I wish Natalie could have just kept her mouth shut. I don't care what she said - it's just that ever since the whole Dixie Chicks scandal (if you can call it that...) I have had to deal with more questions about "corporate play-lists" than almost anything else.
Just for a quick re-cap: A few years ago, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks said she was ashamed to be from Texas because it was the home state of President Bush. Next thing you know, she's on TV with Barbara Walters - crying - wondering how she became so hated. I don't care about what she said (personally, I don't care what any celeb's have to say ... their opinion means squat to me). But soon radio stations began to drop their music, people burned their concert tickets, CD sales plummeted and yet another unimportant issue began to divide the nation.
When one of the larger companies asked their programmers not to play Chicks music until this whole thing blew over - it got even bigger. That is when the pundits who cover media began their "corporate play-list" charge. I think the most ridiculous piece I read was from a pundit who compared radio to his younger days (the 70's) when free-form ruled. Meanwhile, back in reality: the 70's WAS THE ERA OF THE CORPORATE PLAY-LIST. There was a guy name Bill Drake who in the mid 70's had nearly 600 radio stations all using the exact play-list. Today, that would never happen intentionally. We have tools and resources that our 70's fore-fathers could not have imagined. Look at how different WKTI in Milwaukee sounds from WTMX (101.9) in Chicago or WZPL (99.5) in Indianapolis. We're all playing the same adult top 40 format - but today we have the tools to customize our stations to our market's unique tastes. Believe me, if they had these tools in the 70's Bill Drake wouldn't have had 3 stations using his play-list.
So that brings me to the obvious question - How do we choose our music? Good question!
If anything - today we have a glut of information and trying to process it all can be mind-boggling. When a new song come out, radio stations usually get a copy early - sometimes before the CD is released. I have a panel of people here at KTI that I rely-on to give me their honest feedback on these songs. What's great about my panel is that they have diverse music tastes - so I get a lot of opinions. Once I have gathered all of the opinions, then I have to make a judgment call: is this song going to be a hit? If so, we will put it on our "possible adds" list.
Now is where modern technology comes-in ... If you are a KTI INSIDER, you may have taken one of our music surveys. This is where we give you the power to vote on which songs you think we should be playing. You rate the songs and we use that data to decide which songs make it on the air. The songs you hate, we stop playing. So if you want your voice to be heard, we have the first survey of 2007 on-line now:
http://www.wkti.com/els/elsSurveys.asp
If you enjoy taking the surveys and want to continue, you will notice that we blend newer songs with older songs. We may also come back to a song - to see if you like it more now than you did a few weeks ago, or maybe less.
So that's it: no corporate play-lists ... no magic 8-ball ... just good old fashion listening combined with your input. I remember taking a complaint call when the Dixie Chicks flap was in full force. Someone screaming that they never heard Wide Open Spaces anymore and they we should be ashamed of ourselves. The truth was that the only Chicks song we ever played was Landslide - and have never stopped playing it. We did notice that in surveys immediately following the whole thing, that scores for Landslide went down: not enough to drop the song, but definitely a sign that some of our listeners were put-off by the now political Chicks.
But in Milwaukee Wisconsin, the majority of listeners still wanted to hear the song. Believe me, back in Bill Drake's 1970's era, the song would have been dropped everywhere. Ahhh - the good old days - huh?
When one of the larger companies asked their programmers not to play Chicks music until this whole thing blew over - it got even bigger. That is when the pundits who cover media began their "corporate play-list" charge. I think the most ridiculous piece I read was from a pundit who compared radio to his younger days (the 70's) when free-form ruled. Meanwhile, back in reality: the 70's WAS THE ERA OF THE CORPORATE PLAY-LIST. There was a guy name Bill Drake who in the mid 70's had nearly 600 radio stations all using the exact play-list. Today, that would never happen intentionally. We have tools and resources that our 70's fore-fathers could not have imagined. Look at how different WKTI in Milwaukee sounds from WTMX (101.9) in Chicago or WZPL (99.5) in Indianapolis. We're all playing the same adult top 40 format - but today we have the tools to customize our stations to our market's unique tastes. Believe me, if they had these tools in the 70's Bill Drake wouldn't have had 3 stations using his play-list.
So that brings me to the obvious question - How do we choose our music? Good question!
If anything - today we have a glut of information and trying to process it all can be mind-boggling. When a new song come out, radio stations usually get a copy early - sometimes before the CD is released. I have a panel of people here at KTI that I rely-on to give me their honest feedback on these songs. What's great about my panel is that they have diverse music tastes - so I get a lot of opinions. Once I have gathered all of the opinions, then I have to make a judgment call: is this song going to be a hit? If so, we will put it on our "possible adds" list.
Now is where modern technology comes-in ... If you are a KTI INSIDER, you may have taken one of our music surveys. This is where we give you the power to vote on which songs you think we should be playing. You rate the songs and we use that data to decide which songs make it on the air. The songs you hate, we stop playing. So if you want your voice to be heard, we have the first survey of 2007 on-line now:
http://www.wkti.com/els/elsSurveys.asp
If you enjoy taking the surveys and want to continue, you will notice that we blend newer songs with older songs. We may also come back to a song - to see if you like it more now than you did a few weeks ago, or maybe less.
So that's it: no corporate play-lists ... no magic 8-ball ... just good old fashion listening combined with your input. I remember taking a complaint call when the Dixie Chicks flap was in full force. Someone screaming that they never heard Wide Open Spaces anymore and they we should be ashamed of ourselves. The truth was that the only Chicks song we ever played was Landslide - and have never stopped playing it. We did notice that in surveys immediately following the whole thing, that scores for Landslide went down: not enough to drop the song, but definitely a sign that some of our listeners were put-off by the now political Chicks.
But in Milwaukee Wisconsin, the majority of listeners still wanted to hear the song. Believe me, back in Bill Drake's 1970's era, the song would have been dropped everywhere. Ahhh - the good old days - huh?
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