Which is the bigger "tune out" factor?

[davideduardo]

A rotational playlist today would only involve 150 songs played in a day. And if you chose a song today (even if it's well-tested) and it's not on the day's playlist, you're out of luck.

I don't know what a "rotational playlist" is. Nor do I know what a "day's playlist is".

A station has a playlist. One playlist. And from it, it does a daily program log.

Some songs on the playlist are restricted to specific dayparts or days or programs. Some can play nearly any time of the day and day of the week.

As long as we are talking about KRTH, keep in mind that the station has well over 2,000,000 listeners in the LA market alone. Were one listener to call every minute, all day long, only 1440 people could even get through with a request. Why, why, why would a station let the calls of such a tiny percentage of the listeners determine what the other two million would hear? And why would they destroy carefully controlled horizontal and vertical rotations... determined to allow most listeners to hear a nice variety of the songs in the library... by dumping in a song that might have played the day before at the same time?

 

[davideduardo]

For the doubters, here is the full story and the actual ratings books.

Somehow the link did not make it in the post... here it is again.

http://www.davidgleason.com/1979-Z-93-Puerto-Rico.htm

 

[allenv]

It remains on the air because a few people are willing to work their butts of to superserve a community with good music,local info and affordable advertizing. It is locally owned and operated by passionate radio people who have to do a bit of everything and take pride in surviving as best they can in these challenging economic times. They are to be applauded. Radio needs alot more of this type of local owner/operator. The key is being local and wiling to listen to your audience and clients. Much better to be out selling ads than worrying about research and what tests well etc.

 

[allenv]

First all this is Bill Benjamin making this post and I wish to thank Allen Vick for letting me use this space. I want to adress this post stricly to DavidEduardoof .

If you are going to post items about my station, well let's get the facts straight shall we. The station opened on Mpril 1, 1994. I paid 35K for both the AM & FM. I later sold the AM to a Christian Group.

In 2001 we moved into our new facilities on Highway 32 in Plymouth. I assure you sire that we bill a little bit more than 50 a year, that would be closer to per quarter. Everyone has a right to post what they think. However, if you continiue to post inaccurate accounts about my station, rest assured, that I will seek you out and sue you for all I can because what you have stated is slander and I have a strong enough case now...so here is my advice to you...get your facts straight oh and I will tell you that I own 2 houses in Plymouth, I own 5 vehicles and have one daughter who just graduated from college and another in UNC....so do the math...we far exceed anything your misinformation has stated. I'm curious just what do you do in radio to make you such an authority? Did you also know that we won Small Business of The Year Award in 2004, or do you know that business has been so booming that just last month we had to add another stop set to accomdate our clients? My # is 252-793-9993..call me if you have the guts and we can get it straight real quick.

I expect the next posts that you make in regards to my station will be better informed rather than making you look like a total idiot. Again thank you Allen for letting me use your space for this post....

 

[davideduardo]

FHowever, if you continiue to post inaccurate accounts about my station, rest assured, that I will seek you out and sue you for all I can because what you have stated is slander and I have a strong enough case now...

The billing figure comes right out of the recognized industry source for appraisal and billing data, BIA. If they are wrong, tell them... every lender that finances radio, nearly every group of significance and even equipment and program suppliers subscribes to BIA.

so here is my advice to you...get your facts straight oh and I will tell you that I own 2 houses in Plymouth, I own 5 vehicles and have one daughter who just graduated from college and another in UNC....so do the math...we far exceed anything your misinformation has stated.

You claim billing is $200 k. That's less than $18 k a month. That does not sound like a very good business model if you have to pay rents, utilities, insurance, staff, FICA, etc., etc.

Of course, since the cost of the station was minimal, you likely have no debt service so, like so many smaller market stations, what you end up with is guaranteed lifetime employment as long as OTA radio is capable of making a profit.

I expect the next posts that you make in regards to my station will be better informed rather than making you look like a total idiot. Again thank you Allen for letting me use your space for this post....

I suspect you are Allen. Otherwise, why not register a free account yourself?

 

[davideduardo]

It remains on the air because a few people are willing to work their butts of to superserve a community with good music,local info and affordable advertizing(sic).

Serving a community is a noble goal.

But believing that small-market radio is the only venue where a community can be served is a bit disingenuous. Larger market stations also do that every day.

