Dear Lord, please help us. If that playlist on the sixties channel gets any tighter they will be able to fit it through a key hole..I hear 98.6 by Keith at least 4 times every day. They have to start playing tunes that didn't make it into the top 15 or folks will go crazy. It is worse that Top 20 radio years ago. At least they played a Pick Hit of the Week.
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That Poor Pathetic PLaylist on Sixties on 6
- Thread starter FRR
- Start date
FRR said:
Lou Simon is programming that channel. He's added some songs to the playlist, but according to messages he sent to various listeners in his first couple of months, he is limited in how far he can go. Apparently, Scott Greenstein and his immediate yes-men (like Kid Kelly) are convinced that tight-playlist is the only approach that works for oldies or any other format focused on hits. That means saturation rotation for the songs that test well and maybe a few others that are personal favorites of the PD, with everything else on once-in-a-blue-moon rotation. The argument is that it works just fine on your typical "good times and great oldies" FM station, and that satellite listeners basically want to hear FM playlists without the commercials. If the numbers for the decades channels are healthy, then a few complaints from oldies completists aren't going to get them to change.
Lee Abrams, when he was in charge at XM, wasn't afraid to do things he'd never done in terrestrial. That's never been Sirius' approach, and now that the Sirius suits are 100 percent in charge, playlists will likely shrink even further as audience research continues. Don't forget, FM is full of very successful station with playlists of under 400 titles, so it's not the broad masses (sheeple) who are bothered by repetition.
I believe the "Sheeple" don't listen with the intensity of the "completist" or deep music thinker. Unfortnately, they outnumber the deep-people. :'(
The argument is that it works just fine on your typical "good times and great oldies" FM station, and that satellite listeners basically want to hear FM playlists without the commercials. If the numbers for the decades channels are healthy, then a few complaints from oldies completists aren't going to get them to change.
Lee Abrams, when he was in charge at XM, wasn't afraid to do things he'd never done in terrestrial. That's never been Sirius' approach, and now that the Sirius suits are 100 percent in charge, playlists will likely shrink even further as audience research continues. Don't forget, FM is full of very successful station with playlists of under 400 titles, so it's not the broad masses (sheeple) who are bothered by repetition.
[/quote]
But what is this based on? Is there research that truly gets into the listening habits of satellite listeners - and, if so, does it show it being similar to terrestrial habits (e.g. time spent listening?)? My sense is that that doesn't exist - and the lazy programmers are just rehashing the testing they have always depended on.
Lee Abrams, when he was in charge at XM, wasn't afraid to do things he'd never done in terrestrial. That's never been Sirius' approach, and now that the Sirius suits are 100 percent in charge, playlists will likely shrink even further as audience research continues. Don't forget, FM is full of very successful station with playlists of under 400 titles, so it's not the broad masses (sheeple) who are bothered by repetition.
[/quote]
But what is this based on? Is there research that truly gets into the listening habits of satellite listeners - and, if so, does it show it being similar to terrestrial habits (e.g. time spent listening?)? My sense is that that doesn't exist - and the lazy programmers are just rehashing the testing they have always depended on.
microbob said:
I've heard Spectrum's promos for this listener involvement gimmick -- "Tastemakers" -- and am unimpressed. Spectrum runs tracks that show up on the greatest percentage of surveys into the ground, playing them every three or four hours for weeks on end. It also drops titles and artists that don't click with enough respondents completely. It's just another way of running a channel the big-city FM way -- trusting the research and keeping the playlist tight. Typical soulless Sirius programming approach, transferred to a genre that wasn't programmed that way before the 2008 takeover.
I just recently became a fan of the Triple A format, so maybe I'm not the best judge of this, but I don't consider playing a song every 3 or 4 hours "running it into the ground". That's about 40-50 spins per week for song in power rotation. CHR, Urban and Rhythmic are close to 100. Now THAT is a tight playlist.
N
nocomradio
Guest
J. Rob said:
I probably don't represent the "average" listener, but I used to have XM on all day in my shop 5 days a week. Granted, there are a lot of channels, but since the takeover by Sirius it wasn't uncommon to hear many of them play a rotation of songs, (particularly on Sunday nights) and then repeat the exact rotation the next morning.
It really got maddening to find myself paying for that level of repetition. That may be fine for a station that plays a new release from a new artist like they used to do years ago to give the exposure the need, but for the sheer amount of music out there, a little variety and digging a little deeper certainly doesn't seem to me to be asking too much. Heck, the listeners might actually enjoy that, but we'd never know because the Big Daddy Sirius knows what's best.
F
flashback
Guest
i thought one of the reasons people went to satelite radio was to get away from the short sighted playlists.if people are going to get a lack of variety they might as well listen to commercal radio and save monthly payments.
