As a former Ac jock in Ireland I listen to radio every day. How many songs do you think are on top 40,classic hit , oldies stations and that includes the Iheart and Sirus crews. I can tell you when I was on air on ac station in Ireland we had playlist of just 300 songs. I also know Capital Fm in London had as little 250. Love to know your experiences if you are on air jock or listener. Great forum by the way.
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Radio station playlists songs 300 or less?
- Thread starter Mido3737
- Start date
Some historical examples:
KRTH in Los Angeles (oldies) from 2001-2005 was running on about 300 titles.
Gerry Cagle wrote a supposedly fictional book, PAYOLA!, but the details, including jock names, were so thinly disguised that I assume this to be the actual formula he used at KFRC, San Francisco, when he programmed it from 1980-1984: 30 current hits, 50 recurrents, 100 golds. Total library: 180 titles. If you listnened to the station at the time (especially in '81-'83), you'd find that totally believable.
Bobby Ocean told me in 1979 that when John Sebastian left KHJ, Los Angeles and Chuck Martin took over as PD, there were 93 active titles on-air. That includes recurrents, gold, everything.
KRTH in Los Angeles (oldies) from 2001-2005 was running on about 300 titles.
Gerry Cagle wrote a supposedly fictional book, PAYOLA!, but the details, including jock names, were so thinly disguised that I assume this to be the actual formula he used at KFRC, San Francisco, when he programmed it from 1980-1984: 30 current hits, 50 recurrents, 100 golds. Total library: 180 titles. If you listnened to the station at the time (especially in '81-'83), you'd find that totally believable.
Bobby Ocean told me in 1979 that when John Sebastian left KHJ, Los Angeles and Chuck Martin took over as PD, there were 93 active titles on-air. That includes recurrents, gold, everything.
And how were KFRC and KHJ doing in the ratings and in billing during those under-200 and under-100 song years?
I can't speak to billing. In terms of ratings, KHJ had been in trouble for a while. John Sebastian was brought in to try to right the ship.
The station had a 3.3 when he arrived, he delivered a 3.6 with this approach (doesn't sound like much, but it was KHJ's best number in a year and better than all other stations in L.A. playing contemporary music, AM or FM), but it didn't last. The trend from there was 3.1-2.7-2.3 and John was gone.
His replacement, Chuck Martin, took the library back to "normal" levels and saw 2.1-1.8 and then, after KTNQ went Spanish, a bump up to a 2.4.
It worked a lot better at KFRC. Gerry inherited a 4.5 and went 4.8-5.4-5.4. That was '81. '82 was dicey---4.5-4.2-5.0-3.7, but that 3.7 was good for 3rd overall in the market and number one music station.
1983 went 4.1-4.2-3.9-3.0, but by that point KFRC had a chunk of FM competition from KSOL, KIOI, KYUU and KITS.
They inched up to a 3.1 in the Winter book and Gerry was gone, replaced by Mike Phillips, who'd been programming KYUU. He went very traditional mass-appeal top 40 with a much bigger gold library. And his numbers for the three remaining books of 1984 were 3.4-2.6-2.7.
It's worth remembering, though, in both cases you're dealing with AM stations in decline with FM on the rise. Would either of those approaches have worked better---or longer---if they'd been tried on a full market signal FM?
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It certainly is 300 seems the norm maybe someone on air could update us or maybe people who have worked in active rock in past.Great question.đź‘Ť
A newspaper article about WIST Greensboro said it had 2000 songs in its playlist but most of the music at the time came from Stardust.
Great feedback I thing you find it a lot less on Fm and Sat radio stations.
Very well.
In fact, if you go back to the days of true Top 40, stations played about 40 songs and a few "new" songs.
CHRs today really have around 20 currents, 4 or 5 new songs, and one or two categories of recurrents. Outside of specialty shows, 90 to 120 songs would be typical.
