Rebel Media

3XY Chart - Winter In America ranked 9th

Ranked 10th

Highest overall charting for Australia was 38th.

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That argument is settled. I think we can move onto something else now……

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So, I guess Cold Chisel’s Khe Sahn, most of the Eagles singles, including Hotel California, Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven, Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side and Derek & The Dominos Layla were all flops?

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And the Phil Collins/Phil Bailey ā€œEasy Loverā€ duet is another song that never charted in Australia (it was never officially released as a single here), yet still gets flogged on radio relentlessly 40 years on.

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Found an old spreadsheet that was given to me years ago with state positions.
Yes - the song was first released in 74.
Only charted in Adelaide peaking at No.29

Then obviously re-released late 76..charting into 77
Sydney - peaked at No.28
Brisbane - peaked at No.3
Melbourne - peaked at No.13 (although the 3XY charts above would suggest it did better)
Adelaide - didnt chart in 76/77
Perth - didnt chart

So you could say it was a flop in Perth and a pretty decent hit in Brisbane… which is probably why it was / is played a lot in Brisbane.
Funnily enough, Doug’s singles And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda and Saddest Song of all were also Top 5 hits in Brisbane

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Thank you for your research. Much appreciated. And I concede that I was wrong.

Maybe the song wasn’t a total flop. I’m still dubious about where you’ve got the 38 from, but am willing to admit at least it was a hit in Melbourne.

So you guys have made some ground in the defense of Breeze. Phew!

Two flops at the top of the hour and a song that peaked at number thirty eight.

Well done.

So Breeze can now boast a TOH playlist of two flops and a song which peaked at #38.

Well done Breeze.

Meantime listeners are wanting to hear songs that they know and love. You guys seem to be anti-listener in your hunt for the most obscure songs of all time. Let’s just be self-indulgent and play tracks the public don’t want to hear. Yeah that’s great radio, and while we’re at it we’ll throw in a song that scraped in to #38 from 1978 and claim it as an all time classic.

It’s 2025. Radio should be about great music. Not scratchy shite from the 70s.

Pretty sure it made it to #2 on our charts in Aotearoa when it was released. Double platinum. That’s huge.

ā€œHotel Californiaā€ first entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated February 26, 1977,and topped the Hot 100 singles chart for one week in May 1977, the band’s fourth song to reach No. 1 on that chart.

Made it to #2 in Aotearoa. It was a hit.

The argument that these supporters of the Breeze suggest is that it’s OK to play obscure tracks that weren’t popular (for whatever reason),

Easy Lover and Winter in America are not in the same category. One is an absolute classic and the other is absolute shite.

One should be played at the top of the hour and the other should be played every 10 years at a 3XY 1978 reunion party.

We’re talking about Australian radio and Australian charts here… don’t see how anything related to Aotearoa is relevant to this.
If that’s the case, let’s pick a song, for example, that was No.1 in Japan sometime during the 90’s, sung in Japanese. It may have been a double platinum…a huge hit in Japan! Should it be played on Australian radio, because it was a huge hit somewhere in the world, but not in Australia? With all respect, your arguments have more holes than swiss cheese :slight_smile:

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Which is an opinion, not fact.

This forum would be boring if we kept celebrating the same 300 great songs that radio plays all the time. Yes they are great songs, but it’s a non event to hear them on radio, hence we don’t usually note them.

When i hear a so called ā€œobscureā€ song, it makes me think wow, radio still remembers this song somewhere. To. me it’s emotive.

Playing all the over researched ā€œpopularā€ songs is business, yes I know why they do it, but it’s also boring to true radio lovers like most of us here.

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I know I’m going off topic now… but I think a good example is the recent songs I posted from 2RE…They do play the over researched popular songs (I heard them playing The Cars ā€œDriveā€ today and changed stations), but also play a lot of songs that were hits in the day that are no longer played and songs that may have gotten a few spins when first released and charted lowly.

I don’t see that as a problem and obviously the audience and advertisers don’t have a problem with it. Each hour during local programming, they’d play about 12 minutes of ads - mostly local businesses and franchisees. A couple of national and government ads, no community service fillers. It had a very healthy advertising load, which is good for a local radio station. Lots of local community groups get free plugs, interviews with local people about various things - seems like they are very well liked and supported by people in Taree and Forster making it a very viable operation.

