At least for WOGL, they're mainly classic rock songs. Kansas, Boston, Journey, Aerosmith, and Skynyrd.
The kind of songs you might expect on WMGK.
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WOGL Rebrands at Big 98.1
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At least for WOGL, they're mainly classic rock songs. Kansas, Boston, Journey, Aerosmith, and Skynyrd.
The kind of songs you might expect on WMGK.
You're not only a person who listens to the radio for hours; you're one who listens to one station for hours. That's behavior usually found in captive audience environments, such as having to listen to a manager or coworker's favorite station through an entire workday -- and even then, your work would (or should!) relegate that station to background noise. Radio and music/chart geeks are bothered by repetition, most average listeners in the real world aren't.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
You are correct, and as I previously explained we do not program to the small number of listeners that do. It does not matter to programmers that people who do not have typical listening patterns hear repeats.
Maybe in the large cities and markets, but in smaller areas and certainly in areas where retirement communities exist, it is the total opposite. So to those fine program directors and programmers, it does matter and they program to people who enjoy THEIR music. There's a huge expanse of real estate out there, besides LA county. And yes, I do hear repeats in my market, but to the level of it being manageable, not the repeated feeling of songs being burnt beyond a crisp in your market and in Philly!
There's also active vs passive listening. I'm thinking of something like a doctor's office or the like. The radio may be on all day, and presumably a station like 98 since that's the topic isn't going to typically repeat the song within a standard workday length. The repeats are spaced out further than that. But just because it's on, who is actually paying attention to notice if it slipped through? The last time I was in my doc's office, the radio was vaguely on in the background, but people were in and out of the space, talking on the phone, talking to each other...it is simply not realistic to think they're giving their foreground attention to the radio. They can recognize a sense of if their favorite songs tend to play, but they're not keeping score, and that does not somehow make them lesser than some of the pompous folks who belittle the "average" listener.
Many days, I'm working remotely, and even without co-workers physically present, the daily distractions mean I am not making my music foreground listening. I'm going to make a cup of tea. Hopping on phone calls. Focusing on a project. Getting a glass of water. And so on. If the same song played at 8 when I start my day and at whatever god-awful hour I end it, would I notice? Most likely not. Because what happened that many hours ago in the background just doesn't matter.
Many days, I'm working remotely, and even without co-workers physically present, the daily distractions mean I am not making my music foreground listening. I'm going to make a cup of tea. Hopping on phone calls. Focusing on a project. Getting a glass of water. And so on. If the same song played at 8 when I start my day and at whatever god-awful hour I end it, would I notice? Most likely not. Because what happened that many hours ago in the background just doesn't matter.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Occasionally there are differences, and a good programmer takes those differences into account, but there are incredibly few Classic Hits stations that succeed, even in smaller markets, without playing the same consensus favorites that are in power rotations everywhere. (And believe it or not, that does not change in "retirement community" markets ... unless you are talking about programming to the older demographics that are not part of the Classic Hits equation, in which case the argument becomes irrelevant to what we are discussing here.)
The 125 to 130 songs that I have in power rotation (meaning two or three plays per day on my hot clocks) are based upon my evaluation of the actual airplay of 17 stations in the top 20 markets and 25 more stations in medium and small markets. From that data -- not just my opinion -- I can say without fear of being proven wrong that those songs are consensus favorites nationwide.
Got it and thanks for the explanation.
I do hear most of those consensus songs in my market. The big difference here (SW Florida), is that they are spaced out over a longer time period, so as not to sound like the frequency of large market stations playing them. And the fillers in between, are many songs that I enjoy listening too, that the larger markets tend not to play. From Andreas "More More More" from '76 to "Real Love" by the Doobies from '80, just heard yesterday on WSRQ 91.7 and Seaview 104.9. It's all good.
The typical 70s songs still heard on Audacy classic hits stations - I made this list several months back, but I feel it’s still pretty accurate. These must be the ones Audacy has decided test well.
