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Which is the bigger "tune out" factor?
- Thread starter PirateJohnny
- Start date
landtuna said:
Absolutely. But some of the people involved are still living...
Payola generally left no paper trails. It was hard to prove. One of the more recent indictments, settled with a nolo contendre plea, was only possible because the fool who took the payola deposited it with uncanny regularity in his bank account, creating a paper trail that matched "entertainment expense" on the record company books.
During the 70's and 80's I had many personal experiences, ranging from the delivery of a "gifts" at my home to one case where a record duck laid out a humongous line of coke on my desk.
The gifts were returned, the coker was grabbed by the neck and booted from the station.
There were many more examples...
During the disco years, at an LA record and radio convention in LA (famous for the falling furniture) I was invited to a record company suite after a showcase. When I entered, after been vetted by a couple of goons, in one room there was coke on silver trays, and in other rooms there were hookers giving party favors...
I relate those stories because the practice was very prevalent and I was a very minor player as far as the record industry was concerned. Yet the practice touched me regularly.
Of course, those of us... and there were many who felt that it was wrong to play bad records for the audience... who did not take payola would constantly scratch our heads when we heard songs we knew were stiffs being played on other stations.
landtuna said:
Since much of the manipulation was at the retail level, it is hard to say which songs were stiffs that "became hits" due to that manipulation since those of us in radio did not know which songs were involved.
And it is so hard to say that a song that went top 10 really deserved to do that. Perhaps it was pushed up higher than it should be by payola. perhaps it would have been a hit anyway.
The whole point of the payola discussion is to show that the charts, at best, were not perfect. And what gets played today is what listeners want to hear today. The charts may be a guide, but they are not a road map of what to play.
landtuna said:
Landtuna:
While it's not payola, a classic example of how things could go horribly wrong was the soundtrack to the 1978 "Sgt. Pepper" movie.
Billboard based its chart positions on wholesale numbers...figuring by the time a record got far enough up the charts, those wholesale buys would indicate how quickly initial shipments sold to real people and the demand for more copies.
Record labels wised up to this and decided instead of waiting for records to build, they'd "ship platinum". In other words, in week one, one million copies of an album would be shipped to record stores all over the country.
The Sgt. Pepper Soundtrack shipped platinum, debuted at #5, but fell out of the Top 100 LPs within 5 weeks...because very few people were buying the initial stock. It took a year (thanks to restrictive return policies) but it became clear that the Sgt. Pepper Soundtrack maybe sold 100,000 copies to real people.
They did it with singles, too. In fact, often, record companies would "seed" markets by providing 10, 20 or more copies of a single they were pushing to record companies for free...pure profit to the merchant, if they could sell them. But they were often reported as wholesale sales, which counted toward Billboard's chart position. 10 or 20 copies doesn't sound like much until you add up how many stores and cities might be involved. Meantime, on the company's internal books, the freebies that they didn't get money for were written off against the promotion budget for the artist.
michael hagerty said:
Thanks for that info. I can tell you that same type of "interpretative accounting" is used in industries other than record labels. In my experience I've seen manufacturers count "sales" at the wholesale (shipped) level or, more normally, at the retail (sold) level.
But whichever method is used there remains the problem of unsold product. In most cases I suspect the manufacturer or wholesaler eats the cost and, if so, how does anyone profit from such a disaster?
Radio stations make listeners mad playing songs that people do not like.
The retailer doesn't sell records and may or may not be reimbursed for unsold inventory.
The wholesaler has probably claimed sales on his books which then have to be reversed.
Everybody loses.
B
Biondi4Mayor
Guest
David, I am well aware of the work you've done in the industry over the past several decades, and plenty of it can be viewed as great. But, have you ever wondered why, out of all your posts, you take the most heat on oldies related threads? In fact, have you ever wondered why the only format thread that has a topic called "Biggest Tuneout Factor" is the oldies thread?
This format needs to be exectuted better. It cannot be strangled by research.
