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Which is the bigger "tune out" factor?

DavidEduardo said:
Again, con brio: Repetition complaints from listeners of the sort "they repeat the same songs over and over" really mean "they play songs I don't like sometimes".
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I do not believe that. Most people are sick of hearing frequently repeated tested songs, everyday, every week, every month.

Hearing "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" 7 times a year will not cause complaints on repetition. I don't buy it at all.
 
oldies76 said:
DavidEduardo said:
Again, con brio: Repetition complaints from listeners of the sort "they repeat the same songs over and over" really mean "they play songs I don't like sometimes".
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I do not believe that. Most people are sick of hearing frequently repeated tested songs, everyday, every week, every month.

Hearing "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" 7 times a year will not cause complaints on repetition. I don't buy it at all.
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Well, the difference is that I have done well over 1,000 auditorium music tests (AMT's) , hundreds of one-on one projects, and supervised hundreds of thousands of callout music test interviews.

In the perceptual settings (one on ones) it is common to question and dig on the repetition / variety issues. Complaints on variety are always discovered to be complaints about the playing of songs the respondent does not like. Follow up questions reveal that "variety" means "playing songs I like a lot each time I tune in" and has nothing to do with "lots and lots of songs."

In AMT's, questions like "which of these stations repeats the songs it plays too often?" along with a list of stations that play for the same demo or target as the station doing the research. Generally, the station with the deepest playlist gets credit for repetition.

Another common question is "which station has the greatest variety in the music it plays?" Listeners generally pick the station with the tightest, best researched playlist, not the one with many more songs.

I had a case in the Hemisphere's second largest market where I was with a Classic Rock station that played 450 songs. A competitor came on playing about 1800 songs or more. In a Classic Rock music test (done in home one person at a time) the 450 song station won on variety, and the 1800 song station won overwhelmingly for "plays too many songs I don't like" and "plays the same songs over and over." (The 1800 song list was made up entirely of songs that had charted. the 450 song station played only songs that still tested)

"Most People" are not tired of listening to stations that play a nicely sized list of well researched songs that does not include ones that are unpleasant to them. Most people, as has been proven over and over in Arbitron, are tired of stations that play the wrong songs or too many songs. And that is as true in NY, LA and Chicago as it is in Mobile and Odessa and Albuquerque as it is in Plymouth and Lake City and Yuma.
 
oldies76 said:
Hmmm, let's see: The last time I checked, Barry Manilow was performing in Vegas and has more concerts lined up through 2013. So much for "usefulness".
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And Wayne Newton continues to pack them in, too.

Maude and Bill from Boone, IA, go to Vegas to see him "one last time before I die."

By the way, I have great respect for Manilow. When the Desert Unified Schools in the Palm Springs are was going to cut its music programs due to the costs, Manilow stepped forward and paid for all the instruments needed for the entire school district. He's a good person.

But the ongoing appeal of Manilow's music is concentrated among the 66 and over crowd, and is not desirable for the demos radio needs to attract for sales.
 
Well, I just believe that if a station's library is managed right, meaning, spread out and play the tested songs and sprinkling the untested hits every so often, at the right times, there should not be problems relating to repetition.

Remember KRTH during the Phillips / Coffey eras? Seemed like everyone in LA was complaining about tight playlists and excessive repetition then.

If the untested songs are played at correct intervals (with thousands to choose from, in the 1963-1989 period) one untested song should not repeat for many, many weeks and that's only if the same listener just happens to notice the same song twice over a span of several weeks....just a theory.
 
I like the WOW factor in a station.. I'd much rather here WOW that's a great song I haven't heard it in a while instead of WOW that's the 8th time this week I've heard the same song..I'm tuning out...I've heard both..With all this stuff we tend to forget one of the basic rules of good radio is to find a way to connect one on one with a listener.
 
allenv said:
With all this stuff we tend to forget one of the basic rules of good radio is to find a way to connect one on one with a listener.
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It's called taking requests and dedications (even if it's just on Saturday Nights) and playing the favorites of your listeners. Every song is somebody's favorite.

Also on-air talent that actually lived during the time period they are representing would help.
 
good point..radio has become 90% monkey see monkey do...nobody seems to want to think outside the box anymore and I don't mean radical off the wall decisions. I'm talking good solid my competition does A so i'll do B type stuff..but that's another topic I guess.
 