More Than a Feeling - Boston
Kansas - Carry On Wayward Son
Dream On/Sweet Emotion - Aerosmith
Stevie Wonder - Superstition
Billy Joel - Piano Man/My Life/Only the Good Die Young/Big Shot
Wild Cherry - Play That Funky Music
Elton John - Tiny Dancer, Rocket Man, Bennie and the Jets
Bee Gees - Stayin Alive
Donna Summer - Hot Stuff
Four Seasons - December 1963
Fleetwood Mac - Dreams/Go Your Own Way
Gloria Gaynor - I Will Survive
Eagles - Take It Easy/Heartache Tonight/Hotel California
Blondie - Heart of Glass
Earth Wind and Fire - September
Manfred Man - Blinded by the Light
Rod Stewart - Da Ya Think I’m Sexy
Toto - Hold the Line
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Sweet Home Alabama
Journey - Lights
Commodores - Brick House
Bob Seger - Old Time Rock & Roll
Jimmy Buffett- Margaritaville
War - Low Rider
Paul McCartney and Wings - Live and Let Die
Anything from the 70s by Queen, Foreigner, or the Cars.
Some like Queen, the Boston and Kansas tracks are generally in way heavier rotation. Some stations like WOMC and WMXJ that lean older are a bit varied (WOMC obviously plays a lot of Seger, for example, and WMXJ still plays more rhythmic 70s stuff like Bee Gees, ABBA, etc).
Not really a criticism - just interesting that Audacy has settled on this basic framework for 70s songs still played across the board, whether it be KXSN or WOGL.
iHeart, Cumulus, and Beasley also play the above but play stuff like “Maggie May”, “Silly Love Songs”, “Drift Away” (the Dobie Gray version), “Spirit in the Sky”, “Cat’s in the Cradle”, “Dancing Queen”, “Baby I Love Your Way”, more Eagles like “Take it to the Limit” and “Peaceful East Feeling”, “Evil Woman” and “Don’t Bring me Down” by ELO, “Listen to the Music” and “Black Water” by the Doobies, “Crocodile Rock” by EJ, “Don’t Stop” and other 70s Fleetwood Mac hits, Bad Company, “Brandy”, “Still the One”, “You Make Lovin’ Fun” and “Don’t Stop”, “Stuck in the Middle With You”, “A Horse with No Name” and “Sister Golden Hair”, “Lean on Me” and “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers (iHeart likes these mainly), Steve Miller Band, “Running on Empty”, CCR, “Fame” and “Changes” by Bowie etc etc. I’ll stop there!
iHeart is still even throwing in some random 60s tracks like “Brown Eyed Girl”, “Sugar Sugar”, “Daydream Believer”, “Respect”, “Twist and Shout” and some later Beatles. All of this while throwing in 90s AC titles, so it isn’t like they haven’t evolved. They’re just pulling from a much wider age range of music.
I guess my curiosity is - Audacy is running a much tighter playlist on their classic hits stations, but wouldn’t dare touch the 70s tracks I pointed out a couple of paragraphs above on ANY of their classic hits stations. Do they test well for Beasley/iHeart/Cumulus but not Audacy? Is it a different strategy? There’s really not a huge rhyme or reason, but most classic hits stations can seem to agree on almost eliminating disco. I get there’s business/tearing reasoning, I’m just curious if different companies are getting different research results or something. Heck, even WLTW plays “Your Song” by Elton John - way too old for CBS-FM these days!
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K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
That sounds to me like an adjustment in the scheduling software to extend the turnover time, which (as you have already obviously presumed) is a market-by-market decision. Without looking at the situation in-depth, I can logically presume that there is some competitive factor which motivates such an adjustment.
I do have to admit that I find it interesting that close to 90% of the songs with the highest spin totals are on at least 35 of the 42 stations I monitor, consistently. Apparently the consensus preference doesn't change by much, regardless of where one lives.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I think you will find philosophical differences between the major players to some degree, and depending on how rigidly they enforce that in each market you can indeed see those differences if you look hard enough at their playlists.
