Yes, not sure how to put a fast and slow song together without it sounding mismatched in some way.
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Song segues...how do they do it?
- Thread starter tall_guy1
- Start date
That's where you use a jingle or imaging.
I know one station that used sound effects of an actual trainwreck. Sounded great.
Good jingle packages include jingles that start out fast and then slow down, or vice versa, to aid in those transitions.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
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.
There are probably as many policies about jingles and imaging as there are programmers.
I listen to that station. https://legendsradio.com/ The format is standards. And not the standards/AC mix so many stations have.The ads? Not sure. The school? Absolutely.
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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.)
WDRCOBG.COM: Dick Robinson (1/21/25)
A Profile of WDRC's Dick Robinson. WDRCOBG.COM is an inside look at the history and people of WDRC Radio in Hartford, Connecticut. This web site is maintained by Ed Brouderwww.wdrcobg.com
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.
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.
"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.
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.
In two networks I worked with, we were using the song key as one of the parameters for Selector.
What we did was hire a musician who had this ability to detect the key. So, we would tell Selector "that songs starts in A-Major and ends in F-minor". And then that same musician had given us a compatibility list. (That key can work with those keys but not with those keys, etc.)
We were also coding the jingles the same way, and they were a great help for key transitions.
Of course, this approach would work mostly for Gold / AC stations, and obviously not for CHR where the rotations are so tight that you pretty much don't have the choice of "what to play next"
What we did was hire a musician who had this ability to detect the key. So, we would tell Selector "that songs starts in A-Major and ends in F-minor". And then that same musician had given us a compatibility list. (That key can work with those keys but not with those keys, etc.)
We were also coding the jingles the same way, and they were a great help for key transitions.
Of course, this approach would work mostly for Gold / AC stations, and obviously not for CHR where the rotations are so tight that you pretty much don't have the choice of "what to play next"
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
In two networks I worked with, we were using the song key as one of the parameters for Selector.
What we did was hire a musician who had this ability to detect the key. So, we would tell Selector "that songs starts in A-Major and ends in F-minor". And then that same musician had given us a compatibility list. (That key can work with those keys but not with those keys, etc.)
We were also coding the jingles the same way, and they were a great help for key transitions.
Of course, this approach would work mostly for Gold / AC stations, and obviously not for CHR where the rotations are so tight that you pretty much don't have the choice of "what to play next"
The first thing that came to mind was that forcing segues based on the song's key would create a huge imbalance in terms of having all songs in a category playing approximately equal times. I would never consider a policy that had the potential to make a total mess out of rotations ... especially in gold-based formats, where playing the consensus favorites neither too often or too seldom is essential.
I agree with you ;-)
The choir at my church has a hymnal that has songs paired which would fit together.
That would be one way of doing it.
That would be one way of doing it.
Of course not, that's why God invented production elements.
Back in 1974-76, there were attempts to match the key of a record with the jingle leading into it:
This is TM's InterKey:
Interr-Key-1974-Demo-TM-Productions.mp3
drive.google.com
And this is Century21's ChromaKey:
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And since @tall_guy1 asked about tempo-induced trainwrecks, that's what fast-to-slow and slow-to fast jingles were for. I've cued this to start with a fast-to-slow, and the next cut is a slow-to-fast:
I have the feeling their offerings would have been similarly good, but Century21 clearly did a more ear-pleasing job with their demo.This is TM's InterKey:
Interr-Key-1974-Demo-TM-Productions.mp3
And this is Century21's ChromaKey:
Just heard an excellent song for top of the hour. "Boomer 102.5" and 1270 WBOJ Columbus, GA just played The Animals "Please don't let me be misunderstood. "
Excellent choice!
Excellent choice!
It was interesting---the jingle field was crowded in the 70s (PAMS was still the big house, JAM was on fire), and TM was capable of great presentations, but Century 21 tried harder with that one.
Of course, in 1977, TM pretty well won the trophy for good with "Tomorrow Radio"--a 12-inch vinyl record with a comedic look at radio "six years into the future"---1983:
And on the other side, a highly-produced series of jingle demos: