Perhaps market size is our difference. I was working as a Pd in medium markets. Can’t speak for majors.
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Why are big hits "lost?"
- Thread starter tall_guy1
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And perhaps I didn’t express my point properly. What I meant is many record companies pushed their product in unorthodox ways. Payola was one way, (not cash like another era), but trips for the PD, help with station promotions, etc. A lot of non hit product made air due to this. Again, I saw it up close mainly in the 90’s.
Someone has to represent the music. Someone has to make the radio people aware that there's music out there they should listen to, or there's some research they haven't considered. Otherwise, radio either just plays what it wants, or it just plays the same old songs over & over. Choosing what to play on the radio shouldn't be an autocracy, where one person makes decisions about what gets played. He should hear from the people who represent the artists and the music. Don't you think? Isn't that fair? I'm not saying it's always ethical, but at least the musicians have representation. And if the music sucks, the listeners will tell you, and you can stop playing it. But at least the music had a chance.
If a programmer was adding records based on other stations adding it without knowing how the record was performing on those stations, that was on that programmer, not the system.
The only thing adds on other radio stations were good for was to tell you where to look to see if a record was taking off, stiffing or just getting by.
You could also get a rough idea of records that were instant smashes versus records that built slowly and make decisions on what you needed. Even then, you needed to factor in differences between your market and whichever stations in particular you were looking at.
Even when I was programming in the 70s, "it's on KHJ" didn't mean anything by itself. And it's why R&R, despite being better for radio news than Billboard, had one weakness. Its charts were all airplay-based. Turntable records (records that weren't selling but were getting phones or were being added because stations thought it sounded like a hit) over-indexed on the R&R charts.
I don't fully agree.
While maintaining a warm relationship with label representatives is good, it is more often than not like weekly visits from a whole tribe or clan of used care salesmen. There is very little that record reps can tell you that is of value, as their entire job can be condensed into three words: "play my record".
If you are in a larger market, you will get the "top of the line" promotion people and you may be in a position to get interviews, promotional items, tickets for give-aways and the like. But otherwise, it's very time consuming and not very productive.
When Power 106 was #1 in its target in LA in the later 90's, the PD's phone message said, "Hi, you have reached Jimmy Steal, Program Director of Power 106. If you are a record promoter, you can hang up now. Otherwise, leave a message..."
I've never looked at new music from that perspective. To me, it is "what will make the listener happy". And more so, "what will make the listener keep listening".
Adding new music is the riskiest task a station's program staff has to undertake. That's why each of us who engaged in music selection at some point in our careers developed a safety net to prevent playing too many songs that ended up as stiffs.
In my case, some of the aspects of dealing with new music were:
- "Bigness" of the artist. When presented with a group of good new songs, the first choice would likely be a big, normally successful artist. Second would be a rising artist with fewer past hits. Last would be a brand new artists.
- Flavor of the song. If a release just "sounded like my station" it got extra points.
- Balance of playlist: If I had too many ballads or too many crossovers from another genre, new songs of those kinds got postponed or discarded.
- Early play on stations I respected. That is why, going back to the late 50's, we looked at tip sheets and trades to see who was adding the song.
- Concert event: if an artist would be appearing in town and was not being promoted by a competitor, having a new hit song and getting some give-away tickets was a good tactic.
- Artist was "nice" or nice to the station. Aloof or nasty artists don't get preference when making adds.
A lot of this is "gut feel". That is why good PDs can't be created, they are born.
Nope. Sirius has been around in one form or another for 20+ years. It peaked at 34 million-ish subscribers more than three years ago and hasn't been able to break that. It's 10% of the total population of the U.S.
With less than 10 percent of Americans willing to pay for the service, I'd say no.
Was that the same Tom Donohue that DJ'd KYA in the 60's?
And remember that the number is inflated by counting unsold cars on dealer lots and trial subscription periods. If you look at the data, we can say that only about one in ten new car buyers subscribes to the service after the trial is over.
Are there any numbers for app-only subscribers? Last car repair we got, we were offered a 3 month app-only trial (listen with Apple CarPlay!), We're already subscribers so couldn't use.
We are only treated to SiriusXM numbers as part of their press releases and annual / quarterly financial reports to shareholders. We should get the 2022 report soon and we can see what they show.
We can debate this left and right. But corruption between record companies and radio programmers was real. I am not proud of it, but was the hand I was delt.
Missing is the word "some".
There are many PDs who would not sacrifice their job and station by playing stiffs. Corporate-supervised stations had double-checks on adds, enhanced by frequent revision of monitors like MediaBase and which have been in operation with electronic monitoring for nearly three decades.
The days of Joe Isgro and other independent promoters... of PDs accepting coke-o-grams... of unsupervised PDs... are pretty much over.
I was part of a "due diligence" involving a record company sale where possible liability of the rec company for illegal practices had to be evaluated. Things like trips to conventions that did not exist, vehicles, illegal substances and the like had to be evaluated even though they were documented as "entertainment" and "travel expenses" and the like to determine if a potential buyer might be liable in any way. The purchase was not made.
Since then, consolidation has removed most stations that could enhance a record's chart position as companies check too deeply for such practices to be effective. And record companies have less concern for radio plays in most formats, in that new media has made it harder to fake a song's popularity.
We can go back to the 50's and 60's where record companies would fake chart positions by shipping huge quantities of singles to one-stops and distributors by using "returnable for credit" on the invoice. The trades, then, looked at that data to create charts and stations looked at the charts to see what they might add. Those practices are a big part of why the tip sheets were created as stations realized that the charts in Billboard, Cash Box and Record World were distorted by such practices.
I was referring to the 90’s, not today. And believe me my comments were reality then. The system was corrupt.
Its crazy the amount of power spins today though...a station that plays their top songs 115-120 times a week is hard to listen to for me!
Ok, but I still say the system was corrupt. The amount of spins had nothing to do with quality music. It was what the record company was willing to do to make sure their spins got counted. Not pretty, but this is how the wheel churned. We can beatify the process but in fact it was quite ugly. Am I the only person
on here who did not experience this BS?
on here who did not experience this BS?
Go back to the huge years of WABC in New York where the #1 song was played every 90 minutes. That was 112 times a week. And that was in the 60's... over 50 years ago.
So what is done today is very normal in that format and is very appropriate for a station in a CHR or Urban CHR or Churban format.
It is still crazy though. If youre an avid listener of said station, it is torturous! (Not to mention competing stations playing the same song.)
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