DJs Have No Role in Deciding What Gets Played on Classic Rock Stations

Yes they should. The typical top 40 list gets old fast.
A friend that used to be A DJ told me why there was such repetition. Something to do with the station paying for the rights to play the music and purchasing those rights in groups. Broadcasting a song once and paying for it is costly compared to purchasing a group of songs that can be played an unlimited amount of time over a given time period. Or some such.

 

I listen to Galaxy radio. Comes free with your basic cable service, better quality then FM and no commercials or news. Over 100 channels to choose from.

 

I posted this over a year ago in another thread (I used to be a program director at a Classic Rock Station and I was given some freedom to do some fun things):

Basically there is "testing" and "research". Mainly the target audience, at least for Classic Rock is Men 30-60 years old. They have panels and "test" songs and see how well they are liked. Example: Carry On Wayward Son (which by the way, for several years at least back 2000-2005 was the number one song played on Classic Rock Radio in the US) is known by a lot of people. "Oh yeah I like Kansas!!" Most CR listeners that listen at work or wherever are going to KNOW that song and LIKE it. Then if you take Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys and SOME people will know it, only SOME will like it and guys like us on these forums would LOVE it, however they don't ask us what to play. Therefore that song does not "test" well. I did not work for a gorilla like Clear Channel where all the playlists are dictated from Corporate. I had the freedom to do my own research and as long as my ratings were consistent they were fine letting me have free reign. So I used a database called "Media Base" where I could look at most of the CR stations in the US and see what they were playing. I would combine playlists and go from there. Not to mention I am a huge fan of Classic Rock, grew up on it and liked variety. It all comes down to ratings and advertising dollars. While most listeners would not tune out when Carry On Wayward Son plays you may have several tune out for the 11+ minutes of Low Spark because it isn't as generally know by the "at work" audience. I tried to keep the format as fresh as possible by adding "Lost Classics" like Ballroom Blitz or something. We also did 2-fer-Tues and "triple shot weekends" and "Midnight Munch". The munch was the funnest part of programming - we'd play a classic album in it's entirety from beginning to end and let each song fade as you were listening to an album. I would even throw in pops n click sound effects between some of the songs with something like "This is the midnight munch". On Friday nights we did Gettin The Led Out and The Friday Night Floyd Fix (I even played Echoes!).

There are three types of songs: Power, Secondary, Tertiary. You played a power every 15 minutes. Ratings are base on quarter hours so you want your strongest songs playing there.
Example:
Power - Back In Black
Secondary - Cocaine
Tertiary - Point Of Know Return
Secondary - Fooling Yourself
Power - Sweet Home Alabama

There's your 15-20 minutes in a quarter hour.

And that is your basic Classic Rock Format. As I stated earlier, I started adding some 90's stuff and some forgotten stuff at the request of the GM. Bad Company - Holy Water, STP, AIC, even some Pearl Jam (usually after 5 PM). I also made sure that songs did not play more than once a day. If they repeated the next day it would be in a different "day part". You have morning drive, 10-3, 3-7, 7 mid then overnight. The overnight is a repeat of songs that played that day but in a different order. At 7 AM you have a fresh playlist.

Clear Channel has a basic cookie cutter format. Maybe not all of them but most of them all play the same songs determined by someone who isn't local.

But it got to the point where it wasn't fun anymore, I had two kids and a wife to feed and the pay was lousy. So I "retired" in 2005 and got a "real" job making more than twice the pay and i have never looked back. After I left they started adding some 80's to the mix like 867-5309 or The Outfield. I no longer listen to radio in any form. I have burned out on music radio and talk radio and listen to what I want to hear on Spotify or my iPod (and while at home we play a lot of vinyl).

I know this may seem a little complicated and there is actually a lot more to it but that is the basic way it is done, or at least how I did it. I had a good relationship with the company and they were disappointed to see me go but they knew there was no way they could match the pay I would make at my new job (and I have been doing that same job for over 10 years now - in fact, my nickname at work is "Radio").

On occasion they would call me at home and ask me to "fix the playlist". I had the access to the software at home and would "fix" what they had but someone would always mess around with it. I stopped answering the phone after about 7-8 months and they finally got the hint I didn't want to help anymore.

Oh - and we also played King Biscuit Flower Hour but they only reason we did that was so I could keep all the CD's that came in every week for the rare live shows

I will add that most Classic Rock station have a limited play list of around 200 songs and most don't play requests anymore.

 

Yup,me too.it's free and the sonic value is good.

