No. But I understand how they program the station. They're not trying to compete with WXPN or any number of low power non-commercial radio stations around Philly. They're not trying to become someone's personal music device. They're a commercial station that's designed around their average target listener, who doesn't listen for 12 hours a day. Their target listener has certain expectations from this station, including the expectation that they'll hear core artists like RHCP whenever they tune in. If you evaluate them by focusing on how often they play a particular artist during a 24 hour day, that completely ignores how their average listener uses the station.
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Radio 104.5's playlist
- Thread starter radiodx10
- Start date
No. But I understand how they program the station. They're not trying to compete with WXPN or any number of low power non-commercial radio stations around Philly. They're not trying to become someone's personal music device. They're a commercial station that's designed around their average target listener, who doesn't listen for 12 hours a day. Their target listener has certain expectations from this station, including the expectation that they'll hear core artists like RHCP whenever they tune in. If you evaluate them by focusing on how often they play a particular artist during a 24 hour day, that completely ignores how their average listener uses the station.
Miguelito
Star Participant
If nothing else, it's interesting that "Snow (Hey Oh)" played at 12:46am and ten minutes after it ended, it played again! And after 9:13 pm, they somehow went the rest of the day without playing RHCP at all!
On paper, it really does look a bit crazy. Does Q102 play Ed Sheeran 16x a day?
The station is not targeted at 18-24; its specific target is 25-44, with a median target of males around 36.
The problem with alternative in general is that it is a genre made up of multiple smaller coalitions. Each group likes some of the songs some of the other groups also like, but hates some of the songs a couple of the other groups love. So station, not having the ability to send specific songs to each group, has to only play the songs that everybody likes or at least does not dislike.
They are likely playing every consensus song they can find but in that format there are not that many.
Actually, the perception of variety is created by playing no songs a listener dislikes, not more songs. "Variety" means tight rotations of only the strongest songs.
Exactly, and that's a problem unique to this format. A lot of this is caused by the artists and the music itself. There's no one promoting the genre or the culture at large.
atthestars
Star Participant
Gut reaction? Pretty good. They have held solid steady ratings, although do have trouble monetizing it. Unless the $$ goes down, I don't see iHeart with any pressing needs/any other format holes in the market that need to be filled with the 104.5 signal.
RandyDascher
New Participating Member
Thank you for getting my point. There are a few guys on this thread that feel there is nothing wrong with playing the same artist 16 times a day. I wonder if they played the same artist 32 times a day would all the comments be the same? How small a playlist is too small? I'm guessing 104.5's playlist is comprised of no more than 200 songs spanning three decades. Would people like the station more if the playlist was comprised of 50 songs?
I know it will probably NEVER happen but I wish a second alternative rock station would appear in Philly with a much larger playlist and let the ratings decide the winner. The sports talk fans in Philly have choices and competition usually leads to a better product.
chrocket87
Star Participant
Actually, WIOQ played Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" 122 times in the past week- equals an average of over 17 times a day! And that's the #3 song on their playlist. Then again, CHR has always been about playing the hits and playing them a lot.
Back to WRFF, their website isn't as good as it was a year or so ago, but when they published their entire playlist, it was between 400-450 songs. I imagine it's about the same now.
The number of songs they play is dependent on how many "hits" they can find at any given time. And given it's usually top five in its target demographic, I'd say they found the right number.
For me, I liked the station better about five years ago, but it's still pretty good in my book.
In most formats, ranging from AC to Country to the one under discussion, the biggest core artist will definitely play as often as once an hour. In CHR, an artist with currents and recurrents that are very strong may play as often as every 30 to 40 minutes.
If every song by a particular artist that is played is a hit, so what if they play the artist every hour or so? Listeners hear songs, and if among their favorites are many by the same artist, then they want to hear all of them. Imagine if stations did not play song by the biggest artists frequently... a one-hit-wonder artist would play just as often as Imagine Dragons. Not.
The WRFF regular rotation playlist is a tad over 400 songs, which is in the typical range for such a format. It is very hard to find more than that number of songs that don't have horrible negatives among subsets of the target audience.
I've been in a situation, although in a bigger market, with a slightly different version of rock (currents to some songs from the 70's) with a 450 title library. A competitor came on, playing a much larger library. We kept our 20 share and #1 rank, they never got over a 1.8 and left the format a year later. Listener comments in focus groups were similar to "They play one or two songs I don't like for every one that I do like."
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The only way I see it happening is either a college station or an LPFM. There's honestly not enough money in such a format for a commercial operator to waste a major signal. Contrary to your opinion, a bigger playlist would NOT result in more listeners. Just because YOU like something doesn't mean lots of others will. This station is getting great ratings in Philly, and they have no reason to change. Unlike alternative, Sports stations make a ton of money. That's why there are two of them.
RandyDascher
New Participating Member
I'm no ratings expert but is a 2.7 considered great? Please don't tell me fans of Filter "Hey Man Nice Shot" all left to hear Mariah Carey "All I Want For Christmas Is You". My guess is they went to Pandora and Spotify.
atthestars
Star Participant
Honestly, some, yes.
