Much like the legendary BBC Duty Log, Absolute Radio has its own feedback box and where possible, we try to reply to every single email we get sent. Even emails like these…
Dear Absolute,
Your playlist is terrible. You may have the ‘the no repeat guarantee’ (a message which ironically you repeat over and over) but you play the same 100 songs every day. It’s insufferable to the point where I think I am developing IED (Intermittent Explosive Disorder) which causes me to perpatrate random acts of violence on innocent individuals.
Suffice to say I am not the only one that feels this way about your monotonous playlist. The entire office feels the same way as I do except they are lucky enough to have no developed IED. Most of the office folks have now just developed a small dribbling problem. I don’t know who to feel more sorry for.
Unfortunately, we have to listen to the dire tripe that you output as the person in control of the radio will not let us change it. We have considered kidnap but she carries far too many sharp objects for us to approach her plus storage costs these days are through the roof.
Please for the love of all that is sacred, can you increase the amount of songs on your playlist by 5000% I don’t mind hearing even a song I hate once a week but every day is causing my brain to malfunction. It can only be a matter of time until my sanity is drained dry and I go on a mass killing spree of everyone whilst screaming the words
Needless to say we simply cannot allow a comment like this to go unanswered:
Hey there,
Many thanks for writing to us. I sincerely hope you feel a bit better getting that off your chest. I hope the random acts of violence have stopped – we certainly don’t like to think that what we do here will drive you to madness.
I’m genuinely sorry to hear you feel this way about our playlist. When Absolute Radio was launched we canvassed opinion from our listeners to ask them what they wanted to hear from a new radio station. One of the overwhelming issues was that of songs on high rotation – i.e. tracks that would be played sometimes only two or three hours after they had previously been played.
The best way to remedy this was to introduce the No-Repeat Guarantee. The reason we talk about it so much it that it’s a genuine point of difference between us and the rest of the stations on your dial.
From a playlist point of view we have a playlist that rivals even Radio 2 in breadth and variety. It’s a fact that we play more and a greater variety – this was from the music department:
“As a ballpark figure we play, on average, around 1500 different songs in any given week.
As a comparison this is around 4 times as much as all our commercial rivals (Heart, Magic Capital) who tend to rotate their songs at a higher level
Our nearest competitor in terms of individual song variety would be Radio 2, who normally play around half the amount of different songs we do, in any given week.”
I hope that at least sorts out the issue of the repetitious side of our playlist.
Can we suggest some bibs for those staff members who have started to dribble?
With regard to the person who controls the radio, if you could send us her address we’ll make sure we keep up the supply of sharp objects.
Yours,
Roque
