Back towards the end of last year, the local sports talk radio stations got synergized or mergerated or whatever. Basically, the bigger co. bought out the smaller one and they combined the two AM stations down into one. The rumor at the time was that the other AM station was gonna be sold and become a rightwing political talk station. Until that happened they were just planning to rebroadcast the FM sports talk. So I hadn't tuned in probably since sometime in December but in a fit of boredom with all other options, I scanned over last Friday to discover that they're becoming an oldies station. Right now, they're just playing music. No DJs and hardly any ads (except in AM drive time when they're still broadcasting Imus... feh!) and the bumpers say that they're auditioning over 3000 songs for the playlist. They also describe what they're playing as pop hits of the 50s and 60s. But, maybe because they're still in a testing period, I've been surprised at how wide a net they're throwing within the confines of late 20th century pop music. I've heard Nat King Cole, Bobby Darin and even Les Baxter. Also some doo wop, wall of sound, girl groups and Stax/Volt. "Leader of the Pack" and "Love Train" and "Hey Jude" also. They have gone a bit further into 70s sappy pop than I ever care to go but that's why they make it so you can change channels on your car radio. What I'm curious about is, if they end up with a 1500 song playlist, and given that I probably won't be listening every day, how long will it take before it starts to feel like I've heard everything and there's no surprises to be had. Obviously, stations playing new music get around that problem because there's always something different being added to the mix. But I know with the stations I hear at work that play oldies or classic rock there are very few moments when they drop something that surprises me in any way at all. I wonder how big the playlist for Sirius/XM stations is? Cos Sarah and I have listened for the entirety of day long road trips and barely heard any repetition at all AND had multiple occasions of hearing things that neither of us had ever heard before. Well, I guess if you're hearing 12 songs an hour, then 8 hours would still only be 96 songs so you wouldn't need that big a playlist to avoid repetition.