Equal Time
During the preparation of my latest radio transcript, I discovered a reply to a post I had written back in May.
First, the relevant part of the post:
I really don't know as much about radio programming as I should, so when Jack FM popped up in Los Angeles, I didn't think of it as part of an international movement.
I was wrong.
Here are some sample announces [sic] from a webpage entitled varietyhits.com. In other words, it's a danged FORMAT....
The "variety hits" format, under whatever name, has a long (well, sort of long) and storied (well, sort of storied) history. But varietyhits.com takes forever to load, so I'll look at that another time.
Here's the reply that was posted on May 26, but not read by me until this evening (sorry Lou):
Sorry to the previous poster who found a slow loadtime with VarietyHits.com -- I'll look into that. As for the "format", yes it is a format versus a one-off attempt at something unique being done at KCBS-FM in L.A. But the Los Angeles station change gave the format even more national credibility and helped to build the momentum of it happening more nationwide.
However, even if it wasn't a "format" per se, had KCBS-FM been successful, it would've been copied and tried elsewhere anyway. Such is life in the radio biz.
posted by Lou Pickney : Thursday, May 26, 2005 2:27:02 PM
Pickney has a point, inasmuch as radio is just like TV. If something is successful, then everyone tries to copy it. That's why all of a sudden all the radio stations will become sports talk stations, or whatever is hot at the moment.
And, I loaded varietyhits.com's history page, and it came up very, very quickly. Here are a few brief excerpts:
Howard Kroeger, director of operations for CHUM Broadcasting's Winnipeg stations, held an impromptu, informal focus group at a friend's 40th birthday party in late 2001 in Winnipeg. Most of the people at the party were in their mid-to-late 30s, and Kroeger was curious about their musical tastes.
Kroeger played music from the 70s, such as Boston or The Cars, and the crowd gave its approval. But songs from the 60s, even from rock legends like Jimi Hendrix and The Doors, received a tepid response at best.
Based on those results, Kroeger began pouring through one of Joel Whitburn's Billboard chart reference books and began compiling a list of songs from 1974 to present day that fit into the Rock/AC category but which weren't receiving a great deal of airplay. The result was a list with a very deep and varied mix of songs.
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