How many stations actually ask listeners what they want to hear?? I have seen alot more copycatting with stations looking at other stations playlists in other markets and then doing mostly what they do..This beneficial to a to a degree I guess but listeners have very little input in what stations do in my experience.
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Which is the bigger "tune out" factor?
- Thread starter PirateJohnny
- Start date
B
Biondi4Mayor
Guest
DavidEduardo said:
Yes, but back in the 60's and into the 70's, songs had a fairly short chart life, so the 30/40 songs were quickly going in and out. When a station claims they are covering three decades of music (as there's no hope for the 50's to ever creep in) there is little excuse to the same old same old. We're not asking for "Pretty Woman" and "Hotel California" to be erased off the playlist, in fact you don't have to change the amount of plays, but more should be placed in between to at least give the station something different. I agree with what you said in regards to charting songs esp. below Top 40. That's not what I want to hear either, but when there are still HUGE legitimate #1's of the 60's-80's that never get airplay, then something is wrong.
Back to your research and advertising, if, as you say, people are fairly willing to sit through long stopsets of 6+ minutes, then does that not go agaist your "song testing"? You have all this research showing the odds of tuneout, but if people are willing to sit though commercials, then why can't they sit through a song half the length of a stopset which was a legitimate hit?
Your research works well with CURRENT Top 40 in almost any genre. It also worked back in the 60's and 70's, when this music was current. You are correct, the playlists were tighter. HOWEVER, the point of oldies (sorry, Classic Hits) stations is not quite the same of a current Top 40 station, and should not be treated in the same manner. Classic Hits/Oldies are not vying for the new hits, allowing for little excuse of tight playlists.
T
Thomps2525
Guest
Chuck Blore, who installed the "Color Radio" format on KFWB in Los Angeles in early 1958, said for many years that he would write an autobiography. It finally came out a few months ago; it's titled Okay, Okay, I Wrote The Book. He said that once a week, he would meet with all the DJs and they'd listen to all the new records that had come in. If at least five of the seven DJs liked a song, it would go on the playlist. If not, it could be voted on again for two more weeks. If it still didn't make the playlist, it was gone...unless it later started showing up on other stations' lists. Payola never took place at KFWB but it happened at many other stations, and that put an end to the practice of DJs picking the records. But there were weeks when KFWB would add 15 to 20 songs. In addition to the Fabulous Forty Survey, there were usually 40 extras.
One of those aforementioned stations that "played 30 to 40 total songs and played the top tunes every 90 minutes" came along in 1965: it was "Boss Radio" KHJ. Each of the top three songs repeated every 90 minutes, at :00 or :30. There were a few weeks in the 1970s when KHJ added no new songs.
Both KFWB in 1958 and KHJ in 1965 quickly shot to the top of the ratings. So how and why did the preference of the listening audience change so much in a 17-year period? Could KHJ have been successful with an 80-song playlist like KFWB once had? By the way, KHJ cut into KFWB's ratings so badly, in March 1968 KFWB switched to a news format.
One of those aforementioned stations that "played 30 to 40 total songs and played the top tunes every 90 minutes" came along in 1965: it was "Boss Radio" KHJ. Each of the top three songs repeated every 90 minutes, at :00 or :30. There were a few weeks in the 1970s when KHJ added no new songs.
Both KFWB in 1958 and KHJ in 1965 quickly shot to the top of the ratings. So how and why did the preference of the listening audience change so much in a 17-year period? Could KHJ have been successful with an 80-song playlist like KFWB once had? By the way, KHJ cut into KFWB's ratings so badly, in March 1968 KFWB switched to a news format.
LARadioRewind said:
7 years, not 17. So the timeframe is even more compressed.
But I'd argue it wasn't entirely a change on the part of the audience as it was the availability of choices.
KFWB may have lasted 10 years, but it was only #1 for 5 of those. KRLA beat them beginning in 1963...with a tighter playlist and younger, hipper jocks. Two years after that, the even tighter, even hipper KHJ beat KRLA...and sent KFWB to #3 in the format and #5 overall.
