Program Directors vs. Music Directors

[michael hagerty]

What is the difference between the music director and the program director? The program director decides which records gets played on the air, correct? Or, the program director hires and fires the air talent? Does the music director work under the supervision of the program director?

I'm not sure if Music Director is even a thing any more. But back in the 60s and 70s, the Music Director, under the supervision of the Program Director, maintained the record library, dealt with the record promotion people (keeping them out of the Program Director's hair) , and listened to the incoming records.

The MD would also call a select group of local record stores to ask about sales of songs the station was playing or considering playing, and check the charts in Billboard, Record World, Cashbox, Radio & Records, The Gavin Report and others to see how songs were doing in other markets.

Depending on how closely the PD and the MD worked, the two would meet anywhere from once a week to daily to go over all that information and the new records the MD thought were most promising and discuss whether to add them the next time the playlist was updated (usually Tuesday or Wednesday at most stations I was familiar with in the 70s).

When those decisions were made for the week, the MD would call the promo reps whose records were selected and ask for duplicate copies for the library, call the promo reps whose records weren't selected to let them know whether their record was still under consideration for a possible add in the coming weeks, or whether (and this was always a good one to blame on the PD), there really wasn't any interest in discussing it further. The MD would also call the trade papers the station reported to to inform them of what records were added, dropped and had the biggest upward or downward movement that week.

Usually, it was up to the MD to put the physical copies of the new music into the studio, and adjust the categories of records whose upward or downward movement on the new chart had put them in a different category. If the radio station was still playing vinyl, that usually meant timing the record's intro and "posts" (points during the intro where there was some sort of punctuation---a drum hit, a bassline, a background vocal) and noting whether the record faded out or ended cold. A sticker would be put on the label of the record with that information. For example, with a song that had a :22 second intro but some punctuation at :09 and ended cold, the sticker would read ":09/:22/C". If the song faded, that "C" would be an "F" instead.

For stations that recorded their music onto tape cartridges, that would often be the MD's job too, unless union rules required it to be done by an engineer or member of the production staff.

After all that, it was usually up to the MD to type that week's chart, and either send it to the printer (at stations that had that professionally done) or make copies and mail them to the record label promotion people and the trade papers.

PDs were in charge of format clocks, contests and hiring and firing, though most station managers had veto power over money and personnel issues.

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

THANK YOU -- THAT IS SO, SO INTERESTING !!! THANK YOU. 🙂
🙂 🙂 I would have loved to have that job. What an awesome job. Good for you for getting such a cool job.
I have 5 more questions, and I cannot find the answer any other place on the internet. I have tried, and I cannot.
They are about radio. I can ask them about radio in Los Angeles, if it helps the thread stay on topic.
Or, I could wait until David makes another thread. But I would really, really like to know about this. Thank you again, from Daryl Lynn L.A.

PDs were in charge of format clocks, contests and hiring and firing, though most station managers had veto power over money and personnel issues.

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

Okay, here is one of my questions about the Program Director. And this is pretty basic, but the civilian listener doesn't understand how this is done in radio. In music radio, there is usually 5 minutes of news at the top of the hour, or at 5 minutes before the hour. But -- a DJ show has to be planned out beforehand. They know how many minutes of advertising they have, how many spot ads they have to play.....but how do they time the records and general DJ patter to come out exactly at the top of the hour so that the news can start?
Everything has to be figured out in advance, correct? The DJ or the program director has to figure out exactly the time of each record, pretty much down to the exact second. Otherwise, it would be easy to run 5 minutes behind, or 5 minutes too early and have empty airtime to fill. Does the DJ sit down and write a plan before broadcast, like a teacher would write a lesson plan?

Some examples:

You're a DJ with a show on a Top 40 rocker. You do your show hour by hour. You know that you have 20 minutes of 60 second spot advertisements to do each hour.
Then, you have maybe 8 minutes of weather and freeway traffic reports to read throughout the hour.( Like KCBS news radio San Francisco does freeway reports every 10 minutes). That's 28 minutes. Then, there's 5 minutes of news. That's 33 minutes. So, you have 27 minutes to play records and do patter. You have to select records that add up pretty closely to 27 minutes. You can play an instrumental record that leads up to the news, and you can fade the volume down in order for the news to start. That will give you a leeway of maybe 60 seconds, but that's all. Even with an instrumental song, that's really tricky programming.

