• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 12, 2012

One radio station in Los Angeles -- KSWD 100.3 The Sound -- tells listeners it doesn’t play the same song twice in a
24-hour period. Its tagline: “Album Rock. True Variety.”

Apparently people can be bored listening to “Born to Run” at 8 in the morning and then hearing it at 10 p.m. that night.

This can be the opposite of a cable TV network, where a rerun of a show within a 24-hour period is sometimes not only necessary, but desired.

To be fair, a lot of reruns aren’t on the same day, but you can find them scattered throughout the week.  With TV, availability is everything.

Bob Pittman of Clear Channel Entertainment, a big radio concern, said the difference between what his company does and what the Pandora music app does comes down to this: Pandora is a playlist, while broadcast radio offers live news, sports and musical experiences.

For live radio you want that. For live TV -- especially when it comes to news and sports programming -- you want something different everyday, even if we listen to the same analysts, commentators talking about the bowing out of Rick Santorum, the Jets’ trade of Tim Tebow, or the suspension of Sean Payton.

So do TV consumers want a playlist or something a bit unexpected? The answer is that they want both – depending on whether it was last night’s “Big Bang Theory” or the live airing of the NCAA’s Men’s Basketball Tournament final game.