Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I have always wondered who dictated the playlists at radio stations. Were the lists determined by local management, dj's or based on national information. Also as a follow up, did each station determine its own postioning of songs or was that taken from agencies such as billboard. Where I lived the local radio station would publish a list weekly that could be picked up at local record shops.

Boy, Peter, there were a number of factors involved in a stations playlist, or Top 40. Payola wasn't exempt.
The stations music director was the primary individual who put the weekly list together. In the early days, stations followed the national charts such as Billboard, Cashbox, the Gavin Report (the first radio station music Bible) and the major labal promoters. The last of this group had a great deal to do with certain records getting charted with a little prid pro quo. But more often than not you'd see these records always 'bubbling under' the top 40 or 20, depending on the stations list. Some of these records would never even get played, but were reported to the trades as being on the stations playlist. A few were an exception.
Regional acts were much stronger in the late '60's and '70's, and these records got charted. What might have been big in Dallas though, wasn't always the same case in the Bay Area.
The music director would meet once a week with the program director. New material would be listened to, and from there decisions were made as to what would be added and what would be dropped. The songs were charted by number upon requests, sales and national popularity.
Eventually stations got into focus groups, narrower playlists and nearly always followed the trade publication, Radio and Records.

The whole process is really much more drawn out than this, but this is the short version.

Stan: Thanks for your excellent response to my questions. The factors that you have identified would certainly account for the local and regional differences that I noted at the time.

I would be most interested in any anecdotal information you might have with regard to the promotion of a local artist and whether the local radio was cental in his or her success.

One inparticular involved the artist, Willis Alan Ramsey. Ramsey released one LP on Shelter records in '72. His only claim to success is having penned, Muskrat Love.

Raised in Dallas, there was a push by the local label and indie promoters to get airplay. I was the PD at the station under barrage to give Ramsey airplay. I had a music director who was for the most part up and up with promoters. He told one promoter the only way he'd give airplay to Ramsey was if he were to get a Porsche. It was all tongue and cheek.
We never played much of Ramsey. But a week after the phone call with the promoter, my MD got his Porsche. A Matchbox toy Porsche in the mail.

As an added note my wife went to school with Ramsey in Dallas. He was a little on the odd side, she said. He would often close himself into his school locker.

Peter, sometimes if you didn't have a 'tin ear' and were lucky, you picked winners to be aired which became national hits. I was fortunate enough to get a few of these right, but more likely lucky. This sample of gold and platinum records are living out there life in closets throughout the house.

Stan: A great story and I expect there are many others that we will hear over the course of time. Just in passing, how many of us would be proud to have composed Muskrat Love? I have my hand up. We talk about payola in reference to the "old days." Without telling tales out of school and with no station nameed, can we assume it continues today?

It still continues. Maybe not to the extent it used to happen, or as vast. The free wheelin' major record labels aren't what they used to be. And radio stations also require on air personnel to sign affadavits regarding payola/plugola.

Stan: Thanks, I will contact you once I get my material together.