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Z100, music adjustments?

deejaywestbrook

deejaywestbrook

I used to live live in New York City back in the late 90s/00s. Z100 was the station man I loved it. I still listen to it occasionally on the streaming haven't listened to it in a while however I still monitor Media Base to see the number spins the biggest songs are getting (in that city).

However I noticed something strange. When looking at their top five most spins. Usually most CHR stations have about five or six songs in heavy or power rotation. Usually the top five songs are spun from around 115 to 130 times per week.

Z100 has done this for years... They're most played songs were well over a hundred times per week. But lately, I've been seeing on media base that the top five songs on Z100 are only being spun about 80 times per week at most. Does that mean they're playing way more recurrents now? Is it shifting more towards a hot AC? Lol

But seriously, does anyone have any idea what's going on or is Media based just not calculating the number of total spins per week correctly? Because how it looks now Z100 is only playing about four or five currents per hour which is very strange for such a model top 40 station just wondering if anyone else has noticed any changes or what might be happening. Here's a sample of the latest stats for media base on Z100 most played songs.

And this is a sample of the number of spins my local iHeart station Power 961 are playing here in Atlanta. Z100 total spins used to look a lot like this does anyone know what happened?
 

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It might be a sign of the times. A lot of stations have begun chipping away at their current count and focusing more on recurrents. That station in Atlanta is the exception to the rule.
 
There arent as many songs hitting the top 10 as there used to be as songs hang around alot longer now.
billboard top 40 airplay chart:
heat waves #3 but on the chart 41 wks
stay #7 38 wks
industry baby #13 35 wks
need to know #10 31 wks
ghost #6 28 wks
thats what i want 27 wks
one right now #9 21 wks
big energy #5 15 wks & woman #2 14 wks are "newer"
blinding lights which was the #1 song of 2020 also was #39 of 2021.
So maybe they are spreading the plays out more.
 
I compared Z100 with KIIS in LA, and KIIS is playing it's heavies 125 spins a week. Same with several other iHeart CHRs. So you may be on to something. Then I looked down Z-100's list, and there are some older songs still in their playlist.

However, most of the legendary CHRs are seeing their market share drop since the pandemic, and some of it has to do with a shortage of really good hot music. So perhaps the view is why give more spins to bad songs just because they happen to be current?
 
Supposedly they figured out repeating that much does not help their ratings. When I was younger, 80s were average, 90s were up there, 100s were excessive,
 
TheBigA said:
Then why are other CHRs owned by the same company still playing their heavies 120 times a week?
Click to expand...

It's market specific. Repeating that much in Los Angeles might work there just fine, but it might not work in another market in the same way some songs might not work in some markets but do really well in others.
 
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JeremyAndrews said:
It's market specific. Repeating that much in Los Angeles might work there just fine, but it might not work in another market in the same way some songs might not work in some markets but do really well in others.
Click to expand...

What statistical information is there to say it was "excessive" only in NY? Repetition of big hits has worked in Top 40 for 70 years.
 
dcowboy7 said:
The #1 song of 1984 "when doves cry" spent only 16 wks in the top 40. šŸ˜³
Click to expand...
The charts turned to sludge in the '90s and have been that way since. Country is even worse than the Hot 100. Songs can spend nearly a year in the top 40 before reaching their chart peak, and that includes No. 1 hits.
 
JeremyAndrews said:
This is a good read if you want to dive farther into the subject.
Click to expand...

There's a key line in that article:

"We also should consider whether the current CHR product supports an average spin of 119x a week."

That was exactly the point I made in post #4. Why give more spins to bad songs just because they're current? It's not just the repetition, but repetition of the particular songs. If the songs were better, repetition wouldn't be a factor, because repetition is the core of the format. I don't think we're at the point where we can draw any conclusions from this process until we get out of this slump.
 
TheBigA said:
There's a key line in that article:

"We also should consider whether the current CHR product supports an average spin of 119x a week."

That was exactly the point I made in post #4. Why give more spins to bad songs just because they're current? It's not just the repetition, but repetition of the particular songs. If the songs were better, repetition wouldn't be a factor, because repetition is the core of the format. I don't think we're at the point where we can draw any conclusions from this process until we get out of this slump.
Click to expand...
For decades... going back to the mid-70's at least, Top 40 stations had a tactic when there were no "powers" (which, for the non-insiders, are the small group of songs that get the highest play... generally 3 to 5 songs that are in that 100 play a week rotation) which is to suspend powers and subdivide the rest of the currents for a bit faster play to make up for the missing powers.

In the past, some of us almost always slowed the currents down after Thanksgiving since labels did not do heavy releases until January. And sometimes July and August were slow, so the same would happen.

