Originally Posted by SmartProgrammer:
“Good luck in attracting a sizable audience and revenue with that programming philosophy. So if my favourite song is played at 2am on Monday I'd say it's unlikely I would hear it. That leaves just one play and the chance of hearing it then is slim too. Why would I want to listen to a station that doesn't play my favourite songs whenever I tune in?”
The trouble with Heart is that at any given time it has what we might call an "A" list of songs/artists,say ten or so,that it plays relentlessly. The current ones being These Days,the Ellie Goulding one,James Bay,Sam Smith,Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson and so on. So if you're listening for any length of time you hear these songs over and over again. Plus as Simonk243 says,once they're on the A list,they're there not just for weeks on end,but for months. There seems to be very little updating of the playlist on a week to week basis.
Take Ellie Goulding's Love Me Like You Do,for example. It's now nearly six months since that came out and it's still getting played well over a hundred times a month. You can't get away from it. I actually quite liked it when it came out. Now I'm thoroughly fed up with it because I've heard it so often.
Almost everyone on our shift has said more or less the same thing about Heart, "Why do they play the same records all the time,have they only got fifty records?" and so on.
As others have said perhaps our listening is not typical. Most people don't listen for seven hours solid so won't notice the repetition as much.
if they just eased up on the "A" list a bit and played them a bit less often (and freshened up the playlist a bit more often) and played some other records instead it would make Heart a far more enjoyable station to listen to. In my opinion anyway.
But I know this is never going to happen.