K
K.M. Richards
Guest
Consultants like these will always defend the industry at all cost. As music fans (Music Lover) we believe what we believe in and so will they. They disagree with us and we disagree with them. No one (including them) wins.
The consultants and programmers are keeping their jobs. That's a win for our side.
We want large playlists, they want 300, etc..etc..etc..etc....
Another of your disingenuous statements, my friend. We have explained to you numerous times that we have no preconceived number of titles in our minds, and we rely on the music testing to tell us which songs are universally liked by the target demographic ("universally" meaning "the vast majority", before you resurrect the "every song is someone's favorite" line) to determine playlist size. As David has said many times, if 250 songs test well, we'll play those 250 songs. If it's 300, it's 300. If it's 342, we play 342.
I'm going to remind you of something I said in another thread. There is nothing wrong with you liking a broader selection of songs than the ones that get airplay. (Remember when I told you how all over the place my own MP3 player is?) But radio is a mass medium, not a personal MP3 player. We program to the masses, not to the much smaller group of "music fans", as you self-describe.
Radio is an aural comfort food. People listen expecting to hear only the biggest hits. That is what makes your listening expectations atypical; you are at odds with what the actual audience expects. To play the additional songs you've asked for time and again would be the equivalent of giving someone a Twinkie™ with asparagus filling.
This is the business model radio is built on, and your complaining is akin to telling McDonalds their business model is flawed because they don't sell pizza.
It's an endless circle and it will never end.
We were willing to end it a long time ago. It has been the insistence of yourself, and others with your mindset, that radio changes its business model to suit your interests and tastes, that has kept the circle rolling. Please understand that radio is not an audio history book of the music business. It is an entertainment medium which is obligated, both to the listeners and to the stockholders, to deliver a product the majority will listen to. You have proven, over and over in that endless circle, that you are not part of that majority ... which is fine, but stop telling us how to do our jobs when you are not part of the audience we are trying to serve.
May I suggest XMfan, a site very much dedicated to fans like you and I with very little "interference". (Now that I said that, Big A will probably show up there as well). Check out the decades channel, many posts about different genres of music and stations. There is also the Casey Kasem posts as well there. I occasionally post there, when something interesting comes up. In fact other RD music fans post there also, some under different names. Give it a shot, maybe that'll end the "ad nauseum" agony of us being portrayed as usually "wrong", "selfish" and "outliers" by others here.
Sirius/XM is a different business model from terrestrial radio, the primary difference being that its listeners pay directly for the service. If there was such a thing as subscription terrestrial radio, maybe we could do the same thing. But what you have been asking for is for a free service (terrestrial) to program like a premium service (satellite) and your failure to make that distinction is a root failure of your arguments.
I, for one, am quite content to leave you and yours alone at XMFan. I am not part of their business model and would not be qualified to comment. And the ad nauseum "agony" ends here whenever you accept that you are indeed "wrong" (in not recognizing the different business models), "selfish" (by demanding an unwarranted change in terrestrial radio's business model) and "outliers" (nothing more than the factual statement that your concept of programming is outside that which is expected by our audiences). That you took those as insults showed, sadly, that you have been unable to see the discussion from a point of view detached from your own. The inability to take an unemotional view has done more to increase the lifespan of the endless circle than anything we professionals have had to say.
When this thread started, I wondered how long it would take to become an accusation of the professional programmers to be accused of wanting short playlists. And not surprisingly, it took only one day for you to mention "200 titles", oldies ... and no one else mentioned playlist size until today, when you did again. That's your note, Johnny One Note, and maybe if you stick to XMFan you won't feel the need to come here and play that note again ... ad nauseum.