Now Playing on K-Earth - Classic Rock! (Well, sorta...)

[michael hagerty]

...and why Michael and David are putting together plans for KTEN-FM. The new "K-Ten" will feature a ten-song playlist and should be very popular with the 21-to-34 year-olds who want to hear Cruise, Mirrors, Radioactive and Blurred Lines thirty times a day.

Actually, with song lengths and spot loads, we'll only need to play them 24 times a day. But the average listener will only hear them every other day.

 

[Thomps2525]

For many of us, there won't be any major revelations in this article but a discussion of early top-40 radio and tight playlists is at http://www.playlistresearch.com/article/top40.htm

What struck me---besides Michael wielding a baseball bat, of course---is a statement about KLIF's Gordon McLendon, who "believed that music and news were the two things that gave radio an edge over television." Apart from one or two brief newscasts in morning drive, how many music stations still have newscasts in 2013? Remember in 1965 when KHJ kept us informed via "20-20 News" at 20 past each hour and 20 before each hour? Someone today who listens exclusively to top-40 radio and doesn't watch tv or go online or read a newspaper would probably know absolutely nothing about what's going on in Egypt or Nigeria or Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan and he'd probably know nothing about the movement to legalize same-sex marriage or our government's phone-call monitoring or the San Francisco airplane crash or the Quebec train derailment. Is just playing music and running ten-minute commercial blocks enough to fulfill a station's requirement to "broadcast in the public interest"?

 

[michael hagerty]

For many of us, there won't be any major revelations in this article but a discussion of early top-40 radio and tight playlists is at http://www.playlistresearch.com/article/top40.htm

What struck me---besides Michael wielding a baseball bat, of course---is a statement about KLIF's Gordon McLendon, who "believed that music and news were the two things that gave radio an edge over television." Apart from one or two brief newscasts in morning drive, how many music stations still have newscasts in 2013? Remember in 1965 when KHJ kept us informed via "20-20 News" at 20 past each hour and 20 before each hour? Someone today who listens exclusively to top-40 radio and doesn't watch tv or go online or read a newspaper would probably know absolutely nothing about what's going on in Egypt or Nigeria or Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan and he'd priobably know nothing about the movement to legalize same-sex marriage or our government's phone-call monitoring or the San Francisco airplane crash or the Quebec train derailment. Is just playing music and running ten-minute commercial blocks enough to fulfill a station's requirement to "broadcast in the public interest"?

When McLendon said that, you had to wait for Walter Cronkite to come on at 7 if you wanted news from TV. Now you don't.

And find me someone today who's a CHR listener who doesn't go online....who isn't having information pushed to them by their cell phone, if not by CNN, then by a network of friends tweeting.
Trust me, they probably knew about the Supreme Court rulings, Morsi's overthrow, the SFO crash and the NSA wiretaps ahead of a significant percentage of news radio listeners who just weren't tuned in at the time.

 

[Thomps2525]

When Walter Cronkite first voiced his opposition to U.S. involvement in the Viet Nam conflict, President Johnson knew that he (Johnson) had lost the war. Cronkite influenced an entire generation. CNN, on the other hand, is usually lucky to get a half-million viewers in a day. You can see ratings for all the news channels and their individual programs at:

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/tag/cnn-ratings/

CNN, by the way, today had exclusive video of the Asiana Airlines crash. It was shot by an airplane buffwho was with his wife in a public park across from the airport. During the noon hour, they showed the footage at least 50 times!

And, once again, we've gotten off topic.

 

[davideduardo]

Is just playing music and running ten-minute commercial blocks enough to fulfill a station's requirement to "broadcast in the public interest"?

The answer depends on who you ask.

Listeners: I came to this station for music and I hate the interruptions.

FCC: The listeners don't know what they want, so we will make stations do what we know is best for them.

The FCC attitude is what got us the Public Affairs ("PA") requirements which made stations run programs nobody listened to.

The listener attitude is what gives Pandora a 7% share of "radio" listening in the US.

 

[oldies76]

...and why Michael and David are putting together plans for KTEN-FM. The new "K-Ten" will feature a ten-song playlist and should be very popular with the 21-to-34 year-olds who want to hear Cruise, Mirrors, Radioactive and Blurred Lines thirty times a day.

