Greg Strassell is the Senior Vice President of Programming for all 130 CBS radio stations. Yesterday the company made Strassell available to discuss the programming changes CBS is now making on all music stations as a result of the Mason Memo. "It is such an important part of what we do that, as Dan pointed out in the memo, slipped away through different evolutions of the industry, of the business, through consolidation. Maybe voice tracking, maybe through air talent not getting trained properly and through the attempt to reduce clutter. It?s an art. Art is something that is an important part of our industry."
Strassell says CBS programmers have come up with a "spin" formula that determines which songs and artists are highlighted and which are not. "Dan (Mason) and I talked about this, obviously, before his email went out. We talked to a few of our programming leaders, to get their input on this. The more we thought about it, the more it was like ?Oh, wow.? It?s good for the audience. It?s good for the labels. It?s good for radio. We are doing this at CBS Radio because we think this is the right thing to do# If the other groups pick up on it, great. It is good for the industry."
Something CBS listeners will start to hear more of is the artists themselves. They will be on CBS music stations, front-announcing some of their own songs. Here is an example of a CBS "artist ID" from Steven Tyler Here's another from Christina Perry
And, according to Strassell listeners will be more involved. "Another couple of our Top 40?s, AMP in Detroit and 92.3 in New York have come up with something similar, except we are calling it "Listener Personalized New Music ID?s." It?s listeners talking about the music you are about to hear. Those, to me, are a couple of refreshing examples that follow the spirit of Dan?s email but also, in the spirit of CBS radio. We encourage our programmers to think out of the box and to think in new ways."
"One of the things that always set radio apart was that radio stations curated styles of music and air talent curated the music they are playing, and educated and presented. In Europe, the air talent there are called ?presenters?. That is a better name than the phrase, ?disc jockey?. I think it is a mind set and a spirit, what we are trying to accomplish. It goes back to training our programmers and air talent to be sensitive to the music they are playing. Don?t treat it as a piece of digital formula. Don?t treat it as a piece of plastic, treat it as something special."
Strassell says listeners will hear the changes mostly on contemporary formats that play a lot of new music. "We believe that country radio and formats that play songs in a high rotation and are extremely contemporary based, should do this a lot. Maybe an adult rock station that doesn?t play songs in a higher rotation, maybe it takes them a longer time to reach a spin count. We may make that number lower, because it would take several months to reach that spin count. It depends on the format. It varies. But we are committed to making sure that there is a certain spin count in each format, that we reach."
(6/2/2011 12:03:27 PM)
Yeah, more canned voice tracks. That'll revitalize radio.
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