Paper adds...In your mailbox...

Busted!

I paid pretty close attention to local pop radio in my youth, and I've found some old articles in the trade magazines about paper adds. A paper add is a record that a station claims to have added to its regular playlist, even though the station actually seldom if ever plays it. Some of the trade papers said they would drop a station from its reporting panel if the station had paper adds - and would monitor stations to make sure they accurately reported their playlists. There was even talk of bringing wire fraud charges against offending stations.

WKRQ (Q-102) in Cincinnati used to be the local top 40 giant. But playlists there were narrow, and Q-102 was usually late in adding new music. A song could hit #1 nationally but not receive regular play at Q-102. I know this, because I heard this station enough to know.

And whaddya know, 30 years later, I've discovered Q-102 was reporting paper adds. For example, the record added at #30 on Q-102's playlist of September 21, 1984, was a paper add...

http://las-solanas.com/arsa/charts_view.php?svid=57960

I never heard "The Lucky One" on Q-102 outside of American Top 40. Everything else on that playlist seems accurate to the best of my recollection - because I remember things like that. Yes, Q-102 really loved Chris de Burgh (even if he did look like Dr. Shrinker). But make no mistake, Laura Branigan was a paper add. Other Q-102 playlists on that website reveal "Run Runaway" and "Send Me An Angel" as likely paper adds - unless those songs were relegated to ungodly dayparts.

Conversely, Q-102 added "Borderline" by Madonna very late and began playing it constantly, but the song doesn't appear on any Q-102 playlists on that site.

None of these songs had any lyrical controversy that I know of. The station simply deemed these songs popular enough to report as an add but not popular enough to actually play - or vice versa.

I worked in radio later, and I know how this stuff works. In pop radio, there's usually a method to the madness of what a station plays. Most stations don't just take a big stack of records and play them randomly. Music flows are supposed to be carefully balanced. If you listen to a station enough, you can sometimes detect a pattern.

Somehow, I don't think Billboard is going to go back in time and correct its record charts from 30 years ago just because a station with paper adds was on its panel.