You are the new host of radio station 96.5 The Vibe. You’ve just pulled off a successful coup, and now you have far more responsibility than you thought you’d need. Okay, focus. What are you going to play? Who even decides what plays on the radio?

I don’t know. But there are three hypotheses that I have, and my impression is that the correct answer is some arbitrary weighting of all three of them.

Decisions come from above. You find an envelope in the mail pile. “Dear Emily: Congratulations on your accession to the local throne. Please play these twenty songs to-day that we have selected in consultation with major record labels that we have deals with. You better, or we’ll have Legal hunt you down and beat you up with a copy of Billboard magazine. Also please run the following shitload of ads. Sincerely, A Committee of Music Industry Higher-Ups.”

Decisions come from below. Power to the people! You solicit suggestions from people in the neighbourhood who actually listen to your station. “Hey Emily, I hear you’re the new radio host! Any chance you could play Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley at 5:30pm on Tuesday? This would really help me with my promposal. Thanks! -Jaxton” Or maybe “Ms. Morales, please play less rap. It makes my bowels go. Yours respectfully, Jeanine W.”

Decisions come from within. Fuck all that. What do you want to play? Do you want to follow up some pounding hyperpop-yodelling concoction with a stately Baroque sarabande? Sure, why not? Hey look, you just did that, no problem. Okay, who’s phoning in to complain now? It’s nobody! Because you unplugged the landline.

Probably it’s a combination of all three of these. Probably you’re hemmed in by constraints from both above and below, and you find you can only squeeze in a few songs you really want per day. Maybe it’s like 50-40-10. Fifty percent handed to you from above, forty percent requested from below, ten percent your pleasure. “Headquarters says to play these country songs, but my listeners keep telling me to put on some more K-pop. Where am I going to fit all of my nightcore oud records?”

Maybe there are different types of radio station which allocate different proportions of airtime to each of these three classes. Sort of like how franchised restaurants have to adhere to a menu handed down by Headquarters but independent restaurants can sell what they want as long as they don’t haemorrhage customers too quickly. Maybe nationally branded stations have an 80-20-0 proportion, while independent stations are more like 0-70-30. I wonder if there are any 0-0-100 stations.

I am pulling all of these numbers out of a disreputable felt hat.

I also imagine being an elected official is a lot like this. Who decides your platform? Is it the Party higher-ups? Is it your constituents? Is it yourself? And in what proportion?