When I got to country WTNT in Tallahassee in 1990, they were playing 1200 songs. With the help of consultant Phil Hunt from the Rusty Walker group, we cut to less than 400 songs, cut back the number of total currents and sped up rotations of the remaining currents. ratings immediately went up by about 50%. Of course, it helped that we were the official station of the Noles....
The station I work for has a 50s/60s/70s format and includes around 2,500 songs in the rotation, which is more than double what it was a year ago and it continues to grow... The response so far appears to be positive!
How many people even KNOW 2,500 songs? Is there any semblance of a power rotation, or is the average listener likely to hear their favorite big hits just as often as they'll hear a song they don't remember at all?
I'm guessing your station is a mom-and-pop operation in a small town, not part of any rated market. I'm also guessing there are few or no major cities near it, and thus no big-market FM classic hits station for competition. More power to you if your advertisers and listeners support your little station, but I seriously doubt the average radio listener in your town is as enthusiastic about it as you imagine.
PS -- If you're still playing hundreds of '50s titles, be aware that many of those tunes' most enthusiastic fans now reside in your town's cemeteries.
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Here's a simple rule of thumb: The younger the target, the shorter the list. Simple.
That's a good question. First of all, we're talking about a currents-based format, such as CHR. People ask why there are so few adds, and the answer is because they only drop one or two songs a week. The decision to drop is based on a few things, such as the song has peaked. Two weeks after that, you drop it into recurrent. Or the song has been in currents for a few months without a lot of movement. Time to drop and add something new. Or the research shows up with some huge negatives. Once again, it's a good reason to drop. On the other hand, the research comes in, and it's overwhelmingly positive? Time to increase spins, move from medium into heavy, perhaps even jump a couple of songs. All the while, you're fielding calls from the record labels telling you why you should convert their song from medium to heavy.
We've been pulling back on the amount that 50s tunes come up in the rotation and focusing more on 60s/70s tunes.
The feedback that we've gotten from the community has been positive so far - we haven't had any negative comments so far as I am aware.
We're about 30 miles out of a big city. There is a big-market FM classic hits station in that city that reaches most of our coverage area. I've had several listeners reach out saying that they appreciate the variety that we feature that the classic hits station misses. Not to mention that they have pretty much gone 70s and newer and have a very small playlist.
We run a relatively tight playlist in the morning which gets looser in the afternoon before really opening up in the evenings with lots of variety. We also run an all-smooth overnight rotation with everything from Sinatra to the Carpenters & Eva Cassidy. That has also been met with positive feedback.
In addition to music we also feature local news and segments interviewing local businesses, etc. along with some of the local high school sports teams.
Generally, new adds to currents spend a while there, then more to recurrent and then to gold categories. It's likely in most formats that between music tests (directly done or shared by corporate) perhaps 20-30 songs will move through the ranks to gold.
A station can wait for the next music test, and just adjust rotations with slightly bigger gold categories, or they can remove what were the weakest songs from the last test. And, in some formats with lots of songs by certain artists, they might rest some of the weaker older songs as new songs filter down.
There area lot of ways of doing this...
Another is to "packet" some songs by the same artist so that in one rotation of the category one plays, in the second rotation, the other plays. This is a common practice with artists with"too many" hits.
Still another is to rest some songs, and automatically have a group of songs with a percentage resting, with a few coming back each week or so and a few going to rest at the same time.
Or they are telling you to go on the new release and drop the previous one... even though that previous one is the #1 song on your "callout" research and you have to keep it in power.
How much attention is given to an emphasis on seasonal play? Let's say you're running a Classic Hits or Jack-style format. We have your core consensus library. There are core songs that were monster hits peaking at a certain time of the year. Since songs are tied to memory, is it wise to have a 'seasoning' of the library by upping the rotation on those positive testing songs that peaked at a certain time of year? Naturally these songs might get a lower rotation at other points during the year. How much, if any, emphasis is placed on time of year the song peaked to determine it's rotation during the time of year the song peaked?
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