From 2006 until he left the show in 2017, John Garabedian published a weekly newsletter called Monday Morning Update, a list of the syndicated Open House Party’s 40 most-requested songs from the previous weekend along with commentary on the winners and losers, pop culture, charts, and the radio/music business. Hundreds of major radio programming people read it every week in every major market. Program directors, consultants, record labels and readers passionately utilized this audience preference information.
Two years ago, Mason’s Observations was born on the same premise. For anyone familiar with John’s programming and on-air work, you’ll recognize a lot of what we do today from concepts he pioneered. As readers know by now, he was and is my greatest inspiration, along with the creator of Liveline and still heavily involved every day. Let’s take a look back on Monday Morning Update for October 6, 2008. IMHO, almost everything he expresses is still relevant today. Just imagine the songs he points out and what they went on to do and compare them to songs on this week’s Spotify and airplay charts in similar positions.
MMU began with this observation:
“We began publishing this newsletter to help Pop radio by sharing our honest, unique real-life, hype-free real-time music popularity request data in an industry which has historically determined song popularity relying on the wobbles of five second song hook research. Our data is unique in that it is huge and enumerates the relative and real popularity of songs right now based on what passionate interactive heavy radio users tell us they like in a broad national sample.
“Significantly, songs not played by Pop from other formats, which share listeners in the same 12-34 demo, often pop up unexpectedly and with big numbers. For instance, four of this week’s biggest requests are for a Country song (‘Love Story’ by Taylor Swift, #9), a Rhythmic song (‘Swing’ by Savage/Soulja Boy, #13), an Alternative song (‘The Bartender Song’ by Rebab, #14), and a Dance song (‘Just Dance’ by Lady Gaga, #19). Despite most of Pop radio ignoring [them], from our base of 2,600+ requests, huge numbers of listeners have found them, love them, and call us to hear them. Request support for these songs has been building for weeks.
“Did ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson hitting #16 this week in iTunes assure you spiked it in around Halloween? Probably not. Programming music is an art, not a science. But when the listeners speak in large numbers, the ‘art’ demands we pay attention if we want it to sell.”
In some additional notes, Garabedian also wrote that week:
“In 2001, WXKS Boston PD Cadillac Jack McCartney was surprised to find that “Sandstorm” by Darude came out #1 in their music test, although they had never played the song outside of Open House Party, and it only reached a peak position of #33 in Mediabase spins. ‘Sandstorm’ went into heavy recurrent rotation on top-rated Kiss 108.
“In 1995, Fuller-Jeffrey Broadcast Group bought Coast 97, a poorly ranked Hot AC in Portland, Maine. In [an over-radioed] market they hired Eagle Research to do a format search. After extensive surveying, the recommendation came back to do either Oldies or Classic Rock. Not happy with the prospects, Fuller-Jeffrey brought in The Research Group to do a second format search study. The results were identical, and they specifically recommended against doing Top 40, although the market didn’t have a Pop station.
“As Top 40 DJs many years prior, chiefs Bob Fuller and J.J. Jeffrey didn’t believe the research and said ‘screw it, we’re doing Top 40.’ At 6 a.m., two weeks later, ‘Sweet Dreams’ by La Bouche kicked off Portland’s new “Q97 dot 9” and WJBQ debuted in their first book at #4 with a six share, and the next book was #1-12+ with an 8 share. As of last fall, Citadel’s WJBQ was #1 – 12+ with a 7.2 share. Congratulations to PD Tim Moore who has been there for the entire ride.
“In the new Killers song ‘Human,’ Brandon Flowers sings some great lyrics which say ‘cut the cord.’ ‘Are we human? …or are we dancer?’ In other words, are we able to make intelligent decisions as thinking human beings, or do we just blindly follow the dance routine of callout research or spin counts?
“The final decision is yours.”
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