Westwood One adds new 24/7 Good Time Oldies format to replace Scott Shannon's TOC

[ok walters]

No it is not. I was simply stating that because of his series of morning posts took me by surprise as, Wow!
It's not cheerleading, it's an observation in which it's contents I agree with. Simple as that.

So I guess that "Good one, Avid" isn't cheerleading either in your eyes. So when you agree with someone else it isn't cheerleading, but when I do it is. I understand now. Unbelievable.

 

[ok walters]

If you knew the punchline about the golfer and the two "gotchas", you'd understand how only two surprise semi-hits a day could make a difference.

And I didn't ask for a debate. I asked for someone to provide supporting information about a position. You didn't provide information, you mocked my question.

If you thought about it for a minute, you would quickly see that two songs is not enough to move the needle either way, when the average music station will play over 175 songs a day just during daylight hours. A song that doesn't fit will do more harm than good almost every time, and it isn't enough to pacify people like you and your cronies on here, so what is the point in it?

The joke you cite has no relation to this - you gonna wait the rest of the day for your next "gotcha" song? Nope.

 

[oldies76]

So I guess that "Good one, Avid" isn't cheerleading either in your eyes. So when you agree with someone else it isn't cheerleading, but when I do it is. I understand now. Unbelievable.

So when we supposedly "cheerleader" you have to point it out, but when you do it's fine and dandy. I happen to agree with Firepoint and Avid on this issue...anything wrong with that? That what this board is for.

There is a poster at #258 that is concerned about this topic drifting. Why don't you please go back to the topic at hand. If you can't understand what I've told you then, Que Sera.....

With 21 years of combined radio experience, all you're doing is basically counting us out. To us, that's "unbelievable"

Radio will survive another day..

 

[Tibbs4]

We're talking about Hippie in Nashville.

BigA - I thought I was pretty clear that Hippie is doing fine. always room for better. Where are ya gittin your facts?

 

[Tibbs4]

So I guess that "Good one, Avid" isn't cheerleading either in your eyes. So when you agree with someone else it isn't cheerleading, but when I do it is. I understand now. Unbelievable.

MY comment on Firepoint being fired up was a little tongue in cheek humor. It was not cheerleading. It was not a cutdown. It was just making note that he had posted a ton of responses and comments and was wound up. Not in a good way. Not in a bad way. Happy to clarify. Happy Saturday! I am cheering for that for everyone.

 

[TheBigA]

BigA - I thought I was pretty clear that Hippie is doing fine. always room for better. Where are ya gittin your facts?

Depends on what you mean by "doing fine." I hear money is tight.

 

[ok walters]

So when we supposedly "cheerleader" you have to point it out, but when you do it's fine and dandy. I happen to agree with Firepoint and Avid on this issue...anything wrong with that? That what this board is for.

There is a poster at #258 that is concerned about this topic drifting. Why don't you please go back to the topic at hand. If you can't understand what I've told you then, Que Sera.....

With 21 years of combined radio experience, all you're doing is basically counting us out. To us, that's "unbelievable"

Radio will survive another day..

I never did any cheerleading - I agreed with several different people (and they agreed with me as well), but never any "good one" or "you're on fire" type comments. This topic drifted when the question about the playlist length and repetition was answered by those of us in the business, and then it turned into us being called "suits", and the train left the track from there.

21 years is great, but if you never were privy to the business side you haven't seen the whole picture.

 

[davideduardo]

Depends on what you mean by "doing fine." I hear money is tight.

There was even a report fairly recently in one of the gossip sections of one of the online trades that the owner could not afford to travel from Indiana to Nashville to attend to the business. Whether that is true is not certain, but the reported billing of about $15 k a month is definitely not going to leave much left over...

 

[davideduardo]

BigA - I thought I was pretty clear that Hippie is doing fine. always room for better. Where are ya gittin your facts?

It has far less than a half a share in the ratings, and is billing around $15,000 a month. How much worse could it be?

 

[TheFonz]

This may seem like a foreign idea here, but there's more to running a radio station than the programming. The suits, as you call them, don't care about the programming. They care about the ADVERTISING. .

Here's the way I see it: Radio is a Pimp. The advertiser is the John. And the listener is the Ho. The John is constantly looking for younger Hos. But younger Hos are hard to find....................they are taking their business elsewhere. So the Pimp is in trouble. Unless the Pimp can discover another Rush Limbough, he may have to shut down his business and get a job at the car wash. Meanwhile, what about those older used-up Hos? Well, they too have found other sources for their business. And they will live happily ever after. The End

 

[Avid Listener]

This may seem like a foreign idea here, but there's more to running a radio station than the programming. The suits, as you call them, don't care about the programming. They care about the ADVERTISING. So truthfully, if you can demonstrate how they can make more money by playing deep cuts from the 60s, the suits will be very happy. But that's next to impossible in PPM markets. The programming is the means to the end, not the end in itself. At least that's the case in commercial radio.

You totally, completely miss the point. Radio stations rent out their listening audience. That much is obvious. The bigger the audience, the more money they make renting it out. Again, obvious. "Programming" is the bait stations use to attract and keep listeners. Better "bait" means a bigger audience which means more money to make from advertisers. So, any suit who doesn't pay attention to what his station is doing to attract and retain listeners, who are the product he is selling to advertisers, is an idiot.