KFWB had no meaningful competition for the Top 40 audience (KPOP and KDAY were daytimers) until KRLA. And it took KRLA two years to beat them. It took KHJ 6 months to beat KRLA. Every time the audience could choose tighter, cooler, faster, they did.
Part of the reason is that, even then, there were never 40 real hits at any given time, much less 80. Buzz Bennett (who beat Bill Drake in San Diego with a 22-song current playlist) said there are only 7 real hits (if that) at any time. The rest of the chart are records that used to be hits but aren't anymore, records that may become hits but aren't yet and records that never will be.
When you tuned in 50-song KRLA instead of 80-song KFWB, you had a greater mathematical chance of hearing a hit record. And when you tuned in 30-song KHJ, the odds were better still.
The real test would have been to pit Blore against Drake in '58. But Blore would have programmed KFWB differently.
Not really newsworthy to any of us here. Those are typically called your "heavy rotations" or something like that.
Re: Which is the bigger "tune out" factor?in
Perhaps not newsworthy to you, Firepoint, but a direct and relevant answer to Rewind's question of whether KHJ could have succeeded with an 80 song playlist, and an explanation of why, once they had competition, KFWB couldn't, either.
firepoint525 said:
Perhaps not newsworthy to you, Firepoint, but a direct and relevant answer to Rewind's question of whether KHJ could have succeeded with an 80 song playlist, and an explanation of why, once they had competition, KFWB couldn't, either.
DavidEduardo said:
Yes, they were hits, all of them. Any song that reached top 10 on Billboard in the 50's 60's 70's 80's...etc.. were hits. A song that peaked at #82, would not be considered a hit.
Why do you keep denying the truth about classic hits? Just because some of the songs that were hits then and not hits today, does not mean that they were not hits originally.
The songs were ranked in many ways back in the day, whether by Billboard, Casey Kasem, Radio & Records, Rolling Stone, or some local radio station survey. If it ranked well, they were considered hits, period.
And yes, there were "thousands of songs" that were hits originally. Just because you disagree, does not mean otherwise. Just reference any book by Joel Whitburn or Fred Bronson for the facts. Knowing you, you'd disagree with them too.
allenv said:
In major markets, most significant stations do some form of testing the music and perceptual research with listener groups or panels.
In smaller markets, the cost of a single music test is likely beyond the budget... over $30,000 for 500 songs, about $40,000 for a larger library. So such stations will use research in comparable larger markets, looking for a consensus.
When I was running WTNT in Tallahassee, we rotated music tests with a station in Dothan and one in Athens and thus the tests cost a third of what our own tests would cost and the market tastes in country were so similar it did not make any difference.
In any case, stations have always watched other stations for moves, adds, drops and rotational changes. Most of us develop a feel for the programmers whose instincts and skills are the sharpest, and we watch what they do.
I'm pretty sure car designers look at the new models from other car companies, too.
Since stations can't do a census of listeners every week, we make up for the inability to pay for such a thing by using a combination of as much usable listener input as possible with our own programming abilities and all the rest of the input we can get.
oldies76 said:
No, they weren't all hits. There were quite a few songs that charted that were not hits... they were the product of hype, payola, false record store and one-stop reports based on rebates or free product or full return credit. Some were even the product of radio stations "needing" a certain kind of song on the playlist...
We have to eliminate songs people don't want to hear today, no matter how they charted... #1 or #82. The only thing that matters is if listeners want to hear the song on the radio today.
Keep in mind that Billboard charted songs based on relatively easy to manipulate data; Watermark simply used the charts to produce a show... Case Kasem had nothing to do with selecting the songs. R&R took into account airplay, which was an even more subjective and "influencable" commodity. Gavin, Rudman, Hamilton... the trades stations used extensively... also reflected what radio did and were, thus, very subjective sources.
The fact is that those books are simply tabulations of the aforementioned charts. The real fact is that there were all kinds of "turntable hits" and worse.