WRFF traditionally has slid during the December/Holiday books, and this year was no different. Take away the holiday books, and they were generally trending in the Upper 4's to Low 5's for the majority of the year. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but was this year the first time they cracked a 5.0 in the 6+ ratings?)
Will they rebound back to that now that it's post-Christmas? That's left to be seen, but they have before.
If they are, more power to them. OTA radio is not a personal music service. Pandora and Spotify are.
RandyDascher
New Participating Member
Wow. Half their audience may have left to Pandora and Spotify and that's a good thing? That reminds me of a scene from the great film "This Is Spinal Tap".
Question: "When Tap toured America, they were booked into ten thousand seat arenas, and fifteen thousand seat venues, and it seems that now, on the current tour, they are being booked into twelve hundred seat arenas, fifteen hundred seat arenas, and I was just wondering, does this mean that the popularity of the group is waning?"
Answer: "Oh no, no ,no, no, no. No, not at all. I just think that their appeal is becoming more selective."
The playlist might be X number of songs but some (at least in the past) moved base library in and out every few weeks. The goal, since music is connected to memory, was to play songs that peaked at that time of the year in prior years. I've seen situations where the 'older than recurrent' stuff rotated as quickly as about 16 hours and within 4 to 6 weeks, it might be months or longer before the song got aired again.
Consensus is killing Alternative radio on more recent material. I agree, it is a music problem. It has happened to other formats too. The once dominant top 40 splintered to evolve in to several formats. I saw it in the last years I programmed top 40. You had rap, rock, alternative, dance and adult contemporary all mixed up on the chart but every group that liked a certain type began to dislike the other styles to the point the format had to choose their poison and stick with it.
Top 40 was always fast repetition. I remember one top 40 launch a buddy worked for said the station had a 70 minute rotation on the currents (all we the hottest songs of the moment) and they only had 18 recurrents...a playlist of something like 30-35 songs. And they blew the doors off the competitors. The guy I knew said he felt like pulling his hair out because he was so sick of playing the same songs over and over and listeners complained but they actually listened anyway.
Consensus is killing Alternative radio on more recent material. I agree, it is a music problem. It has happened to other formats too. The once dominant top 40 splintered to evolve in to several formats. I saw it in the last years I programmed top 40. You had rap, rock, alternative, dance and adult contemporary all mixed up on the chart but every group that liked a certain type began to dislike the other styles to the point the format had to choose their poison and stick with it.
Top 40 was always fast repetition. I remember one top 40 launch a buddy worked for said the station had a 70 minute rotation on the currents (all we the hottest songs of the moment) and they only had 18 recurrents...a playlist of something like 30-35 songs. And they blew the doors off the competitors. The guy I knew said he felt like pulling his hair out because he was so sick of playing the same songs over and over and listeners complained but they actually listened anyway.
Not at 104.5. A multi month airplay report on M-F 6 AM to 7 PM confirms the low 400's range.
I have seen enough alternative music tests to think that there are not enough songs that can safely be played to have some resting at any given time. Because of the big splits in taste within the format or genre, there just are not enough songs to be able to rest some.
The general use of resting in such cases is with secondary songs by major artists where there are just too many songs by that artist.
You learn something new department: I've never seen (or done) a station that rotated gold based on the original seasons of popularity. But I have almost exclusively been in markets where it does not snow, so seasonality is not a significant memory-jogging quality. It might be different in Ishpeming.
I remember a contemporary station I was asked to assist which had over 30 currents, about 100 recurrents and 800 or so and was last among the market's 15 FMs. I cut the currents in half, and cut the recurrents by two thirds and the gold by 75%. Next book it was #1 and stayed there.
The issue here is that on-demand or pure-play services are "pull" and have no or very few commercials. Over the air radio can not tailor a different signal for each listener. And we have to pay the bills with commercials.
Radio continues to have the reach it had two decades ago. Your argument fails right there.
People have so many entertainment alternatives today, from video games to 500 channels of video to streaming and 1000 song music collections on their phone. Of course listening time will be reduced, just as it was when television came on the scene.
Radio has found that the same kinds of rotations and structures worked in the 50's as worked today. In fact, radio was "saved" from TV by stations that played 40 songs and only 40 songs over and over all week long, every week, all year long.
Nobody except the all-Christmas station pays any attention to the Holiday book. The rest of us, buyers included, just skip it entirely. In fact, it is only done because Nielsen has to maintain the panel active no matter what.
A 2.7 in 6+ is irrelevant anyway. Those numbers are given "for free" because that is what they are worth to stations and advertisers.
The young adult females in the station's audience did go for Christmas formatted stations.
Both males and females have very disrupted and atypical behaviour during the holiday period, so wiggles, wobbles and aberrations in listening are very common. Add in kids out of school, and you have another influence that affects adult listening.
Where did you come up with the idea that "half their audience may have left to Pandora and Spotofy?"
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