"Walk Away Renee" Which Version?

[tjthedj]

Hey "U" (just thought I'd try that aberration),

Well, it gives the APPPEARANCE of "audience participation - a VERY good thing. The audience "thinks" "that radio station LISTENS" to ME!
- when the pd (or whoever) picks the music, anyway.

 

[OldGringo]

Oldiescat, we agree. The regular rotation IS about 700 songs, with lots of attention to (maybe only 1 per hour late in the hour) other stuff with a much lower rotation, giving the illusion that you have EVERYTHING. THAT is what Chick Watkins did (using Selector) on the old "AM ONLY" format with about the same number of songs.

I agree that there are some formats where that many songs will work, but in most, it is way in excess of what the average listener wants to hear.

Auditorium testing is quite expensive, but I would do it initially. Then, after that, anually (probably labor day weekend) I'd do a "music battle" playing 2 songs, then people vote, then the winner of that battle faces another song, and so on. Even if you get only a few calls (even in a small market my experience was that LOTS of people call) you give the ILLUSION of "playing peoples favorites and that we have an amaziingly LARGE library. Idea is from Bob Moomey at WIND, Chicago in the 70's.

An AMT is not that expensive, unless you are in a market like Idaho Falls or Panama City. The cost can range between $20 k and $30 k usually, and if the station can trade the facility and refreshments and parking, even less.

It is pretty standard to do a minimum of two tests a year, generally removed from holiday seasons, and preceeding the Spring and Fall books by enough time to implement and adjust the list. I know of stations doing 4 tests and even 6 a year, depending on the size of hte market and the tendency of the library to get crispy and need rotational adjustment.

I have done "on air" AMTs on a number of occasions, publishing the list in a newspaper as well as making the forms available in stores. Listeners rate the songs just like in an AMT. Importantly, we put a place to list "songs I like but did not hear" so that songs we might have missed are brought to our attention, and added to the "real" AMT. At one station, we got about 50,000 entries, and lots of songs that we did actually test.

There are all kinds of ways listeners can give input that helps put together a more "scientific" AMT. It lets the listeners know the station cares about the songs that are played, and can help in finalizing an AMT list. It also tells the listener that if you do not play a song it is because most of the other listeners did not like it.

 

[TheFonz]

Re: here we go again

NEWSFLASH, gentlemen: radio listeners do not base their musical tastes in 2006 on what was on record charts 40 years ago.

Speak for yourself, big guy. That's what I subscribe to satellite for.

There simply are not 4500, 2000 or even 1000 Oldies that deserve regular airplay, whether you're a 1958-1971 traditional oldies station or one that's a '60s/'70s mix.
Never have been, never will be.

[/quote][/quote][/quote]

No song deserves "regular" airplay (i.e. too much repetition). Mix 'em up and play'em. Even if it's only once a week.

 

[OldiesCat]

problem is

NEWSFLASH, gentlemen: radio listeners do not base their musical tastes in 2006 on what was on record charts 40 years ago.

Speak for yourself, big guy. That's what I subscribe to satellite for.

There simply are not 4500, 2000 or even 1000 Oldies that deserve regular airplay, whether you're a 1958-1971 traditional oldies station or one that's a '60s/'70s mix.
Never have been, never will be.

[/quote][/quote]

No song deserves "regular" airplay (i.e. too much repetition). Mix 'em up and play'em. Even if it's only once a week.
[/quote]

Point A: you are in radio. You are not representative of typical, everyday radio listeners (and, if you're not in radio, you're obviously radio junkie enough to be the exception, not the rule).

Point B: "No song deserves regular airplay"? You've got to be joking. If you only play your Powers once a week (for example), you'd end up playing so many stone stiffs your TSL would be 2 hours a week. If you knew what you were talking about, you'd realize that a high-demand song like Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl" playing only once per week (perhaps on overnights) would leave your core audience extremely unsatisfied. The average heavy listener tunes in around 2 hours per day, average listener just over one hour per day. Most of your P-1 listeners will miss most of their favorite hits, therefore leaving my radio station creaming your radio station every hour, every day, every week and every ratings period.

