Who gives a crap? You change when you need to change within your demo. That's what keeps things fresh. If you're lucky and have done appropriate research, you reap benefits. If not, you might go in a different direction. None of this is rocket science.
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Stations that have drastically changed their sound?
- Thread starter tall_guy1
- Start date
Yeah, I’m not following the previous logic. Of course a station changes sounds even within its format. Heck, forget just music stations, so do spoken word formats. In Philly here, the WIP of today doesn’t sound like it did 25 years ago (or whenever it became sports). Sure, the complaints about the teams are the same decade after decade, but the hosts have very different styles and the station personality is different.
I guess that also means the general premise of the thread is unclear. The fastest way to die is to not change and evolve.
I guess that also means the general premise of the thread is unclear. The fastest way to die is to not change and evolve.
Stations change their "sound" in what is normally a gradual process.
Either the station or the like formatted stations in a company do research and they regularly adjust the music library to reflect changes in taste and, importantly, the aging into the station's demo of "new" listeners and the aging out of older ones they no longer wish to appeal to.
So in a market that is increasingly Hispanic, a station may increase the number of Hispanics in their research. They may find that some songs that are even well liked by the oldest "cell" of their audience are very negative for the younger portion and for people aging into their format's target. So those songs may be eliminated totally or slowed down in rotation to reflect those changes.
If a station did not do deep research for a period of time due to cost or a management decision, when they finally do get some data, they may find that significant changes have to be made.
And changes in the programming team at a station may be accompanied by changes in the way songs are rotated, categorized and rested. There are ways I'd never program that other good PD might use successfully... just like different artists will paint the same scene with different motifs, color intensities, brush strokes and the like.
I read his frequent posts as trying to make a point about his own personal music philosophy tied with perceived music changes from his personal radio listening experiences, by essentially asking the same question several different ways. Ultimately his hope is to pin down radio pros into admitting that large playlists of untested music would tap into an untapped bonanza of younger radio listeners.
Essentially, he needs to understand the logic of why McDonalds does not serve sushi and French wines.
McSushi. Mmmm
Agree, but he wants to correlate the overall popularity of french fries based on seagulls fighting over one on the ground in the McDonald's parking lot.
Well, in Argentina they have McPalta… “palta” being avocado.
Well, maybe they should. 🤔
I'd be curious to see old music logs for when exactly a station makes these changes. A lot of times I notice theyre accompanied by either a slogan change or some kind of change like "now with 10 songs in a row" soas its not as noticeable.
Very often a music test implementation is a good moment to changed some of the imaging so that the music "refresh", changed song categories / rotations and the like will be emphasized.
Personally, I prefer to "step" any songs that are being added into the list, starting at a low rotation while moving dropped songs out slowly by putting permanent rest dates on them that are as much as a couple of weeks later. Others do instant swaps and moves. There are no rules.
When I worked at a station that went from Mainstream CHR to Rhythmic CHR about 20 years ago, here's how we did it. As David mentions, there's no right or wrong way to do it, but here's what we did:
1) Adjusted our music mix from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM immediately. Went from a standard CHR rotation to 3 urbans and one pop half the day.
2) Softer pop hits, like Sheryl Crow "Soak Up the Sun" and "The First Cut is the Deepest" were immediately dayparted to 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM Monday thru Friday. Softer pop hits more than 18 months old were spiked.
3) Changed our nighttime programs to edgier names. "Make It or Break It" became "Q It or Screw It." "Demand Radio" became "The Booty Call," where, instead of demanding your favorite songs, you had to tell a relationship, love or sex story to get your song on-the-air.
4) A few more rhythmic songs were added, mostly at the expense of pop gold tracks, in morning drive and between 4:00 and 6:00. Those dayparts became more rhythmic over time while the midday show began sounding more and more like the morning show and afternoon drivetime.
What we didn't change:
1) Positioners. We were always "THEEEEE Hit Music Channel" and "THEEEEEE 20-in-a-row Hit Music Channel."