To make more money renting out your audience, you have to get a bigger audience. Since there is a finite number of listeners out there, to get someone to listen to your station, you have to get him to stop listening to some other station. Therefore, your program content needs to be more appealing than your competitors' content. If your programming is great, top-notch and excellent, but your competition's programming is even greater, you lose. If your content sucks, but your competitor sucks even worse, you win.

 

[Avid Listener]

Music testing is a very exact and precise science.

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

 

[Avid Listener]

Please tell us where this magical land of "no really strong competitors" is. Are there more than 50 people in the listening area of this land of wonder? Wow - nice post - pretty amazing with only one eye.

Look up the concept "hypothetical illustration". It might enlighten you.

 

[Avid Listener]

If you thought about it for a minute, you would quickly see that two songs is not enough to move the needle either way, when the average music station will play over 175 songs a day just during daylight hours. A song that doesn't fit will do more harm than good almost every time, and it isn't enough to pacify people like you and your cronies on here, so what is the point in it?

The joke you cite has no relation to this - you gonna wait the rest of the day for your next "gotcha" song? Nope.

Who said anything about a song that doesn't fit?

And to be honest, the idea that just maybe the next song might be a real treasure wouldn't be enough to make someone leave the radio turned on when otherwise they'd turn it off, but it just might get someone to be a little less quick to change the station when a less-than-favorite song is played.

 

[Avid Listener]

Depends on what you mean by "doing fine." I hear money is tight.

Funny, I heard that the entire American economy is in the toilet and money is tight pretty much everywhere. We're in the middle of what they're calling a "recession" because the politicians are afraid to tell the truth and use the "d" word. Things are worse now in many, many ways than they were in the 1930's. Radio stations are not immune to the crumbling economy, any more than any other industry is. So of course money is "tight" at lots of radio stations.

 

[oldies76]

You totally, completely miss the point. Radio stations rent out their listening audience. That much is obvious. The bigger the audience, the more money they make renting it out. Again, obvious. "Programming" is the bait stations use to attract and keep listeners. Better "bait" means a bigger audience which means more money to make from advertisers. So, any suit who doesn't pay attention to what his station is doing to attract and retain listeners, who are the product he is selling to advertisers, is an idiot.

To make more money renting out your audience, you have to get a bigger audience. Since there is a finite number of listeners out there, to get someone to listen to your station, you have to get him to stop listening to some other station. Therefore, your program content needs to be more appealing than your competitors' content. If your programming is great, top-notch and excellent, but your competition's programming is even greater, you lose. If your content sucks, but your competitor sucks even worse, you win.

And a good way to attract more audience and "steal" from your competitors, is to play different music than your competitors, meaning more "lost hits" or a larger playlist with better variety and fun, true weekends. People like change, they like variety and fun, not constant monotony and a resemblance to their competitors. You are expected to be unique in nature, not the same as the others. Many, many people dislike Wal-Mart for this same reason. All stores look the same, just arranged right to left, or left to right, same thing. Stores are messy, unstocked. People want new things, new presentations, new ideas...not the same ole nonsense.

 

[davideduardo]

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

What a flippant response to a reasoned post with data that is fundamental to the marketing model of business from P&G on down to much smaller niche producers and marketers most of us have never even heard of.

 

[davideduardo]

. People want new things, new presentations, new ideas...not the same ole nonsense.

No, people want dependable, familiar products most of the time. Experimentation and pioneering is saved for special moments. And this condition increases as consumers age due to experiences, good and bad, with trying new products or new implementations of old ones.

 

[davideduardo]

Since there is a finite number of listeners out there, to get someone to listen to your station, you have to get him to stop listening to some other station. Therefore, your program content needs to be more appealing than your competitors' content. If your programming is great, top-notch and excellent, but your competition's programming is even greater, you lose. If your content sucks, but your competitor sucks even worse, you win.

You are completely forgetting a number of facts that are higher up on the radio hierarchy of needs:

First, people generally have a group of stations they use. They generally pick one at any given moment based on both an overall liking of the station and their mood at the time.

Second, listening spans average around 15 minutes, and are separated by non-radio-listening moments ranging from phone calls to bathroom breaks. A station change generally comes at the beginning of any listening incident and is motivated by expectations an mood.

Third, changes in station during an incident are motivated by station "mistakes" or "negatives". These range from, of course, commercials, to highly disliked songs. Most of those mid-stream changes happen in the car, where alternative stations are easily selectable. Not so much in the home or at work.

So it's the overall Fit, Flow and Feel of a radio station that attracts and holds listeners across multiple incidents. If your expectations are lessened by not-so-great songs being peppered in the format, you come back less often or stop listening.

 

[TheBigA]

So, any suit who doesn't pay attention to what his station is doing to attract and retain listeners, who are the product he is selling to advertisers, is an idiot.

They can "pay attention" to it. But it's not their job. In your previous post, you said "the suits nix songs from the 60s..." Typically the suits aren't the one making that call. But they WILL be the ones to totally drop a format.

Running a radio station isn't a one man gig. Lots of people involved. You like to have someone else doing the programming, so if it doesn't work, it gives you someone to blame.