allenv said:
It's not about "having all the answers" but, rather, knowing where to go to get the correct answer.
I am, though, kinda' amused that some of this particular format's defenders use ignorance and disinformation as their weapons of choice.
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Which is the bigger "tune out" factor?
- Thread starter PirateJohnny
- Start date
It's not about "having all the answers" but, rather, knowing where to go to get the correct answer.
I am, though, kinda' amused that some of this particular format's defenders use ignorance and disinformation as their weapons of choice.
You know David you don't know Jack about me or my backgound,education, radio experience, etc.. but though I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but I'm not ignorant..This is a forum for discussion and opinions some right, some wrong but its fun to share ideas until you get some holier than thou know it all who needs to get off his high horse...Again i'm sure you are smarter than me, most people are but you need to lose this look down your nose at those who don't agree with attitude You'd be alot more fun to converse with if you did..Again I totally respect your opinions and have no axe to grind with you but please go easy on the attitude..There is no place for it here and I hope you see where I'm coming from.
LARadioRewind said:
1959-61 is generally regarded as a "false start" for KRLA. The format that won the ratings began in 1961, and in 1963, they toppled KFWB.
I don't count broken strings (unless they're only a matter of months) as a continuous run. When Shadoe took the reins, KRLA stopped being Top 40.
The return to Top 40 (voice-tracked, with Johnny Hayes as the only voice apart from Art Laboe introducing certain oldies) happened April 1, 1976. Laboe was GM, Bill Pearl and Tom Greenleigh shared programming duties and Guy Zapolean was their music director.
There were huge limitations (all programming originated from the transmitter and nothing was live...the Pasadena studios were used for production only)...but in the January/February 1977 Arbitron, KRLA had a 4.1 to KHJ's 4.0, stunning just about everyone.
But...the music mix was 55% gold, 45% current...so I'm not at all certain that really counts as Top 40 (which would rarely go more than 33% gold outside of special weekends). So for the listener, KRLA was a true Top 40 for either 10 or 12 years, depending on whether you count the 1959-61 "false start".
And even using the most generous standards, KRLA's run pales in comparison to KIIS-FM's (which was the point of the initial post...the supposed loyalty listeners had to stations in decades past as compared to today).
In 1977, Pearl and Greenleigh left KRLA for KIQQ, to take over programming when Bill Drake and Gene Chenault's contract with Cosmic Communications expired.
About the word "ignorance":
Rooting from " ignore", suggests a selective state where one chooses to close his/her eyes to existing knowledge and information. It can also be a simple issue of not having the information to begin with.
It's not an insult, guys. You can have a PhD in astrophysics and an IQ through the roof but still not have exposure to or be willing to acknowledge data involving a given subject.
I used the word about myself in the Top 77 of 2012 thread when I learned what might have caused The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset" to rank highly (namely, its exposure in the Olympics closing ceremonies:
...my skepticism about the vote was simply wrong.
I was ignorant. My apologies to the group and anyone I may have offended.
So don't get mad at David. He's not insulting you.
Rooting from " ignore", suggests a selective state where one chooses to close his/her eyes to existing knowledge and information. It can also be a simple issue of not having the information to begin with.
It's not an insult, guys. You can have a PhD in astrophysics and an IQ through the roof but still not have exposure to or be willing to acknowledge data involving a given subject.
I used the word about myself in the Top 77 of 2012 thread when I learned what might have caused The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset" to rank highly (namely, its exposure in the Olympics closing ceremonies:
...my skepticism about the vote was simply wrong.
I was ignorant. My apologies to the group and anyone I may have offended.
So don't get mad at David. He's not insulting you.
Not mad Michael..I enjoy reading what you and David & everyone writes. I'm glad so many of us are still passionate about radio..I can only draw on my personal experiences and dealings with what I've seen in small market radio for almost 30 years..I've learned alot and will continue to be a part of this as long as I can..I just think sometimes we need to look at the tone of a post before we hit the send button. Myself included..
Allen
Allen
oldies76 said:
I did not say your post was "ignorant".
However, the non-stop "if it started you should play it" and "they shouldn't stop playing the 50's and 60's" comments plus the comments about supposed tune-outs over stopsets are all contradicted by widely available facts... yet they get posted over and over.
When facts are available, even to those not subscribed to ratings or party to proprietary research, and a person clings to a well-refuted idea, that is ignorant.
Of course, the comments about "today's music sucks but 50's* music is the best ever recorded" are the product of emotion, not reason, and are excusable.
*You may substitute "40's" or "60's" or "The Victorian Era" at will.
oldies76 said:
From the moment I prepared to put my first station on the air 48 years ago, I believed it was easier to sell the #1 station than the #25 station. So I figured that if I pleased the listeners, I'd also make money from the advertisers.
That theory worked. It also helped me since I'm probably not that good a seller... so it makes it easier if the station and the size of its audience "sells itself".
Part of pleasing the listeners is finding out what the listeners want. As technology has improved over the years, the ways in which we can find out what listeners want have improved.
