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Radio 104.5's playlist

TheBigA said:
I never said they went to WBEB. I was the guy who said they left town for winter break. Remember, these were people who were extremely happy with the station in November.
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So your premise is that college students who have ratings books or PPMs leave town. Wouldn't those same students listen to the alternative rock station in the city they are visiting. So wouldn't students with ratings books or PPMs who attend college in other towns come home to Philly and listen to 104.5? It's kind of a push. I meant that seriously, I'm not trying to be a wise guy.


TheBigA said:
To be honest, if you hadn't told me your age, I could have guessed. I see enough research from 45+ demo to recognize the behavior. It's around that age that people begin reacting negatively to playlist size and commercial load in EVERY format, not just alternative. You should see the comments from classic hits.
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I've been critical of small playlists since I was about 20 listening to WYSP's tiny classic rock playlist in a body shop all day long after Howard Stern. To this day when I hear "Sweet Home Alabama" I want to slit my wrists. And Lynryd Skynyrd was my favorite band when I was a kid. Keep in mind the guy who started this thread said he was 20.
 
RandyDascher said:
Obviously you got your stations inverted but I know what you meant.
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Yes, I did. I meant WRFF had nearly five times the 25-54 audience of WXPN.

I don't have access to those numbers. The Radio Online page I'm looking at has them tied for 13th place.
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Nobody except the Christmas-formatted stations themselves pay any attention to the Holiday numbers. And nobody, all 13 books of the year, uses 6+ or, generally, even looks at it seriously.

Ratings wobble. Changes of a few tenths of a share up or down are insignificant. Stations look at their core target demographics, and spend a lot of time determining if variances are wobbles or trends. We have loads of Nielsen tools and third part services that help us track performance.

Just looking at the broad overview of the data, WRFF is a well performing station. Whether it has a bad month or a very good one. it's important to look at multi-book rolling averages just as advertisers and agencies do.
 
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RandyDascher said:
So your premise is that college students who have ratings books or PPMs leave town.
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Who knows? That's why I don't play the speculation game. There has to be an explanation why it happens every year in December. That's a good one.

RandyDascher said:
Keep in mind the guy who started this thread said he was 20.
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I understand that. He's also a DJ at a college radio station, where playlists basically don't exist. Neither he nor the other posters said the station's music policy changed in December. It's something they've noticed for a while. So obviously there was something other than playlist size that's responsible for the holiday ratings.
 
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RandyDascher said:
So your premise is that college students who have ratings books or PPMs leave town. Wouldn't those same students listen to the alternative rock station in the city they are visiting. So wouldn't students with ratings books or PPMs who attend college in other towns come home to Philly and listen to 104.5? It's kind of a push. I meant that seriously, I'm not trying to be a wise guy.
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The listening by PPM panelists when out of town is included in the market that they live in, not the one they visit. PPM panelists are market specific. And PPM panelists have to be permanent residents of the market they are recruited in.

College students who have permanent legal residences outside the Philly MSA are not recruited for the PPM panel. And out-of-towners who listen to Philly stations while visiting have their listening included in the ratings for the market they live in.

(Philadelphia is measured by PPM, so there are no diaries distributed in the MSA)

I've been critical of small playlists since I was about 20 listening to WYSP's tiny classic rock playlist in a body shop all day long after Howard Stern. To this day when I hear "Sweet Home Alabama" I want to slit my wrists. And Lynryd Skynyrd was my favorite band when I was a kid. Keep in mind the guy who started this thread said he was 20.
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Probably all programmers have at one time or another tried expanding the playlist for "variety". We've all learned that such a move either got us fired or was an embarrassment we had to live down for years. A smaller number of us saw a competitor try to out-variety us and got a genuine thrill in seeing them act like a Cold War Russian submarine, plunging and never coming back up.
 
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TheBigA said:
Good point...forgot about that. It would also explain why there wasn't a similar drop during summer vacation.
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I also have considerable doubts that an MBA candidate at Wharton who is paying over $150,000 for a two year program is going to be a) listening to much radio and b) fussing with a PPM device.
 
TheBigA said:
The other thing is you're attempting to use one bad ratings book to justify your personal taste in music. I have no reason to believe that if this station added 50 more songs to their playlist, or decreased the airplay frequency of certain bands that automatically the ratings would double. No question that a small percentage would appreciate it, but it wouldn't necessarily result in increased listening.
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I posted the same comments on September 14th, 2016 on a thread titled 103.9 WDRE, long before WRFF's ratings fell to a 2.7. Here's the link:
http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?697066-103-9-wdre
 
RandyDascher said:
I posted the same comments on September 14th, 2016 on a thread titled 103.9 WDRE, long before WRFF's ratings fell to a 2.7. Here's the link:
http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?697066-103-9-wdre
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So as I read that thread, the WRFF didn't change it's music policy in December, and in fact was in place when the station was getting close to a 5 share. So that confirms to me that playlist size or artist repetition aren't the causes of the low holiday book.
 
