Imponderables: Fun and Games Read Online Free PDF Page A

identification. Here are some of the most important reasons for lack of IDs, followed by the rebuttal case for more IDs.
     
    1. Research shows that listeners want more music and less talk. Jay Gilbert, afternoon drive DJ on WEBN, Cincinnati, one of the first Album-Oriented Rock stations, told us that every research survey he has ever seen has indicated that most listeners want DJs to shut up and play more music. Originally, the relative lack of commercials and DJ chatter on FM helped the fledgling band win over AM listeners.
     Sure, says Cleveland radio personality Danny Wright, who is generally against overdoing IDs, every poll he has seen in his twenty years in broadcasting indicates that listeners hate jocks who talk too much. But then who are the most popular people on the air? According to Wright, “the folks with the oral trots”—Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, Rick Dees, Scott Shannon, etc. Wright believes that if a jock has nothing to say, he is better off just playing music, but that audiences love patter if it is entertaining.

2. IDs slow down the show. In order to speed up the pace of the show and to provide the illusion of more music being played, stations will do everything from playing records at a higher than normal speed to instructing DJs to talk over the music. To many PDs, back announcing, in particular, is just dead air, particularly when the time could be devoted to more jingles promoting the call letters of the station.
     Of course, the five or ten seconds devoted to identifying a song could be spent playing more music, but then perhaps a radio show should be more than a jukebox with commercials. Al Brock, a PD and on-air personality at WKLX, an oldies station in Rochester, New York, told Imponderables that identifying a song is a way of connecting the DJs with the music, showing listeners that the jocks are interested in and committed to the music. PDs who are for frequent IDs see them as part of the music programming, while anti-ID PDs see them as part of the talk. Brock feels strongly enough about the issue to try to frontsell or backsell every song on the station (which can’t always be done, because of time constraints).

3. Why tell audiences what they already know? A classical music station usually IDs every selection it plays, because the audience might not be able to recognize a particular piece or the conductor and orchestra. But does a DJ really have to tell an audience “That was Whitney Houston and ‘I Will Always Love You’?”
     The answer of the pro-ID side is, “Yes, you do.” Al Brock informed us that most people know some songs by titles and other by artists but that few can remember both. For example, after the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody” was rereleased during the popular run of the movie Ghost , the song was not only played on oldies stations (it never stopped being played there) but promoted as if it were a new song on many CHR and AC (Adult Contemporary) stations. Yet listeners constantly called to ask the name of the song or the group who sang it. Another DJ told us that every time he plays Paul Stookey’s “The Wedding Song” (the title is not part of the lyrics), even if he front- or backsells it, he gets calls asking, “What song was that?”
     Obviously, the need for IDs depends upon the format of the station and the familiarity of a given song. Virtually every PD and DJ we spoke to identified a brand new song, one that the station has been playing for two to four weeks. (These songs are called “currents.”) All agreed that the songs least needed to be ID’d are songs that are no longer current but are still popular and haven’t left the playlist. These are known as “recurrents” and are usually played less than “currents” but more than oldies. Some PDs argue that oldies don’t require IDs because they are so familiar, but even this strategy has pitfalls, for oldies stations are trying to attract younger