Biondi4Mayor said:
Much of the reason why lots of high-charting songs from that era don't get played is that they were "#1 then and not #1 now" because many/most people don't want to hear them today.
The data on tune-out in stopsets comes directly from matching the time of commercial sets with PPM meter behaviour. It's not an interpretation... it is the actual fact of PPM behaviour. And it shows that the tune-out, in its vast and overwhelming majority, comes in the first minute or so, no matter how long the stopsets are.
On the other hand, we can get from the PPM data processed by MediaMonitors exact behaviour for individual song play over many individual plays of a song. We also know that some songs cause much greater audience loss than stopsets.
Unlike commercials, which are necessary to the business, we can make the decision to stop playing songs that do us harm.
And, again, listeners know that commercials are part of the "admission price" to free radio. On the other hand, they don't come to a station expecting to hear songs they despise, and will exit promptly when one is played.
It does not matter whether a station plays 100 currents and recurrents like many CHRs (outside of mix shows and specialty features) or 700 to 800 like many country and classic hits stations do. What matters is if the listeners like each song they hear.
Currents are researched much differently than catalogs are. Currents can "turn on you" in a week or two. Songs can stiff out and never make it even after three to four weeks play as new adds. Fast response is needed, and many methods, such as callout (whether on the phone, via internet sampling or other methods including intercepts) are used for weekly tracking. Stations with large libraries will use regular AMTs for library cuts and some form of current research if they play any currents (as country stations do). But in each instance, all that matters is the binary "yes/no" on how much each listener wants to hear the song today on the radio.
There are several stiffs that get played to death. In fact, I don't even understand why they were even tested. One is "Get Ready" by the Temps which charted in the low 30's. It's a nice tune, but never a big enough hit to be in an "A" rotation...but there it is. The Rare Earth version was Top 10. Another is the Contours "Do You Love Me". So what, it was in a movie...big deal. It's 2.5 minutes of annoying screaming. There are 30 other higher charting, better selling, smoother sounding and beter produced Motown hits that make a station flow and have forward motion without the harshness. "More Love" by The Miracles come to mind. Same goes for James Brown "I Feel Good" It's a great lunar, but not an "A". Keeping the forward motion and tempo without the abrasiveness was always my goal, wheter it was Soul or Rock. Just an opinion.
...and just for interest of those out of the Northeast, here is the Top 77 of the year in voting from www.musicradio77.com
http://www.musicradio77.com/voting2012tally.html
How many of these are NOT being played on your favorite station?
http://www.musicradio77.com/voting2012tally.html
How many of these are NOT being played on your favorite station?
DavidEduardo said:
There's no absolute proof of that. Everyone has their favorite songs. Just because these people didn't participate in an auditorium test, does not make them automatically eliminate most top charting songs as unfavorites.
There are millions upon millions of music listeners in the USA and you're telling us that most of them would not want to hear the vast majority of former top 10 charting hits??
oldies76 said:
I'm not in the business, but I learned enough about polling -- and did enough -- as part of coursework in college that I can tell you David is right on this. You poll a truly representative sampling of people and the results will reflect the larger population with a margin of error of less than 5 percent. If oldies geeks and playlist-depth fanatics constitute, say, 3 percent of the general radio-listening public (and that's probably WAY too generous an estimate), then you'll probably get 1 to 5 of them in a room filled with 100 people. That's far too few to influence the outcome. You're going to get a couple of positive ratings for, say, Sister Janet Mead's "The Lord's Prayer," but the rest of the crowd either doesn't know the song (because it became a never-play-again item as soon as it dropped from the charts, in the mid-1970s) or they don't like it.
Face it, much of what we remember about radio in the '60s and '70s was smoke and mirrors. Songs that never would have passed the smell test now got on radio through, as David says, payola, free drugs, perks for record store owners, you name it. The songs that last are the ones poeple really, really liked when they were current or that got used in a movie in the past couple of decades and rode the positive association people had with the film into "classic" status on radio. Would "More Love" become a classic hits staple if it had been used in "Ghost" instead of "Unchained Melody"? Perhaps, but you could ask that about any song and get the same non-answer.
