, 90's, this decade and even an occasional 60's tune. That is why it is called "Adult Hits" by the industry.

The playlist is a mile wide and an inch deep.

But we need more sources of music than just JACK, and JACK has a horrendous jaded announcer voice and phoney self-mocking attitude that is nauseatingly juvenile.

The listeners who like the Jack music have been pretty much found to hate DJs, and they like the "anti-jock" attitude. The music and the attitude go together. When Jack station, like Chicago, have tried high profile personalities, they tank.

Differnet subject....KRTH definitely uses the "platooning" method you describe. I'll use "Classical Gas" as an example. That chestnut pops into their playlist every so often, then promptly disappears. It's a good strategy.

To me, it looks like a fill song. Maybe a manual fill... "fill" meaning a song you use if the scheduler does not come up with something and gives an unscheduled position. I know one station where this kind of category has a median turn of 79 days, but the low end is about 12 days and the high end a whopping 210 days.

But nothing substitutes for an authentically deep playlist. Keep it small, and you will eventually die.

Substitute "deep" for "tight" and "small" for "broad" and you are right. Your statement, as is, is a sure-fire, guaranteed formula for ratings disaster and the industry history is littered with fine examples of changed formats and fired PDs who were the results of a deep library format.

JACK works because it plays HITS - although PPM is showing it's not as strong TSL as it was in the diary - and the ratings are not as strong in a few markets.

You need to have a focused product that plays FAMILIAR music. Even though JACK is broad-based, it does both of things, play HITS and is FAMILIAR. The wide era of music may be contributing to the lower TSL.

 

[oldies76]

Substitute "deep" for "tight" and "small" for "broad" and you are right. Your statement, as is, is a sure-fire, guaranteed formula for ratings disaster and the industry history is littered with fine examples of changed formats and fired PDs who were the results of a deep library format.

CBS-FM is still chugging along with their thousands of hits and specials last I heard, haven't heard of any PD firings yet there. Sounds like a successful classic hits format going on there. By the way, if under 45's don't listen to oldies and under 35's don't listen to Cl. hits, then why is the target audience 25-54..shouldn't it be only 45-55+ ?

 

[davideduardo]

CBS-FM is still chugging along with their thousands of hits and specials last I heard, haven't heard of any PD firings yet there. Sounds like a successful classic hits format going on there. By the way, if under 45's don't listen to oldies and under 35's don't listen to Cl. hits, then why is the target audience 25-54..shouldn't it be only 45-55+ ?

The base library is less than 900 songs. Specialty shows are not generally calculated, as they tend to run when a tiny, tiny audience is available, like Saturday or Sunday night.

25-54 is the broad buyers' target. Stations present rates based on covering some portion of this demo, like men 25.44 for example. Buyers will pick a combination of stations in a broad demo that together cover their format.

 

[scooty430]

I have a better idea. Just turn on any terrestrial radio station. They might as well be spankin' the monkey too, because nobody is really listening.

Wake up.

Hmmm...then how is it you know so much about what they do?

I don't.

I only know what I hear. (Boring.)

And what I read. (Radio audiences are declining, radio companies have declining profits (even before the housing bubble burst.)

How about you? Do YOU like listening to Brown Eyed Girl over and over? If so, why? Help me to understand the appeal.

 

[TheBigA]

How about you? Do YOU like listening to Brown Eyed Girl over and over? If so, why? Help me to understand the appeal.

I don't. I have a life. But when the song comes on, I always turn it up and sing with the chorus. La dee da.

By the same token, I have thousands and thousands of records (yes, vinyl) and can listen to every song Them or Van ever recorded. I even own the Shadows of Knight's follow-up to "Gloria." So I can quote all the record geek stuff for you. But I also understand that not everyone is a geek like me, and they just want to hear their favorite songs. For them, there's radio.

 

[scooty430]

I wonder if the thinking on demos will ever change. Today's 40 or 50 or 60 year old is not the same as its equivalent in 1955, yet we are still using the same mentality, that they are not worth reaching. That puzzles me.

Go fight this one with Lever and P&G and COke and McDonalds and...

The decision to focus on 18-48, 18-34 and 25-54 as the buy demos (or some subset of them) is an advertiser dictate, handed to the agency with the instructions, "buy against this group."

You'd be surprised how many younger people like oldies. They are somewhat timeless. They're helped by exposure in movies, at baseball games, on TV shows, in ads. The problem is that one can get these oldies instantly online, so why sit around listening to some boring radio station that plays the same set of them all day.

The thing is that under-45's nearly don't listen at all to oldeis, and uder-35's don't listen to classic hits, and when we find the exceptions, it's mostly people who had no choice... in an office or workplace, in the car with family, etc. And, for whatever the reason, the listening by out-of-demo listeners is so minute as to be insignificant and unsalable.

As for JACK, it is essentially the "new" version of an Oldies station, except it's 80s.

No, it's not 80's. It's 70's, 80's, 90's, this decade and even an occasional 60's tune. That is why it is called "Adult Hits" by the industry.

The playlist is a mile wide and an inch deep.

But we need more sources of music than just JACK, and JACK has a horrendous jaded announcer voice and phoney self-mocking attitude that is nauseatingly juvenile.

The listeners who like the Jack music have been pretty much found to hate DJs, and they like the "anti-jock" attitude. The music and the attitude go together. When Jack station, like Chicago, have tried high profile personalities, they tank.

Differnet subject....KRTH definitely uses the "platooning" method you describe. I'll use "Classical Gas" as an example. That chestnut pops into their playlist every so often, then promptly disappears. It's a good strategy.

