re: What determines which older songs get played in heavy rotation/played to death?

The consultants use focus groups, and one of the big factors is not disliking the song. Not actually always LIKING the song, but not actively DISLIKING it. It's a recipe for blandness.

Back in the day, you wanted to turn your audience on...now its all about not turning them off.

Amen, brother.

Cousin Brucie, who did a syndicated show for years, said going to satellite was incredible because his playlist went from like 250 songs to thousands of songs.

That's funny, because I bought Sirius when Corp radio began sucking really bad, and I dropped Sirius because they kept repeating the same songs on the 3 stations I frequented.

Maybe he has some pull on his station, but for the most part Sat Radio blows as well.

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It's because local radio is essentially dead. Media conglomeration means just a few companies own all of the stations across the nation, and they use the same playlist throughout their entire company. It leads to less and less interesting playlists, and there's no way for songs, particularly old ones, to crack the list. Then you have stations like JACK which is literally programmed by a computer.

A good DJ was like a curator. It's a long lost skill.

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Yep, its a lost era sadly. I guess it was different to play deep cuts or songs that were released as singles but didn't hit big, maybe crack the top 40 but not top 10 or 20 when those artist were current or recent and not nostalgia acts. What's even sadder is, the big acts get played, even if it is the same 2-3 songs, but some mid level acts, that were moderately popular or had 1 or 2 mid level songs are completely forgotten. A group like Triumph was a staple on KLOL and other AOR stations but is gone from classic rock. April Wine, Dokken are some others. Hell, Sammy Hagar is now know for Van Halen (i still weep inside over that) and I Can't Drive 55, but Standing Hampton was a great album, it was huge in Texas, though he never seemed to catch on in NOLA/BR, but you will never hear anything from that album, a real shame.