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Should stations' playlists be as narrow as they possibly can?

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tall_guy1

tall_guy1

This is in part of the ethos of some of the posts here, but I wonder if narrowing station's playlists even more would be a good idea? For example, if a Hot AC station plays Kryptonite by 3 Doors down, should it be cut? There is always a way a station's playlist could be more narrow, so should broadcasters generally go that route and eliminate any form of "outliers"?
 
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They should play what their audience and market research and testing tells them they should play. Don't add. Don't try and "give" the audience something they didn't "ask for".
 
tall_guy1 said:
This is in part of the ethos of some of the posts here, but I wonder if narrowing station's playlists even more would be a good idea? For example, if a Hot AC station plays Kryptonite by 3 Doors down, should it be cut? There is always a way a station's playlist could be more narrow, so should broadcasters generally go that route and eliminate any form of "outliers"?
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Stations do not set out to narrow or widen playlists. They set out to play the songs that their listeners have a consensus strong liking for. It there are 400 or 600 makes no difference; they just don't play weak songs to get to a "goal" of a certain number or, inversely, cut out good songs to "keep the list short.

Stations ask their listeners to score lots and lots of songs. The ones that get on the playlists are the ones that are generally viewed positively by everyone.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Stations do not set out to narrow or widen playlists. They set out to play the songs that their listeners have a consensus strong liking for. It there are 400 or 600 makes no difference; they just don't play weak songs to get to a "goal" of a certain number or, inversely, cut out good songs to "keep the list short.

Stations ask their listeners to score lots and lots of songs. The ones that get on the playlists are the ones that are generally viewed positively by everyone.
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But within that list, aren't there songs that don't score "as high" as others that could potentially be cut?
 
tall_guy1 said:
But within that list, aren't there songs that don't score "as high" as others that could potentially be cut?
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Generally, the songs that are near a cutoff point... usually where one subset likes them less than the other subsets... are individually looked at to see if their benefits are greater than the risk we take in playing the.

For example, if a song is weaker in the younger female portion of our sample, we consider if the variety the song will add is more valuable than any risk it brings. Every song is looked at from a number of perspectives... some are easy to understand like different age groups, gender and ethnicity. Others are complex, like cluster analysis to see if there are subsets of taste groups within our total listener set that are not related to age, gender and other obvious factors. Or we may look at shorter total hour listeners vs. longer ones, or only drive time listeners and so on.

And, of course, we look at listener groups that use different streaming sources and/or competitive stations.
 
AbrahamJSimpson said:
At some point, doesn’t it get tiring to keep posting this same stuff over and over and over?
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I type fast and, of course, it is sort of part of the moderator task to explain as best I can things that those who do not or have not worked in radio don't know or understand. Part of the function of this site is to give those who want to know more about how radio works a place to ask questions.
 
Kelly A said:
I know, right? Keep asking essentially the same question a slightly different way hoping for a result you want. If one made a drinking game from these posts, you'd become an alcoholic pretty quick.
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No, trying something a bit different this time. I am wondering if narrowing even further would improve things.
 
It’s not really different. It’s been explained there is a general “sweet spot” that stations are going to hover around. This is kind of a back door way to get to the same proposition about playlists.

Maybe there’s a Kansas City station that would somehow “improve” (depending on what that is intended to convey) if they cut one or two songs? Just hypothesizing.
 
Should we revert back to the Top 40 days of programming, then?
 
tall_guy1 said:
No, trying something a bit different this time. I am wondering if narrowing even further would improve things.
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The answer is that lots of stations have improved their ratings by tightening up the playlist -- essentially trimming the fat.

But there's no firm rule. In other words, a radio station playing 250 titles is not necessarily going to beat one playing 400 titles.
 
tall_guy1 said:
No, trying something a bit different this time. I am wondering if narrowing even further would improve things.
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What's different about asking the same question related to playlist size over and over? Do you really think some of us haven't answered your similar questions prior?
 
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