Paul Anka’s 1974 “Having My Baby” was his 5th biggest hit after “Diana” in 1957 and “Lonely Boy” in 1959. Then”Put your head on my shoulder” and “Puppy love”. But a nice comeback. Paul is now 81.
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Why are big hits "lost?"
- Thread starter tall_guy1
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When compared with markets of similar size, Kansas City is under-radioed. Large markets with relatively few stations tend to make poor test markets because those stations are at a premium. Most operators aren't going to use a good signal as a test. KC was, however, an early adapter of the Jack FM format.
San Antonio is another frequent test market that generally isn’t use for testing radio for the same reason. Being so close to Austin means fewer potential allotments as every full market station has to be at least two clicks from the full market Austin stations. Unlike KC, San Antonio had a handful of local/regional formats that wouldn’t work in many other places. It also had one of the first official “Hot AC” stations in the country, and a successful CHR was nuked to launch it. (That one was, by and large, a flop. Though it had some success, it didn’t even last 1,000 days.)
Yes. I generally like Paul Anka's music ! He sings with a lot of feeling and sincerity. He really can convey the emotion of the song.
Which would make the 13 years and 44 songs in between his last previous top ten record (22 of which failed to chart at all) and "(You're) Having My Baby" really tough to explain.
Good Lord!🤮
Could this be the beginnings of a big Radio Discussions user's meetup on Zoom some evening? BYOB and prepare for a Paul Anka-themed karaoke singalong extravaganza???
The test market concept has changed a lot due to the Internet, cable viewing and the like.
It used to be that a product could be distributed in a single isolated city (such as KC or Indianapolis) and ads run in local media. Today, so much media usage is not local and cities have such different ethnic compositions that a "very white" market like those I just named does not work.
Radio formats are not test marketed. If someone comes up with a new format variant, they put it on a station that is not doing well. If it does better than expected, they may put it on some other stations they own. Others may gradually copy it. But that is it.
I'd rather be drawn and quartered.
I can’t understand why some here diss Anka. Ok, he was smaltzie for sure but he churned out hits. He is recognized as a star in his era.
You are.....disagreeing with Seatown, then? It's fine to disagree. I'm just not sure with whom you are disagreeing.
MODERATOR COMMENT: We just closed one thread because it went into "I like this song but you like that song" and was far removed from being about radio and radio programming.
Please let's not turn this thread into a Whitburn book or a poll of favorite 60's tunes. Or take it to the "remotely related to broadcasting" section:
Please let's not turn this thread into a Whitburn book or a poll of favorite 60's tunes. Or take it to the "remotely related to broadcasting" section:
Because he created talent-less pablum?
KC and the Sunshine Band was considered a recognized star around that time too. And KC couldn't sing a lick. Just because it was popular then, never meant it was actually good.
God bless you!
You are.....disagreeing with Seatown, then? It's fine to disagree. I'm just not sure with whom you are disagreeing.
I was responding to you:
“I think the only reason it was ever played, was that Anka was considered ( and is still considered) to be a good song writer and a name in music.”
If that were the case, why had it been 13 years since his last top ten? Why had 44 Paul Anka records not gone top ten? Why did 22 of those records not chart at all?
Hard to explain how radio only played that record because Paul is a good songwriter and a name in music, but not the others.
Oh -- I see. I was just saying that Anka was a well-known songwriter. I don't know why all his songs did not chart. That gets us off-topic into the category of why songs become hits when some people don't like them, and why do some songs fail to chart when people do like them?
If a radio station gets a record from a promoter, and the P.D. thinks that both side A and side B are going to be a hit, then how does the station decide which side to play? But, the moderator has asked us not to go off topic about this issue. So I will be careful about this in the future.
I've had a number of cases of finding a different cut that I wanted to play. The label did not like that, and asked me to flip the cut. I told them that, then, I would not play either. They backed down.
In one case, the "wrong cut" was the artists biggest song ever.
Okay -- that's what I was thinking. Thank you, David.
This goes back to the time of the "British Invasion" where labels would try to put our C&Ds when stations got new songs flown in from England ahead of the US release. They eventually figured out that they had to synchronize the releases.
You said the only reason “(You’re) Having My Baby” got played was because Anka was regarded as a good songwriter and was a name.
The point is not why those other records didn’t hit—-it’s that because those records didn’t hit, “(You’re) Having My Baby” was played for other reasons—-in the same way that “Sara Smile” was not a case of “heavy pressure by promoters”.
DJ Dave Hull did that one time at KRLA when he was specifically asked not to play the Beatles song one day ahead of time. KRLA liked to promote themselves as "the Beatles station", and Dave liked to call himself "the fifth Beatle."
He played it anyway, and he was fired. Then there was a protest by listeners, because Dave was a popular DJ in morning drive time. Dave personally told that story to Bill Earl, the KRLA radio historian, who wrote it in his history of KRLA. -- Daryl
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