Bristol Broadcasting WXBQ Johnson City, TN (96.9) PD Nikki Thomas encouraged programmers to give records a fighting chance during Friday’s “360 Jock – Make the Music Work for You: Music Scheduling” workshop at CRS. “We play a lot of new music,” Thomas said. “There’s no promotion in it. We play it. If I like it, we play it. Then we play it like we freaking mean it. We don’t play it in the middle of the damn night and then act like we’re playing the damn record. We play it in the daytime. We let people hear it and then we test it. If it tests, we keep playing it and if it doesn’t test we don’t play it anymore. I’ll get fighting mad about it. Some people will play a record six freaking months and sit there and tell the label that they’re doing it … what did you do? Did it get any vitamin D? Did it get the damn vitamin D?”
Thomas also said that as both a music fan and a programmer, she sometimes has to let personalities learn the hard way.
“I’ve had people before that get to feeling froggy doing a request show,” and decide they’ll choose their own music,” Thomas said. “I’ve sat in my office and watched as our streaming would drop like a rock. I let them do it. I let them do it. Then, when it was over with, I asked, ‘You’re feeling good about that Shania Twain song.’ They’d say, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well, let me show you something.’ And I just showed them the numbers. They didn’t have access to that data so they didn’t know. I remember [the talent] looked at it and said, ‘Oh my God.’ It’s not even that it was a bad song, it just [was poorly placed]. She never did it again. When she did, she would balance it, because she had that power and knowledge.” Thomas said programmers owe the same commitment to every record on the playlist: “These are your kids. I don’t think people understand that sometimes.”