What about "That Poor Pathetic Audio Quality on XM?"
flashback said:
FM content without the commercials is another subscription driver. There are plenty of people who like commercial radio's playlists just the way they've always been but can't stand the increased commercial load, particularly the 5- to 8-minute stop sets on some stations. My opinion has always been that the genre specialists and deep-playlist buffs drove subsrciptions in satellite radio's early years. Now the medium has to convince the great American mainstream to climb on board. Like it or not, pushing the commercial-free nature of the service and the familiarity of the music has more potential to turn those people into subscribers than putting 2,000-song playlists on the decades channels.
F
flashback
Guest
so the boring selection of music creeps in satallite radio .
N
nocomradio
Guest
flashback said:
My point exactly: Why sound like everything else?
Instead of selling ad time to the local used car purveyor, or hearing the same droning commercial for the local community college for the umpteenth time, Sirius has decided to bore us to death with playlists that mirror what you get between commercials to draw in their equivalent of ad sales in the form of subscribers.
I can't speak for the radio industry, but as a successful business owner of 15 years now, I find this business model strange in that it somehow survives while alienating its customer base and doing exactly the opposite of what it takes to stay afloat in the business world. I am sure this will all catch up in the end, but how long will that take? I can't help but be just a little jealous in the fact that I have to work really hard to be successful and retain my customer base for an average wage while Sirius doesn't even try.
I dropped XM a few years ago and constantly get the promo in the mail....5 months for twenty dollars...or something like that. They never ask me why I don't take them up on their offer. Small playlists are one of the main reasons. As a club/restaurant DJ for years I notice young people like oldies but there are certain ones they can't take.....example The Show Must Go On by Three Dog Night (comments are...what is that weird circus song? I don't like it.) But most oldies they never heard before people are neutral or learn to like. Most music surveys ask people to identify the song which is not a true test if it should be played. If they never heard the song it is not going to rate well...but again is the true test of music? A lot of songs take a little time to grow on you.....like many tv shows that were almost cancelled but became big hits. Of course the short attention span and greed of this era is part of the problem. I have to admit if someone writes too much in a comment on radio-info I skip some of it....so I will cut this short.
I don't know what some of you guys have been bitchin' about ...but I hear some surprises in there where instead of going Oh WOW!, I'm going Huh What? I hear some cuts that are alittle too deep. Some of those that I wouldn't add on an oldies or 60's stations. On a twin spin weekend...I heard a Pet Clark song calleed the "Other Mans Grass is always Greener". Not one of her best and probably a mid charter. What's the sense of playing that if it stiffed the first time due to the lack of her other hits. Another one was from a group called Orpheus. What? It sounded like a mid-charter or below. I don't remeber hearing that as a current, And there's reason why. Another surprise was from a song by the Tokens....an old shampoo commercial. I haven't heard that since the commercial was out as a child. There were a few more featured that charted in the 50's-60's, upper 40's or put it like this...songs major markets would shy away from adding on to the playlist when they were currently out. It seems like 60's on 6 either goes from 5-10 Corporate research oldies...to an oldie that I don't think you'll find at a flee market. One extreme to the other. It doesn't have to be not played because it mid-charted...but make sure the selection is good. You will hear surprises that you'll have to look up in a Joel Whitburn book, or Wikipedia or something like it.
I'm for hiring Ricky the K, and let him bring his show that he did on-line to xm. Talk about variety!
If Wikipedia is accurate in their article on Orpheus, then one of their songs (don't know it this was the song referred to) was number 1 in some markets.Starbucks said:
"Many ask why "Can't Find the Time" went to #1 in their market but did not chart higher nationally. It is because those instances did not occur at the same time. MGM, already in a fiscal panic, could not deliver product to all the record stores at the same time. DJs wouldn't promote records that were not sold locally. Recognizing their blunder, MGM re-released the song three times over the first three years."
Here is the link for the complete article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus_(band)
drt
Starbucks said:
You must be too young to remember much about the sixties music. And remember, songs did not have to only be in the top 10 or 20 for folks to like them and want to hear them. If you can't remember Pet Clark's The Other Man Grass is Always Greener " and Can't Find the Time" you must not have listened to radio back then
F
flashback
Guest
sometimes people get too hung up on how high a song went up to on the charts .
there are many good songs that were not as popular but still good.there were many songs off albums that were as good as any on the charts that just were not made into singles.
the key is just to enjoy a song as a song not worry about how populart it got when it was current.
broadcast radio is one thing. a station on satalite radio should play songs broadcast radio doesn`t play.itis one of the things that should draw people to it.
there are many good songs that were not as popular but still good.there were many songs off albums that were as good as any on the charts that just were not made into singles.
the key is just to enjoy a song as a song not worry about how populart it got when it was current.
broadcast radio is one thing. a station on satalite radio should play songs broadcast radio doesn`t play.itis one of the things that should draw people to it.
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