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Planet Rock..same old hat


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After a  couple of years lay off I've been tuning into Planet Rock a few days recently just to see if owt's changed but no. Still the same hoary old classic rock  staples from the 60s, 70s 80s i.e. More Than A fookin Feeling, bluddy Kiss, Journey,  John Mellencrap, etc etc. Had a random gander at several shows playlists and was hard pressed to find the likes of Lamb of God, Killswitch Engage , Mastodon, Ministry, Killing Joke etc.  Yet PR continues to plug Tax The Heat and the Dead Daisies which are at least current, though I don't rate them much but each to their own. So, anyone else think PR needs to be a bit more adventurous in their playlist selections?

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To me it's always Journey, Foreigner, Kiss, with more modern stuff like Joe Bonamassa, Black Star Riders, Cadillac 3, Black Stone Cherry...

And that's it. It's either Classic rock or a random newer rock song by a not so big band. I remember when they took over from Kerrang on 105.2fm and nothing has changed.

Darren Redick is probably my favourite DJ but he's the worst culprit!

Probably a case of you'll miss it when it's gone but until then...

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It's always going to be a problem with commercial radio. Inevitably it dwindles down to the common denominator music that attracts a decent size audience that the commercials can sell stuff to. I used to like listening to Fish doing his own programme back in the day but not regularly listened to PR very much in years, or much other 'traditional' radio for that matter.

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Can't get them on DAB where I am but I liked the station a few years ago when Rick Wakeman had a show on Saturday which was good, Rick was funny and he played some good music too.  Can't comment on its current format but it was always a case of liking one or two songs out of a  every 6 to 8 played, and occasionally hearing something new and good that you'd not heard before, pretty much like every other radio station, commercial or otherwise IMO. 

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KevB - I get that but I thought rock fans might be more open minded about the less familiar than your average Radio 2 / commercial pop radio listener. According to RAJAR data , 71% of the audience is male, and 62% ABC1. 68% fall into the 25-54 age group, So PR is not really dealing with teens and housewives. There's a freighter load of tunes for PR to pick from so we don't really need or want to keep hearing Smoke on the water, Alright now, Satisfaction,  Sultans of Swing etc ever again, do we?

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36 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said:

KevB - I get that but I thought rock fans might be more open minded about the less familiar than your average Radio 2 / commercial pop radio listener. According to RAJAR data , 71% of the audience is male, and 62% ABC1. 68% fall into the 25-54 age group, So PR is not really dealing with teens and housewives. There's a freighter load of tunes for PR to pick from so we don't really need or want to keep hearing Smoke on the water, Alright now, Satisfaction,  Sultans of Swing etc ever again, do we?

commercial stations target their audience, so PR aren't interested in the teens and housewives, they've got their own stations like Radio 1, Capitol and Smooth, if people don't hear what they like every couple of tunes they change stations, that's the price for having more stations, if you want more eclectic stuff Radio 6 may be the answer, but they'll be a load of stuff you don't like.

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used to listen to it, but it got so repetitive (Alice Cooper's Poison anyone? Pretty sure that was part of his DJ contract that it had to be played Every Bloomin' day)), gave up on it, started listening to 6 music and realised I wasn't dead from the waist down after all!

Edited by skidder652003
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13 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

TBH almost every broadcast radio station tends to repeat itself. Stick with 6 Music for a couple of weeks and you'll be just as fed up with hearing the same songs over and over.

That's true. We have it on in the office and it's pretty dull.

I nearly hurled a stapler when I heard "Going for Gold" by Shed Seven. At least the old dinosaurs on Planet Rock wouldn't stoop that low.

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I used to listen to Radio 2 all the time, it is now playing stuff Inwould consider to be bordering Radio 1, now only listen to Mr J Walker on Sunday afternoons.

My daily choice of station is now Planet Rock and I enjoy about 70% of what’s played, not into Motörhead, Metallica etc.

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PR seems to have a strong  bias towards all the old lags from the 60s, 70s, 80s, early 90s , Zep, Stones, Who, Aerosmith, Kiss, Floyd, Rush, Jethro Tull, Queen , Foo Fighters, AC/DC blah etc. It's like the playlist makers are in their 70s. There's precious little decent music radio amid the guff that is  Radio 1, Smooth , Heart,  Kiss, Magic,  The Breeze etc. 

