"Not sure what that means - they still play all the top 15 hits like they always did."
With all due respect if you think that all there is to it and all they do is play the top 15 hits there is just no way for me educate you on the facts of programming music on a message board.
CHR stations play currents, usually they have 4 or 5 songs that they play much much more so than any other songs, those are the songs in power rotation. A power may be played 110 times a week, with there being just 4 or 5 of them, then the next most played current songs in "B" rotation will be 50 times a week, so they are played half as many times. The power comes up every 75 minutes, while the rotation for the sub power would be maybe every 3 hours.
Then there are recurrents, power recurrents being songs that were hits from a few months back to maybe a year and a half, power recurrents being stronger songs that get a higher rotation that other recurrents. Then you have gold selections, songs from a few years back as well.
Then there is the flow of the station based upon the tempo of the songs they play, the sound, the genre etc and how they are rotated to play next to other songs.
What I have noticed, and in my opinion, while z100 is a very good sounding radio station right now, far superior to the mess that most other chrs in this country play, their sound and overall music selection and how they are played is not as strong as it was earlier this year and last year. This goes into the powers they choose sure, but also how long they are powers, how they are rotated, the new songs they choose to play and how fast they up the rotations of those, and the selections made for golds and power recurrents.
Take 965 in philly, as wired the music was a mess and they got a bit over a 2 share. They switched it to amp radio and made the music rotations and song choices much more focused and better, in doing that they got the station up over a 3 share. Those are 6+ numbers yes, but as always today stations are focused to their target demos, so if they go up you can be sure that the station is doing better in those target demos. Now on the surface to the untrained ear and or those who aren't schooled in modern hit music, you might say what is the difference all they do is play the top 15 songs, but there obviously is so much more to it than that and it transcends to how many people listen and also how long they stick around.
Obviously the basics like that every 15 minutes should give the listener an undeniable reflection of what your station is about and all that it offers are all going to be covered well by a station that makes over 50 million dollars a year in the #1 market, my comments on z100 are more minimal but it trying to squeeze out every bit of share you can as is the name of the game, these little nuances matter a great deal.
