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Song segues...how do they do it?

I think it's a real art. When it's approaching top of the hour, you might play " Color My World" five minutes or so before station ID, then after ID play "Satisfaction." But never the other way around. What's difficult to do correctly is going from a fast to a slow song. You'd probably play a slow station ID to introduce a slow song. Don't think I've ever heard an Anne Murray song at top of the hour. Or Chris Cross. Unless maybe you're on a "light FM" type station.
Yes, not sure how to put a fast and slow song together without it sounding mismatched in some way.
 
Or sometimes you keep sweeper jingles mid-tempo so they segue between anything, and save the uptempo ones for coming out of stopsets, where you need the emphasis after so much spoken word content.

There are probably as many policies about jingles and imaging as there are programmers.
 
The ads? Not sure. The school? Absolutely.

Founded by WDRC's Dick Robinson way back in the '60s, it's still active, as is, remarkably, its founder! The excellent WDRC history site devotes three full pages to Dick and his lengthy career, which started in the '50s. Last updated this past January, it indicates that Dick now programs a station in Florida. (That mention is at the bottom of Page 3.)
I listen to that station. https://legendsradio.com/ The format is standards. And not the standards/AC mix so many stations have.
 
Getting back to the original topic, the urban AC station in Charlotte used to do a show where one song would segue into another. A popular pair of songs was "Rapper's Delight" by Sugarhill Gang and "Good Times" by Chic.
 
Some automation software allows you to manually edit every segue throughout the day by changing the cue points. You do this in an effort to "keep things tight". You can change exactly when the sweeper starts and when the next song starts as the sweeper ends. It overrides the original "cue point" that you originally give every song or imaging element.

Some stations actually produce custom versions of songs. Z100 in NY is great with segues. As an example, they have Katy Perry or Taylor Swift singing the station name and slogan at the beginning their songs. They do this a lot with artists and it's seamless. They even change the first few lyrics of the song. However, their budget is endless compared to most markets. KDWB does this in some forms as well. There is a lot less of it today, as many imaging directors are handling multiple clusters instead of just one or two stations.
 
There is a lot less of it today, as many imaging directors are handling multiple clusters instead of just one or two stations.
"Imaging Director"? What is that? I have worked in some of the biggest stations in some of the biggest markets, but never had someone dedicated just to doing station imaging (and I am talking about stations even in a market bigger than New York).

This arouses my curiosity, as we all live in a world only as big as our personal experiences: do any station (or did they at one time) have a person dedicated only to station sweepers, liners, promos, etcetera?
 
"Imaging Director"? What is that? I have worked in some of the biggest stations in some of the biggest markets, but never had someone dedicated just to doing station imaging (and I am talking about stations even in a market bigger than New York).

This arouses my curiosity, as we all live in a world only as big as our personal experiences: do any station (or did they at one time) have a person dedicated only to station sweepers, liners, promos, etcetera?
Yes, it was a common thing. Specifically for those two stations, Dave Foxx was the longtime imaging director for Z100.

Ricky Roo was at KDWB, and now does it nationally for iHeart. KDWB had a few over the years.

Scott Stanley at WLW comes to mind as well. Pure genius. He focused solely on WLW. IHeart realized he was a genius and took him national as well. He retired last month but still writes for Premier's NT/Ammo imaging service.
 
I know of a cluster (current times) that refers to it as "Topical Content Producer." Three stations all driven by news, talk and sports. They produced and kept fresh daily promos and imaging and had next to nothing to do with producing commercials, the production director did that.
 
I know of a cluster (current times) that refers to it as "Topical Content Producer." Three stations all driven by news, talk and sports. They produced and kept fresh daily promos and imaging and had next to nothing to do with producing commercials, the production director did that.
Production Director? What's that? I watched those departments dwindle down to nothing. Now it's a jock from Arizona voicing your local car dealership ad in Connecticut.

A lot of News/Talk/Sports stations today use a service that produce the promos and imaging. All you have to do is drop your voice guy in.

At one time, over at iHeart the PD of the News/Talker in Memphis could get an email asking them to make a promo for a talker in Nevada. They all used the same imaging service from Premiere. Everyone had the generic station work parts from the voice guys of all those stations. If you saw a promo you liked you put in a request. All you had to do was drop their local tag in and send it off. It wouldn't surprise me if the CHR stations had a similar setup where they share resources.
 


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