Or should we call it KTST?? and their jingle would be "Featuring the best tested songs, that YOU, the listener have chosen to hear day in and day out". :

Had one of those "house parties" again last night (about 7 hours worth), and of course, played numerous 70's hits that are ignored by radio today....but the guests sure enjoyed them!!!
It's all about the memories, when they were young.

Think how radio listeners would react also?? Well, Rewind and myself know the answer to that.

 

[davideduardo]

Had one of those "house parties" again last night (about 7 hours worth), and of course, played numerous 70's hits that are ignored by radio today....but the guests sure enjoyed them!!!
It's all about the memories, when they were young.

Think how radio listeners would react also?? Well, Rewind and myself know the answer to that.

I've done some fairly extensive research on club and party moods vs. radio moods. What it boils down to is that what we like to hear in a party atmosphere only minimally overlaps what we like to hear on the radio.

Start out with the fact that radio listening is frequently done alone, while parties are collective experiences with the group dynamic being the ruling influence.

Once you understand that parties and clubs... which often have spirits as a catalyst... are not representative of the radio environment... you can see why this kind of anecdotal experience is irrelevant.

 

[Thomps2525]

Since Mister oldies76 didn't name the '70s songs that he played for his guests, allow me:

Feelings - Morris Albert
Bloat On - Cheech & Chong
Chick-A-Boom - Daddy Dewdrop
Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep - Mac & Katie Kissoon
Tennessee Birdwalk - Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan
The Night Chicago Died - Paper Lace
Junk Food Junkie - Larry Groce
Do You Think I'm Disco - Steve Dahl
Dis-Gorilla - Rick Dees
Bridget The Midget - Ray Stevens
Gimme Dat Ding - Pipkins
Puppy Love - Donny Osmond
Evil Boll Weevil - Grand Canyon
Last Game Of The Season - David Geddes
Once You Understand - Think

Nothin' but the best of the decade! (And note how that last title ties in with David's final comments.)

 

[oldies76]

Since Mister oldies76 didn't name the '70s songs that he played for his guests, allow me:

Feelings - Morris Albert
Bloat On - Cheech & Chong
Chick-A-Boom - Daddy Dewdrop
Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep - Mac & Katie Kissoon
Tennessee Birdwalk - Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan
The Night Chicago Died - Paper Lace
Junk Food Junkie - Larry Groce
Do You Think I'm Disco - Steve Dahl
Dis-Gorilla - Rick Dees
Bridget The Midget - Ray Stevens
Gimme Dat Ding - Pipkins
Puppy Love - Donny Osmond
Evil Boll Weevil - Grand Canyon
Last Game Of The Season - David Geddes
Once You Understand - Think

Nothin' but the best of the decade! (And note how that last title ties in with David's final comments.)

Naah....nice try though!

I did play these lost hits though:

Don't it Make My Brown Eyes Blue - Crystal Gayle
Theme From "SWAT" - Rhythm Heritage
Reunited - Peaches and Herb
Tragedy - Bee Gees
Please Don't Go - KC & the Sunshine Band
I Can't Tell You Why - Eagles (1980)
You'll Never Find, Another Love Like Mine - Lou Rawls
You Make Me Feel Brand New - Stylistics
Sideshow - Blue Magic
Scorpio - Dennis Coffey
Hopelessly Devoted To You - Olivia Newton-John
Could it Be Magic - Donna Summer

among many others.....

 

[michael hagerty]

When Walter Cronkite first voiced his opposition to U.S. involvement in the Viet Nam conflict, President Johnson knew that he (Johnson) had lost the war. Cronkite influenced an entire generation. CNN, on the other hand, is usually lucky to get a half-million viewers in a day. You can see ratings for all the news channels and their individual programs at:

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/tag/cnn-ratings/

CNN, by the way, today had exclusive video of the Asiana Airlines crash. It was shot by an airplane buffwho was with his wife in a public park across from the airport. During the noon hour, they showed the footage at least 50 times!

And, once again, we've gotten off topic.

Not to take us back off topic, but in the interest of clarity for anyone who follows that link, "Total Day" is for 9AM-5PM. Below that, you'll find numbers for 6-9 AM and for individual hours from 5PM to Midnight. Each of those hours averages 633,000 viewers for CNN, so they do significantly better than half a million viewers a day. Fox News has hours that top a million viewers.

