stuart@ssc-vax.UUCP (Stuart Lewis) (06/07/84)
Well fans, in further continuation of the radio workings saga I see that there is a further hunger for information in netland. I shall accomodate. First let me state that in my next and seperate article I shall flame (with extreme prejudice, 007) dya; but not here. I knew that I would create some questions as my first article was much too small to do anything but scratch the surface. So here goes again. Billboard is the trade magazine and basically has nothing to do with radio programming. Billboards information is gathered strictly from record sales and jukebox play records - radio stations do not have any say at all in re- gards to the 'Top 100' (singles) or the 'Top 200' (albums). It is published for the benefit of the record companies. Think of it as the record companies Wall Street Journal where the record exec's watch their commoddities go up and down the money making scales. Sure, program and music directors care about what is selling good, but if all they played was strictly "top 40" they'd always be a month behind what the fu- ture sellers are going to be. The 2 greatest influences to what radio sta- tions play (and what you eventually listen to) are publications called "Walrus" and "Radio and Records" - think of these as the radio stations Wall Street Journal. Subscription to these runs over a hundred bucks a year each and they come out weekly (as does Billboard). These two publications, whether you know it or not, influence every major station and market in the U.S. and determine what you will hear or be hearing today and in the future. These publications work like this : Every week, the music director goes in to his office with his pile of music logs that the jocks have been filling out and compiles the top played songs and albums for the week - most stations also log the number of calls for a particu- lar song also, which is important too as we will see. Anyway, the music direc- tor (md hereafter) compiles this information and sends it in to Walrus and/or R & R. This information is then published weekly and comes out in the next weeks issue. The results are broke down in to geographic markets and each sta- tion in that market has its own space (that is each "subscribing" station - a station can get these publications mailed to them at a pretty cheap rate, but to be a "subscribing" or "reporting" station, that's where the subscription rate gets expensive). Now the md can look over what every major station in the country is playing - whether its a rival station across town or one on the opp- osite coast. This is what determines what stations play - not Billboard, but you can see how one will have eventual influence on the other - and it's not going to be Billboard! Also, what a station in New York has listed as being a hot album or single may be a total bomb in Seattle or L.A. The Seattle md's will look at what's being played in Spokane, Portland, S.F., L.A., and San Diego. The Denver md's will be watching Salt Lake City, Kansas City, Lincoln, Minneapolis/Ste. Paul and so on. Consider this as being the "shop talk" of program and music directors - a comparing of notes so to speak. If a md sees that a station down the road is playing song 'A' a lot and he initially tossed it as being lousy, he'll go dig it up and give it a second listen and perhaps put it on a playlist. If you think about it you'll find that you are hearing some songs an awful lot - weeks perhaps - before they make it to the Billboard Top 100. That's because songs have to get the airplay and recognition before people buy them - it's not unusual for songs to be out for many months before they crack Billboard. It's Walrus or Radio & Records first, Billboard second. Getting back to reporting to these publications, again, there are 3 categories into which things fall : hot airplay, warm airplay, and new entries. There is normally only 5 or so albums reported in each category from each station. There may also be a sidelight stating which songs were the most requested for the week - those not on any of the 3 lists, that is. Reporting station info is also listed : call letters, music director, program director, frequency, hours of operation, wattage, format, etc. This is not only for rock/pop stations either. Country & Western, Jazz, Easy Listening all have there own sections each week too. But here you can see where the mentioning of requests will even further influence future playlists. An L.A. md might read where some song is really being requested heavily in Portland and Seattle, so he's going to pull it out and give it a listen too - remember, these guys get paid to stay on top of the music scene, and if a competitor station up the road has been 'scooping' them for 2 or 3 weeks on a particular song that is really hot, the program director is not going to be happy with the music director for not having pick- ed up on it - enough of these and he's out the door. Well, I hope this further enlightens you on how music playlists are determin- ed. This is only one facet of broadcasting and covers just about every type of station except 'newsradio' and classic format stations. Further questions will undoubtedly be answered in my flaming article to dya. Stuart Lewis ssc-vax!stuart