The problem as illustrated in this thread is not with radio, not with me. It is with you and your like-thinkers because you don't realize that you are atypical and that there are very, very few like you. The "broad" in "broadcasting" means stations seek large, monetizable audiences and there is no evidence that any of the things you (a collective "you" in this case) wish for or want or expect will attract a large or salable audience.
If that's an insult, it is not intended as a personal offense but an indictment of people who take the "my mind's made up so don't confuse me with the facts" attitude in general.
We (collective "we" here) pay a lot of attention to what listeners want and do... we pay for ratings, buy research, and use other methods to figure out how to attract listeners. It's just that our findings don't come close to matching what you think most people want.
As I prep for another show, I'm looking for a few "Oh Wow"s for MY market. "Selfish One"-Jackie Ross, "Mind Body & Soul" -Flaming Ember, "When I Die" Motherlode, "There Is" Dells are considerations. The log is January light, and all these tunes were on station LPs in the 60's-70's.
They were local favorites THEN. Time to see the light of day again mixed with the usual.
Now, we know of the positive and neutral tune testing. For the sake of discussion, Let's say OK. Let's say 100 in an auditorium is still more vaualble than x# actual listeners. What MY point all along has been, although song A tests super well, alone, with it's refrain played...when it gets aired 5-6 times a week, and heard 2-3 times a week, 6-8 x a month after 45+ years (like "Satisfaction" or "Brown Eyed Girl") it has worn out it's welcome. (The original incarnation)WCBS-FM had a HUGE library rotation, and was #1 or 2 for years on end in the 80's-90's. Pepperred with many Local hits. Joe McCoy had the tunes, air talent and history...not just research.
They were local favorites THEN. Time to see the light of day again mixed with the usual.
Now, we know of the positive and neutral tune testing. For the sake of discussion, Let's say OK. Let's say 100 in an auditorium is still more vaualble than x# actual listeners. What MY point all along has been, although song A tests super well, alone, with it's refrain played...when it gets aired 5-6 times a week, and heard 2-3 times a week, 6-8 x a month after 45+ years (like "Satisfaction" or "Brown Eyed Girl") it has worn out it's welcome. (The original incarnation)WCBS-FM had a HUGE library rotation, and was #1 or 2 for years on end in the 80's-90's. Pepperred with many Local hits. Joe McCoy had the tunes, air talent and history...not just research.
amfmsw said:
If it's worn out its welcome, it won't test well.
CBS-FM was dumped because it stopped working (at least with the people and at the level CBS needed it to). Yes, I know they brought it back after the disaster that was "Jack", but it was and is a very different CBS-FM.
And as for local hits, there may be cities in this country that still have a stable population. But they're rare. A Pew study four years ago found that only 37% of adults of all ages have never left their home town or city. Among adults 30-49, it's 35%, the lowest percentage in any age group. However, people 50-65 and 65+ are only at 37%. It's 18-29 year olds, at 44%, that drive the average up.
That varies by region. In the Midwest, 46% of all adults say they've spent their entire life in one community (big or small). In the East, that drops to 38%, in the South to 36% and in the West to 30%.
Again, remember that the spike in those numbers comes young...18-29, so it's not especially good news for classic hits stations that want to play local hits.
Taking my home town of Los Angeles, 30% of adults of all ages in the West say they've lived in the same city all their lives. But apply that drop in the percentage among adults 30-49, and it's below 30%.
Now, that doesn't mean that just under 30% of the 30-49 year olds in Los Angeles are natives. It means that of the people born in Los Angeles between 1964 and 1983 who are still alive today, just under 30% stuck around. In the meantime, there's been an influx of other people in that age range into the city. In 1964, just over 7 million people lived in the L.A. metro. In 1983, about 11 million. Now, it's a shade over sixteen million.
So, in L.A. and most other cities, the further back you go, the fewer people are going to remember and relate to a local hit. Even in the Midwest, given the 18-29 spike, you're probably going to be under 40% before you factor in deaths and new arrivals to the city.
It's a pretty interesting look at the way we've changed. The pdf is here: http://pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/Movers-and-Stayers.pdf
Hey, Michael, what about the "when in Rome" factor? Just because I move to an area doesn't mean that I should expect them to adapt to my tastes, or more precisely, to give up their own local faves. Aside from that, I would think that the 18-29s probably have a much higher diet of current music listening, so they would probably be much less resistant to "local" hits, assuming that they are still current hits. They might even still be looking for the "next big thing." Yeah, they wouldn't be (still) listening to a "local" hit from 20 years ago (if they ever were), but if it was an early hit by someone who later "went national," who knows?
I looked back at old WLS surveys online, and I couldn't help but notice that midwestern groups like Styx, REO Speedwagon, and Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band were slightly better represented on WLS' surveys than on national charts. Sure, they all went national, but they were (proportionally) bigger hits in Chicagoland than nationwide.