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No. We’re talking about Rebel. Please stay on topic.

Rebel are all over the place when it comes to their programming. Some people like it. Other’s don’t.

The general consensus is that Rebel’s programming is amateurish and halfed-assed. I have just jumped onboard this assertion.

The pro-Rebel people have so far counter attacked with the suggestion that Rebel plays tracks that made it to #38 in the charts at the top of the hour along with two flops. And they are arguing this is great radio.

Trouble is with you though is you are stuck in the 80s. FFS. Sure it’s an 80s song and you get an emotion from the 80s.

Are you still going to get that in 10 years? 20 years? Your answer is - 12" remixes and rare tracks. No. The 80s will not last forever mate.

That’s rubbish, True radio is about the listeners. Sitting behind the mic and talking to listeners that’s one thing I learnt very early on. It’s not about playing the music I like. It’s about them.

Hey I just met you

As a radio announcer you might want to play Winter in America. But the listeners want the most overplayed, repetitive track of all time.

And this is crazy

And you give it to them. Because this is radio. It’s not about you. It’s about the listeners.

Wrong again. I have listed tracks from other decades too, not just the 80s.

That’s because it’s a business, and listeners are what helps pays the bill. It doesn’t mean it’s great radio.

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Really no point continuing this discussion. You’re contradicting yourself and what you say makes no sense despite the evidence put in front of you.
Over and out!

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Nobody cares what charted in New Zealand. It’s irrelevant in discussing Australian radio playlists.

I’m really 100% over your rantings. You’re just deliberately provoking responses by insulting people and their personal tastes.

You’re really nowhere near as smart as you think you are

If you want fresh hits and tight playlists, why are you even listening to Breeze? Just so you can come on here and troll.

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I will trot out the well worn pithy mantra of commercial radio: ā€˜deliver audiences to advertisers’. The songs are incidental in the first place. You want as many people listening/enduring the ads as possible, so you appeal to these masses by playing the safest songs.

Community radio thankfully has a different ambit and so I have no qualms about being adventurous with my music, within reason of course. As stated I do follow a few radio conventions.

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Jesus, why is everyone going each other in here… some people like one thing and some like another, welcome to earth. If you don’t like what you hear go elsewhere.

I, myself, get tired of Australian Radio, and I seek out overseas alternatives which would probably make your skin crawl @1323ZM. Some of them play songs that would make Breeze and Rebel look as safe as WSFM! The good thing here is such a small outlet is trying to break the normal safe and boring pattern alot of Australian Radio has succumb to.

There are so many choices for as you say ā€œgood and safe radioā€. But if you dont like something, you can just switch off and find something else that fancies your taste, you don’t have to come in here and stoop so low as to start attacking people personally to make your point.

And if you want to find other stations to listen to for your ā€œgood radioā€ fix then TuneIN now has a radio map to explore the world and theres also radio garden, which is a good app too.

But please dont come in here insulting and provoking people with your over acted rants… seriously mate, youd be right at home in an episode of Days of Our Lives or Bold and Beautiful with all the soap opera over acting you do.

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Gotta admit though, good for a larf.

I was reading through this thread whilst having breakfast at the local cafe; the staff probably wondered what was going on with me :wink:

Anyhow poking the bear is best left for Trump so let’s move on.

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agreed

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I haven’t listened to them all that much - but to me it always feels like Rebel/Breeze are perfect when you also get reception of standard stations - they create an audience by being outside the stuff the normal stations would play - it fills gaps against how you’d program a standard 2 station regional market, but is a strange approach for if you were making a station for the remote areas it’s supposed to cover.

It obviously goes to Rebel’s clear strategy of maximising their reach into the major centres, like being receivable in so much of SEQ, where they are a welcome choice, and likely have strong ad revenue bases.

But if you were in a regular regional town where Rebel/Breeze and the ABC stations were your only choices, I feel that huge amounts of listeners would not really like either. It’s a really strange context for what are probably Australia’s least safe format stations to be potentially your only options.

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