Please explain it again

[ArtSpooner]

I'm pretty sure that this topic has been discussed before, but could we try it again? I usually listen to sports radio. The program changes at WEEI and the hockey talk have sent me to 103.3, 100.1, and 105.7. Why, in the name of Bruce Bradley, do they keep playing the same songs every day? They have a gazillion songs to choose from, especially now that they're trying to slip in garbage from the 80s.

Back in the old days, when we were listening to our transistors, the way it worked was, a song would be popular and on the charts for a few, or even many weeks and we would hear it every day. Eventually it would become, what they called an "Oldie" and you would only hear it once in a while. That system always worked for me. Now with 40+ years of rock 'n roll, there is a sufficient library of songs in existence so that you should be able to go longer than ONE STINKING DAY without hearing the same song again.

Rant completed. Over and out.

 

[CTListener]

Only 400 or so songs from that entire era test well with the all-powerful focus groups, it seems. From what I understand, you get 300 people of a certain age in an auditorium and play them a snippet of "Layla," and 275 of them are going to nod their heads and say, "Good tune!" You play something that hasn't gotten a spin on FM since the day it fell off the WCOZ playlist and you're going to get 75 "Wow! I'd forgotten about this song!"s and 225 "What IS this?"s.

As a listener who would be in the minority on the latter hypothetical song, that frustrates me, but numbers don't lie.

 

[JJ Wright]

........ They have a gazillion songs to choose from, especially now that they're trying to slip in garbage from the 80s.

Back in the old days, when we were listening to our transistors, the way it worked was, a song would be popular and on the charts for a few, or even many weeks and we would hear it every day. Eventually it would become, what they called an "Oldie" and you would only hear it once in a while. That system always worked for me. Now with 40+ years of rock 'n roll, there is a sufficient library of songs in existence so that you should be able to go longer than ONE STINKING DAY without hearing the same song again.

Rant completed. Over and out.

Interesting. Man I've been hearing the same complaints about repetition of songs for nearly 40 years now. If our short playlists drive ya crazy, you should listen to KISS or Jamn for a day or so

 

[Laurence Glavin]

I'm pretty sure that this topic has been discussed before, but could we try it again? I usually listen to sports radio. The program changes at WEEI and the hockey talk have sent me to 103.3, 100.1, and 105.7. Why, in the name of Bruce Bradley, do they keep playing the same songs every day? They have a gazillion songs to choose from, especially now that they're trying to slip in garbage from the 80s.

Back in the old days, when we were listening to our transistors, the way it worked was, a song would be popular and on the charts for a few, or even many weeks and we would hear it every day. Eventually it would become, what they called an "Oldie" and you would only hear it once in a while. That system always worked for me. Now with 40+ years of rock 'n roll, there is a sufficient library of songs in existence so that you should be able to go longer than ONE STINKING DAY without hearing the same song again.

Rant completed. Over and out.

"Over": in radio parlance signifies that the sender has temporarily finished transmitting and is awaiting a reply or acknowledgement; "out": this signifies that the sender has finished the message and is not expecting a reply. The two words are polar opposites.

 

[Jimmy128]

That is why I stopped listening to WZLX a long time ago. You could count on hearing "Come Together" "Satisfaction" "Freebird" "Stairway to Heaven" and "Goin' Mobile" every day. I don't know what they play now.

 

[CrankyYankee]

This is the same comment I heard when I was selling cable TV and folks would tell me they didn't want HBO because they showed the same stuff over and over(and over!) Of course they do...they're on 24/7. Then add in the extra HBO channels and you more of the same more often. Watch something else now and then for cripes sake! We live in a great country with more that two or three radio stations available to us. Listen to something else once in a while and give the 'Hits" a rest!
(Remember the playlist from the WHTT days?! OY!)

 

[Jimc]

Remember when the TOP Hits...hottest "currents" were played every HOUR (sometimes hour and a half!!!)???

Those were the daaaayys!

 

[Bigtime Bowler]

Interesting. Man I've been hearing the same complaints about repetition of songs for nearly 40 years now. If our short playlists drive ya crazy, you should listen to KISS or Jamn for a day or so Smiley

JJ -- I'd really like to think higher of you to point fingers as a defense. Two totally different beasts...

 

[progressivetalk]

First, the music played by WZLX and other stations, no matter how many times you've heard it is still so many times better than the crap that passes for music today that I can't count that high. AS for the hockey talk, try listening to it. Hockey IS the world's greatest sport, even in Boston (and I'm rooting for the Canucks).

 

[diamondj]

It seems to me that classic rock is the only format that would allow the exact same songs not to be repeated two days in a row. Yes, Led Zeppelin would be played every day but not the exact same song two days in a row. If classic hits (aka oldies) plays something from a core artist, there are fewer songs that are "ok" to play than a classic rock station's core artist. If I hear "Elton John is coming up," I have a better chance of guessing what song it will be on WODS/WROR versus WZLX.
It also seems like artists like Roy Orbison and Abba only had one or two hits in their careers.

