[progdirjim(Admin)]

Originally posted by Rick and Roll
For consideration by Jim and my fellow Moonies:

1) The idea of full-length play is essential to a prog station. A show like Tommy's is needed. Personally, I have issues with the preponderance (sp?) of the same bands (especially the Floyd), but everyone seems to really enjoy it. There should be more of this full-length play. There are tons of examples, but for instance Strangefish's Full Scale record is awesome. No one wants to hear "Oceans Deep" ten times and no others. Play it all. A lot of my favorite CD's lose their magic if cuts are played individually from them.

There's a couple of different but related ideas here. I agree a show like Tommy's is a good thing, and there are no plans to eliminate it. I also could deal with less Floyd and the KC family of bands, but I don't want to be dictating what Tommy plays. Defeats the purpose of having someone ELSE do a show if I tell him what to play or not play.
I'm not convinced playing the entire Strangefish album through will alleviate the problem of "Oceans Deep" being overplayed. We can consider more full length play at some point, but the biggest problem I hear is too much of the same artists rather than not enough of an artist.

2) I do not want to see this become a Flower Kings station <snip> Take a chance people!

We do not want to and will not become a Flower Kings station. I like the band A LOT, but there's way too much of the same songs being requested.

3) I may not like a lot of what's on Progressive Shores, but I love the idea and the show. Even the repeats are fine.

Progressive Shores may be MY favorite of the shows. Sean always has stuff that I'm not familiar with, and I like the methodical country by country approach.

4) The idea of having listeners select a block of music once a month or every two weeks has a lot of upside:

<lots of stuff snipped>

Well, two main problems with this. One, coordinating user blocks will take a fair amount of human intervention on mine and/or Roger's parts. We can make it happen, but it may not be religiously every month. The bigger issue as I see it, is that the repetitiveness you hear on Aural Moon is directly the result of listeners choosing the music. I don't intend to come across as arrogant or anything here, but I see the workings of the station, and I can see when what is played is a random SAM selection, requests, or DJ'd by one of us. Naturally, I like what I DJ (or I wouldn't cue it up in the first place). But I can assure you, requests are the least imaginative, and most repetitive music you here on Aural Moon. Certainly there are exceptions - the themes overall worked well I felt - lots of people requested songs they didn't know because they fit in with the theme. Maybe having user blocks available would help. But I think we have a lot of regular requesters who are not regular posters, and I'm guessing that's where a lot of repeats come from.

5) I strongly disagree with putting a limit on how often a band plays or someone can request, but by the same token, in order to expand the base we need to be inclusive of others, specifically the periphery listener. No one should be rq more than 3 songs a day, really. It's just not fair. And no one should take advantage of this either. I'm past the point of buying all I hear, but I want to hear it!

6) Another reason you hear these same long tunes is that if you are making a request, you don't want to "waste it" on a 4 minute tune. More bang for the buck. On Stardust We Are, there are a few short great songs. but hey if I can rq, why not stardust...it's 25 minutes...see what I mean? then we burned out on it. Transatlantic - "We All Need Some Light Now" might be the best song on the record - but there are other longer songs and they get played.

Well, these two points almost contradict themselves, don't they? The bottom line is, we already have a limit on how often people can request. We are going to experiment with some minor modifications to these policies (making them more stringent, I'm afraid) and feedback will be listened to.

7) The program director should have a certain amount of time to have "free programming". Sometimes we've played songs by bands with the same letter, stuff like that. Or random play. I like that. It's different.

Technically, I have that now. But we are seriously considering a "request-free" day, when no requests are allowed - once a month, or once a week even. I think people will be pleasantly surprised.

8) All new additions should be played in their entierety once. Why not? This is long overdue.

Not a bad idea at all, we'll probably do this on an informal basis.

None of these suggestions I am making have nothing to do with limits.....I want to hear a variety!

As I alluded earlier, I think the only way to hear more variety is to limit the requests, unfortunately. We'll continue to work on it from all angles though.