 

[tjthedj]

I generally dislike cats - but YOU are a GREAT exception. I agree with your post 100% I also have a great deal of difficulty with the 700 song playlist. Selector, or some creative scheduling would make a 1200-1500 song list great.

 

[ixnay]

And that's the point--the remake of "Walk Away Renee" by the Four Tops was a hit in a number of places, in some instances, moreso than the original.

Philadelphia, for one, I guess. In the late '90s the Tops' "...Renee" (which, I'll just say, holds its own against the Left Banke's, though I prefer to hear the latter), got quite a bit of play on WOGL-98.1, which played quite a lot of "obscure" Motown (the Supes' "There's No Stopping Us Now", the Tempts' "The Impossible Dream", the Miracles' "Would I Love You", the Tops' "I'll Turn to Stone", for examples). I guess the Tops' "...Renee" charted higher in Philly than nationally, and maybe higher than the Left Banke's version. But I was only 7 years old in 1968, the year of the Tops' version (I'll have to check my Whitburn for the date).

ixnay

 

[warm590]

ok, i'll jump in; this is my opinion-

We have over 11,000 titles. Knowledgeable jocks who know the music cold. We do well in the ratings. We still do requests and dedications. Request lines always open. The listeners love us because no other station in our area plays the stuff we do, and nobody will take a request except us. We play 50's and 60's only.h

we play both versions of "walk away Renee"; "pretty balerina"; We play "do wah diddy ditty" by the exciters, which is a kick *ss version that came out in '63, as opposed to the beat-to-death version by..who was it?? I forgot.

Test??? test this........ ;D

Civilized discussion???


warm590

 

[DougD]

ok, i'll jump in; this is my opinion-

We have over 11,000 titles. Knowledgeable jocks who know the music cold. We do well in the ratings. We still do requests and dedications. Request lines always open. The listeners love us because no other station in our area plays the stuff we do, and nobody will take a request except us. We play 50's and 60's only.h

we play both versions of "walk away Renee"; "pretty balerina"; We play "do wah diddy ditty" by the exciters, which is a kick *ss version that came out in '63, as opposed to the beat-to-death version by..who was it?? I forgot.

Test??? test this........ ;D

Civilized discussion???


warm590

Sounds like a great station. Where is it?

 

[OldiesCat]

thanks for the giggles

ok, i'll jump in; this is my opinion-

We have over 11,000 titles. Knowledgeable jocks who know the music cold. We do well in the ratings. We still do requests and dedications. Request lines always open. The listeners love us because no other station in our area plays the stuff we do, and nobody will take a request except us. We play 50's and 60's only.h

we play both versions of "walk away Renee"; "pretty balerina"; We play "do wah diddy ditty" by the exciters, which is a kick *ss version that came out in '63, as opposed to the beat-to-death version by..who was it?? I forgot.

Test??? test this........ ;D

Civilized discussion???
warm590

How do you assume Oldies jocks know the music "cold"? If you're referring to disc jockeys who can quote chart positions, this just in: LISTENERS DON'T CARE.

Also be interesting to know where you get your number of "11,000 songs" from?

 

[warm590]

These are jocks who have been in oldies radio a long time and are seasoned vets. And from what we get in terms of advertising, ratings and response over the phone, I beg to differ that the listeners don't care. Hard as it might be to understand, listeners are people and not just statistics. This goes to show how far the business has come from reality and personality driven radio. We enjoy our niche!! ???

Keep it going ;D

warm590

 

[CTListener]

These are jocks who have been in oldies radio a long time and are seasoned vets. And from what we get in terms of advertising, ratings and response over the phone, I beg to differ that the listeners don't care. Hard as it might be to understand, listeners are people and not just statistics. This goes to show how far the business has come from reality and personality driven radio. We enjoy our niche!! ???

Keep it going ;D

warm590

Are you live 24/7? Do you play all 11,000 titles over the course of a month? Six months? A year? How often do familiar oldies like "Respect" and "Oh, Pretty Woman" get played on your station? More often than that "kick-ass" cover of the Manfred Mann song? Come to think of it, do you EVER play the Manfred Mann version?

