A majority of Radio Consultants who work with medium and large market stations prefer and espouse a very tight playlist. By that, I mean they narrow the number of songs a given station plays down to as short a list of song as possible.

Without going into all of their "research" (which is biased from the start, that's for another post), I have had consultants tell me the following through the years:

"...While programming a market-leading station, I was told to keep the playlist as tight as possible, keep it careful, only play the biggest hits, don't give the listener a chance to search the dial by playing a "weak" song..."

and

"...While programming a station number 2 in the format in it's market and trying to topple the top station, I was told to keep the playlist as tight as possible, keep it careful, only play the biggest hits, don't give the listener a chance to go back to the leading station by playing a "weak" song..."

Huh?

Exactly. In other words, no matter which consultant I've worked with (and I have worked with a total of five, two big names and three "medium" names), I was told I had to have a smaller playlist than the other guy. I once said to one of them...hmmm, we're up against Consultant B (one of the others I had worked WITH) and he's telling his PD that very same thing. How small is too small? Should I just play the same song over and over again?

Either way, the tight playlist is, frankly, bullshit. It's too careful. It's risk-free. It takes no chances. And I don't like that style. When people say "they play the same thing over and over", they are usually listening to a tightly-listed station. Full disclosure, of course, will reveal that listeners say that even if you are programming a big playlist. But that's a good thing. Why? Because they are obviously listening for longer periods of time, and that's good for your advertisers, which is the BOTTOM LINE of a successful radio station.

If a station is rotating their A songs (hottest 5 or 7 or 9, depending on the consultant) every 2 hours or less, and you're rotating your A songs every 3 to 4 hours, and people are "hearing them too much" on YOUR station, they are listening longer.

I prefer a large playlist, for many reasons, that I will get into at length in the future. But I will end this post with this anecdote:

A well-known consultant made the argument for a tight playlist by telling me on his own blog that "the average person only has 300 songs on their I-pod, that is why you only program your best 300 songs!", and he was pretty cocky about it.

I replied, "show me two people with the same 300 songs on their I-pod and I'll program a 300-song playlist." He never responded. Subsquently, I was not allowed to comment anymore on that blog.