No, they're nothing like Cronkite's 15 million viewers a night. But that wasn't the point. The number of people who get news instantaneously on personal devices today blows Cronkite, Huntley-Brinkley and Howard K. Smith's combined number into the weeds.

 

[TheRover]

Are there any major-market programmers who still go by good ol'-fashioned "gut instinct"?---Someone who says, "Y'know, I think these songs would sound good on my station so I'm gonna play 'em" instead of relying on consultants and auditorium tests and computer printouts?

The advertising dept's of companies and corporations, feel their position is somewhat "safe" if they back up their placement of advertising dollars, based on "industry standard professional research," ie national consultants.

So, while the "gut insitinct" of a programmer could benefit the listener, the station is not there, in the 1st place "for the listener".

The station exists for the stockholders. And the stockholders make money when advertisers buy time. That's all that matters to the owners of the stations -- no matter they imply or say or hype to the audience.

Business is not uplifting... it's just business.

Like the Processed Food Industry.... Their busines is not to distribute healthy food -- no matter what is implies on their packaging and advertising. They sell convenience and not health.

Radio is like a big 7-11 store.

There is no room for a commercial "Whole Foods" in today's radio business model.

You may get some "healthy" choies on the fringe, but the mainstay and the focus is processed "junk" food, regardless of the genre.

This top down startified radio system is here to stay. Because it;s what pleases the advertisers and their stockholders the most.

You want "healthy" music choices.... do not look to radio for that option. It's not there on the public airwaves.

 

[semoochie]

No, if you satisfy the majority, you bring in advertising. Otherwise, you don't. There's no real change here since the 1920s.

 

[davideduardo]

The advertising dept's of companies and corporations, feel their position is somewhat "safe" if they back up their placement of advertising dollars, based on "industry standard professional research," ie national consultants.

Significant adevertisers do not use "consultants" to provide research (although they may hire consultants for things like analytics.

Large brands, companies and services do extensive market research, ranging from product development to test marketing to point of purchase and in-home studies. Some companies, like P&G, spend hundreds of millions on proprietary research.

These companies know who buys and how much. They know how much advertising moves sales, and what the return on investment is. And the do lots of targeted marketing... aimed at specific sales opportunities that are profitable.

There is no "safe" ad target... just well researched focusing on the ages, geographies and other aspects of targeting.

Radio stations that depend on agency business have to target their format at some part of the demographic spread that large numbers of advertisers are looking for. Other than that, they can pick any format that they like; if the format delivers a lot of listeners and is properly priced, they will get buys.

 

[michael hagerty]

No, if you satisfy the majority, you bring in advertising. Otherwise, you don't. There's no real change here since the 1920s.

Bingo. Thank you. Since this is the Los Angeles radio board, let's look and see what worked in the past, which supposedly was filled with by-the-gut, rather than by-the book programmers.

Top 5 (6, because of a tie) stations, Fall 1966:

1. KHJ (Top 40, with the tightest playlist in town at the time): 9.0
1. KMPC (MOR, which in '66 for KMPC was Petula Clark, Dean Martin, Bert Kaempfert....apart from Johnny Magnus' jazz cuts in his 10PM-1AM show, there wasn't anything challenging there): 9.0
1. KLAC (Talk, largely propelled by the verbal pyrotechnics of Joe Pyne, who told callers he disagreed with to "go gargle with razor blades")
4. KFI (MOR, and even more old-school than KMPC): 4.0
4. KPOL (Beautiful Music...the stuff even elevators don't play today): 4.0
4. KRLA (Top 40, playing 10 records more than KHJ and letting their DJs have a little more latitude in what they said...which resulted in this station, #1 two years before, having less than half KHJ's number)

Skip ahead five years......

Top 5 stations, Fall, 1971:

1. KHJ (Top 40, still with the tightest playlist in town, and now with the Goldens cut from about 1,000 to 500 "super hits"): 9.3
2. KABC (Talk, but at least without Joe Pyne and with Michael Jackson...no, not that Michael Jackson): 8.0
3. KGFJ (R&B, but big hit R&B): 7.0
4. KNX (News): 4.8
5. KJOI-FM (Beautiful Music...for elevators with two speakers): 4.5


Another five years...

