Three songs from Olivia Rodrigo’s new album made the Liveline Top 20 this week, which is something very few artists achieve. Taylor Swift did it a few years ago when “Anti-Hero”, “Lavendar Haze” and “Karma” were all kinda happening at once. This week, Rodrigo’s “drop dead” may have dropped down to #2 on Liveline, but “stupid song” is climbing u (#16) and is currently #1 on Spotify. “the cure” is #3 on Spotify and our #9 request.
Only one artist holds the record of four songs and that’s Sabrina Carpenter who in October 2024 owned pop music, with “Espresso”, “Please Please Please”, “Taste” and “Bed Chem”. It was a massive achievement on Top 40 when they all hit #1 (consecutively), something I don’t recall happening since Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” album which by 2012 produced six number-ones!
One song we haven’t seen requests for yet is Gracie Abrams’ “Hit the Wall,” which may surprise people given her following. It’s similar to two years ago when “Close To You” became an airplay hit, but it took “That’s So True” to make our audience react. “That’s So True” continues to get calls, although many of them pre-teen.
Where The Callers Are
It’s been almost a month since Liveline launched on KUDD (Mix 105.1) Salt Lake City. As exciting and rewarding as that was, it took about two weeks for us to start receiving the high volume of calls you’d expect from a major market. There was a similar delay on WVMX (Mix 107.9) Columbus, Ohio when that station added the show several months ago; again, it’s really picked up since then.
CHWE (Energy 106) Winnipeg, a major-market station in Canada, leads all markets with the largest number of calls by far, but our affiliates in St. Cloud, Minn., Columbus, Ga., and Kearney, Neb., all punch far above their market size when it comes to generating more phones than much larger cities.
When Liveline hit the airwaves on KNDE (Candy 95) College Station/Bryan, Texas, it was a major announcement for us. OM Rob Mack and I have always been well-aligned on programming and radio philosophy. It doesn’t surprise him that Liveline gets so many calls from markets like his. “I think the bigger towns are harder to make an impact because everything is bigger. There is no shortage of things to capture attention … but smaller towns are still ‘radio active.’”
That pattern goes back to John Garabedian’s Open House Party. He dominated ratings in almost every major market over the course of 30 years, but when you listen back (I’ve posted more than 400 full shows from all eras) you’ll notice that so many of the calls were from small markets. Sunny Joe White’s WXKS (Kiss 108) was OHP’s launching pad, but Garabedian himself recalls “we hardly ever got calls from Boston once the others started coming in.”
Salt Lake City has three Top 40 stations, plus two Hot ACs. There’s definitely no shortage of pop music on their dial, but there was a massive shortage of live, interactive, engaging and fun entertainment at night (like most places). Salt Lake City has five different styles of radio and five different stations trying to make people fall in love with them. It’s a true radio battle and we’re excited to compete. We always tell Liveline prospects to “listen and compare.” That’s what the listeners are doing.
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