The Infinite Dial

Even if the New Orleans Saints were upset winners on Super Bowl Sunday, there was never any question about which city was going to win the battle of the local sports novelties.

New Orleans is probably the market with the most robust history of local hits -- those songs that endure on the radio despite not having become hits elsewhere. It's a history less changed by MTV, syndicated programming, or the population shifts that have tamped down local hits elsewhere. And not only did the unique flavor of the market survive Hurricane Katrina, but one of the biggest local hits that you've never heard of is actually about being displaced by Katrina.

So it just followed that having the Saints in the Super Bowl would bring out the sports-related novelties. Indianapolis, which has had a few occasional local songs of its own over the years, did have a Colts-related song: the Mudkids' "Do It Again (Go Colts '10)," which got airplay on Top 40s WNOU and WZPL and Rock WRZX.

But New Orleans' WEZB (B97) alone had at least six different football-related novelties (or songs repurposed as football novelties) in rotation last week:

* Baby Boy Da Prince's "Saints Song 2009" (which also got other airplay in the region)
* U2 & Green Day's "The Saints Are Coming," which was pressed into action as a football song
* K. Gates' "Black & Gold"
* X-Man, Big Shot, Big Rec, and Kuniqua's "Heart Of The City (Who Dat)"
* Ying-Yang Twins' "Halftime"
* Will Smith's "Miami"--which got far more airplay on B97 and Hot AC rival WDVW than it did in Miami last week.

B97 has also given Queen's "We Are The Champions" at least four spins this week. And it has a whole page of Saints songs posted.

And there are other Saints records on other stations, such as Kellen Smith's "My Town (Saints Anthem) on Urban WQUE (Q93) and Williams Riley's "The Who Dat Roll," on WNOE and other Country stations around the state.

In other markets, sports-related novelties are one of the few times that programmers give themselves permission to go off the menu. It's one of the few times a group PD can look at the playlist and understand what exactly those "different" records are doing there. But listeners don't make that distinction. Those with continuing ties to the radio expect it to reflect their lives all year long.