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Do these songs get airplay?

oldies76 said:
#1 for 10 weeks in 1977, #1 ranked song of all the 70's. Yes, I would play it. Certainly not everyday or in regular rotation, but during a 70's weekend show, yes.
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Knowing how horribly, excruciatingly negative that the song is among listeners... even those over 55... I would not even play it in a weekend show unless it was after 7 PM Saturday or Sunday when essentially nobody is listening anyway.

A large dose of Antivert is recommended while or after hearing that song.
 
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DavidEduardo said:


Knowing how horribly, excruciatingly negative that the song is among listeners... even those over 55... I would not even play it in a weekend show unless it was after 7 PM Saturday or Sunday when essentially nobody is listening anyway.

A large dose of Antivert is recommended while or after hearing that song.
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I'm guessing that the type of person who would attend a song survey take their music very seriously and have pretty concrete thoughts on what they like and dislike. The same type of person who sends their steak back to the cook if it isn't done to their complete satisfaction.

Then there are those of us who don't get emotional about a particular song and just enjoy it as it passes by. Different strokes for different folks. For every person who feel excruciatingly negative about a song there are those who either like it or don't care significantly one way or the other.
 
I had a bad experience at a drive through the other day. I don't feel "excruciatingly negative" about the place...but I'm not going back.

People who don't go back to a radio station are lost forever.
 
DavidEduardo said:


Knowing how horribly, excruciatingly negative that the song is among listeners... even those over 55... I would not even play it in a weekend show unless it was after 7 PM Saturday or Sunday when essentially nobody is listening anyway.

A large dose of Antivert is recommended while or after hearing that song.
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Well after hearing it twice on Radio Magica and on WOGL's A to Z special this weekend, it must have some lasting appeal. And you're exactly right, I'd play it after 7pm on a Saturday night.
 
landtuna said:
I'm guessing that the type of person who would attend a song survey take their music very seriously and have pretty concrete thoughts on what they like and dislike. The same type of person who sends their steak back to the cook if it isn't done to their complete satisfaction.
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People who attend (in person) or participate in (online) music tests are not one or another "type" but they are fairly typical listeners. The primary incentive is the fact that participating is rewarded with cash, ranging from about $60 in lower cost smaller markets to up to $200 in big, expensive congested markets.

I've participated in several perceptual studies for cars; when someone offers $250 for two hours it makes me curious enough to attend. And the other people attending were a pretty good representation of owners or potential owners of the brand doing the study.

Then there are those of us who don't get emotional about a particular song and just enjoy it as it passes by. Different strokes for different folks. For every person who feel excruciatingly negative about a song there are those who either like it or don't care significantly one way or the other-
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Songs can have a percentage of negatives, some neutrals and some positives. Any percentage of neutral (below a 40 on a 1-100 scale) above maybe 10% is a killer negative. And songs with mostly neutral scores are of no use, either. Stations look for consensus-based positives and little negative. It is OK for them to say they like it but don't love it, meaning the positive scores are 60 or above on that same scale. But to get ratings, most of the songs have to be favorites.
 
DavidEduardo said:


People who attend (in person) or participate in (online) music tests are not one or another "type" but they are fairly typical listeners.
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About 20 years ago I was invited to participate in a music test. It was for a Country station here in Phoenix. The weird thing about it was I have never been a country radio listener and had never contacted that station in any capacity.

The invite consisted of $1 and a t-shirt. I spent the dollar. Wifey still has the t-shirt.
 
landtuna said:


About 20 years ago I was invited to participate in a music test. It was for a Country station here in Phoenix. The weird thing about it was I have never been a country radio listener and had never contacted that station in any capacity.

The invite consisted of $1 and a t-shirt. I spent the dollar. Wifey still has the t-shirt.
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If the incentive was $1, this was not a "real" music test.

A "real" test is blind (you don't know who is conducting it to avoid bias) and the recruiting 20 years ago would have been done entirely by telephone. Before inviting you, they would have found out what stations you listened to most, and if KNIX or KMLE were not in your response, they would have thanked you and hung up.
 
gr8oldies said:
I'll point out that WOGL used "Zippity-doo-dah" for it's "Z". Apparently no other "Z" titles.
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WDRC-FM Hartford used that one as well when it was an oldies station and doing an annual A to Z. Other possibilities would have been Tijuana Brass' "Zorba the Greek" and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich's "Zabadak," a low-charting follow-up to "Bend It," which did well in scattered markets, mostly in the Northeast, in late '66/early '67, but barely registered in most.
 
DavidEduardo said:


If the incentive was $1, this was not a "real" music test.
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That was just the invitation to participate. I don't know what the incentive was because I didn't sign up for the test (wasn't a country music fan then or now).

DavidEduardo said:
A "real" test is blind (you don't know who is conducting it to avoid bias) and the recruiting 20 years ago would have been done entirely by telephone. Before inviting you, they would have found out what stations you listened to most, and if KNIX or KMLE were not in your response, they would have thanked you and hung up.
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The invitation did not specify who was running the test but the t-shirt had a KNIX logo on it. The dollar bill had George Washington.

Funny thing was.....no one ever asked me whether I listened to KNIX or not and I was around 50 at that time which was out of the demographic (I thought).
 
landtuna said:


That was just the invitation to participate. I don't know what the incentive was because I didn't sign up for the test (wasn't a country music fan then or now).

The invitation did not specify who was running the test but the t-shirt had a KNIX logo on it. The dollar bill had George Washington.