 

That's something I didn't mention earlier. As someone who has a neurotic aversion to hearing the same thing often, the actual commercials on commercial radio stations drive me bonkers. I do still listen to some commercial radio, but commercial talk radio, and in particular at home, sports talk (I'm a pretty big sports fan, too). But when they go to commercial breaks, I have to turn it off. Luckily the sports talk station I listen to has pretty consistent timing for commercials, where their breaks are close to seven minutes (seven friggin minutes!), so depending on what I'm doing while listening, I can turn it off and play a couple tunes or something and then go back to it.

 

I've never understood why anyone would even want to be a deejay if you can't program your own music. To just sit there and play the same 20 songs over and over again and try to feign any interest in the crap that you are forced to shill - it just sounds like a miserable existence. I was a deejay at a tiny little community radio station and even though we were on in the middle of the night and had a listenership of about 20 speed freaks and loonies, we got to play the music that moved us.

 

I'm assuming that even for classic rock radio in the era you worked it, there was some song cycling ("old stuff" off the playlist, "new stuff" on)? About how often would you cycle songs, and what percentage? For example, maybe 15-20% of those 200 tunes would be different after a few months?

Depending on what I'm doing, I can easily hear 200 tunes in day and a half or whatever, and by the fourth or fifth time of hearing all of those tunes--which I could easily do in a week, I'd be ready to stick whatever player I'm using in the microwave on high and just give up listening to music altogether, haha--especially if we're talking about songs I already know (as is the case with classic rock radio). Heck, I'd go insane and not want to listen to music any longer if I only had 200 albums on hand for a few months.

 

Also, when I worked in radio--the early to mid-90s, the DJs made absolute $h|^ money. And some of them were cats who had been in radio for 25 years or more, and the station in question was a huge success and had been for a couple decades--it was the #1 country station for a wide geographical area where country was popular. I have no idea how the DJs were able to survive on the money they were making, which was barely over minimum wage.

I didn't make any money to boast about as a talk radio cohost, either (even though some hosts in the market I was in--hosts at another station, did make a lot), but I made more than the DJs at our sister station were making. But I primarily did it because I kind of fell into it, I enjoyed it a lot, I was staying at my folks' house again during that time--so I had almost no expenses, and it was a fun thing to do while I was finishing up that particular grad school work.

 

Sadly your fears seem to be starting to come to fruition... unless acquired on less than legal measures, you can't "own" Kanye's Life Of Pablo, it's a streaming exclusive.

 

I changed it up every few months. Since we were not an around the year ratings during non ratings period I would add more songs and put some in the "rest" category. One thing I did was rest "Hotel California" for a period but replace it with the unplugged version for something different. But when I did 2 other stations in town also added it to their rotation. And if there were songs I really liked I would add them during non-ratings period (example Blue On Black by KWS).

Something else that has changed is most music stations are not live. Many of them are pre-recorded voice tracks and that's why no one answers when you call - because no one is in the studio they are off in the production room or doing some other menial task.

 

Been that way for a while here.

WCXS had an A-Z week where they actually played a lot of songs they normally would never play. Loved it. That is what they should do all the time.

Nice to hear the whole version of In A Gadda Da Vida played on the radio.

 

I'd be interested in seeing some examples of what you think a good hour of commercial radio might sound like. What 45 minutes of music would you program for a classic rock format?

 

Not sure how it works in your neck of the woods Tim. In the U.S. commercial stations pay a fee to BMI & ASCAP based on a percentage of the station's revenue. Having paid that rate the station can play any or all such as few or as many times as deemed appropriate. Several times a year a station must submit a 24 hour playlist from which BMI & ASCAP make a determination on what composers will be paid.

 

I can always tell when the morning drive guys are about to interview or have just interviewed a musician on-air when I get in my car and they're playing a "deep" cut. They played "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" last week, and sure enough they had just interviewed Steve Hackett.

 

I guess it depends on the format. I worked in top 40 radio for many years and was a national DJ for Radio Disney. Those had to be the most repetitive formats of all, but I thoroughly enjoyed being on the air. It wasn't about the music. It was about engaging with the listeners. Having short, topical conversations over song intros...making people laugh by putting someone funny on the air...in the case of Disney, having a kid be really excited to be on the radio. When I was in the studio, the monitors were turned down most of the time while I was on the phone fielding calls from listeners.

 

probably with a little bit of exaggeration, i can say that every time i put on the local classic rock station i hear led zeppelin or pink floyd within 3 songs. it is utterly ridiculous.

