Adventure Car Hop is the Place to Go

[David Tomm]

That still happens today, except they're called "recurrents" instead of 
"extras."  Songs drop off the chart, but they are still familiar to the 
audience.  If the particular song has a low burn factor in research, it 
can linger around for awhile before being rested and returned as a gold 
title down the line.  CHR radio still has tight rotations like they did 
back then, but stations hold onto their biggest hits much longer.  It 
used to be that after 12 weeks or so songs got dropped off the charts, 
even the biggest hits, to make room for new music.  Today if a song is 
a monster hit, stations will continue to play it, even for several 
months, until it's completely burned out.  Moving these songs to 
"recurrent" status gets the most life out of those hits as possible. In 
AC radio, their huge hits can chart for a year or longer, and can hang 
around as recurrents for at least as long after that.  I remember 
"Because You Loved Me"  by Celine Dion was a recurrent at AC radio for 
a few YEARS after it's chart run had ended.

-Dave Tomm
"Mike Thomas"


On May 15, 2007, at 9:42 PM, Roger Kirk wrote:
>>
> A common practice at Portland stations in the 60's (WJAB, Westbrook 
> comes to mind) was the name "Extra" to denote a song that had dropped 
> off the Top 30, but was still playable for a little while longer 
> before it finally went to sleep for a while before finally being 
> resurrected as an Oldie.  Kinda like the opposite of a Hitbound.
>
> When Sunny Joe White was at Kiss, they used to drop songs from airplay 
> completely after they had their Top 30 run and kept them buried for 
> just the right amount of time (usually a year or more) before bringing 
> them back to a listener's "Oh Wow" welcome back.
>