2) Personalities. Well, not immediately, anyway. Shortly after the switch, our morning show, minus the female sidekick, moved to another market. Our PD/afternoon personality and night guy/MD were the morning show when the station was on a weaker signal. They went back to mornings. The morning sidekick picked up a few hours of the midday shift. Afternoons went to the midday guy, and we had hired a host of an urban program on the community noncommercial radio station for part-time/weekend work and promoted him to 6:00 PM to midnight.
3) Imaging. Well, okay, we made a few changes, but they were subtle. Softer and slower jingles were dayparted to 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM before being phased out altogether, and we added a handful more of what we referred to as "Quick Hits," which were station liners between songs.
This is a good example of how complex music selection, scheduling and sequencing can be and how they are tied together with imaging.
Some think that a radio station is just an "iPod on shuffle". It involves hours of work a day in scheduling, working on imaging, etc.
If I could think of one station in the world that almost never changed anything (except some music) it was probably Ecos del Torbes, which I used to hear on the Tropical band. From the 70s through the end of the shortwave relay, to the end of the AM and forced dissolution of the entire company and remaining online stream, it seemed to be the same presentation, same news intro (including “El Mundo Al Dia”) and the long-running “Lo Que Esta Noche Recuerda”.
I didnt know rhythmic chrs ever played sheryl crow. Were the personalities on board with the changes, or were they more mainstream chr "people?"
Back in the late 90s, many Rhythmics played My Heart Will Go On, and some played How Do I Live. Sometimes, the Rhythmic acts as the mass appeal / hit music station for the market, especially when there is a lack of a mainstream Top 40. (For much of the 00s, plenty of California radio markets, including San Francisco (!!!), lacked a mainstream CHR. And KIIS and KHTS, whilst mainstream, leaned heavily into hip hop, even moreso than in 2023.)
When we first decided to go rhythmic, we were only a true rhythmic from 6:00 PM - 6:00 AM. With all forms of CHR, the popular songs change relatively quickly. So, as “Soak Up the Sun” and “The First Cut Is the Deepest” became less popular, we further rolled back how often we played them. They weren’t on the playlist for very long all things considered.
We just wanted to win. We didn't see ourselves as CHR people. We saw ourselves as winners. I didn’t personally like the music, but I wanted to have fun and have fun for as long as I could. I always knew there were two types of people in radio, those who have been fired and those who will be, and I was willing to do whatever I could to make sure the inevitable didn’t happen. Having an AC in the building meant we could use the new rhythmic CHR and the AC to squeeze the heritage CHR. It worked brilliantly.
Sometimes you can tell a station "wants" to be a different format when you hear it. For example, I get the sense 99.7 the point in kc "wants" to be a full blown chr but isnt to fill the void in the market. They even have "the friday flex" on friday mornings with lots of rhythmic "party" songs that dont at all seem hot ac. Moreover, I kind of wonder if the personalities on mix 93.3 (a chr) like the music they play. They are in their 40s-50s (especially rocket and teresa) and think maybe its not their type of music for the most part.
I'm not sure what you mean by saying a station wants to be a different format. Depending on your competition and other stations in your cluster, you can sound a little different from the norm for your format. The Point does a great job at getting 25-49 females, and it's trying to get those listeners more than it's trying to be any one format.
I grew up listening to Ronnie Rocket on KJ103 in Oklahoma City. I turn 48 in a few days, and he's quite-a-bit older than I am. I have to think he's at least 60. I can remember him hosting afternoons and nights on KJ103 before I was old enough to drive. Teresa is a couple years older than I am, and I had friends who went to high school with her. I don’t believe either of them has ever done anything but CHR. I don’t know what they think of today's hit music, but they've been at Mix for almost 22 years, and their numbers have been as good as they've ever been. Mix used to have the opposite problem of 98.9 The Rock. At The Rock, it had phenomenal numbers in the morning with Johnny Dare and dived the rest of the day. Mix had mediocre morning ratings and went up as the day went on. Rocket and Teresa helped solve that problem.
Stations don’t want things because they’re not living things. The people who run them want to succeed at their jobs. And how did this loop back to the silliness about what the personalities want to play? Read all the postings about people who move jobs and formats all the time.
There aren’t enough eyeroll emojis in the world for this.
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