Why has Rewind become pathologically repetive?

[Nu_Roo_2]

With Rewind we're talking about a format closer to Adult Hits, not CHR or even AC.  Heck, even 93.3's CC Premium Choice tight, conservative version of Oldies sounds like it has a long, deep list compared to Rewind.  It makes no sense for a foreground, multi-decade, "feel-good" format like Rewind's to be playing virtually the same songs every day with rare variation.  This is especially true given that they play a lot of pop-rhythmic stuff in addition to the pop-rock that is the staple of 80s-focused formats i.e., they have more format-viable stuff to choose from.

One theory I have is that they are playing it ultra-conservative because as an Arbitron non-subscriber they won't be able to read the ratings effect of any playlist expansion or tweaking.  So when they talk about about playing the same mix tape over and over, it actually isn't all that far from literal reality.  On the other hand, that wouldn't explain Saga stations like CR WKLH Milwaukee that still has a very broad list compared to, say, a WLVQ.

Does anyone else think the lack of ratings access could be a factor here, or have other explanations?  Could it just be lazy programming?  I'm not saying that it makes no sense to have significant amount of repetition, but it shouldn't be so relentless and with virtually no spice except maybe once every 3-4 hours.  I really think they're jeopardizing their long-term viability, which is a shame because it's a great format -- for a day.

 

[dawg4life]

I don't listen to terrestrial radio very often anymore but when I did listen to Rewind the other day it reminded me why I don't listen to local radio anymore.
But yes that station has regressed since the last time I listened and I didn't think it could get much worse. When Rewind first launched in Columbus, they sounded fantastic. That seems to happen to a lot of stations that I liked at one time or another. They start off strong and then somebody screws it up.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

They start off strong and then somebody screws it up.

So true. Or, in at least a few cases, they finally start getting their act together and building momentum after it's already too late, i.e., the plug is already getting pulled.

BTW, sorry for the typo in the Topic. Should of course be REPETITIVE.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

Curious timing: Today, just after finally venting about this, I heard an hour or so where Rewind was playing a lot of songs they haven't played in ages -- maybe never for some of them. I doubt there's any real significance to it, i.e. maybe they've just slightly tweaked what we'll be hearing every day for the next five months. But hopefully I'm wrong, and they are becoming a little less stubbornly repetitive. I guess the next few weeks will tell.

 

[the marv]

They read their facebook wall quite a bit to get views from listeners. So I venture they read this site too.

 

[lovejamminoldies]

I like Rewind in Cinci much better, but Rewind here can't sound like they do because of Sunny. I think Rewind should lean a little more rhythmic and embrace that feel good format. I like the new voiceguy they have though!

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

I like Rewind in Cinci much better, but Rewind here can't sound like they do because of Sunny.

Isn't the fact that Rewind has to avoid a lot of stuff to prevent too much overlap with Sunny all the *more* reason to go a tad deeper on what they *can* play??

I think Rewind should lean a little more rhythmic and embrace that feel good format. I like the new voiceguy they have though!

I like the new voice, too.  Frankly, while I've always enjoyed their production with the female voice, I think they've gotten carried away with it.   The sound effects and the "woo-hoo's," etc. have escalated to the point that it gets grating.  They're hammering the "feel good" imaging to a fault, to the point where, figuratively, it's like someone trying to use their fingers to stretch your lips into a smile while saying "you're going to feel good whether you want to or not, dammit!"  I.e., it's kind of annoying.  Again, concept fine, but execution getting over-the-top.  The male voice has been a refreshing change from this.  Bright but not manic.  I wish they'd use him more.

As for the music genres, IMO they have a good balance between rhythm and rock -- to the extent I can occasionally get myself to sit through the format-inappropriate intense repetition, anyway.  What I *would* personally like to see go away are the hair bands, but I get the impression that music tests very well in Columbus, so I can see why it makes sense for Rewind to play it.

 

[lovejamminoldies]

I personally like the Feel Good imaging, but Sunny uses it too. I think Rewind should have been MOViN. It probably would have gotten the same, if not better ratings. But it's tough to do that format with Mix a few songs away from being CHR and Sunny not being Hot AC because of its 70s and gold that they play.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

But hopefully I'm wrong, and they are becoming a little less stubbornly repetitive.  I guess the next few weeks will tell.

