Who picks the songs???

[FRR]

The answer is far different now than 40 years ago. I'm still waiting for someone to explain why the top 40 powerhouse in Cincinnati (WSAI 1360) never played the #1 version of You've Got A Friend by James Taylor, opting instead to play the Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway version that peaked at #29. Back then the PD got to make local decisions because he/she thought a song was right for the market (even though the chosen version in the above case was awful IMHO). And it exposed some mighty good songs that would never have seen the light of day otherwise. But to play devil's advocate with my own post, there was exactly 1 station playing top 40 hit music in the market at the time. It was that or listen to your own record collection. In their case, they had a lot of room to experiment with little to lose. Different world today...

This can really be expounded out by comparing local Top 30 surveys between WKLO and WAKY. Both were Top 40 in Louisville, Kentucky but often as many as 10 songs would be on one stations survey that were not on the other. Both had different PD's and they would often play different songs and thus those songs became popular enough to enter the respective station's survey.

Sadly now a days you can drive cross country and you will hear the same 20 current songs on every CHR station no matter where you go. There is no local live entertaining CHR radio any more and that's very sad but it is what it is. Me? I just use my i-Pod and listen to whatever I want.

You are so right. And your last paragraph says it all.

 

[Imlivinontheair]

The answer is far different now than 40 years ago. I'm still waiting for someone to explain why the top 40 powerhouse in Cincinnati (WSAI 1360) never played the #1 version of You've Got A Friend by James Taylor, opting instead to play the Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway version that peaked at #29. Back then the PD got to make local decisions because he/she thought a song was right for the market (even though the chosen version in the above case was awful IMHO). And it exposed some mighty good songs that would never have seen the light of day otherwise. But to play devil's advocate with my own post, there was exactly 1 station playing top 40 hit music in the market at the time. It was that or listen to your own record collection. In their case, they had a lot of room to experiment with little to lose. Different world today...

This can really be expounded out by comparing local Top 30 surveys between WKLO and WAKY. Both were Top 40 in Louisville, Kentucky but often as many as 10 songs would be on one stations survey that were not on the other. Both had different PD's and they would often play different songs and thus those songs became popular enough to enter the respective station's survey.

Sadly now a days you can drive cross country and you will hear the same 20 current songs on every CHR station no matter where you go. There is no local live entertaining CHR radio any more and that's very sad but it is what it is. Me? I just use my i-Pod and listen to whatever I want.

You are so right. And your last paragraph says it all.

So...what can be done to correct this trend? If we want radio to survive and there is no doubt it is the best what is the answer?

No one says radio has to die.

How about approaching advertisers and asking them if they think that they are getting the best bang for their buck on stations who program this way?

I would think that the sales pitch that frequency is the only way to get results with radio ad buying does not apply as the tendency of playing the same 20-50 songs in repetition drives off an audience several times in the course of a day.

How can one claim frequency of exposure to folks who are channel surfing out of sheer boredom??

Would like to hear some thoughts on this...