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

[michael hagerty]

I just think that One Of These Nights sounds a little too strident and album-rock-oriented for KRTH's playlist. It fits on KLOS. It doesn't fit on KRTH. But they don't program to me; they program to the masses who inexplicably never get tired of hearing the same big hits over and over and over and over and over and over and.....

Almost every classic-hits station, KRTH included, plays Moondance. Why? It was a 1970 album track that got to only #92 when it was released as a single in 1977. If I'm ever part of KRTH's "audience research" I'll tell them that if they want to play Van Morrison songs, they should drop the burned-out over-played songs Moondance and Brown Eyed Girl and instead play Domino, Come Running, Blue Monday and Jackie Wilson Said.

Steve, KFI played "One Of These Nights" as a current when they were an AC in 1975...two years before they went Top 40. Now it's supposed to be a KLOS (or KSWD) exclusive?

People got (and continue to get) laid to "Moondance", which trumps irrelevant chart numbers.

It's "Blue Money". "Blue Monday" was Fats Domino. "Domino" was a tribute to Fats. It and "Jackie Wilson Said" are great records. Two of my personal favorites.

 

[semoochie]

"800 songs is a good base, but they must be mixed with the "other" lost songs." Do you wish to try it again, Michael?

 

[michael hagerty]

"800 songs is a good base, but they must be mixed with the "other" lost songs." Do you wish to try it again, Michael?

Nothing to try again. I didn't respond to that comment in the first place. 800 songs seems to work just fine, it beats the heck out of 300, and "Moondance" is a great example of a lost song getting play because it tests well now. Too hip for Top 40 in 1970, too mellow for AOR by '78, when it was too old for Top 40. I don't think anybody in L.A. played it between the death of KNX-FM and the birth of The Wave, but it works now.

By now, you know what I think happens when you play songs the majority of the audience has no desire to hear.

 

[oldies76]

By now, you know what I think happens when you play songs the majority of the audience has no desire to hear.

Highly questionable statement.

I'll give you 50.01%, that's a good enough majority.

and "Moondance" is a great example of a lost song getting play because it tests well now

"Moondance" is not a lost song, it has been played for years....try the examples I gave several posts back.

 

[Goldilocks94941]

Van Morrison's "Moondance" stopped sounding "cool" in the 1990s, when I heard it over the ceiling speakers in the Fred Meyer supermarket in Anchorage.

If you feel you have to CYA with "research" to strictly limit your station's playlist to only those songs that got a high score in an artificial research setting, then at least why don't you go deeper into the catalog of the artists your studies find appealing, rather than trying to narrow it to just a particular song or two you played in an auditorium? Mix in more of the music those core artists have released a few times an hour to encourage longer listening, and introduce the element of welcome surprises that used to be part of the reason we'd turn the radio on in the first place. Or at least add some of these artists' other material in the evenings, including longer album versions of their hits, and see how it eventually goes.

Otherwise, you have zero moments of genuine delight for listeners who would probably enjoy a music-triggered flashback now and then. And younger audiences will never know there is a vast repertory of great music, at least when they listen to your station. You're making people who want something more than cheeseburgers go elsewhere to satisfy their tastes. These severely limited playlists do to your soul what eating only McDonalds or In-and-Out hamburgers every day will do to your body.

 

[oldies76]

If you feel you have to CYA with "research" to strictly limit your station's playlist to only those songs that got a high score in an artificial research setting, then at least why don't you go deeper into the catalog of the artists your studies find appealing, rather than trying to narrow it to just a particular song or two you played in an auditorium? Mix in more of the music those core artists have released a few times an hour to encourage longer listening, and introduce the element of welcome surprises that used to be part of the reason we'd turn the radio on in the first place. Or at least add some of these artists' other material in the evenings, including longer album versions of their hits, and see how it eventually goes.