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Song repetition is an issue faced by all radio stations but particularly by era-based genre stations like Planet Rock (and Classic FM, for another) who face a bit of a problem when it comes to new material. There's not much of it being made anymore, hence there's a smaller pool of new material to fish in. This forces the station back on to older material which is prioritised according to familiarity, historic sales, etc.

On normal radio stations like Capital the new music would be played more often than the old stuff. On genre stations like Planet Rock the reverse is the case.

If you've got a limited amount of new material it becomes more difficult to ensure a reasonable degree of separation between plays of the older tracks. Assuming that you've got 45 minutes of music in the hour, that's 2520 plays over a week. If you've got a library of about 600 songs that would be approximately 4 plays a week on average. But you don't rotate everything evenly; some songs might only be played once a week, whereas others might be played twice a day.

Ideally the music scheduling software should rotate these more heavily-played songs around the clock to avoid repetition to audiences who listen at particular times. Unfortunately, it seems that no one has yet solved the problem whereby the rotation algorithms, if let un-managed, seem to end up clumping songs into repetitive patterns. For some weeks last year Classic FM played the New World Symphony nearly every night between 22:00 and 23:00. No one on the station seemed to notice. Likewise, it sounded like they started the weekday 22:00 hour with the Rodrigo five times in a month. 

So, less new music, a smaller music base and a lax approach to managing the rotations means we end up with threads like this.

Edited by skankdelvar
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I like planet rock but agree, it is very repetitive and I'd like to hear some newer stuff by bands that will be playing Download etc. To be fair to them tolhey do plug when Black Stone Cherry have something out, a "current" band I like, but then the same old same old. I don't mind the classics at all but it means I can't listen for too long before trying to find something else.

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15 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

Song repetition is an issue faced by all radio stations but particularly by era-based genre stations like Planet Rock (and Classic FM, for another) who face a bit of a problem when it comes to new material. There's not much of it being made anymore, hence there's a smaller pool of new material to fish in. This forces the station back on to older material which is prioritised according to familiarity, historic sales, etc.

On normal radio stations like Capital the new music would be played more often than the old stuff. On genre stations like Planet Rock the reverse is the case.

If you've got a limited amount of new material it becomes more difficult to ensure a reasonable degree of separation between plays of the older tracks. Assuming that you've got 45 minutes of music in the hour, that's 2520 plays over a week. If you've got a library of about 600 songs that would be approximately 4 plays a week on average. But you don't rotate everything evenly; some songs might only be played once a week, whereas others might be played twice a day.

Ideally the music scheduling software should rotate these more heavily-played songs around the clock to avoid repetition to audiences who listen at particular times. Unfortunately, it seems that no one has yet solved the problem whereby the rotation algorithms, if let un-managed, seem to end up clumping songs into repetitive patterns. For some weeks last year Classic FM played the New World Symphony nearly every night between 22:00 and 23:00. No one on the station seemed to notice. Likewise, it sounded like they started the weekday 22:00 hour with the Rodrigo five times in a month. 

So, less new music, a smaller music base and a lax approach to managing the rotations means we end up with threads like this.

Not sure I agree with you about not much new stuff being made. There's loads of bands that come to mind who i dont think have ever been played on PR, including pretty much all metal acts such as most of last and this year's Download lineups. At last years' DL  I came across  around 10 bands I'd never heard of before as they just never get any play on even PR let alone other radio. I think PR did or have one  or two late night shows dedicated to heavier or newer stuff but not any more it seems

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18 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said:

Not sure I agree with you about not much new stuff being made. 

:) I kinda meant there's not much new Classic Rock around atm (though Greta Van Fleet are making waves, I s'pose). Certainly not as much as in the golden age 60's-80's

Sure, there's a thriving metal thing out there but I don't think it really fits with the Planet Rock 'familiar classic rock' format afaics, except perhaps as something they'd maybe drop in occasionally.

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I would never have heard Foo Fighters' cover of "Have a Cigar" if it weren't for Planet Rock. Strangely, the Hairy Rock show on Sundays/ Tues eves is also rather varied (and funny).

I agree about repetition, though. Especially Rolling Stones songs.

And I object verbally every time they play U2. Rock? Really?

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16 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

But even the great big acts like Sabbath, Zeppelin, Floyd, Purple, Stones, Rush etc etc have a huge back catalogue, but they still play the same dozen or so songs from each band, why dont they mix it up a bit?

Edited by skidder652003
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