Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I know I've wondered this aloud before, but it still bothers me ... why does a "classic rock" radio station, which has two or three decades worth of music to choose from and no "latest" or "current" releases to have to worry about, need the concept of "heavy rotation"? (Okay, to be fair, maybe it's only "medium rotation", but it seems like I'm hearing the same songs an awful lot.) However good a song is, I will notice that I'm hearing the same songs every day, and if I listen to the radio a lot, I most certainly will notice that I've heard the same song three or four times today! Yeah, there are songs I don't mind hearing that often, but with such a huge number of good songs from the period, why should the playlist get repetetive?

(What's the classic-rock period these days anyhow? Is 1966 still classic-rock or has it been redefined into oldies now? I know the upper end is later than I'm used to thinking of the classic phase being ... is the period roughly 1966-1980? Narrower? Wider? Later? Personally, I'd be inclined to say 1962-1976, but I'm neither a musicologist nor a radio-industry businessman, just a musician and listener. IIRC, radio stations calling themselves classic-rock started adding "and eighties" to their "greatest music of the sixties and seventies" slogans not long after they came into existence.)

I've always been troubled by what I perceive as a lack of imagination in mainstream radio (though it's probably just "being cautious not to risk alienating any of their designated demographic"), wondering why only one track from an album was allowed to be "the hit" (while other tracks on the same album were better) when I was in high school, for example, but the idea that a station with decades of music to play would limit itself to relatively few songs just boggles me.

Of course, this is why I listen to an "alternative" station (by which I mean really alternative, not just slapping the alternative label on an old album-rock station that has since gone poppy) when I have a choice. The radio on the kitchen counter is tuned to WRNR (103.1 FM Annapolis), and my car radio alternates between that and WTOP (1500 AM Washington -- news/traffic/weather). Unfortunately, I can't tune that in on my shower radio, nor on the boom box that's feeding into my stereo, so I'm settling for a classic-rock station that would otherwise be my "when I feel like hearing something that brings back memories" once-in-a-while station.