The single most listened to Thing on music radio is the Countdown. People love lists, of course and we soon learned that people remember to tune back in for the countdown shows. Early Rock ‘n Roll radio stations had all kinds. There was the Weekly Top 40 Countdown, yes. There was the countdown of the Top Five Most Requested Songs Tonight at Ten. Those two were the staples, but a lot of us saw it to be a promo opportunity, something to talk about, something for listeners to make a mental note to tune in again for a custom countdown of some sort, whatever the PD and staff could come up with. Counting down The Number One Songs of the Past Ten Years, was a good one. If auto racing was popular in the area, you could countdown the Top 10 Car songs. You could countdown the Top Summer songs. For the esoteric, made-up rankings, well we made up the list, so we could decide what the rankings were. Big fun.
Here’s a video showing how to format a Year End Countdown in MusicOne Windows. It runs 4:30.
SW
Written by
Steve Warren
Steve Warren has programmed radio since 1964. He built MdB, the first music scheduler for the Mac, in 1987 and Music 1 for Windows in 1994, and is a founding partner of MusicOne.