It is locally owned and operated by passionate radio people who have to do a bit of everything and take pride in surviving as best they can in these challenging economic times.

So people in bigger markets don't have the same problems?

They are to be applauded.

Anyone who can make a living in radio today is to be applauded. But I hope they have a backup plan ready.

Radio needs alot more of this type of local owner/operator. The key is being local and wiling to listen to your audience and clients. Much better to be out selling ads than worrying about research and what tests well etc.

Why is being a peddler better than finding out what the audience really wants to hear.

Since you have mentioned that the station has a library of 8,000 songs, it would appear that a lot more time is being spent selling than programming.

 

[oldies76]

As long as we are talking about KRTH, keep in mind that the station has well over 2,000,000 listeners in the LA market alone. Were one listener to call every minute, all day long, only 1440 people could even get through with a request. Why, why, why would a station let the calls of such a tiny percentage of the listeners determine what the other two million would hear? And why would they destroy carefully controlled horizontal and vertical rotations... determined to allow most listeners to hear a nice variety of the songs in the library... by dumping in a song that might have played the day before at the same time?

It's called satifying a listener. And I'm talking about just the tested songs being requested.

So if someone requests a song and hasn't heard it for an hour, (and after the on-air personality said to the caller that we'll get it on for you as soon as possible), don't you think that would be listener tune-out? Btw, the other 2 million could probably care less what they are hearing via request, since to them, what they are hearing is random. You are making it sound extreme here. A few 3 minute songs won't destroy the city. This isn't television.

 

[CTListener]

As long as we are talking about KRTH, keep in mind that the station has well over 2,000,000 listeners in the LA market alone. Were one listener to call every minute, all day long, only 1440 people could even get through with a request. Why, why, why would a station let the calls of such a tiny percentage of the listeners determine what the other two million would hear? And why would they destroy carefully controlled horizontal and vertical rotations... determined to allow most listeners to hear a nice variety of the songs in the library... by dumping in a song that might have played the day before at the same time?

It's called satifying a listener. And I'm talking about just the tested songs being requested.

So if someone requests a song and hasn't heard it for an hour, (and after the on-air personality said to the caller that we'll get it on for you as soon as possible), don't you think that would be listener tune-out? Btw, the other 2 million could probably care less what they are hearing via request, since to them, what they are hearing is random. You are making it sound extreme here. A few 3 minute songs won't destroy the city. This isn't television.

WDRC-FM Hartford has a five-hour request show every Saturday. Most of the songs played are from the regular playlist and just about everything else is a song that the station used to play regularly but has bumped from rotation to make room for more '80s titles. So if a listener calls in to hear "Hot Rod Lincoln" or "Magic Bus" it's going to get played -- at least there seem to be two or three slots an hour reserved for such requests. Now, until a couple of years ago, this was a place you could also get a spin for "The Great Pretender" or "In the Still of the Nite," but if any of the old-timers are still calling in, they're probably either getting the "I'll see if I can get that on for you" line or, I hope, an explanation that the station's focus has changed from '50s/'60s to '70s/'80s. Either way, there are probably too few listeners to DRC-FM now who used to tune in daily for their fix of Platters and Coasters and Frankie Avalon to matter at all in the ratings or overall listener satisfaction. The station's updated sound has been in place for a couple of years now and has become comfortable to the demographic mix it's targeting.

 

[allenv]

Dave this Allen Vick I did let Bill Benjamin use my account because he could not remember his password. He has not posted in a long while. I'm sure he will reactivate his account soon..I do not know you and have no issue with you at all.We were simply discussing a topic when I mentioned a couple of stations that I enjoyed. For some reason you decided to take a jab at Bill's station and he simply wanted to respond. I assure you we are two different people and again I respect your opinions and postings but I don't blame Bill for being a little ticked. Have you ever owned a station in a small market?? I'm assuming you have from your postings..

Allen Vick

 

[davideduardo]

It's called satifying a listener. And I'm talking about just the tested songs being requested.

So if someone requests a song and hasn't heard it for an hour, (and after the on-air personality said to the caller that we'll get it on for you as soon as possible), don't you think that would be listener tune-out? Btw, the other 2 million could probably care less what they are hearing via request, since to them, what they are hearing is random. You are making it sound extreme here. A few 3 minute songs won't destroy the city. This isn't television.