 

[Jimmy128]

First of all, the big radio networks think people are idiots. Also, now we have WODS and WROR (I still think of them as WEEI-FM and WVBF) playing the exact same format. Roy Orbison had at least 20 hits. And here's what I really want to say, just imagine if a station, any format, played a no repeat week. They easily could.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

Roy Orbison had at least 20 hits.

But, they are, for the most part, now considered too old for the demographic that sponsors want to target. The one exception, "Oh, Pretty Woman" from 1964, had a more recent resurgence that gave it a somewhat younger audience due to its use in the popular movie of the same name (minus the "Oh") twenty years ago, so it still tests well in focus groups of the target age.

 

[JJ Wright]

Interesting. Man I've been hearing the same complaints about repetition of songs for nearly 40 years now. If our short playlists drive ya crazy, you should listen to KISS or Jamn for a day or so Smiley

JJ -- I'd really like to think higher of you to point fingers as a defense. Two totally different beasts...

Just simply saying that radio, musically: playlists, rotations and so on, to me, has been this way for as long as I remember.

 

[johnster]

Interesting. Man I've been hearing the same complaints about repetition of songs for nearly 40 years now. If our short playlists drive ya crazy, you should listen to KISS or Jamn for a day or so Smiley

JJ -- I'd really like to think higher of you to point fingers as a defense. Two totally different beasts...

Bigtime, In JJ's 40 years he is including his time spent there as well as other places. And through all those years of complaints he's been at some pretty successful places. So I think you misunderstood his post he's not pointing fingers he's talking facts from years of experience. Some today would argue short rotations are even more important a PPM world.

 

[ArtSpooner]

Interesting. Man I've been hearing the same complaints about repetition of songs for nearly 40 years now. If our short playlists drive ya crazy, you should listen to KISS or Jamn for a day or so


[/quote]So you've been ignoring the same same complaints for 40 years. Well at least I'm not alone. Did it ever occur to you that I don't listen to those stations because I don't like most of the music they play? I listen to the so-called oldie stations because I like the music from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. I'm annoyed because they limit themselves to such a small portion of it.

To the poster who commented on "Over and out". Nobody likes a pedantic weenie.

 

[JJ Wright]

I listen to the so-called oldie stations because I like the music from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. I'm annoyed because they limit themselves to such a small portion of it.

Point taken. Hope you find a station that gives you what you want. I honestly think 50's have not been played on Boston radio for years. Even when I came to WRKO in 73, we played perhaps one every couple of hours, if any at all.

 

[CTListener]

I listen to the so-called oldie stations because I like the music from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. I'm annoyed because they limit themselves to such a small portion of it.

Point taken. Hope you find a station that gives you what you want. I honestly think 50's have not been played on Boston radio for years. Even when I came to WRKO in 73, we played perhaps one every couple of hours, if any at all.

It's a little better on satellite, although Sirius XM has shriveled the playlists on all of its decades channels since the merger. "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Oh Pretty Woman" often get three spins a day. Each channel has maybe 700 songs from the appropriate era in regular rotation, nearly all of them top-10 hits, the rest are either only played on specialty shows or are designated as too low-charting/poor-testing for airplay under any circumstances. I guess NOT playing "Brown Eyed Girl" every day gets listeners more ticked off than playing it does, and only the oldies geeks apparently want anything but familiar tunes played. So much for any fundamental difference between the typical FM listener and the typical satellite radio listener, eh?

 

[johnster]

Well I don't think Satellite radio has ever gotten out of the black. They have been caught many times lying about how many of their subscribers actually pay for the service. And each time Arbitron offers them free PPM encoders they turn them down. It almost seems like they don't want us to know how many folks listen to them? So I'm not sure they are a good comparison as they don't compete in the same forum "the PPM world".

It's a little better on satellite, although Sirius XM has shriveled the playlists on all of its decades channels since the merger. "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Oh Pretty Woman" often get three spins a day. Each channel has maybe 700 songs from the appropriate era in regular rotation, nearly all of them top-10 hits, the rest are either only played on specialty shows or are designated as too low-charting/poor-testing for airplay under any circumstances. I guess NOT playing "Brown Eyed Girl" every day gets listeners more ticked off than playing it does, and only the oldies geeks apparently want anything but familiar tunes played. So much for any fundamental difference between the typical FM listener and the typical satellite radio listener, eh?

 

[DToTheJ]

Well, with about a half-dozen terrestrial stations joining the XM lineup, they might as well encode for PPM!

 

[Signpost]

I agree with JJ. Complaints about repetition go back to the beginning of "Top 40" in the late '50's. Tight playlists always worked at leveraging the "lowest common denominator" into salable ratings. This is nothing new. And there was nothing you could do. It was tyranny.

But now you can carry thousands of songs in your pocket, discover new music on any computer or smartphone, and choose between thousands of stations to listen to on the internet.

Just like 1000 channels on cable TV resulted in a staggering variety of new program options compared to what you got surfing between channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 25, 38 and 56 in 1970.