Another example:

You work for CapRadio NPR in Sacramento, correct? So, when I listen to CapRadio, everything is timed precisely - not only the music shows, but also the spoken shows. For example, I just finished listening to Market Watch with Kai Ryssdal ( spelling?). That ends at EXACTLY 2:30 pm Pacific Time. He has to stop speaking at EXACTLY 2:30. Not 2:31, not 2:29. How does he do that? Does he write extra filler copy, or ad lib something to say, just in case he ends at 2:29 and has to fill for another 60 seconds?

Thank you......I have been trying to figure this out for 40 years. I'll save the reply, so that I don't ask it again. - Daryl 🙂

 

[TheBigA]

I'm not sure if Music Director is even a thing any more.

In the chart world, the MD is still a thing. In order for a station to be a chart reporter, they need to have a local MD, who takes calls from the record labels (as you said). That aspect has not changed. In fact, I'd suggest the one and only thing that keeps radio stations local is the requirement for a local music director who makes local music decisions. If music decisions are made in a corporate office, that station can't be a chart reporter.

 

[DavidEduardo]

In the chart world, the MD is still a thing. In order for a station to be a chart reporter, they need to have a local MD, who takes calls from the record labels (as you said). That aspect has not changed. In fact, I'd suggest the one and only thing that keeps radio stations local is the requirement for a local music director who makes local music decisions. If music decisions are made in a corporate office, that station can't be a chart reporter.

But often the MD is just the PD with a second title. None of the reporting stations I have consulted or supervised in the last decade or so has had a separate music director.

 

[michael hagerty]

Okay, here is one of my questions about the Program Director. And this is pretty basic, but the civilian listener doesn't understand how this is done in radio. In music radio, there is usually 5 minutes of news at the top of the hour, or at 5 minutes before the hour. But -- a DJ show has to be planned out beforehand. They know how many minutes of advertising they have, how many spot ads they have to play.....but how do they time the records and general DJ patter to come out exactly at the top of the hour so that the news can start?
Everything has to be figured out in advance, correct? The DJ or the program director has to figure out exactly the time of each record, pretty much down to the exact second. Otherwise, it would be easy to run 5 minutes behind, or 5 minutes too early and have empty airtime to fill. Does the DJ sit down and write a plan before broadcast, like a teacher would write a lesson plan?

There are a lot of different ways to do this.

First, the radio stations you and I grew up with---KFWB, KRLA, KHJ, even KMPC and KFI---didn't do network news. They had their own newspeople. So it didn't matter if the jock was a few seconds or even a minute or more off---though on-time was always better.

This is really only a problem if you have a network newscast that you can't control. It starts at :00, come hell or high water.

A lot of stations with network newscasts handled that by making the last record of the hour an instrumental. Some would fade out of it when it was time for the station ID in order to join the network news at the top of the hour. Others would do what is known as a pre-roll. So let's say the instrumental is 2 minutes and 45 seconds long and the station ID is five seconds long. That means at 2 minutes and 50 seconds before the top of the hour, the DJ would start the record with the sound turned all the way down.

When the record before it, or the commercial, or whatever would end, the DJ would simply bring the volume up and maybe say something like "News is coming up in just a minute or so---here's some Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass." The record plays all the way to the end---whether that's 15 seconds or 2 minutes or whatever, the station ID plays or is read live, and presto---there's the news, right on time.

At KOLO in Reno, we cheated. NBC had two feeds of its top of the hour newscast, the first one of which came down at :54 past the hour. We had a 5 and a half minute tape cartridge that recorded the :54. It was ready for playback anytime after :59:30, so we could be anywhere from 30 seconds early to on time to however late we wanted or needed to be.

How do you keep from getting too off-course over the hour leading up to that? Well, nobody flies blind. There's always some sort of guide.

At a music station, it was a hot clock---showing where the music goes, where the commercials go and so on. This is one of KHJ's from the late 60s:


In the 60s and 70s, most of the songs were three to three and a half minutes in length. If the next song is going to put you too far behind, you skip it and play something shorter.

You're a DJ with a show on a Top 40 rocker. You do your show hour by hour. You know that you have 20 minutes of 60 second spot advertisements to do each hour.

Then, you have maybe 8 minutes of weather and freeway traffic reports to read throughout the hour.( Like KCBS news radio San Francisco does "traffic on the 8's"). That's 28 minutes. Then, there's 5 minutes of news. That's 33 minutes. So, you have 27 minutes to play records and do patter.

If you're a Top 40 station with 20 minutes of spots, eight minutes of traffic and weather and and five minutes of news, you'll be changing formats soon anyway. The competition will kill you. NO Top 40 station ever had that. Most spot loads were between eight and 14 minutes, and very few bothered with in-depth traffic reports. Weather was "Night and early morning low clouds and fog along the coast. 45 tonight, 70 tomorrow and 66 now at (call letters)."

