Breakin' da law ...

Sean Ross at RadioInfo advocates formatic anarchy:

Last week, in our inaugural look at “Radio’s Best & Worst,” I saluted WDJQ (Q92) Canton, Ohio, PD John Stewart for “another cheerful flouting of radio law” with the week’s standout “Trainwreck Segue” (from Boys Like Girls & Taylor Swift into AC/DC on a retro weekend). “Ouch!” wrote Stewart after seeing that. “Come on man,” wrote Q92’s Rob Mackenzie. “Are you missing the Q92 slamming on the [Radio-Info.com message] boards? It hasn’t been around for a while, you’re trying to bring it back.”

The e-mails were playful. (I hope.) And regular readers know just how much I appreciate Q92’s successful iconoclasm. Any CHR station that aggressively programs both rhythm and rock is a rarity, and, yes, often in violation of the current collective programming wisdom. But it’s still dangerous to praise iconoclasm in public. I long-ago wrote about the unusual garage rock Oldies that John Gorman was spiking in at WMJI (Majic 105.3) Cleveland. “You made it sound like I didn’t know what I was doing,” he responded. But the whole point was that Gorman’s authority was long established. So maybe it was okay to play something other than “Unchained Melody” and “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy.”

So let’s be clear. “Radio Law” is meant to be studied, and then consciously broken. Too often these days, neither takes place. Few have emerged as today’s programming theorists, and those that did would likely be dismissed as not sufficiently managerial. But it is that combination of creativity and grounding-in-the-basics that both allows and encourages a programmer to set aside “Radio Law” and do something else when appropriate.

In a world where programming theory is devalued, a lot of “Radio Law” is there because of habit, not forethought – not unlike those always-comical obscure local ordinances that make it a felony to eat peanuts in church. Why has every radio station felt the need to do special programming at Noon? Why do morning teams save the call letters for their bumpers—even when they’re not syndicated and have no reason not to give the calls more often? Why must every station Website have three artist pictures – often the same ones -- across the banner?

Some programmers congratulate themselves on breaking “Radio Law,” when all they’re really doing is switching from old dogma to new dogma. A decade ago, some PDs used to make a point of not having tempo in the top of the hour song, or not coming out of a stopset with a recurrent. But today, it would be precisely that kind of attention to detail that would be the most contrarian.

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