Nah, only took a few days to find out.  But I was wrong when I said they pretty much repeat most of the music daily.  It's more like multiple times a day, and not just for a few powers.  What a strange way to program a format that is not current/recurrent based, and indeed is a type of Adult Hits that plays multiple genres and eras.  Not only are they hurting their long-term viability from accelerated burnout, but if they were hoping to pick up some of the listening that was starting to mushroom at Jack-FM before Salem bought and killed it, they've probably ruined those chances as well.  Jack listeners were conditioned to hear considerably more (carefully-constructed) depth and less repetition than on most stations -- i.e., the opposite of Rewind's 4-hour repeating-loop sound.  And in its last couple months Jack was earning far higher shares than Rewind ever did when visible.  You'd think Saga would have picked up a few clues from that, if even just from the publicly-available shares.

 

[dawg4life]

Nu Roo 2, if you haven't done so already, get an iPhone or any decent smartphone and get whatever you need to connect at home and in the car and I promise you that you will be so much happier.

I know I am.

 

[lovejamminoldies]

I swear I hear The Joker EVERY time I listen... here's the problem with Rewind Columbus vs. Rewind Cincinnati

Rewind Cinci is owned by a company who actually spends money on their stations and has a full-time live and local staff as well. They have evolved the station from when it first launched to compete with Warm 98, and for awhile they were on top. Their imaging and jingles are top notch. They don't have an AC station in their cluster so they can get away with playing more.

Rewind Columbus has 2 other stations in their cluster, one of them that shares their library. It wouldn't sound good to play Carly Rae Jepsen or Rihanna when they can be heard on both Sunny and Mix. Although, I think it would sound fresh, they will do anything to protect those stations. AC is evolving, which is why Mix is evolving into a CHR to give Sunny some room to play more risky stuff. Until one of them flips, you won't see any MAJOR changes on any station except Mix leaning more and more CHR to give room for each station to evolve.

For the record, I heard All Summer Long on Rewind this morning, that probably being the most current song they play unless they added a bunch of those songs from that era recently.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

For the record, I heard All Summer Long on Rewind this morning, that probably being the most current song they play unless they added a bunch of those songs from that era recently.

Yes, they play maybe ten (!) 2000's songs at most, and "All Summer Long" is probably the most recent. I'm guessing they find it more acceptable because it is a throwback song that talks about 1989 and samples "Sweet Home Alabama." I.e., it's kind of like back when oldies stations were playing Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock n Roll" at a time when they weren't going beyond '73/'74 on anything else.

 

[schmave]

If I ever hear Rewind play Carly Rae Jepsen or Rihanna, that will be the last time I listen to them. No reason for them to include that in their playlist. Rewind is the closest thing we have to an 80s-oriented station in this town.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

Rewind could play strictly top ten 80s hits -- and nothing else -- and be far, far less repetitive (and thus far more listenable) than they are now. Heck, they could play nothing but top ten 1983-1988 hits and be far, far less repetitive (and thus far more listenable) than they are. That's how ridiculous and perplexing this is. They play the same songs every day for long, long periods of time, and many of those songs multiple times per day. Is there really any reason why an upbeat, familiar song like "Run-Around" by Blues Traveler has to be relegated strictly to the "Class Reunion Lunch," and only on days when they feature 1995, yet Cameo's "Word Up" or The Time's "Jungle Love" is playing almost every time you tune to the station? I've still been tuning in the last few days hoping in vain to hear some "new" smash-hit 80s, 90s or 70s tunes, but instead I've heard Tone Loc's Wild Thing so many times that I've lost count. It's almost as if Rewind is being programmed like a CHR or Hot AC. It just doesn't make sense.

At Oldies 93.3 (a format which *expected* to be very repetitive in its "tight" version), you might hear many of the songs multiple days in a row, or even multiple times in one day. But then within a few days the active list will be refreshed so that it is largely a different set of tunes that is getting repeated. People have been claiming that Q-FM-96 sounds stale, but it actually sounds far less doggedly repetitive than Rewind.

