Larger towns-much narrower playlists?

[tall_guy1]

I have noticed this. Bigger towns, generally speaking, tend to have very narrow playlists that are almost "predictable." However, when going out in a more rural district, the playlists expand drastically. Has anyone else noticed this?

 

[K.M. Richards]

No surprises there. Large markets tend to be able to either do extensive music research, including auditorium testing and pare down their on-air library to those songs which have the lowest probability of causing tune-outs.

Medium markets are very likely to have a consultant who either does periodic research or has agreements to use research done by larger stations. Their playlists are going to be slightly larger because compromises have to be made; if the consultant is using someone else's research they are going to have to use a market that is closest demographically to the one they are doing the playlist for, and will keep some songs in that might not have been the best-testing to allow for the difference in markets.

Small, unrated markets generally are using Whitburn books and just playing everything that peaked above a certain point. This would be a potential kiss of death in large and medium markets because amidst those songs are ones that aren't as universally well-loved now as they might have been then, and cause tune-out. The safety valve in this situation is two-fold: One, with no ratings such stations are not going to be harmed by the fluctuation and two, there are probably far fewer choices for listeners so they may very well sit through a song they dislike simply cause they have nowhere else to go.

In the heyday of tape-based automation, pre-recorded formats tended to do better than homegrown ones because the smaller stations benefited from research done by the syndication services and the music was a tighter playlist with only those songs that were overwhelmingly high-testing in multiple markets.

I hope your point was not to "prove" that bigger playlists will work in larger markets, because that has been disproven time and again ... and already discussed to death in several threads here in the past.

 

[b-turner]

This is very logical. The bigger the market, the more competition you have. When the whole idea is to always be playing songs your target audience loves, those songs that are common account for fewer titles. Since listeners tune to several stations in major markets, winning the most time spent on your station by playing the best songs means you win in the ratings. The better you do in the ratings, the more the station gets in revenue and the longer you get to earn a paycheck from that station. In short, everybody wins.

The lower the population, the fewer the competitors and almost by default, the longer time spent listening. As a result, a larger playlist is usually utilized because of longer listening times and less competition. In smaller markets there might not be another competitor, so listeners 'put up with' a marginal song better than in markets where they simply don't have to.

Back in the day lots of stations opted for the tape based formats, even for live stations. The reasoning, according to one boss, was that the average program director lasted about a year before getting to climb a bit higher on the radio ladder. Each new program director meant the station changed so much he felt the tape format offered him the consistency in his small market. And I might add, those reels came in handy when you needed a bathroom break. The downside was it seemed like the song you hated most always popped up on your shift.