Why has Rewind become pathologically repetive?

[KFodor]

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)?

The honest answer to your question Nu depends on how that music is scheduled. As long as you didn't overdo the number of "less heard" songs each hour, set them in-between two well known good testers, and creatively staged them, it probably wouldn't hurt at all. But the dirty little "secret" (all due apologies to Jake J. - just kidding you, Jake.) is that many of these so-called "genius" PD's don't know how to properly configure their music schedulers. Poor music scheduling is what causes the "perception" of a station's repetitiveness the majority of the time. If the music is scheduled correctly, that perception of repetitiveness rarely raises its ugly head.

Back when WCOL-FM was playing oldies, we had two music lists...an "A" list (which played all the time in rotation), and a "B" list (which aired weekends and would get sprinkled in at select times during the week). It gave what I call an "illusion" of depth and added to the impression of station musical variety. The overall library was up around 1,200 or so songs, while the daily playlist was about 500 or so. All I know is that we took WBNS-FM 13 out of 13 books that way, even with Chucko spinning his nonhits 4 hours a night.

Unfortunately, a truly annoying commercial that's over repeated in saturation buys can drive away listeners. Too bad station sales departments refuse to believe that. And there are far too many annoying, obnoxious, poorly written spots with no attention given to creativity on radio these days. Which may explain why the Anheuser-Busch "Real Men Of Genius" spots stood out like an oasis in the desert when they were running...

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

Interesting and enlightening post, Jason. Thanks. BTW, seems like the Sirens commercial may finally be gone for now -- and hopefully permanently.