You could have not said it better!! I agree

 

[michael hagerty]

and "Moondance" is a great example of a lost song getting play because it tests well now

"Moondance" is not a lost song, it has been played for years....try the examples I gave several posts back.

Selective cutting and pasting of quotes, Oldies, which I notice you do a lot. Here's the whole thing:


Too hip for Top 40 in 1970, too mellow for AOR by '78, when it was too old for Top 40. I don't think anybody in L.A. played it between the death of KNX-FM and the birth of The Wave, but it works now.

So, yeah...it was a lost song for several years and for those who weren't listening to The Wave, even longer.

 

[michael hagerty]

Van Morrison's "Moondance" stopped sounding "cool" in the 1990s, when I heard it over the ceiling speakers in the Fred Meyer supermarket in Anchorage.

If you feel you have to CYA with "research" to strictly limit your station's playlist to only those songs that got a high score in an artificial research setting, then at least why don't you go deeper into the catalog of the artists your studies find appealing, rather than trying to narrow it to just a particular song or two you played in an auditorium? Mix in more of the music those core artists have released a few times an hour to encourage longer listening, and introduce the element of welcome surprises that used to be part of the reason we'd turn the radio on in the first place. Or at least add some of these artists' other material in the evenings, including longer album versions of their hits, and see how it eventually goes.

Otherwise, you have zero moments of genuine delight for listeners who would probably enjoy a music-triggered flashback now and then. And younger audiences will never know there is a vast repertory of great music, at least when they listen to your station. You're making people who want something more than cheeseburgers go elsewhere to satisfy their tastes. These severely limited playlists do to your soul what eating only McDonalds or In-and-Out hamburgers every day will do to your body.

If you rummage around on the site, you'll find explanations of how auditorium testing actually works. It's not what you have suggested.

Welcome surprises are great. The trouble is unwelcome surprises, which have the exact opposite effect...shorter listening times.

And as for the McDonald's analogy. The average Classic Hits listener balances his/her own diet....sharing listening between 6 and 9 stations, and rarely if ever spending more than 12 minutes with any one of them. Which makes it all the more important to be playing the right record when they tune in.

 

[oldies76]

So, yeah...it was a lost song for several years and for those who weren't listening to The Wave, even longer.

We were mentioning the fact that it's still being played on KRTH for many years now, so the song is not lost...on KRTH anyways. The songs I mentioned yesterday are lost songs on KRTH, since I have not heard them in over 30 years on that station, if ever.

And yeah, I tend to paste only one liners from quotes, to avoid having a additional lines of quotes that are irrevelant or inches tall blocks to the point I'm trying to make.

 

[michael hagerty]

So, yeah...it was a lost song for several years and for those who weren't listening to The Wave, even longer.

We were mentioning the fact that it's still being played on KRTH for many years now, so the song is not lost...on KRTH anyways. The songs I mentioned yesterday are lost songs on KRTH, since I have not heard them in over 30 years on that station, if ever.

And yeah, I tend to paste only one liners from quotes, to avoid having a additional lines of quotes that are irrevelant or inches tall blocks to the point I'm trying to make.

Context matters.

 

[oldies76]

The average Classic Hits listener balances his/her own diet....sharing listening between 6 and 9 stations, and rarely if ever spending more than 12 minutes with any one of them. Which makes it all the more important to be playing the right record when they tune in.

If the average listener is spending only 12 minutes tuning in to KRTH, then it's unlikely many people won't hear the so-called undesirables (lost hits in my books), but some will, if played once an hour. I don't believe it's as bad as you think it could turn out. Many will embrace "new" music on their station, not monotony.

 

[michael hagerty]

The average Classic Hits listener balances his/her own diet....sharing listening between 6 and 9 stations, and rarely if ever spending more than 12 minutes with any one of them. Which makes it all the more important to be playing the right record when they tune in.

