The Infinite Dial

Edison's Larry Rosin and I have had a lot of discussions about song length. How many times, he has often asked, does one really need to hear the oft-repeated hooks of "Crazy In Love" or "Jumpin' Jumpin'"? Larry has gone as far as suggesting that in this day of busy schedules and short attention spans, there might be a place for a Top 40 station that edits the songs to give you more of the hits faster.

Using that as a departure, I have found myself lately thinking that a CHR that took songs down to 3-1/2 minutes could play 14-15 records an hour and, perhaps, enjoy the same sort of subliminal advantage that some PDs believe exist in speeding up the records.And these days, a few more of the hits are coming in under 3:30 anyway. But could you get "Lovestoned/I Think She Knows" under 3:30 and maintain most of the Justin Timberlake song's changes? "Until The End Of Time"? "Welcome To The Black Parade"?

The interesting part here is that many of today's listeners are used to truncated songs anyway. Urban and Rhythmic Top 40 listeners have been hearing mixes as a significant part of their stations' programming for more than a decade, and Mainstream Top 40 listeners are hearing more and more. And no matter how hit-driven PDs would like their mixers to be, the airwaves often fill up with songs, old or new, that wouldn't otherwise be on the radio.

This was driven home for me tonight when I came across WWPR (Power 105) New York's night jock DJ Clue while he was in a mix. The record that caught my attention was Soul IV Real's 1995 hit, "Every Little Thing I Do," not a record you hear much on the radio these days. I was still enjoying it when that song segued into Truth Hurts' "Addictive," a big R&B hit that pretty much disappeared instantly after it ran its course in the summer of 2002. That one got a verse and two choruses before Beyonce's "Naughty Girl." Hearing that one wasn't special for me and by then I was in the driveway. A little more of "Addictive" might have kept the motor running for another minute or so anyway.

So how is it, then, that a radio station must play all 4:40 of a song, if that's what the label gives them as the single edit, when a song is new, but five years later, must not play more than 90 seconds of it? And here's another one to ponder: What's safer from a programming standpoint? Pulling out "Addictive" or "Every Little Thing I Do" once in a blue moon but surrounding them with hits and letting them play all the way through? Or stacking up 20 minutes comprised largely of songs that don't sustain--even if you play only a few minutes of each?