Station identity
What a station reveals about itself—clearly or otherwise—over a real stretch of listening.
Music programming · Station sound · Listener experience
How a station comes together in real time.
LW / 01
Listening Window is a body of writing and analysis grounded in sustained listening to radio stations. It examines how music, sequencing, voices and presentation combine in the listener’s experience.
Listeners don’t experience music logs, clocks, or strategy decks. They experience the station.
The listening window
The station is not any single element. It is the relationship between them—and how that relationship feels to the listener.
≈ 6–7 songs
A Listening Window means spending roughly six or seven songs with a station and noticing how identity, momentum, contrast and context accumulate across that stretch.
Read more about the methodSequence & momentum
How songs, voices and transitions create movement, context and a sense of intention.
Listener experience
What people actually hear and feel, beyond the systems and strategy behind the sound.
Selected writing
Thinking through the sound of a station.
01
Music strategy
02Music Tells the First Story
How the music establishes a station’s identity before anything else has a chance to explain it.
Sequence & momentum
03A Station Should Feel Like a Journey, Not a Rollercoaster
Why range and contrast need a sense of direction if a station is going to hold together.
Listener experience
The Listening Window: What I’m Listening For
Listening for identity, momentum and cohesion across a real stretch of a station—not in isolated moments.
Perspective
Listening closely to what the listener actually hears.
I’m Mike Lavallee, a music programmer with more than 15 years in radio programming across CHR, Hot AC and Classic Hits.
Listening Window is where I explore how stations reveal themselves over time: whether the identity is clear, the momentum holds, and everything feels like it belongs together.