If the average listener is spending only 12 minutes tuning in to KRTH, then it's unlikely many people won't hear the so-called undesirables (lost hits in my books), but some will, if played once an hour. I don't believe it's as bad as you think it could turn out. Many will embrace "new" music on their station, not monotony.

Oldies: What you may not understand is KRTH has a cume of somewhere around a million listeners a week. In any given quarter hour between 5AM and 7PM, more than a hundred thousand people are listening (part of the objective is to attain a relatively consistent AQH).

And, given the trend to longer 70s and 80s songs, 12 minutes would mean, at max, three songs a KRTH listener would hear. Less if there's any portion of or an entire commercial break. As we've discussed before, the target KRTH listener uses the station as a mood service...there's an expectation when they push the button...they're going for familiar songs that they like. If one of only two or three songs they hear doesn't deliver on that, it's a breach to them. Fail to deliver enough times and they don't tune in as often or stop tuning in at all.

Why do that when you have songs you know they like?

 

[davideduardo]

If the average listener is spending only 12 minutes tuning in to KRTH, then it's unlikely many people won't hear the so-called undesirables (lost hits in my books), but some will, if played once an hour. I don't believe it's as bad as you think it could turn out. Many will embrace "new" music on their station, not monotony.

Here are the more precise metrics on KRTH...

Every week an average of 2.1 million people listen to the station. The average listening time, weekly, is somewhere around 2:00 hours per week. The average time per listening incident is under 15 minutes.

Incidents of listening are a function of the person being available to listen to the radio and wanting to hear a particular station out of the half-dozen the average person uses at least once during a week.

Incidents end when the station plays a bad song, when the person is interrupted by things like phone calls, bathroom breaks, etc., and the end of a possible listening opportunity (such as getting to the mall, parking and turning off the radio).

When a person picks a station, they have expectations of hearing something they really like and also of having their expectations from that station met. Nobody says, "I'll turn to KRTH to see what song I barely remember and never liked they play next". In fact, that would be a reason to stop listening and to not come back for some time.

 

[davideduardo]

...only those songs that got a high score in an artificial research setting,

A "research setting" is no more artificial than a home or a workplace or in the car. People hear snippets of songs and are asked how much they would like to hear that song on the radio today. That's totally real.

then at least why don't you go deeper into the catalog of the artists your studies find appealing, rather than trying to narrow it to just a particular song or two you played in an auditorium?

... because stations play songs, not artists. At any given moment, the PPM scrutinizes how much listeners like what they are hearing at that moment. Since all of us have artists we like, but few of us like every single song our favorite artists have done, the measurement is based on each song.

In any case, classic hits stations test, over time, about every song that has been popular in the past by an artist to see which are popular, still, today.

Mix in more of the music those core artists have released a few times an hour to encourage longer listening,

The effect is exactly the opposite, as stations who have tried too-big playlists or too-deep cuts have found.

and introduce the element of welcome surprises that used to be part of the reason we'd turn the radio on in the first place.

There is no evidence that classic hits listeners want to be surprised. They want to be entertained with songs they know and love, not stiffs.

Or at least add some of these artists' other material in the evenings, including longer album versions of their hits, and see how it eventually goes.

It's been done. Most of use either made the big playlist mistake ourselves (often followed by a pink slip) or watched others commit musical suicide and we know that it never works.

And younger audiences will never know there is a vast repertory of great music, at least when they listen to your station.

People outside your target demo will not be drawn in by more songs they don't know. If anything, the broad based hits that are still liked today have a better chance of attracting "fringe" listeners.

You're making people who want something more than cheeseburgers go elsewhere to satisfy their tastes.

First, people don't listen longer or become more loyal with big playlists. They tend to listen less, and often never. The average of 700 to 800 songs on a classic insures that most listeners will not hear songs for around two weeks...

