Did Radio Destroy the Recurrent?

In the early days of my radio education, it was probably the third programming term I learned: after “format” and “playlist,” there was “recurrent.” And knowing how to handle those former power rotation songs that had been hits over the last year or so was a key part of any programmer’s strategy.

The rise of the recurrent as a programming concept was heavily tied to the rise of callout research. In the first year or so of callout as a commonly used tool, programmers realized that some hit records stayed entrenched for a long time. In the late ‘70s, one station realized that “If You Leave Me Now” by Chicago was still “testing power” a year later. The rise of callout also gave us the beginnings of the “bringback” of an older song as a (sometimes) regular programming tactic.

For the most part, however, program directors didn’t want “If You Leave Me Now” to linger in power for a year. There was usually a clear delineation between currents and songs that were 6-12 months old. Usually, songs went away for a while in between. Part of the effectiveness of a recurrent was looking up and realizing that you hadn’t heard a song—even one that was so big a year ago—for at least a moment.

In the mid-‘80s heyday of KZZP Phoenix, Guy Zapoleon remembers that “power recurrents”—the five biggest former powers—played 34x a week. Regular recurrents averaged 11x a week. (This at a time when power rotation would have been 72x a week, a top spin count now found only at smaller-market, very adult leaning CHRs.) KZZP called those five songs “down powers.” One of the fun parts of radio lore was that every PD seemed to have their own term—former “A”s were also “stay currents” or “stash.”

When Top 40’s mid-‘80s golden age started to taper off, and callout research made a comeback, programmers began holding on to songs longer again. In the late ‘80s, the line between current and recurrent blurred again. In the early ‘90s, the advent of BDSradio monitored airplay confirmed it.

When CHR made its comeback in the mid-to-late ‘90s, the line was further obscured, often for good reasons. If you had just signed on a market’s first CHR in four years, shouldn’t “Another Night” by Real McCoy be a power, if listeners hadn’t had a chance to hear it as a current? Besides, if you put “Another Night” in recurrent in that market, it wouldn’t necessarily guarantee the strength and familiarity that a recurrent is meant to provide in that position.

Over the last 35 years, there has been the understanding that the recurrents were among the most important, most effective songs on a radio station. That made it easy to blur the lines between current and recurrent. There’s no intent here to dispute the value of a recurrent, or that some listeners only really bond with songs about the time that they would normally reach recurrent. I’m glad that “Levitating” and “Heat Waves,” two songs that rebounded from recurrent (or, at some stations, from being on hold) got to realize their full potential.

But I do think we’ve diluted the impact of the recurrent:

• In the past, the older songs that endured in power for nine months were meant to be unicorns, not a regular occurrence;
• In the past, recurrents that returned to power rotation were meant to be secret weapons, not just the regular spackle for a soft week;
• When songs sit in power for six months (Kid Laroi & Justin Bieber, “Stay”) or come back after 18 months (Kid Laroi, “Without You” at some stations recently), they mostly serve to remind people how few hits there are now. 

The recurrent was never meant to encompass three out of a station’s five powers. It was never meant to play 110x a week. (Or 40x a week in the case of some Mainstream ACs.) In the late ‘00s, when PPM monitored measurement of radio was new, I saw a data that showed that “The Way I Are” by Timberland had shot up in listener retention when it came out of the ultra-high power rotations of the market’s two CHRs. The presenter thought we were leaving hits on the table. I interpreted that story as saying some songs could be most effective if not pounded.

Handling recurrents correctly is key to Country radio’s current issues as programmers gather for Country Radio Seminar 2022. Country was one of the first current-based formats where recurrents became “even more important than power.” Recurrents are still among the most valuable songs on Country radio and some stations still move off their biggest songs too quickly because of the chart game. But the emphasis on music that is a year or two old has also diluted Country’s excitement in the streaming age.

Based on some of the comments I’ve seen in the ramp-up to CRS, programmers seem to understand that both “holding on to the hits” and “staying fresh” are important. I’ve devoted an entire column to this recently. In Country, some of the problem might be fixed by finally having two separate charts; having “new Country” CHR-like stations and more recurrent/gold-based variety-driven stations on the same chart seems to hold both of them back. 

Beyond that, there also seems to be a need in all formats to figure out what “power” means at a time when some songs get a hit record there early and others kill it too soon, or hold it there forever. But one key to figuring out what power means might be clarifying what “recurrent” means again, and making it mean something.