CTListener said:
I disagree with almost everything you said.
An auditorium of 100 people would be there to sample music of a specific genre, not all pop, rock, country etc., so the "3%" of Oldies isn't a true reflection. If an Oldies station wants to sample their genre everyone in the auditorium would be reflective of potential Oldies listeners.
And I also don't follow your "smoke and mirrors comment related to 60's and 70's music. Music of the 60's was either largely British Invasion stuff (early) or some form of protest rock (later). But most of all it was innovative. Within the decade as a whole there are dozens of sub-genres from 50's pop to ballads to the beginnings of metal to soapy love songs, folk and folk-rock. I am not a music historian but I believe there isn't a single decade in music history that had as much experimentation and mix as did the 60's.
The 70's softened a bit overall and the 50's influence was gone but now you had country crossovers making inroads into pop (think Eagles, NGDB and others). The forefront musicians of 70's pop were perhaps, as a group, the most talented bunch of musicians we've ever had. I cannot see how that fits "smoke and mirrors".
That the music of both decades is still played in volume today should be enough to suggest it's popularity and I think it will outlast the people of the decade that spawned it by quite a bit. I really doubt that the music of any other period can and will do that.
amfmsw said:
Which, as I noted in the separate thread about it, should be taken for what it is...the votes of some of the (according to Quantcast) fewer than 13,000 people who visit a tribute site to a radio station that hasn't played music in 30 years.
I can tell you for certain that #22 isn't being played on my favorite station.
landtuna said:
A music test for a classic hits station will include listeners to classic hits radio station(s) or people who like "that kind of music". A typical recruit specification for such a station would likely start with: persons 35-54, 50% male 50% female, probably some ethnic control in markets with high percentages of Hispanics. Usually, a question about stations listened to and the amount of listening would be done... something like the classic hits station being among the top 3 most listened to stations and getting an average of 5 to 8 hours of listening a week.
There you have a basis for testing songs: people who listen enough to know the songs and like them, people in the age and gender mix the station needs, and enough ethnic control to mirror the market and the appeal of the format.
If the issue is that a station has been underachieving, a recruit will be done based on playing four, five or six different "pods" (snippets of 5 or 6 songs that represent a style) will be played. All pods will be in-format, and if the potential recruit indicates strong like for half or more of the pods, they get invited to participate. That way you get people who like a lot of the music yet may not be listening because the station sucks... you get people who will tell you what to play to fix it.
The "smoke and mirrors" comment refers specifically to things like record retail and one-stop shenanigans, payola, turntable hits to balance a playlist, etc. All these common practices caused the charts to be less-than-perfect reflections of reality.
The lesser know element to these record label gambits was at the retail level. Many stations called record outlets for sales reports. So record labels would give stores free copies of songs they wanted reported as "top 10" or "growing fast" by the stores. Or they gave them more copies of a true hit product. Or they allowed a higher percentage of returns on their label... whatever the incentive, stores reported higher sales of songs that, often, were stiffs.
While there have been, historically, only a handful of payola indictments, the practice was enormously common. And in the 60's and 70's, it was pervasive. Payola produced airplay, and airplay caused songs to climb the charts... but many payola-induced songs were not hits.
oldies76 said:
The proof is in every one of the well-over-1000 music tests I have done. Most... and that means a majority... of older songs in any format no longer are liked and are not well received. Only a smaller percentage are broadly liked and willingly received if played today.
A music test is, when well done (and most are), is a very accurate cross section of the listening audience to a station. In fact, a music test generally brings in more regular users of a station than the Arbitron PPM system uses to measure that station.
Did you know that the #1 music station in LA has about a 5 share? That means, on average, its ratings are being determined by about 15 individual meters in a market of 11,000,000 persons?
A music test, by comparison, will have 100 to 110 people.
Asked, answered and amply proven.
amfmsw said:
If they get played on a station today, then today they are not stiffs.
There are #1 songs that are unplayable today, and there are #20 songs that are.
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