Did Radio Not Listen To The Listeners?

One of the recurring themes about the new music process and the way that songs become hits, particularly the left-field hits and comeback songs that emerge from TikTok and streaming, is that the process of making hits has become more democratized. “The days of radio [telling the listener what the hits are] are over,” said a panelist at a recent Radio Days Europe session on the music process, but it’s a sentiment I’ve heard all over the world for the last 15 months.

It’s at this point that I feel the need to interrupt and mention the 65-year history of listener input at radio, and at Top 40 radio in particular. For the first 20 years, it was sales and request lines. For the last 45 years, that has been augmented by radio station listener research, developed in search of representing the entire audience, not just those “actives” who would call a request line. When I began covering radio, the first cliché that radio programmers offered so many times that it wasn’t even worth writing down was “find out what the audience wants and give it to them.” But they weren’t wrong.

When the request line was viable, it allowed KHJ Los Angeles to be the most influential Top 40 station of its era, and perhaps ever, by allowing a successful, dominant Top 40 station to add music aggressively, finishing with all but the biggest hits in less than ten weeks. The impact of sales was clear in the regional differences from market to market, but most felt at stations that started R&B and dance crossovers like CKLW Detroit or WABC New York. It was a return to looking at sales that powered WCAU-FM Philadelphia, the “Hot Hits” station that helped save Top 40 in the ‘80s by “looking at the box-office.”

Over the years, the question has never been whether to listen to the listener, but how best to listen to them, and which ones. That didn’t mean that radio didn’t take a role in offering the listener choices when it came to music. But the best, most enterprising program and music directors were always the ones acting as listener advocates, trying to get a sense of what they wanted before another station did. 

The least democratic part of the process was often the chart game and label priorities. For the last 20 years, the explanation of why songs that became phenomenal through left-field means but not on the radio was that they weren’t being promoted. We’re seeing more unicorns now because labels would rather promote established songs, even left-field ones, than some new songs. We have a 13-year-old R&B hit on the pop charts now because of the industry quest for a “Sure Thing.” There are fewer label priorities and game plans now, but even the lack of them is a funhouse mirror, distorting the dialogue between radio and the audience.

There is little music enterprise left from radio now. There is less music being promoted to radio by record labels. There are roughly half as many current songs in play at Top 40 as was once typical. Radio station callout research has softened as the ratings of current-based stations have fallen, making callout better at determining recurrents than power rotation, its original strength. The sudden emphasis on TikTok has replaced radio’s 65-90% reach (depending on who you ask) with a gatekeeper used by only 33% of America, down from 36% last year. That doesn’t feel more democratic.

We’ve also found that listeners, left entirely to their own devices, are unreliable music directors. It’s not their job. Stop making Star Wars movies and you’ll probably find somebody willing to act one out entirely with Legos and post it on YouTube. Mostly, though, you’ll just stop having Star Wars movies. Listeners can supply radio with perhaps half the number of hits we once had. That’s because we’ve lost 50% of the process. We once wondered whether to listen to active or passive listeners. Now the process is best described as passive/aggressive.

It’s worth noting that the comment paraphrased above at Radio Days Europe came from Chris Price, head of music for Top 40 BBC Radio 1. That station, along with AC sister Radio 2, remain two of the world’s greatest examples of music enterprise. If handing things over to the listeners entirely meant I discovered as much new music as I do from either station, I’d have no objections. It’s worth noting that Radio 1 doesn’t rely as much on TikTok and streaming as it does on its specialty show hosts and producers. Even so, Price noted, he feels new music is getting shallower lately.

It would be easier to express enthusiasm for this new paradigm if current-based formats were winning, but most dramatically are not. As radio makes itself less necessary, it’s hard to find out what listeners want when the response may be “that’s okay, we’re good here” Laying out a buffet table for listeners with music was never merely dictating to them; it was merely starting a dialogue. To the extent that dialogue is taking place with friends and family now, it may be because we as radio people have gotten so quiet.