There are still some great idea people in radio with things that would engage & keep a listener.Part of the problem is its hard to contest & do TSL builders with little to no live operators anymore. its hard for a listener to win a contest when there is no one in the building to answer the phone. Little things mean alot.
 
oldies76 said:
Well, I just believe that if a station's library is managed right, meaning, spread out and play the tested songs and sprinkling the untested hits every so often, at the right times, there should not be problems relating to repetition.
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There are no "untested" songs. AMTs have been around for 35 years and every song has been tested under all kinds of situations.

Again, songs that don't test well TODAY in the PPM markets can be easily seen to cause significant percentages of listeners to immediately tune out.

Remember KRTH during the Phillips / Coffey eras? Seemed like everyone in LA was complaining about tight playlists and excessive repetition then.
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No, they weren't. If you recall (I have the book, BTW) the station did very well in the 90's. Fom '91 to '99, they averaged in the high threes... one year averaged (4 books) a 4.0. That's about two/thirds of a point over the average for the 80's.

Eventually, the excessive 60's stuff, too much Beach Boys for a growing Hispanic market, and other factors caught up with KRTH and it eventually had to change from oldies to classic hits. But it did pretty well for a while with that tight tight playlist.

Here are the numbers from '75 to 2002:
http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Duncan-1975-1992/Los Angeles.pdf

If the untested songs are played at correct intervals (with thousands to choose from, in the 1963-1989 period) one untested song should not repeat for many, many weeks and that's only if the same listener just happens to notice the same song twice over a span of several weeks....just a theory.
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If each of those tested-but-failed songs causes a third of the listeners to go away the moment it is played, by the time you do this for a few days, you will have pissed off every listener so many times that they won't come back for a long time... if ever.
 
The songs listeners to gold based formats don't like are those that were hits once upon a time, but are no longer of interest to listeners. Manilow, 1910 Fruitgum Company, etc., etc., are examples of artists who had hits of which none are today useful.
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The aforementioned Hippie Radio does indeed play 1910 Fruitgum Company AND the Carpenters (!), and I won tickets to the recent Barry Manilow concert here in Nashville from them (although I can't say that I have ever heard him there, except maybe on AT40 the '70s). It's worth noting that they are not "corporately" owned, and they thumb their noses at stations that are corporately owned, and they appeal to baby boomers, the oldest of whom are 66 now! :eek: Apparently, repetition of commercials to reach the over 55 part of the baby boom generation is not an issue with them, as they repeat certain commercials ad nauseum! The mix of 1910 and the "Carps" (as I call them) is not a tune-out factor for me because they blend them in well with everyone else that they also play.

By the by, I am 48 (almost 49), so I am at the tail end of the baby boom. But I grew up with a station that played a mix of '50s through the (then-current) '70s, so it is an insult to my intelligence to say that I should not know songs from the '50s and early '60s, merely because I am not old enough to remember when they were current.
 
DavidEduardo said:
No, they weren't. If you recall (I have the book, BTW) the station did very well in the 90's. Fom '91 to '99, they averaged in the high threes... one year averaged (4 books) a 4.0. That's about two/thirds of a point over the average for the 80's.
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Your attached list is informative, but then what is the real reason why KRTH changed PD's in 2005? Word of mouth was tight playlists and repetition saturation from the Coffey era.
From 1998 onward, your link shows a general trend to lower ratings, with a steady 3.1 / 3.2 in the early 2000's.

2004 and 2005 are absent.
 
If one "wrong" oldie chases off a listener forever, weren't you going to lose them permanently at the first commercial break anyway?
 
oldies76 said:
Your attached list is informative, but then what is the real reason why KRTH changed PD's in 2005? Word of mouth was tight playlists and repetition saturation from the Coffey era.
From 1998 onward, your link shows a general trend to lower ratings, with a steady 3.1 / 3.2 in the early 2000's.
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The format was changed and Jhani Kaye was hired to make KRTH into a Classic Hits station. The 60's oldies thing, as I said, became less and less relevant in LA due to the aging of the listener base and the changing ethnicity of the market.

2004 and 2005 are absent.
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That's because the publication did not include those years.
 
KRTH ...Sucks !!!!! there are more songs in my computer trash bin ,than the KRTH playlist.
 
DavidEduardo said:
allenv said:
True let's face people turn the dial when the stopset begins more often than not.
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Not really. People understand that stations run commercials, so they are expected and the tune-out effects are not as severe as one might think unless actual research is done.
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I would agree with you if the stopsets were similar in length to those of 30 years ago. Today the stopset can be expected to approach 5-6 minutes. For me and a ton of others that is a mandatory push of the pre-set.
 
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