The Infinite Dial

Some wackiness I've encountered over the years in helping radio stations put together music tests:

Stations that don't want to test some (or all) of their powers: "We're going to play 'Sweet Home Alabama' anyway. So why test it?" Usually there's just a perennial song or two at stake here, but there have been stations that decided to sit out the entire front page from the previous test to make more room for other songs.

There are a few problems here: managing the songs you're playing, particularly the ones you're powering, is just as significant a reason for doing a music test as finding new ones. Even "Sweet Home Alabama" burns. And any song of a slightly lesser magnitude can certainly fluctuate enough between tests to rate being monitored as often as possible.

Beyond that, not testing the Mount Rushmore hits of a format lowers the average score--thus distorting some stations' interpretation of what a playable score is. In this scenario, there have generally been more wacky titles tested and some of them appear to be within shooting distance of playability. But even those middling numbers are an optical illusion.

The flip side of this is the stations that don't want to test the titles that barely made the cut last time--again, to make room for more songs. Generally those are the songs most impacted by airplay -- either being back on the radio gives them a boost the second time or, just as often, they don't stand up to six months (or a year, or two years) of airplay.

Some of this discussion may seem quaint -- a holdover from a time when stations did three music tests a year and more closely scrutinized every song, as in the days before Bob- and Jack-FM opened programmers up to offering more variety. But 2010 is a year when stations are indeed doing more music testing than a year ago and many of them have been letting that library sit for a while at a time when tastes are shifting radically. So it's never possible to ask too many questions, even about the perennials.