 

[Thomps2525]

I'm surprised that the average KRTH listener tunes in for only 15 minutes at a time. In the late '50s and early '60s when top-40 radio was in its so-called "glory years," didn't young people listen to KFWB or KRLA for hours at a time? And this was in an era where ten to twenty songs were being added to the Fabulous Forty and the Tune-Dex each week, replacing the songs that dropped off. I don't expect to hear songs from 2013 on KRTH, of course---at least not until the year 2030---but would KRTH's TSL improve if, each week, the station dropped some of the overplayed oldies and added 50 or 60 songs that haven't been played in a while? I very seldom listen to KRTH because I know that every time I turn on 101.1, I'll hear either a lengthy commercial block or a song I've been sick of for decades. I would listen a lot more often if I knew I'd hear something different than the "same old songs" (with apologies to the Four Tops). Another idea that I think would be fun would be for KRTH to continue to play the hits of 1964-84 but on a monthly basis. In June, play only the songs that were on the top 40 in the month of June. In July, many of those songs would still be played but there would be a lot of "new" songs from previous Julys. The playlist wouldn't get stale. My ideas are free and worth every penny!

 

[oldies76]

Another idea that I think would be fun would be for KRTH to continue to play the hits of 1964-84 but on a monthly basis. In June, play only the songs that were on the top 40 in the month of June. In July, many of those songs would still be played but there would be a lot of "new" songs from previous Julys. The playlist wouldn't get stale. My ideas are free and worth every penny!

Now that's an interesting concept! So if it's July, you're proposing to feature all the July hits for every year within '64 to '84, all mixed around? But then "Brown Eyed Girl" would not be heard again til September or early October, disappointing many...... :

 

[davideduardo]

I'm surprised that the average KRTH listener tunes in for only 15 minutes at a time.

The average PPM panelist listens to the radio in what averages out to be around 15 minute chunks. In the dairy, they might have written down listening from 9 to 5 at work, but in fact, due to interrruptions, lunch, the bathroom, phone calls, coffee breaks, chatting with other people, going to different work areas, etc., produce perhaps 2 hours of listening with tons of interruptions.

In the late '50s and early '60s when top-40 radio was in its so-called "glory years," didn't young people listen to KFWB or KRLA for hours at a time?

If we had the PPM back then, we would have seen the perception of non-stop listening broken by all manner of interruption and thus, less listening time and less time per listening incident.

And this was in an era where ten to twenty songs were being added to the Fabulous Forty and the Tune-Dex each week, replacing the songs that dropped off.

Was it really that many? I tracked station charts during the 60's, as I used them to program the English language music on my own CHR station, and the ones I followed like WABC, WIXY and WQAM seemed to add 3 to 4 songs a week on average... maybe 5 some weeks, and very few in the holidays.

 

[oldies76]

Incidents end when the station plays a bad song

But David....It's a bad song to some, not to all. That's what I've been trying to stress. At worst, it might rank as 50/50...a neutral type. Now unless you play that Chirpy Chirpy song that Rewind mentioned or something slow like "At Seventeen" (good song btw) at drive time or "Honey", then you might risk losing the masses (but even with those hits, a few will stick it through..).

You will still lose some listeners even with the tested songs....It happens all the time, with any song. Some less than others. 100% of your target will not like even a superior song like "Billie Jean"....It happens. Some like "Afternoon Delight"...heck wasn't that played on KRTH recently?

 

[Thomps2525]

Afternoon Delight was just an okay song...but it took on new meaning for me when legendary 1970s newsman Ron Burgundy sang it in the Anchorman movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RewPzVnrdb0

"Stay classy, San Diego!"

 

[michael hagerty]

I'm surprised that the average KRTH listener tunes in for only 15 minutes at a time. In the late '50s and early '60s when top-40 radio was in its so-called "glory years," didn't young people listen to KFWB or KRLA for hours at a time?

Steve: Yes. Young people had lots of time on their hands and fewer choices.

When you're 40-something and have kids, a commute, errands, a job and 9 stations that play music you like, you tend not to listen like a teen from the late 50s/early 60s.