Longer Still

We continue into the month of August with a series dedicated to the length of songs. I heard a long time ago that most songs accepted for radio play have a particular time restriction. Most radio stations don't like to play songs that are longer than 5 minutes, because it limits the number of songs that can be played in an hour, which then limits the number of commercials you can play in that hour. Therefore, unless a song is rocking the Billboard charts or some other factor, most songs that you hear on the radio are between 3 and 5 minutes in length. While there are exceptions to this rule it's an injustice to the community and to the artist to limit which songs will be played based on time. Is that radio profiling?

Well fortunately for us, we don't have the same restrictions that most radio stations do in terms of trying to fit commericals and all that into an hour's programming. So, this coming weekend, we'll hear some great music that you probably won't find anywhere else, because of the time barrier. And in the next few weeks, we'll look at more lengthy tunes and couple them with some shorter songs. It was the way things were 40 plus years ago in popular music. In the 50's and early 60's, you couldn't find a song that was 4 minutes long. A lot of artists are going back to that style with shorter tunes. So we'll present the Long and Short of it all in the month of August, on the Appetizer from Abilene Public Radio.

Listen Saturday nights at 8 on 89.7 FM or online at kacu.org