Here is the thing... stations doing gold based formats try to program each song so that it does not re-play in the same vicinity of time before playing in other parts of the 24 hour clock. And they establish a minimum rest time for each song... it might be less than 24 hours for the bigger scoring songs, and several days for the lesser, but acceptable ones.

That means, taking a song in a category calculated to play with a minimum rest of a day and a daypart (roughly 30 hours), that you can expect the song to not play in the same daypart for about six to seven days, and then more flexible rules will keep it from playing in the same hour when it does return to the daypart for another play.

So a great deal of effort is taken in making sure the song does not play within the same hour as much as 2 or 3 weeks out. Yet you suggest playing a request as long as it has not played for at least an hour the same day!

The P1 listeners of a station (P1 being a term applied to those who spend more time with one station than with any other... Preference level 1) may listen, save for interruptions, for a number of hours a day. Do you think any "my favorite station" listener wants to hear the same song just an hour apart because somebody who wasn't listening now has an urge to hear it?

And why do you think, around the country, stations with much shorter playlists than Classic Hits stations, such as AC, do "no repeat workday" features? That's because re-playing a song too close to its prior play is not such a good idea on that sort of station... so much so that they try to not play any song over in an 8 or 9 hour period every day!

This is a very big deal to programmers, particularly in PPM markets.

 

[davideduardo]

For some reason you decided to take a jab at Bill's station and he simply wanted to respond.

I did not "take a jab" at that station. I simply reported that it was in a very small market with very limited billings.

Sometimes, stations in smaller markets can be very nicely programmed. Other times they can make what would be fatal mistakes in a more competitive situation and get away with it because listeners have no other OTA radio choices.

A station with a library of 8,000 songs is making such a fatal mistake. The listener is not a beneficiary of this... they are a victim of bad radio. Fortunately, they now have many new media alternatives.

Have you ever owned a station in a small market?? I'm assuming you have from your postings..

Yes, I have owned some small market stations back when I was in ownership. But they were satellite stations to my larger market stations, not locally programmed. Examples would be two stations at either end of the Oil Pipeline at Lago Agrio in the Amazon jungle and Bahía de Caráquez on the Pacific coast... little boomtowns created by the oil industry. They were sold to national advertisers as a concept sell, and did, for all practical purposes, no local sales at all. The other stations I owned were in the #1, #2 and #3 cities.

 

[davideduardo]

WDRC-FM Hartford has a five-hour request show every Saturday.

Let me guess... it's on from 7 PM to Midnight.

 

[allenv]

To say an 8,000 song playlist is a huge mistake is simply your opinion.You are not in the Eastern NC Market..Broad programming philosophies don't always apply to every market.You can't sit 3,000 miles away and tell me what Bill is doing is a mistake. I would not question your programming because the same applies to me.Until you've fought the battles in this market you are not qualified to offer anything but opinions and that's cool. That's what this board is based on. None of us have all the answers but we have something in common we love radio.The tone of your post come across as holier than thou and you know it all and rest of us are stupid...Just sayin.' Again I don't know you from Adam. Its tough to share ideas and opinions with someone who already knows it all..This will be my last post of this nature & I hope you see the point I'm trying to make.

 

[CTListener]

WDRC-FM Hartford has a five-hour request show every Saturday.

Let me guess... it's on from 7 PM to Midnight.

You got it! Same timeslot for 25 years. It's got its devoted following, but you're right, it's nothing that any station would want to put out there on weekdays when the programming that helps set the ad rates is running.

 

[davideduardo]

To say an 8,000 song playlist is a huge mistake is simply your opinion.You are not in the Eastern NC Market..Broad programming philosophies don't always apply to every market.You can't sit 3,000 miles away and tell me what Bill is doing is a mistake. I would not question your programming because the same applies to me.Until you've fought the battles in this market you are not qualified to offer anything but opinions and that's cool. That's what this board is based on. None of us have all the answers but we have something in common we love radio.The tone of your post come across as holier than thou and you know it all and rest of us are stupid...Just sayin.' Again I don't know you from Adam. Its tough to share ideas and opinions with someone who already knows it all..This will be my last post of this nature & I hope you see the point I'm trying to make.

I've inadvertently made a career out of playing the right number of songs when a competitor is playing too many. And I know many other programmers in markets big and small who have the same experiences.