Top 5 stations, Fall, 1976:

1. KABC (Talk and the Dodgers): 6.7
2. KBIG-FM (Beautiful Music): 5.9
3. KHJ (Top 40...with fewer and newer Goldens than ever before): 5.3
4. KJOI-FM (Beautiful Music): 4.9
5. KNX (News): 4.8

And five more (okay, four and a half, I can't find the Fall, 1981 numbers).....

Top 5 stations, Spring 1981:

1. KABC (Talk and the Dodgers): 8.5
2. KBIG-FM (Beautiful Music): 5.5
3. KMET-FM (AOR, but not freeform...no, this was tight, heavily consulted arena rock): 4.6
4. KFWB (News): 3.8
4. KJOI-FM (Beautiful Music): 3.8

It has always been thus.

 

[davideduardo]

And five more (okay, four and a half, I can't find the Fall, 1981 numbers).....

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Duncan-American-Radio/Duncan-1981-Fall.pdf

 

[michael hagerty]

And five more (okay, four and a half, I can't find the Fall, 1981 numbers).....

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Duncan-American-Radio/Duncan-1981-Fall.pdf

Thanks, David...should have remembered it's all there.

Anyway, not much change. The winners (as usual) are the most tightly focused stations.

 

[Thomps2525]

I wonder how much better KNX would do in the ratings if they tightened their focus---by getting rid of Melinda Lee's Food News program and actually being an all-news station. Yeah, I know that Lee's show gets high ratings---for a cooking program, that is---but on many Saturdays it frustrates me to learn of a breaking news story and turn on KNX in the hope of hearing an update and instead hearing "Now let me tell you how to make a zesty onion-and-celery garnish for your casserole." :-\

 

[michael hagerty]

I wonder how much better KNX would do in the ratings if they tightened their focus---by getting rid of Melinda Lee's Food News program and actually being an all-news station. Yeah, I know that Lee's show gets high ratings---for a cooking program, that is---but on many Saturdays it frustrates me to learn of a breaking news story and turn on KNX in the hope of hearing an update and instead hearing "Now let me tell you how to make a zesty onion-and-celery garnish for your casserole." :-\

How much better would KNX do in the ratings if it did news instead of a cooking show between 10 AM and Noon on Saturdays?

Hmmmm..........yeah.......168 hours in a week...so just change those two hours and BOOM!

 

[Thomps2525]

With so much happening in the world, I want---and need---an all-news station that really is all-news. I can't speak for anyone else---and ain'tcha glad of that?---but I know that if there's a major news story on a Saturday morning, KFI is the station to turn to. Their slogan is "News on the hour, on the half, and when it breaks."

Possible scenario:

KFI: "This is Eric Leonard, reporting from outside a Denny's restaurant where at least 48 people died when a Boeing MD-83 inexplicably lost power and crashed into the north wall of the restaurant just as lunchtime customers were starting to arrive."

KNX: "Last hour I told you how to make the most mouth-watering Moroccan lamb skewers. This hour I want to give you a recipe for the perfect couscous to accompany the lamb."

 

[michael hagerty]

With so much happening in the world, I want---and need---an all-news station that really is all-news. I can't speak for anyone else---and ain'tcha glad of that?---but I know that if there's a major news story on a Saturday morning, KFI is the station to turn to. Their slogan is "News on the hour, on the half, and when it breaks."

Possible scenario:

KFI: "This is Eric Leonard, reporting from outside a Denny's restaurant where at least 48 people died when a Boeing MD-83 inexplicably lost power and crashed into the north wall of the restaurant just as lunchtime customers were starting to arrive."

KNX: "Last hour I told you how to make the most mouth-watering Moroccan lamb skewers. This hour I want to give you a recipe for the perfect couscous to accompany the lamb."

Two things:

Both KFI and KNX are running previously recorded programs on Saturday mornings. KFI's got the final hour of Handel on the Law from 10-11, followed by Leo LaPorte from 11-Noon.

So all that KNX needs to do is be as agressive as KFI about pre-empting when news happens. Remember, cooking has a history on KNX going back to Mike Roy and Denny Bracken.

And if you know when news breaks on a Saturday, KFI's going to be on with it, then where's the problem? Does it matter to you whether it's KNX or KFI covering the story?