This format needs to be exectuted better. It cannot be strangled by research.
Biondi4Mayor said:
New York: WCBS-FM #2 overall
Los Angeles: KRTH-FM #6 overall
Chicago: WLS-FM #8 overall
San Francisco: KOSF-FM #9 overall
Dallas: KLUV-FM #7 overall
Houston: KGLK-FM #9 overall
Philadelphia: WOGL-FM #7 overall
Atlanta: WSRV-FM #6 overall
Boston: WROR-FM #4 overall
This is a format that needs to be executed better and is being strangled?
Biondi4Mayor said:
In many markets, formats of all kinds can be "better" executed. But the main reason is that radio revenues are down 30% or more compared with the pre-recession years. The recession, lower PUR due to the PPM in the top 48 markets and the impact of new media all have a part in this situation.
As to classic hits, it's logical to expect a lot of misunderstanding of why certain songs don't get played or why some others are played "so often" and that is the fact that in the 60's those songs reached about half the population via early Top 40 radio. So there is no kind of music that has more familiarity.
But if you go to discussions of alternative rock, smooth jazz and dance, you find that there are polarized groups that think stations do (or did) a bad job and that the wrong songs or the wrong artists are being played, and so on.
The only way FM over-the-air can program classic hits is to look for only those songs that have broad appeal.
If there were more money, they could test more often, hire more talent, do more contests, run less commercial minutes. But that's just not the case today.
(Yes, I said "more research". How would anyone think it was wrong to consult the listeners as often as possible about what they like and what they don't like?)
michael hagerty said:
KLUV might actually be doing a little better than that, if it weren't for the fact that KEOM (a public school district station in the same market) wasn't duplicating their format. While KEOM's signal is directional and doesn't make it to Ft. Worth, it does reach quite a bit of Dallas.
R
oldies76 said:
The most recent hour on WCBS-FM as I write this:
Tone-Loc: Wild Thing
Odyssey: Native New Yorker
Michael Jackson: Don't Stop Til You Get Enough
Whispers: Rock Steady
Def Leppard: Pour Some Sugar On Me
Barry White: You're The First, The Last, My Everything
Lipps, Inc.: Funkytown
Grand Funk: The Loco-Motion
Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive
Buster Poindexter: Hot Hot Hot
Earth, Wind & Fire: Let's Groove
Bee Gees: Night Fever
I don't really see any surprises. The couple of songs I haven't heard on KOOL-FM in Phoenix (Native New Yorker, Hot Hot Hot) I'm sure tested well.
The playlist goes back to 2AM today...nothing amazing.
landtuna said:
Admittedly, that was the 7-8PM hour on New Year's Eve...might not be a fair representation. So here's what they played between 10 and 11 this morning:
Pat Benatar: Love Is A Battlefield
Miracles: Tears Of A Clown
Wings: Band On The Run
Samantha Sang: Emotion
John Mellencamp: Small Town
Foundations: Baby Now That I've Found You
Three Degrees: When Will I See You Again
George Michael: One More Try
Blondie: Heart of Glass
KC And The Sunshine Band: Shake Your Booty
Rolling Stones: Jumpin' Jack Flash
Pretenders: Brass In Pocket (I'm Special)
And again...nothing I haven't heard on KOOL, nothing especially daring and I'll bet every one of them tests really well.
michael hagerty said:
It's a much broader selection. Compare a whole weekend playlist with KRTH and you'll see the big difference...In fact, do a week by week comparison, including weekend nights and see the differences. The only drawback is Dick Bartley's top 20 Sunday night countdown, which does not appear in the "just played" listings. So, you can add 40 more rarely played songs to the mix weekly for WCBS.
landtuna said:
I'm sorry, Landtuna...well, the two oldest songs would be more or less a tie between Barry White and Grand Funk. But I suspect there's more to it.
oldies76 said:
If the broader playlist on weekends made the difference in WCBS-FM's popularity, then why would listeners settle for the more conventional music five out of seven days?
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