Your station sounds "too cool for the room," the "room" being any American market, unless you happen to have found the lone market in the nation with a population of oldies geeks sizable (and young enough) to sustain ratings and advertising on a station that uses live air talent.

 

[OldiesCat]

11,000 songs

These are jocks who have been in oldies radio a long time and are seasoned vets. And from what we get in terms of advertising, ratings and response over the phone, I beg to differ that the listeners don't care. Hard as it might be to understand, listeners are people and not just statistics. This goes to show how far the business has come from reality and personality driven radio. We enjoy our niche!! ???

Keep it going ;D

warm590

Is yours a rated station in a Top 50 or so Arbitron market? "Warm 590" sounds like a small-town AM, which has almost no pressure to generate revenue.

 

[davideduardo]

Re: 11,000 songs

Is yours a rated station in a Top 50 or so Arbitron market? "Warm 590" sounds like a small-town AM, which has almost no pressure to generate revenue.

WARM is the once-legendary 590 AM in Scranton, PA, one of the original Susquehanna stations and one of those 30-share CHRs. It now is averaging about a 0.6 share over the last 6 books, nearly none of it in demos under 55. The station bills about $30 k a month, in a market where the top station, a CHR, bills about $4.5 million a year. I suppose it covers expenses, but barely.

In any case, there is no way that any station could be successful with 11 thousand songs, because the personal inventory of the average person is nowhere near that, particularly in one genre. I can see (and actually work with) a station with around 1000 songs, including seasonals and "oh wow" tunes, but once you get beyond that, most of the additional tunes are highly negative among most of the audience or, at best, neutral and elicit no positive reaction... making the staiton dull and boring.

These deep playlist stations all seem to be in places where there is no competiton, and when there is a competitor, they die.

Were I to list the mistakes I have made, the biggest one would be tihinking that a bigger playlist would beat a tighter playlist. Only took one royal defeat for me not to do that again. Fortunately, I was able to do follow up research and found out that the other staiton, the one with a quarter of the playlist I had, won all the key values of "variety" and "more songs" and "better songs" and "repeats the same songs less." Variety is achieved by playing (fewer) good songs, and the perception of repetition comes form playing bad songss. Nobody complains about the repetition of thier favorite songs... only about hearing songs they don't like.

 

[FRR]

Re: here we go again

NEWSFLASH, gentlemen: radio listeners do not base their musical tastes in 2006 on what was on record charts 40 years ago.

Speak for yourself, big guy. That's what I subscribe to satellite for.

There simply are not 4500, 2000 or even 1000 Oldies that deserve regular airplay, whether you're a 1958-1971 traditional oldies station or one that's a '60s/'70s mix.
Never have been, never will be.

[/quote][/quote]

No song deserves "regular" airplay (i.e. too much repetition). Mix 'em up and play'em. Even if it's only once a week.
[/quote

I'm not in radio, just a guy who has listened to radio since 1955. Those of us that love Oldies formats want to hear songs that were played in that era, not just the top twenty or thirty. Play them all, as they were played then, and we will listen. Check out Oldies 1160 in Cincinnati. It's as close as it comes to real good

 

[CTListener]

Re: here we go again

NEWSFLASH, gentlemen: radio listeners do not base their musical tastes in 2006 on what was on record charts 40 years ago.

Speak for yourself, big guy. That's what I subscribe to satellite for.

There simply are not 4500, 2000 or even 1000 Oldies that deserve regular airplay, whether you're a 1958-1971 traditional oldies station or one that's a '60s/'70s mix.
Never have been, never will be.

[/quote]

No song deserves "regular" airplay (i.e. too much repetition). Mix 'em up and play'em. Even if it's only once a week.
[/quote

I'm not in radio, just a guy who has listened to radio since 1955. Those of us that love Oldies formats want to hear songs that were played in that era, not just the top twenty or thirty. Play them all, as they were played then, and we will listen. Check out Oldies 1160 in Cincinnati. It's as close as it comes to real good
[/quote]

Then why can't this station in the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre market, which has a large 50+ population, do any better than a 0.6?