Funny thing was.....no one ever asked me whether I listened to KNIX or not and I was around 50 at that time which was out of the demographic (I thought).
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One. Music tests are not recruited at random. Stations want people who are heavy users of the general type of music they play, since a music test presents snippets of hundreds of songs which participants score. If a person does not like the music genre or use stations in the genre, it's a waste of about $150-$250 or more to bring each of them in. Generally, a recruit back then was done by phone and the first items were gender (by voice) and age. Then they are asked about station usage and perhaps played a montage of music types within the genre. At any step, anyone out of the demo or who did not like the stations or music genres is dropped.

Two. In 1995 the recruit spec for country in Phoenix would have been 25-54 or even 35-54. You would have been in demo unless the station was researching the core demo of, perhaps, 35-49 rather than what the full listener spectrum was.

Three. I don't think Camel would send a KNIX tee. So it is more than obvious that you were contacted by KNIX for KNIX.

Four. Music tests are blind and should never identify the station due to heavy bias issues. Back then, they were conducted by independent companies at meeting rooms, typically at hotels or meeting centers. There would never be station signage or personnel visible to the participants and the moderator would say something like "I'm from XYZ Research Company from Faraway City, and I'm here to ask you to provide opinions that will help local radio stations to provide programs and music you like".

I have no idea what KNIX was doing, but it was not a true music test as the contact violated every "rule" of research. Given the things you recall, and their similarity with Arbitron recruit methods at the time, it may have been intended to get name recognition and better diary responses by local listeners.
 
gr8oldies said:
I'll point out that WOGL used "Zippity-doo-dah" for it's "Z". Apparently no other "Z" titles.
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100.3 the Fox in Greensboro NC did all its songs from A to Z in 1994, when it was a rock-based classic hits station which lasted one year, and that was the last song.

I seem to recall the classic rocker doing an A to Z and it wasn't on their list. I don't remember if there were any Zs.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Four. Music tests are blind and should never identify the station due to heavy bias issues.
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I was invited to participate in several online tests where I ranked a song from strongly like to strongly dislike, but I knew very well it was ABC Timeless Favorites, a satellite music service, doing the test.
 
vchimpanzee said:
100.3 the Fox in Greensboro NC did all its songs from A to Z in 1994, when it was a rock-based classic hits station which lasted one year, and that was the last song.

I seem to recall the classic rocker doing an A to Z and it wasn't on their list. I don't remember if there were any Zs.
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WDRC-FM's A to Z started with songs with punctuation as the first character in their titles, starting with John Lennon's "#9 Dream" and continuing through BJ Thomas' "(Hey Won't You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song" and all the other parenthesized titles in the library, followed by numbers ("7-Rooms of Gloom," etc.) and THEN the "A" songs.This nerdish exercise ran for close to eight full days over the Christmas/New Year period, pausing only for automated overnight programming.
 
What I dislike about A to Z's is when they use (The) or (A) as part of the song title and use them as part of the alphabetization. "The Joker" should be under J, not T. Numbers should also be alphabetized. "99 Luftballons" should be in the N's...etc..

WOGL did their first run in four days, then realizing they only had 3 days to do the rerun over the actual Memorial Day Weekend, then ended up skipping letters (and hundreds of songs in the process) to make sure their last song, "Zip A Dee Doo Dah" ended before midnight, late Monday night! Sounds like something went wrong here with timing, or simply they had too many songs to play through twice, over the seven days leading up to Memorial Day.

Of course playing their Sunday night 50's sock hop show for three hours didn't help either. They could have postponed that for a weekend.
 
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oldies76 said:
What I dislike about A to Z's is when they use (The) or (A) as part of the song title and use them as part of the alphabetization. "The Joker" should be under J, not T. Numbers should also be alphabetized. "99 Luftballons" should be in the N's...etc.
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Nope, absolutely wrong. You should take a course in library science before forming opinions.
 
oldies76 said:
What I dislike about A to Z's is when they use (The) or (A) as part of the song title and use them as part of the alphabetization. "The Joker" should be under J, not T. Numbers should also be alphabetized. "99 Luftballons" should be in the N's...etc..

WOGL did their first run in four days, then realizing they only had 3 days to do the rerun over the actual Memorial Day Weekend, then ended up skipping letters (and hundreds of songs in the process) to make sure their last song, "Zip A Dee Doo Dah" ended before midnight, late Monday night! Sounds like something went wrong here with timing, or simply they had too many songs to play through twice, over the seven days leading up to Memorial Day.

Of course playing their Sunday night 50's sock hop show for three hours didn't help either. They could have postponed that for a weekend.
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You should have heard DRC-FM's second A to Z. That was the year they dug up "Zip-a-dee-do-dah" to give the thing an actual "Z" song -- the first had ended with "You've Made Me So Very Happy." It was also the year they decided to throw all the Christmas songs into the soup without removing an equal number of standard chart hits, resulting in "Snoopy's Christmas" being played on New Year's Day and "Winter Wonderland" coming up two days later. Sanity -- well, more of it than before -- prevailed the following year and the holiday tunes were axed.
 
TheBigA said:
Nope, absolutely wrong. You should take a course in library science before forming opinions.
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There is nothing definite about using articles "The" or "A" before a noun, when alphabetizing. "The Night Chicago Died" can be alphabetized using N or T. I prefer to use N, in this case. In Joel Whitburn's books, the index shows song titles in alpha order without "A" or "The". Same thing with numbers. Who's the genius here? A very successful one at that. Other radio stations A to Z's have done the same thing before. Maybe you should listen to them more often, instead of second guessing people. Btw, I worked in a public library in Southern California for 14 years. Nice try.
 
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