Quote Originally Posted by Boogiedown View Post
Being live on air: timing was everything. There's a certain rhythm for inserting commercials, maintaining the right ratio of music to ads, being able to end the music exactly at the top of the hour. I can imagine that stunt of Phil's really irked the programmers, and only aided in their cooling to his product. Not smart, and at 45 seconds, such a glaring discrepancy OF COURSE they would notice.

Also station listeners would be patient enough to wait through a short song they didn't really like for hopes of the next one being a favorite. But if you didn't like or were tired of the entirety of American Pie....halfway through ...what else is on the dial.

. In the 60's, programming was based on a Top 40 playlist, a number you could manage and keep the hotter stuff in rapid rotation. As records got longer in the 70's stations began using a trimmed down Top 30 list so as to be able to keep all the tunes heard in a timely rotation and to especially assure the hottest singles got frequent play.
That's really interesting and I'm glad to have a confirmation that I was on the right track as far as there being an actual reason why songs were uniformly under 3 minutes. It's really fascinating how Top 40 Radio worked. It's often taken for granted that it was this super fun part of the 60s and 70s, but there actually were a lot of headaches and frustration behind the scenes.