I've done research in some markets as small as Albany, GA, Dothan, AL, Panama City, FM and Tallahassee, FL and in markets bigger than New York City. In all cases, the number of "playable" songs varies by format, not by market size.

A country station in the smallest researchable market (meaning a market that can afford the cost of a $30,000 music test) and one in a Top 10 market will both find about the same number of playable songs. Thus there is no leap of faith in saying that similar conditions would prevail in all markets, irrespective of size.

That's why successful traditional AC stations all play about the same number of songs, Country stations have fairly comparable library size, classic hits stations have similar song counts and so on.

I've also made sort of a career out of decimating stations where management believed that their market was different. Whether it be El Paso or Dothan or Karachi, stations that use "local differences" as an excuse for not following good radio practices always succumb to stations that do.

A corollary to the "my market is different" is "that can't be done here". I've seen many opportunities missed by folks who believed that well researched ideas would not work because "I know my market and you are from outside the market and are an idiot..."

 

[davideduardo]

Let me guess... it's on from 7 PM to Midnight.

You got it! Same timeslot for 25 years. It's got its devoted following, but you're right, it's nothing that any station would want to put out there on weekdays when the programming that helps set the ad rates is running.

The Saturday and Sunday evening ghetto dayparts are perfect places to put such shows. The dayparts are, essentially, not used by the regular M-F 6 AM to 7 PM listeners, but they offer the opportunity to add a bit to the cume and to create some goodwill with a segment of the audience who really appreciate that kind of show.

 

[oldies76]

Yet you suggest playing a request as long as it has not played for at least an hour the same day!

Not saying that...not at all.

Obviously there has to be limits. I've been told before by radio DJ's, that this song has recently played, choose another. If the song played earlier in the day, then discretion must be used by the station. I believe a good balance can be made between requests listeners make and what is slated to air any given day.

But if a listener requests a song that has not been played for a long time, it should be played. And we may not hear it again for another 3 months.....who knows anymore

When I worked at KWVE 107.9, we took requests for the Contemporary Christian music we played (Maranatha Singers, Twila Paris...etc..) and made sure it was on within 15 minutes. Of course, back then (1989) we did not use playlists, we just chose carted songs at random and aired them. The only rule we really had, was not to play the same song twice in your six hour shift and avoid your personal favorites on every shift.

The good days of radio!!!

 

[oldies76]

Yet you suggest playing a request as long as it has not played for at least an hour the same day!

It's the listener waiting for an hour after the request was originally made. That's a tune-out.

 

[CTListener]

Let me guess... it's on from 7 PM to Midnight.

You got it! Same timeslot for 25 years. It's got its devoted following, but you're right, it's nothing that any station would want to put out there on weekdays when the programming that helps set the ad rates is running.

The Saturday and Sunday evening ghetto dayparts are perfect places to put such shows. The dayparts are, essentially, not used by the regular M-F 6 AM to 7 PM listeners, but they offer the opportunity to add a bit to the cume and to create some goodwill with a segment of the audience who really appreciate that kind of show.

The country station in Boston, WKLB, has had a classic country show in another graveyard slot, 8 to noon Sundays, for nearly as long. Supposedly, it's made WKLB (which does very well for a country station in the Northeast anyway) No. 1 overall during that daypart in several books over the years. But what you said about DRC-FM holds true here: nobody who listens to the station M-F is interested in hearing a bunch of old Charley Pride and Crystal Gayle songs, so all the show does is add to the cume.

 

[radiophiler]

Here's another question regarding classic hits stations: How many years should the format span?

Let's use a couple of examples. First: a station centered in the 70s. Is it better to go really broad and play music from 1960 to 1989? Or is a tighter range of years better: 1967 to 1982? Something in between?
For a 70s-based station, one consideration might be that people who grew up with music from the 60s are now out of the prime sales demo of 25-54. So, might the station actually be better off playing music from 1970-1985?

Second example: A station centered in the 80s. It doesn't have quite the same problem as a 70s centered station regarding people 55+. So, do you go broad, 1970 to 1999? Or narrow, maybe even 80s only, 1980-1989? Or something in between?

Curious to hear opinions. And I'm asking the question in order to have a financially successful station. Let's assume, also, we're talking about a medium market, say markets 50-99 in rank.