The closest to what you're describing was an old-line MOR station like KMPC or KFI. They'd play six records an hour, and their personalities were ad-lib masters. Again, they also weren't carrying network newscasts, so it didn't matter if they were off. In fact, KMPC had an annoying top-of-the-hour tone that would sound and most of the time, the personality was still reading the live ad copy before the newscast.

So, when I listen to CapRadio, everything is timed precisely - not only the music shows, but also the spoken shows. For example, I just finished listening to Market Watch with Kai Ryssdal ( spelling?). That ends at EXACTLY 2:30 pm Pacific Time. He has to stop speaking at EXACTLY 2:30. Not 2:31, not 2:29. How does he do that? Does he write extra filler copy, or ad lib something to say, just in case he ends at 2:29 and has to fill for another 60 seconds?

In news, our scripts are written into software systems that time the copy. So, when you build a show or a newscast, it tells you whether you're light or heavy and by how much. Kai's glib and quick on his feet...he can add or subtract 30 seconds on the fly really easily. And you'll notice, sometimes there's a little more of the theme music at the end between "See ya tomorrow, everybody" and "This is APM."

In newscasts, I often find that I'm running a little long, so I'll shorten copy on the fly---boil the story down to its essence. If I need to stretch to hit the outtime, that's where anything from a promo ("We have the latest on today's storm for you online---at CapRadio-dot-org") to a quick weather update ("The rain ends this afternoon. Cold but clear tomorrow and another storm Saturday.") come in handy.

If we're only dealing with three or four seconds either way, that can be as simple as slowing down "This---is CapRadio News." or speeding up "'scapradionews".

 

[DavidEduardo]

Okay, here is one of my questions about the Program Director. And this is pretty basic, but the civilian listener doesn't understand how this is done in radio. In music radio, there is usually 5 minutes of news at the top of the hour, or at 5 minutes before the hour. But -- a DJ show has to be planned out beforehand. They know how many minutes of advertising they have, how many spot ads they have to play.....but how do they time the records and general DJ patter to come out exactly at the top of the hour so that the news can start?
Everything has to be figured out in advance, correct? The DJ or the program director has to figure out exactly the time of each record, pretty much down to the exact second. Otherwise, it would be easy to run 5 minutes behind, or 5 minutes too early and have empty airtime to fill. Does the DJ sit down and write a plan before broadcast, like a teacher would write a lesson plan?

today nearly all stations that are programmed, locally use computer music scheduling. Each music sweep, and each hour have extra songs to be played if needed. Because most stations don’t have hourly newscast anymore there is no exact timing requirement the only thing that signifies the start of the hour internally is that the system will eliminate any fill songs and move to the next hours worth of music.

Even music stations that have newscasts are generally not obsessed with starting the hourly news at exactly the top of the hour right down to the minute and second. If a song takes a minute longer or ends 30 seconds earlier, they just moved into the next scheduled event.

Stations that take some kind of syndicated programming usually get it in what I’d like to call “kibbles and bits” where they have the ingredients delivered over the Internet and assembled locally on the stations program computer. That way a network station or program can be adapted to the local station according to the number of commercials and other elements they insert locally.

Back in the day, the only reason for precise timing was when news, or some other program capsule was delivered, live by a network and was not taped and had to be run. Exactly as received. Today almost all stations. Take network programming Through Internet feeds which are stored on each stations, local computer and run when the local system wants them to run.

If you take the Ryan Seacrest syndicated show as an example most of the bits are recorded in advance and assembled by production people, and then sent by Internet to the affiliated stations where they run within the local format. The local stations may have different playlists different amounts of commercials and different elements like news and traffic reports and the Secrest, which are not always recorded sequentially; he may sometimes record a certain segment for three or four days in advance, but other segments may be fed the same day as the broadcast. But nobody is sitting in the studio waiting for the songs to end to do the bits in the show.

 

[michael hagerty]

Thanks, David. I was just about to mention that I'm way out of the loop when it comes to how music stations do it now.

 

[TheBigA]

But often the MD is just the PD with a second title. None of the reporting stations I have consulted or supervised in the last decade or so has had a separate music director.

You can look at the Mediabase site. They list all of the MDs and their phone numbers. They also list the PDs. Depending on the format, most stations have two separate people. But the main thing the charts want is a local person who makes local decisions and can take label calls. It usually easy to assign a DJ to do the work for an APD/MD title. It doesn't have to be a full time job.