I've been listening since 1964. Many of the people I know have been listening at least that long, too. I'm the only one who remembers all the songs our local oldies station -- with its liberal 900-1,000-song playlist -- plays. And that station rarely plays anything that charted lower than No. 20, unless it was a regional hit or an album track.

It goes 10 songs deep on the Dave Clark Five: "Over and Over," "Because," "Bits and Pieces," "Do You Love Me," "Glad All Over," "Catch Us If You Can," "You Got What It Takes," "I Like It Like That," "Can't You See That She's Mine" and "Any Way You Want It." Sure, the DC5 had more singles, but seeing as how most oldies stations only play three or four of these titles, those other songs are long forgotten by everyone but oldies geeks and DC5 fanatics. There just aren't enough of either group to sustain a completist oldies station in any market. The average listener -- of any age or musical era -- wants familiarity above all else.

 

[davideduardo]

Re: here we go again

I'm not in radio, just a guy who has listened to radio since 1955. Those of us that love Oldies formats want to hear songs that were played in that era, not just the top twenty or thirty. Play them all, as they were played then, and we will listen. Check out Oldies 1160 in Cincinnati. It's as close as it comes to real good

It is also as close as it comes to not showing in the ratings... and nearly nothing in under 55. Unless a station has listeners, and in ages advertisers want, whether it is "real good" to you is irrelevant. It is really unlikely they can make money with this format (they billed less thann $25 k a month) and pay expenses and survive. For programming of this tye to survive, it has to be on subscription, paid, radio or on your iPod.

 

[Johnny Morgan]

For programming of this tye to survive, it has to be on subscription, paid, radio or on your iPod.

Or a fairly substantially-power non-comm.

No names please... ;D

 

[CTListener]

For programming of this tye to survive, it has to be on subscription, paid, radio or on your iPod.

Or a fairly substantially-power non-comm.

No names please... ;D

There are still commercial oldies and "classic hits" stations around that run deeper oldies and/or request shows on Saturday or Sunday night, pleasing the oldies geeks and older listeners without hurting the station's demographics in time slots that matter. Could this non-comm of yours keep attracting the community support and funding it needs if it were programming deep oldies 24/7, as WARM is apparently doing?

 

[Johnny Morgan]

Could this non-comm of yours keep attracting the community support and funding it needs if it were programming deep oldies 24/7, as WARM is apparently doing?

Good question. My initial response would be "yes" based solely on the abject lack of a similar service in the area (50s-70s, that is). Now, since we're not constrained by the business issues of commercial radio and don't have to tailor our service to an advertiser-friendly segment of the audience, the 45+ oldies audience is fresh for the picking, because the only competitor--a VERY large, VERY heritage "oldies" FM--has been younging up for at least 4 years now. Where advertisers aren't much interested in 50+, the audience is still there seeking to be served. If the choice is a bit deeper or nothing at all, we've found that the audience likes deeper.

The community support and funding I can't make any predictions about without doing a study. But judging by the response to 25 hours on Sundays, it weighs in favor of success.

But this is all academic since (a) I haven't studied it in depth, and (b) there's no change on the horizon, barring a move from the station up north.

 

[OldiesCat]

oldies in 2006

Please don't get me wrong, folks- I am NOT anti-Oldies. Obiviously, it's a format I have great passion for. I also strongly believe Oldies became a self- fulfilling prophecy format that decided years ago to ride the horse 'till it fell (vs. gradually evolving over the years in an effort to continue bringing new listeners into the fold).

But, I also live in the real world, in 2006. And, if you gave me a full-signal FM station in a substantially sized market with no Oldies station and suggested, "here, do Oldies the way it's always been done", I'd pass. You guys can do all the "but it shouldn't be all about the money" all you like, but why be in business if not to have a great product that produces a profit? All the nostalgia and nobility in the world doesn't pay the bills.

Got a nearly-zero-overhead AM or a non-comm? Knock yourself out and God Bless you. But I wouldn't open a pizza parlour or auto repair business without knowing I could have a good customer base that could generate a profit- I sure as hell wouldn't do it with a radio station, either.