ok, here we go.
When it comes to the amount of times we play a song like "crazy b*tch" we let people vote on if the song is getting tired or not. Its called "The Music Advisory Panel"
http://989thebear.com/PROGRAMS/MusicAdv ... fault.aspx
That will take you right to it, what it does is lets you listen to all the new songs we are playing and rate if you are tired of it or not and/or how much you like it. Every monday we take this info into our music meeting and look at it when we make our moves with the music, if you don't like hearing the same stuff all the time then here's your opportunity to do something about it. We want as many people as possible on this so give it a try.
Variety of music- Again we allow people to have a say in this, about once a year we call people to come in and listen to a bunch of songs, and again rate what you think of them, we even pay people for this. Its not current songs, its things that the people who work here think we should be playing. I myself just turned in several hundred songs that I want to be considered. People are unwilling to get involved but more than willing to complain, here's a shot to get involved with what we do, what other stations do is up to them.
Local Music- I'm sure I'm not going to make any friends with this part but its the truth. Your average listener does not care about songs that they have never heard by bands they have never heard of. We found this out years ago when we started the Homegrown Show. It had horrible ratings, so since this is a business we had to cut it out, it was dead weight. We brought it back because we thought that there needed to be some sort of showcase for the talent that we do have in Ft. Wayne. It wasn't to compete with what 102.3 did, we never really cared what they did because they were not competition for us. Basically, doing a local show hurts our ratings but we think its more important to get some kind of recognition to the local scene, thats whay we sponser the Battle of the Bands, and will do so again next year.
Going out to local shows and broadcasting- This was brought up in an earlier post and I'll respond to it. We don't do this for a few reasons first, to get on-air mentions on any station costs money, we would do it if whoever was putting on a show paid us. Now, I know that sounds like a greedy reason but this is business. Secondly, we all have families and work far more than people realize and if we went out to one show we would have to do it for every show nd we simply do not have the time or the man power. We do link to band web pages from our "Local Licks" page so people can know when and where to see a certain band. Our website gets, I think, an average of 20,000 hits a week. Not sure though so don't quote me on that. Either way its quite a bit of exposure for the bands, if the bands don't see it then its because the people don't care. Sorry we can't force them to. We can only give them the info if they choose not to take it, what can we do.
The ideas and complaints I read are more than valid and they are things that the DJ's here, and I'm sure at every station, have brought up as well.
Thanks, keep it coming
P.S.
imaging how many times you've heard Crazy B*tch, not multiply by 10. Thats how many times I've heard it. Believe me I understand.