Of course, one of the reasons we stopped calling the format "Top 40" was because by the time we got real research, we realized that there were generally around 20 real hits plus a few new adds that were waiting to be researched. Jerry Clifton said that there were never more than 17 hits at any time in the format, in fact.

Whether that data is true today with all the online influences and artists' ability to drop a new song instantly is a different subject.

I think Sean's article is well thought out. However, there are several caveats: first, some markets have fewer signals and not all have overlapping Hot AC stations or they don't have a Churban to fragment them. And, second, there are markets like NYC that have much less in-car listening due to higher use of public transit; a comparison of the US with Europe is challenged by the overwhelming use of public transit there.
 
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JeremyAndrews said:
It's market specific. Repeating that much in Los Angeles might work there just fine, but it might not work in another market in the same way some songs might not work in some markets but do really well in others.
Click to expand...
Some of that may have to do with each market's average drive time and the percentage of people commuting on public transit.
 
There are some interesting selections being brought back on Z100 recently, a couple more than 20 years old
(N'Sync, some Britney Spears songs; understandable as she's been in the news recently for various reasons).
Most of the newly re-added recurrents are 5 to 20 years old, most that I thought would never air again on Z100.

To see each day's playlist for Z100, adjust the date in the URL address below.
For example: it's currently set up to show the list from 4/15/2022.
I was able to go back 63 days to 2/11/2022 as of this post on 4/15/2022.
Change the end of the address from "MONDTE=4%2F15%2F2022" to "MONDTE=2%2F11%2F2022"
to see 2/11/2022. I imagine the "oldest date available" moves forward 1 day with each passing day.

 
I just checked the CHR stations in the Top 10 markets, and Z100 is still playing its heavies less than 100 spins a week.

They are the only CHR in the Top 10 that is under 100. Most are over 125.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Jerry Clifton said that there were never more than 17 hits at any time in the format, in fact.
Click to expand...
I guess its what does he defines as a hit.
Just off the top of my head Z100 is playing every 1-22 song on the current billboard mainstream top 40 airplay chart.
Also played some from 23-40.
 
pjc1961 said:
There are some interesting selections being brought back on Z100 recently, a couple more than 20 years old
(N'Sync, some Britney Spears songs; understandable as she's been in the news recently for various reasons).
Most of the newly re-added recurrents are 5 to 20 years old, most that I thought would never air again on Z100.

To see each day's playlist for Z100, adjust the date in the URL address below.
For example: it's currently set up to show the list from 4/15/2022.
I was able to go back 63 days to 2/11/2022 as of this post on 4/15/2022.
Change the end of the address from "MONDTE=4%2F15%2F2022" to "MONDTE=2%2F11%2F2022"
to see 2/11/2022. I imagine the "oldest date available" moves forward 1 day with each passing day.

Click to expand...

A lot of CHR stations do this, especially ones that rely on the upper end of the demo in certain dayparts. WXSS in Milwaukee routinely plays songs that are more than 20 years old. Sometimes several times a day, When the format launched there in the late 90s, the oldest songs they played were also about 20 years old (1982)

WZOK in Rockford, IL played 80s music well into the 2000s. WKFR in Battle Creek still does during the midday. I think WIXX in Green Bay still sneaks in some 80s Bon Jovi from time to time. A lot of times this is in smaller markets, or on heritage stations (KIIS still plays songs like Dreaming Of You by Selena and California Love by 2Pac) WKSC in Chicago occasionally plays Mid 2000s Panic At The Disco and Fall Out Boy.

This is more likely to happen in specific dayparts. Middays and Early Afternoons. WZOK used to basically go Adult CHR at 4AM to cater to the at work crowd. They would return to full blown CHR sometime during the mid afternoon. You're most likely to hear a lot of these older songs during the midday and afternoon (At work and drive home)
 
dcowboy7 said:
I guess its what does he defines as a hit.
Click to expand...
The difference is that a chart has numeric ranks that are based just on this week's music. If the biggest song is not very strong, it may get vastly fewer plays online than a "really big song" in a different week and month.

And all rank positions are relative. The #30 song may be less than 5% of the plays of the #1 song. The Billboard Hot 100 will always have 100 songs. But the point at which those songs outside the top 15 to 20 stop being relevant is very critical.

And radio makes age distinctions, such as new releases, currents, recurrents, etc. Billboard does not.
dcowboy7 said:
Just off the top of my head Z100 is playing every 1-22 song on the current billboard mainstream top 40 airplay chart.
Also played some from 23-40.
Click to expand...
But radio does not have 22 rotations. at most, they might have new, current moving up, power, current moving down, power recurrent, recurrent, recurrent gold, and so on. So the 8th song on a radio list plays the same as the 15th, for example.

In other words, the comparisons are not 100% parallel.
 
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