 

[michael hagerty]

I have 5 more questions, and I cannot find the answer any other place on the internet. I have tried, and I cannot.
They are about radio. I can ask them about radio in Los Angeles, if it helps the thread stay on topic.
Or, I could wait until David makes another thread. But I would really, really like to know about this. Thank you again, from Daryl Lynn L.A.

Daryl, you can start threads yourself. Just go to the main Los Angeles page---look in the upper right and you'll see an orange rectangle directly across from "Los Angeles" labeled "Post Thread". Then you can ask any question and start a thread specifically for it, if there's not a thread where it would naturally fit.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

When the record before it, or the commercial, or whatever would end, the DJ would simply bring the volume up and maybe say something like "News is coming up in just a minute or so---here's some Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass." The record plays all the way to the end---whether that's 15 seconds or 2 minutes or whatever, the station ID plays or is read live, and presto---there's the news, right on time.

Instrumentals were one way to do it, although none of the stations I worked for encouraged that -- we didn't play instrumentals regularly, and messing up back-timing wasn't a good excuse in the PD's eye.

The way I did it before we got a computer that would do the math for me... during the :46 spot break, I'd get out a pocket calculator. Add up the seconds in each of the 3 records remaining on the log, then the minutes. Ideally the music would be 30 or 40 seconds shy of the hour, to leave room for an image liner, a final talk break and the legal ID jingle.

If the math didn't work out right, we had the authority to dump the last record and select one to make it fit.

If we're only dealing with three or four seconds either way, that can be as simple as slowing down "This---is CapRadio News." or speeding up "'scapradionews".

The network newscasters from NPR love to stick in a check of the Wall Street figures for timing purposes.
(correspondent outcue) "Nathan Rott, NPR News, Kiev"
(anchor) "On Wall Street, futures are mixed, with the Dow up 3 tenths and the S&P off 2 tenths of a percent. This is NPR News."

 

[michael hagerty]

The network newscasters from NPR love to stick in a check of the Wall Street figures for timing purposes.
(correspondent outcue) "Nathan Rott, NPR News, Kiev"
(anchor) "On Wall Street, futures are mixed, with the Dow up 3 tenths and the S&P off 2 tenths of a percent. This is NPR News."

At KFBK, we always had the Wall Street numbers at the end of the rundowns for newscasts in case we needed to fill. It was optional copy unless there was a major story about the market itself.

 

[secondchoice]

Over 3 decades ago, I worked at a full service AC (KUIL) and we had CBS news every hour. I pulled and stacked "music carts" at least two hours in advance. The PD allowed the last 2 songs to be "swapped" with the same category from that hour's music or the next hour's music. Usually you would find 2 songs with a long "fade", and do the backtiming math where both of the fade songs at least had the main vocal part played. Sometimes I needed to fill the time with what was going to be played next hour depending on spot load in the :50 break. They went oldies while I was on Christmas vacation, and with shorter songs much easier timing. IIRC the CBS news intro music was only 5 or 6 seconds so there wasn't much wiggle room with the ID. If you plan, no instrumentals needed.

 

[gr8oldies]

THANK YOU -- THAT IS SO, SO INTERESTING !!! THANK YOU. 🙂
🙂 🙂 I would have loved to have that job. What an awesome job. Good for you for getting such a cool job.
I have 5 more questions, and I cannot find the answer any other place on the internet. I have tried, and I cannot.
They are about radio. I can ask them about radio in Los Angeles, if it helps the thread stay on topic.
Or, I could wait until David makes another thread. But I would really, really like to know about this. Thank you again, from Daryl Lynn L.A.

Read up on legendary Music Director Rosalie Trombley of The Big 8 CKLW fame. She passed away a year ago, and a statue of her likeness will be unveiled in Windsor, Ontario next September.

 

[gr8oldies]

Instrumentals were one way to do it, although none of the stations I worked for encouraged that -- we didn't play instrumentals regularly, and messing up back-timing wasn't a good excuse in the PD's eye.

The way I did it before we got a computer that would do the math for me... during the :46 spot break, I'd get out a pocket calculator. Add up the seconds in each of the 3 records remaining on the log, then the minutes. Ideally the music would be 30 or 40 seconds shy of the hour, to leave room for an image liner, a final talk break and the legal ID jingle.

If the math didn't work out right, we had the authority to dump the last record and select one to make it fit.


The network newscasters from NPR love to stick in a check of the Wall Street figures for timing purposes.
(correspondent outcue) "Nathan Rott, NPR News, Kiev"
(anchor) "On Wall Street, futures are mixed, with the Dow up 3 tenths and the S&P off 2 tenths of a percent. This is NPR News."

