Tag: radio programming

Hey friends! I wanted to post a few items of business coming up in the next little bit. Starting in October, I will be starting to mix in some Halloween music. This will be music that isn’t Country, but is appropriate for the Season. You’ll hear great tunes like Ghostbusters, Thriller and Monster Mash. I know there are some of you die-hard fans that may find it difficult to bear such a burden. Rest assured, it will only be 1-2 songs per hour. In the past, I’ve also programmed a special day of all Halloween music and a live show on Halloween night. Due to other previous commitments, I will not be able to do this. However, I will be able to continue the tradition of playing the original broadcast of the War of the Worlds from 1948! This will be played, in it’s entirety at 8pm Mountain. Pretty exciting stuff!

The next item is our 100% Christmas music that begins the day after Thanksgiving. On November 25th, we go all Christmas! This is a long-held tradition on this station, for years before we became America’s Country. Since we are a Country station now, we will try to have more Christmas songs performed by Country performers. We also only play 2 station IDs per hour, this means very low interruption so you can play our station in your homes or your businesses and it will create a wonderful soundtrack for the Holiday Season. Christmas music will go all the way up to New Year’s Eve. Of course, we will be commercial-free so why would you listen to anything else?

I’m really excited for the coming months here at America’s Country! Keep your eyes peeled as we will for sure have more info and details as things get closer. Thank you for listening and sticking with America’s Country!

-Timmy

2010 has been an incredibly successful and very experimental year so far! We introduced 2 syndicated, weekly shows: The DJ Mike Show and Stephen Keogh’s American Country Chart Top 20. We started having themed music days with the 80’s, Country and Alternative. We just want to experiment further.

Due to some research and the advice of some great radio and internet radio professionals, we’ve come to some more understanding about how people listen to music. There are many complex and potentially expensive methods of research that we just cannot do ourselves. What we can do is throw something out there and see what sticks. We  know what sticks by a couple of simple measurements. The number of listeners at a given time and how long said listeners hang around. I think that the latter is where I’ve been missing the boat.

Before adopting the themed days, I would program the music like I have on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I call it the 2+1 method. Since folks like different styles of music I thought mixing them up would be best. It seems that while I enjoyed this method, lots didn’t. Listeners would sit and listen to a couple of songs they liked and bail when something they aren’t in the mood for comes on. Typical (read FM) radio will most likely never spread out their formats to include rock if they are a Country station, because they have to keep their listeners long enough to listen to their commercials. I figured the internet could be different and instead of hitting those preset buttons on your car stereo to fit whatever mood may strike, I’d be able to hang on to listeners by giving them everything. This has never been the case with KXRT.

In order to further experiment, I invite you to sample our Week of Country Hits, starting Monday, July 26th. I will only play country hit songs 24 hours a day Monday through Saturday at midnight. I still will play the DJ Mike Show Saturday morning as there are agreements in place to do so. In the near future, depending on how many listeners show up and hang around, I will run this test again, but with another genre. Not only do I invite you to take part, I also ask you to please invite (beg) all your friends and family who might be able to tune in with you. Again, I really want to see this experiment work and the more listeners, the better!

Again, starting midnight on Monday, July 26th, KXRT will begin playing all Country Hits for 6 days, through midnight Saturday! No commercials, infrequent interruption and only the best, high quality Country Music the internet can offer!

Keep watching our Facebook Page for more info! Thank you for listening to KXRT!

-Timmy

As mentioned in a previous post, our music library has been entirely re-tagged and cataloged. This took some effort and has made a lot of the next steps very easy. I plan to now go through the music library and start really focusing on the hits! I have some good resources, including my gut instinct, to help bring this playlist around. The tagline of our station is 30 Years of Hits! I want to make that truly the case. Over this weekend, I plan on spending some good time combing through the library and weeding out a lot of songs that are not hits. There are still a lot of good songs that have never been played on radio that I want to play in a low rotation. I want to add songs by less familiar artists that bring talent and compliment the sound of our great station!

The New KXRT is in it’s infancy. We have a long way to go. Thanks for sticking with us and for your help! If you have something to add or any ideas, please don’t hesitate to comment here, send a direct message on our Twitter, or email us at kxrt-studio@marinifamily.org

Thank you!

-Timmy

We have the music library almost completely tuned. It took some work to get the genres all labeled correctly but we did it. Now we can continue tweaking and adjusting the playlists. I am still needing to work on new station IDs and other imaging elements. I also want to create new “genres” such as HOT and Current and Gold to better focus the music around some of the hottest newer music. That will never be our entire focus but I love the new current music and you probably do too. We will work on getting those elements working and improved.

Thanks for all your patience and listenership! Tell your friends, family, co-workers about The New KXRT!

-Timmy