I looked back at old WLS surveys online, and I couldn't help but notice that midwestern groups like Styx, REO Speedwagon, and Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band were slightly better represented on WLS' surveys than on national charts. Sure, they all went national, but they were (proportionally) bigger hits in Chicagoland than nationwide.
I like the jocks when their commentary is related to the music that they are playing. But when they are trying to read a 20-second weather forecast over a 10-second intro, that is only annoying. I have a feeling that it is station management and/or their PDs forcing them to do things like that. Not saying that they shouldn't read the weather forecast, only that they should have an intro long enough for them to read that forecast, so that they are not over-running the vocals of the song that they are playing. A little planning ahead of time would prevent that from happening.oldies76 said:
firepoint525 said:
Firepoint: With migration rates that high, those records stopped being part of the local flavor a long time ago. Let's say we're in L.A. We're already below 30% for all adults 30-49. Now take a record that went Top 10 on KHJ in 1968 but didn't do well nationally (there were a bunch...I don't have the list handy at the moment).
Okay. We're dealing with a 45 year old record on a station that had a 30 share in teens. Assuming none of those folks has died and all of them like that song (I'm really stretching here)...there's a possibility (and only a possibility) that 10% of the available audience remembers it as a local hit.
Factor in dead, never liked it, got tired of it and maybe you're at 5-7%.
And then there's age. If the record's 45, that 30 share in teens back in the day only applies to people who are now 57 to 62. Not demographically helpful.
As to the Midwestern charts, take those (from the REO/Seger/Styx era) with a grain of salt. Two things were at work...a disco backlash that hurt black artists until Michael Jackson broke through with Thriller (a nationwide problem, but the Midwest was really whitebread musically in those years) and an attempt by Top 40 to fend off the exodus of teens and young adults to album rock stations.
firepoint525 said:
That should never happen. Either start the weather over the end of the previous element and do the final :10 over the intro, do the weather dry or over a music bed, end with the station name or calls ("...and 62 degrees at K-Earth 101.") and start the song cold with no talkup, or...shorten the weather.
I'm not sure I ever did a 20-second weather forecast in music radio. Even in Reno during a winter storm you can usually get it down to something like "Up to six inches of snow today and tonight, more in the foothills. 32 all day, down to 10 when the clouds clear about midnight and 32 now at KOLO."
Okay, you are taking me a little too literally again. I am referring to when reading the weather forecast (or station liner or whatever) is longer than the song intro (and the outro of the outgoing song). A PD at my first station told me that at one of his previous stations, they were required to keep the music going under talking elements (probably to avoid talking too long), so all he had available to him was the outro of the previous song, and the intro of the next one. No "dry" parts underneath his voice.
Personally, I like letting a staff meteorologist (usually from an area TV station) do the weather (possibly over a music bed, yeah, that's good, too), but it also leads to increased likelihood of voice-tracking of the station (not necessarily a bad thing if done correctly).
I still remember a dj at WLS (talking over the intro of Queen's "We Will Rock You") saying something to the effect of "aack, I forgot to do the weather! Well, we'll do it later!" Better that than talking over the vocals.
Personally, I like letting a staff meteorologist (usually from an area TV station) do the weather (possibly over a music bed, yeah, that's good, too), but it also leads to increased likelihood of voice-tracking of the station (not necessarily a bad thing if done correctly).
I still remember a dj at WLS (talking over the intro of Queen's "We Will Rock You") saying something to the effect of "aack, I forgot to do the weather! Well, we'll do it later!" Better that than talking over the vocals.
firepoint525 said:
And again, it's simple. Shorten the weather. If the intro can't support it, kill the weather (here in Phoenix, you often need only 5 seconds: "Sunny and 112. 92 overnight. 103 now at KIIS-FM.").
Too many jocks try to read the entire NWS forecast.
If the liner won't fit and can't be accommodated that's the PD's problem. He's supposed to be overseeing those elements and managing flow.
As Robert W. Morgan said: "Only idiots step on the vocal."
I bristle at the suggestion of racism, but I am thinking that the charts that I remembered seeing were from the '70s. If these were from the '81-'82 timeframe, then I might agree with you.michael hagerty said:
I really should go back and look at those charts to see if any country crossovers found their way on there. The country crossovers (with the possible exception of southern rock) would have chased youngsters (and this would have included me, at that time, as well) to album rock as surely as any disco would have.
firepoint525 said:
Let me know what you find. On the West Coast, KHJ and KFRC started trying to defend against AOR by late '77. AOR stations had mostly stopped playing black artists (in the early 70s, they were just part of the mix), so the Top 40 stations went pretty white too.
firepoint525 said:
Got curious myself. Since REO didn't have its first Top 10 hit until 1980, I think we probably are talking about that timeframe.
Taking a quick look at the WLS playlists on Oldiesloon, even in December of '79, they were playing plenty of disco and early rap (Sugarhill Gang "Rapper's Delight"). By early '82, though, there was quite a bit of Triumph, Rush and other acts that didn't do that well in other areas of the country on Top 40/CHR.
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