At my first station, instrumental fill was for wimps. We had to hit the ABC Information Network straight up at the top of the hour. There was nothing like playing 2 or 3 songs after the 50 break, the last one being "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder, with it's ultra-cold ending, legal ID and ABC News with no superfluous fill "coming up at the top of the hour it's ABC News". We were a full-service A/C with a top 40 approach.

 

[michael hagerty]

Read up on legendary Music Director Rosalie Trombley of The Big 8 CKLW fame. She passed away a year ago, and a statue of her likeness will be unveiled in Windsor, Ontario next September.

Rosalie was tremendous. Absolutely the standard-setter. Honored in song by Bob Seger ("Rosalie") and the MD who convinced Casablanca Records that the A-side of the Kiss single wasn't "Detroit Rock City", but "Beth".

Other great MDs of the 60s and 70s: Betty Brenneman at KHJ, Shaune McNamara at KHJ and later KHTZ, Alma Greer at KSFO, Alene McKinney at KMPC, Clark Anthony at KFMB-AM and Dave Sholin at KFRC.

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

Read up on legendary Music Director Rosalie Trombley of The Big 8 CKLW fame. She passed away a year ago, and a statue of her likeness will be unveiled in Windsor, Ontario next September.

Thank you so much for this information ! At the risk of going off-topic, I cannot imagine a woman program director. In my day, very, very few women held any significant jobs in radio. It was completely a man's world. I think one time at KRLA, DJ Dick Biondi got his girlfriend a job as the music librarian. But that was about it. Anyway, I will look up Rosalie. Thank you. -- Daryl

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

Rosalie was tremendous. Absolutely the standard-setter. Honored in song by Bob Seger ("Rosalie") and the MD who convinced Casablanca Records that the A-side of the Kiss single wasn't "Detroit Rock City", but "Beth".

Other great MDs of the 60s and 70s: Betty Brenneman at KHJ, Shaune McNamara at KHJ and later KHTZ, Alma Greer at KSFO, Alene McKinney at KMPC, Clark Anthony at KFMB-AM and Dave Sholin at KFRC.

This is off-topic ( sigh ), but big important stations like KMPC, KFI, KHJ, had zero female air talent when I was listening.

I think that maybe one time, KRLA program director Jim Washburne gave a secretary, Sie Holliday, a Sunday night DJ shift because the station imagined her to have a "sultry" voice, but she did not last very long, and went back to being a secretary.
She lasted maybe 6 weeks?


I'm sure you're right, but KMPC was hugely successful and would have no need to hire Alene McKinney ( unless she was attractive and was a girlfriend of someone in management). Yes, memory can be deceiving, but a woman pd is almost unimaginagle in the 60's. Maybe in the late 70's, though.

KMPC is huge, very popular, buttoned down, owned by Gene Autry, IIRC. Which I might not be doing. Conservative MOR format, played standards and some top 40 ballads -- for those readers here outside of California.

Mel Torme's daughter, Daisy Torme, was a DJ there in 1990's. I used to listen to her a lot. Yes, I know this is off-topic, but the topic threads here are pretty narrow. - Daryl

 

[michael hagerty]

Thank you so much for this information ! At the risk of going off-topic, I cannot imagine a woman program director. In my day, very, very few women held any significant jobs in radio. It was completely a man's world. I think one time at KRLA, DJ Dick Biondi got his girlfriend a job as the music librarian. But that was about it. Anyway, I will look up Rosalie. Thank you. -- Daryl

You're not off-topic. It's literally about Program Directors and Music Directors.

That said, there have been some tremendous women as Program Directors as well: I believe Rochelle Staab was the first female PD in L.A. at KIIS-AM-FM, from 1976-1978. Since then, just off the top of my head, my former boss and friend Crys Quimby was PD at KFWB from 1996-2003 and Robin Bertolucci has been the PD at KFI for 20 years.

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

At my first station, instrumental fill was for wimps. We had to hit the ABC Information Network straight up at the top of the hour. There was nothing like playing 2 or 3 songs after the 50 break, the last one being "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder, with it's ultra-cold ending, legal ID and ABC News with no superfluous fill "coming up at the top of the hour it's ABC News". We were a full-service A/C with a top 40 approach.

I love Stevie Wonder and "Sir Duke", but my gosh, that's an impossible song with which to lead into the news. L.A. top 40 stations always found some movie theme music by Henry Mancini, or Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. I'm sure that Herb Alpert sold millions of albums because his trumpet music was used constantly to lead up to the news. -- Daryl