To me, it looks like a fill song. Maybe a manual fill... "fill" meaning a song you use if the scheduler does not come up with something and gives an unscheduled position. I know one station where this kind of category has a median turn of 79 days, but the low end is about 12 days and the high end a whopping 210 days.

But nothing substitutes for an authentically deep playlist. Keep it small, and you will eventually die.

Substitute "deep" for "tight" and "small" for "broad" and you are right. Your statement, as is, is a sure-fire, guaranteed formula for ratings disaster and the industry history is littered with fine examples of changed formats and fired PDs who were the results of a deep library format.

I actually agree with most of your points, for once.

Yes, JACK is 60s through 90s, and even currents like Maroon 5, but it's mostly 80s. It's the new Oldies station.

Maybe most people like the obnoxious jocks. So be it. I was looking at that from more of an aesthetic viewpoint, and personally I find the "Jack sucks" promos on the station to be lame. It's a sign of a society afraid to actually embrace something and be sincere. "Hey, I like this!" Luckily, we DID see that during the inauguration speech. Hopefully we can leave the sarcastic, snarky, attitude behind and grow up a bit. After all, this is a station targeted at ADULTS, and not even the young ones!

I do think most people don't like DJs, that is true, mostly because it's been a long time since they were allowed to be good.

I disagree with you, as usual, about small playlists working on stations without new music. Both KRTH and CBS have playlists approaching 1000 now, and JACK is at least that. You and I both know that is very big compared to the 200-400 songs we had just a few years ago.

Show me a station with a 250 song, static playlist (no currents) that was a long-term success. I don't think there are any.

 

[scooty430]

How about you? Do YOU like listening to Brown Eyed Girl over and over? If so, why? Help me to understand the appeal.

I don't. I have a life. But when the song comes on, I always turn it up and sing with the chorus. La dee da.

By the same token, I have thousands and thousands of records (yes, vinyl) and can listen to every song Them or Van ever recorded. I even own the Shadows of Knight's follow-up to "Gloria." So I can quote all the record geek stuff for you. But I also understand that not everyone is a geek like me, and they just want to hear their favorite songs. For them, there's radio.

Really? See, when I heard Brown Eyed Girl at first, I did turn it up. But now I turn it OFF. Maybe you don't really listen to the radio very often, which is fine. Maybe NOBODY is listening to the radio very often, so the repetition is not an issue.

At least we can agree on vinyl. I have all the Van albums on vinyl too (well, all the good ones.)

I miss, though, the times when radio could introduce me to something like Van, something like "Into the Mystic" rather than just Moondance. This is why people like Pandora - it says, "hey, how about this song?"

Radio, conversely, simply barfs back what you already know about.

 

[TheBigA]

I miss, though, the times when radio could introduce me to something like Van, something like "Into the Mystic" rather than just Moondance. This is why people like Pandora - it says, "hey, how about this song?"

Radio is not a personal music service. Pandora is. Very different devices.

Even back in the day, when Van was a current, almost every station with any audience only played the hits. Only the progressive stations played the album cuts. There were only a handful of them in the entire country and they were only around for a few years before Lee Abrams got to them. Then all the deep cuts were banished.

By the way, we'll see what happens to Pandora now that they're airing commercials. Usually the first thing to go once a medium becomes ad-supported in the depth. That's what killed progressive radio.

 

[scooty430]

Apples and oranges. New music stations are designed to play a small number of tunes over and over. That's the way it should be, and of course KHJ and WABC stuck very close to the Top 20.

But stations with mostly old music regularly had 2000 title libraries, even as recently as the early 90s.

All I know is that I heard "Into the Mystic," and hundreds of other great songs, on KLSX. I was turned onto all kinds of music that was new to me, though it wasn't technically new. I suppose for the older audience members, these were songs they'd either not heard in awhile, had forgotten about, or had missed. In any event, radio was not repeating itself.

I didn't know Pandora has ads now. Deal killer for me, as I can only listen off a computer at home. But if I could listen at work, and leave it on, I might still use it.

Big picture, every song is unfamiliar to everybody at some point. The idea that you can never play unfamiliar songs is patently absurd. You have to.

 

[davideduardo]

Big picture, every song is unfamiliar to everybody at some point. The idea that you can never play unfamiliar songs is patently absurd. You have to.

... not on stations that create listener expectations of presenting familiar and favorite songs. That's their whole appeal, in fact, and presenting songs that are unfamiliar or a hazy memory violates expectations and kills TSL. I've seen this on specialty shows that go deep or focus on a particular aspect of music of the past, using MediaMonitor tracking, and those unfamiliar or only vaguely familiar songs are killers. End result: those specialty shows are gone, and ratings are up nearly 200%.

 

[scooty430]

Big picture, every song is unfamiliar to everybody at some point. The idea that you can never play unfamiliar songs is patently absurd. You have to.

... not on stations that create listener expectations of presenting familiar and favorite songs. That's their whole appeal, in fact, and presenting songs that are unfamiliar or a hazy memory violates expectations and kills TSL. I've seen this on specialty shows that go deep or focus on a particular aspect of music of the past, using MediaMonitor tracking, and those unfamiliar or only vaguely familiar songs are killers. End result: those specialty shows are gone, and ratings are up nearly 200%.

But they aren't gone. Specialty shows are on every station: KLOS, KRTH, CBS-FM, and have been for years. And all three of those stations have increased the number of specialty weekends, except for KLOS, which is struggling and will have a new PD.

Only station with no specialty shows is JACK, but they already have the biggest playlist.