In general, the top 1970s songs on Classic Hits stations are:
Billy Joel: Only The Good Die Young, Piano Man
Blondie: Heart Of Glass, One Way Or Another
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band: Old Time Rock & Roll
Boston: More Than A Feeling
Cars: Just What I Needed
Cheap Trick: I Want You To Want Me
Eagles: Hotel California, Take It Easy
Earth, Wind & Fire: September
Electric Light Orchestra: Don't Bring Me Down
Elton John: Bennie And The Jets, Rocket Man, Tiny Dancer
Fleetwood Mac: Don't Stop, Dreams, Go Your Own Way, Landslide
Foreigner: Cold As Ice
Four Seasons: December 1963 (Oh, What A Night)
Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive
Hall and Oates: Rich Girl
Jimmy Buffett: Margaritaville
John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John: You're The One That I Want
Journey: Lights
Kansas: Carry On Wayward Son
Kiss: Rock And Roll All Nite
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Sweet Home Alabama
Manfred Mann: Blinded By The Light
Michael Jackson: Rock With You
Pat Benatar: Heartbreaker
Paul McCartney & Wings: Live And Let Die, Maybe I'm Amazed
Pink Floyd: Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)
Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Somebody To Love, We Are The Champions/We Will Rock You
Rupert Holmes: Escape (The Piña Colada Song)
Steve Miller Band: The Joker
Toto: Hold The Line
War: Low Rider
Wild Cherry: Play That Funky Music
These are in alphabetical order and are based on the composite rankings of all stations that identify as Classic Hits (not just the ones I routinely monitor). Obviously, there will be differences based on market situations and/or corporate edicts and I expect more differences in 1970s titles than I would in 1980s ones.
The real issue is that those small, tiny market station can't and don't do research, so they don't know which songs are now poison.
Even in the smallest rated markets, listening patters are the same. People have the same lifestyles in the sense that they get up and to to work or take the kids to school and so on. They also know about streaming and Sirius and all the alternatives.
But they have limited budgets so they just don't know how many stiffs they are playing.
Three points:
WOGL was using a tighter playlist last week than any of Audacy's other classic hits stations.
WOGL plays a small percentage of 70s songs (maybe 3 an hour)
WOGL has an active playlist, which means it rotates songs into and out of its playlist on a regular basis, and also increases or decreases spins of its songs on a regular basis.
So not all songs in its library are being spun at the same time, and songs you may hear a lot one week may disappear the next week.
As someone who listens for long periods, I like this.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
What we still don't know (yet) is if that is being done just to get listener attention for the branding change.
It's rare for a major market Classic Hits station to have an active playlist, especially to this extent. And especially Idiocy.
We may well be discussing a situation in flux. As David said just a few posts ago, listening patterns are pretty much the same regardless of market and I can't see bucking that trend as something permanent in a market the size of Philadelphia.
I looked at several classic hits stations in Mediabase last week, and spins of their songs changed from one week to the next.
Maybe I'm misreading Mediabase or you have another explanation.
Also, in another thread I compared KRTH and KOSF, and they also varied the songs and spins from week to week.
The situation that seemed unique to WOGL was the size of the playlist and the amount of spins given to songs in their Top 20. WOGL played songs in their Top 20 an average of ten times more per week than WCBS.
Both of the major music programming software apps have the ability to set up scheduled rest on specific songs and also the ability to do scheduled changes from one rotational category to another.
That means that a percentage of songs in a category or specific songs can be "told" to play for a certain period of time or do a certain number of spins and then rest for a specific period. And songs that are in a faster rotating category can move to a slower category for a while, also based on either plays or time.
A common use of resting is when a song is at the very bottom of those that were deemed playable in the last test and which the PD does not want to burn out. Similarly, a song that is at the borderline between belonging in a faster rotation and a slower category can be scheduled to move back and forth based on time or plays.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
You explained what I was trying to say better than I could, A. And David's subsequent post does explain this to some degree, but it still appears to me that WOGL is creating a different pattern than what you are seeing in Mediabase and I see in BDS as "typical".
The net result is an active rather than static playlist. Songs may appear in "recently played" one week, and removed the next.
Cumulus appears to do the same thing with their Nash Icon format.
Interesting. Essentially every Audacy classic hits station, except for WMXJ and maybe a smaller market one, pulls 70s titles from this exact list.
Classic hits as a whole does seem to have reached a consensus that the earlier acts of the decade like Badfinger, Three Dog Night, Chicago, solo Beatles, soul (O’Jays, Stylistics, Spinners, etc), disco (other than a few) have aged out of the format. I’m not sure if Audacy is as top down with classic hits as they have been with, say, alternative, but they clearly all pull 70s titles from a certain list that is almost identical to the one above and very little deviation. I haven’t checked with the 90s on, but that seems to vary more depending on the market. With Cumulus, iHeart, and Townsquare there seems to be more discretion left to the individual markets.
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