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TheBigA said:
So as I read that thread, the WRFF didn't change it's music policy in December, and in fact was in place when the station was getting close to a 5 share. So that confirms to me that playlist size or artist repetition aren't the causes of the low holiday book.
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In fact, another poster showed that WRFF always has a low point in the Holiday book. Combined with the fact that buyers don't look at the Holiday book for anything except the next Holiday period, we should prudently ignore it entirely. In any case, tomorrow we will see Day 1 releases of the January PPM book.
 
Another 20 year old chiming in... It's my understanding that the average listener only tunes in for ~12 minutes at a time in the car. During that period, it's important that the station is delivering content that their P1 is familiar with. Otherwise, there's a high chance that they'll tune out. Radio stations spend a lot of time, money, and energy conducting research to determine what content is most favorable. You can't sell a station by how cutting edge/deep the playlist is, you sell it by the ratings and maximizing familiar content maximizes your ratings. Everything Radio 104.5 plays is chosen with some sort of reason.

I don't understand why some people think their personal opinion/general observation trumps research?
 
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ATLD said:
Another 20 year old chiming in... It's my understanding that the average listener only tunes in for ~12 minutes at a time in the car. During that period, it's important that the station is delivering content that their P1 is familiar with.
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I agree...all of this goes into the format we've been discussing. But it also applies to a lot of other formats, including all news. Try listening to KYW for 12 hours. You hear the exact same stories repeated in a cycle. Hey didn't we just hear that story? Sure you did. And it's one of the top rated stations in town.
 
ATLD said:
Another 20 year old chiming in... It's my understanding that the average listener only tunes in for ~12 minutes at a time in the car.
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Not just in the car... anywhere. In the car, listening is particularly limited by the length of the drive or commute. At home and at work, there are all manner of interruptions to continuous listening, ranging from taking out the trash or going out into the yard and taking a call, having a conversation or taking a coffee or bathroom break.

During that period, it's important that the station is delivering content that their P1 is familiar with. Otherwise, there's a high chance that they'll tune out. Radio stations spend a lot of time, money, and energy conducting research to determine what content is most favorable. You can't sell a station by how cutting edge/deep the playlist is, you sell it by the ratings and maximizing familiar content maximizes your ratings. Everything Radio 104.5 plays is chosen with some sort of reason.
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Absolutely. A high TSL station might have a dozen or more listening incidents by a P1 listener in a day. If each time they come back, they are not rewarded with a good song or good content, they are gone.

I don't understand why some people think their personal opinion/general observation trumps research?
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Because they are very self-centered?
 
DavidEduardo said:
The personal preferences of a radio professional should never have any bearing on that person's ability to find out the tastes of a target group and serve them as best they can. Were it otherwise, what you are insinuating is tantamount to saying that a man should not be a women's fashion designer...
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I would never post my opinion about WXTU because I don't ever listen to it. I hate country music so why would I care what songs they play?
 
radiodx10 said:
I was mentioning this in a post recently. I figured it could use its own post, though.

Radio 104.5 is a favourite station of mine here in Philly. I like that it is a one of a kind almost. What I hate is it seems to have the smallest playlist I have heard from a station. We make jokes how the Top 40 has like 10 songs in its playlist. With Radio 104.5, that could reign true.

Okay Radio 104.5, I've heard "Dani California" a million times already. No, I don't want to hear "Unsteady" by X Ambassadors again. Not "Riptide" by Vance Joy either. Oh for god's sake what's this the billionth time you've played "Smells like teen spirit"?

That's usually how it goes with Radio 104.5 and myself. And their bumpers! My friends always say I do the best impression of that guy who does the 104.5 bumpers (you can probably hear it in your head if you've heard it enough) "radio 104.5, Philadelphia's alternative".

I gotta hand it to them. They've become more than just a radio station to people my age (20-26 year olds). EVERYONE knows that station, know's how it sounds and what it plays. It's our generations WDRE 103.9. Good for them. Now just for crying out loud, expand your library a bit more! How about some meat puppets, local bands like Petal, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, NOFX, Catch 22, some more tracks from weezer besides "say it aint so", you could play "pink triangle, "el scorcho" those are some good lesser played weezer tracks. you could also play some stuff by norah jones, mellisa ethridge, garbage, the psychedelic furs. It's easy Radio 104.5- HIRE ME lol.
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I've been saying this for years I like the station but it's run by iHeart and it's cookie cutter, no real identity, they don't really branch out too much besides the bonus track and new music discovery show, I even made a post about it on this site under the heading 103.9 WDRE, it bothers me so much that it actually drove me to create my own internet radio station just to prove to myself that you could mix up playlists and it would still sound decent www.alternativemedicineradio.com here is the link to my site if you want to check it out
 
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