 

JOHNNIEWALKERATKSAN

 

If a classic rock station would use the model of playing one power track every quarter hour, then that is roughly 100 power songs daily. If they were to expand their pool of power tracks to roughly 750-800 songs, they could go a whole week and only play Hotel California once! Now, double the amount of secondary and tertiary songs available (say 1500 for each category) and suddenly you're looking at a library approaching 4000 songs! Finally, develop a pool of songs to rotate in and out with the secondary and tertiary music and you've got a "no repeat work-week" broadcast with enough "deep-cut" secondary/tertiary tunes to satisfy most listeners.

If any classic rock stations are looking for a new programmer, send them my way!

 

Yeah and when I knew it was BMI time I would play some deep cuts on those days to help out my favorite artists. Not sure how they actually determine who gets paid and how much but I did my part by playing some stuff that wasn't in regular rotation. Triumph probably needs some money so let's play R&R Machine!

Worked at one station in the late 80's that refused to pay BMI so we could only play ASCAP songs. It sucked BMI required us to have a log every day of the year and we had to hand write it all down and it limited our playlist. It was an AM station that signed off at midnight.

 

Classic rock wouldn't be a preferred format for me, because I like more genre variety than it suggests. There were no classic rock stations when I was last listening to commercial music radio regularly, because I was last listening when stuff like Zeppelin, Bad Company and the Eagles were current, not primarily historical acts.

But if I were a program director for a classic rock station, what I'd ideally want to do would be to give my DJs a lot of freedom, and something like the following guidelines:

(1) There would be big pool of material to choose from--thousands of releases from many hundreds of different artists. I'd be controlling the pool of material to choose from, steering the basic sound of the station.
(2) At least once per half-hour, DJs would be required to play a track that charted at least as high as, say, #60.
(3) At least once per half-hour, DJs would be required to play a track that didn't chart at all.
(4) There would be some tracks from some albums that would normally be off-limits, whether because of lyrical content, or because of musical content that doesn't really fit the classical rock idea. For example, normally you'd not be able to play "Revolution 9" from the White Album. I'd have some album side or complete album slots, though, and those tracks would play then.
(4) No track could be repeated during a given week. Once someone plays a track, it's taken out of the pool for everyone for that week. Particular tracks also can't be repeated on a particular day-part or shift more than once per month. So, for example, you can't be the guy to hog "Street Fighting Man" by playing it at the same time every week--just when it comes back into the pool. Once you play it, you can't play it again on your shift for another month.
(5) No artist could be played more than once every three hours (and so if someone were played once every three hours--like say if we had a bunch of Stones-loving DJs, if you were to listen 24/7, you'd hear 56 different Stones tracks throughout the week).
(6) Once per hour, you'd be required to play a track from an artist that no one else played that week yet. So you're guaranteed that we're going to play tracks from at least 168 different artists throughout the week. (Of course you're going to hear more than that, but even if we had a bunch of DJs obsessive about the same artists, you'd hear at least 168 different artists every week.)
(7) Once per hour, a DJ has to play a request, as long as they have a request that fits the limitations above.

A computer would keep track of all of this for the DJs of course.

 

How do you avoid purchasing anything produced, distributed or sold by a corporation?

 

When I read threads like this I get sad, I get mad, and then I realize we are complaining about something that is gone, dead, and buried, we just need to get over it. Public and college radio is out there, alive and well and playing interesting music. Via the internet we now have scores of choices, and then there's the subscription services, doomsday is not here yet!

Just a week ago I watched documentary footage on Youtube of behind the scenes action at WNEW-FM in New York City around 1980. This was a fabulous station, I thrilled to seeing it alive again, and I lament that it's gone, but I accept it. While recently working in NYC, I got a kick out if hearing one of that station's premiere DJs, Dennis Elsas on a clasdiccrock station, along with ithers who DJ'd for the mire commercial station WPLJ. While it was good to hear their voices again, the prigramming was completely canned, just what you'd expect from today's classic rock formats.

Yes, corporations destroyed something we all used to love, and they are destroying other forms if entertainment as well. It's horrible, but we can't change it. They want what's safe, and will earn them money, they no longer truly care about their products.

Enjoy what good stuff is out there, enjoy your very fond memories of the great stations and DJs you listened to back in the day, but do yourselves a big favor and accept that it is gone, and that rock as the dominant genre in popular music is as well. It will all live on to be sure, but it will never ever be what it was.

 

you should be asking yourself that, if indeed "corporations ruined the radio".

I totally disagree with that statement, but I guess you knew that. Most music that is available to people now, except for the tiny indie labels, is either run by, or absolutely in bed with, a "corporation".

As with any relationship, it can be benevolent or oppressive and controlling.

All I see on this thread is an irrational fear and hatred of corporations. They didnt give the public anything it didnt ask for.

Theres a lesson here.

 

Great article, thanks.