 

[jakej]

Isn't it all just a question of degree? All commercial radio's the same. All the stations essentially have the same philosophy. Play the hits to death. Some are just a little bit more obvious about that strategy than others.
401 episodes of "Secrets" = approximately 6,015 different songs heard so far. But not by any of you. So please quit complaining about what you've got instead -- it's basically what you asked for.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

I just started nosing through some monitors, and some quick observation quantifies how out-of-control Rewind's repeats are.

I looked at the songs played during the 7 hours from 1pm to 8pm yesterday (Thursday). Then I looked back at the songs played earlier in the same day, namely the 6 morning hours from 6am to noon. (I left out noon-1 since it includes some specialty programming).

I found that 76 songs were played from 1pm - 8pm, and that *at least* 17 of these (22%) hadalso been played during the 6-hour morning period the same day. (I say *at least* because I may have missed some of the repeats during this quick analysis). A number of these repeats were less than four hours apart (!), e.g., "Heart of Glass" was played at 10:24am and again at 1:24pm; "Sister Christian" was played at 11:38am and 2:41pm; and "Oh Sheila" was played at 11:30am and 3pm. And to think other gold-based formats go for artist separation! Rewind apparently doesn't even try for song separation. Again, it's as if they are treating all these 30-year-old songs as currents and recurrents. Why?

If I had looked deeper (oops, Rewind must hate that word) and gone past 8pm (or earlier than 6am) we'd no doubt see even more intra-day repeats. But more importantly, a comparison to the day before would no doubt turn up 90%+ repeats.

Sorry to be so blunt, but to me this looks like sloppy, lazy programming despite whatever explanations might be given if Saga were to read and reply. They're burning the station to a crisp in record time.

 

[xmusicmatt]

It would be interesting to see how Rewind is doing in the PPMs with their tight repetitive playlist however SAGA does not believe in paying for the ratings.. so..

 

[alans613]

They might as well flip Rewind to Jack-FM and be done with it. ljo is right...Rewind is owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, who also owns WUBE B-105 and WKRQ, the legendary Q102. Hubbard has live, local people on Q and Rewind 6AM-Midnight. Not sure about B. Q even has an off-air PD(Patti Marshall), which is almost unheard of in this era of radio.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

Actually, if you just look at 70s, 80s and 90s, Rewind's music isn't all that different the Cincy Rewind's (WREW). The difference -- a BIG difference -- is that at WREW, the 2000s-to-today tunes take up a substantial proportion of the airtime, which means the 70s, 80s and 90s tunes don't have to be repeated nearly as often as they are on Columbus's Rewind.

That's why, if they don't want to add the later and current tunes like Cincy, Rewind Columbus really needs to add a lot more 70s/80s/90s variety to their daily programming to avoid being a repeat monster. It's a shame they are stuck in this mode, because it's basically a darn-good sounding station that is ruined by uber-repetitiveness. Would it really hurt to play their "songs you don't hear anywhere else" once or twice each hour, instead of once every 3-4 hours (but without always staging it)? Since they're still upbeat, familiar tunes, the break in the repeat-monotony would more than make up for playing something that's not one of their top-testers.

On a tangential note, one of the things that may be even more off-putting at the moment than the out-of-control (for this type of station) repetitiveness is that awful, awful, awful commercial for Sirens that seems to be played during virtually every break. Without going into details (which would double the length of the post), I have to say this is *easily* the most obnoxious commercial I've heard on Columbus radio in several years. I will say just one thing about it: since when is a Columbus blue-collar worker supposed to have a guttural, r-dropping eastern accent (and a strange one that doesn't even exist in the real world, for that matter)?

 

[KFodor]

Isn't it all just a question of degree? All commercial radio's the same. All the stations essentially have the same philosophy. Play the hits to death. Some are just a little bit more obvious about that strategy than others.
401 episodes of "Secrets" = approximately 6,015 different songs heard so far. But not by any of you. So please quit complaining about what you've got instead -- it's basically what you asked for.

Yeah...because playing the hits gets you listeners.