Karaokechic: I remember seeing you posted this question a while ago, but I was reading on my mobile at the time and wanted to wait until I got home before I answered it. I then of course forgot I was going to do that and never replied.

Rotation management in my opinion is a lot like the legal system; multiple interests to keep happy (often self-interests rather than altruistic), often requiring contradictory actions meaning that it is almost certain people will not be happy with the way you do it 100% of the time. As the legal system is not perfect but aspires to be as close to perfect as it possibly can, so to should a host's rotation.

Disclaimer: I don't profess to be an expert on rotation management (despite what some people think lol) and the way I have run a rotation has certainly changed over time to the point where nowadays I do things every now and then which would no doubt horrify the LB Host of 3 years ago. My primary philosophy is that the way you run a rotation must be consistent and explainable to anyone who wants to grill you on it.

The first and most important thing is to understand what exactly you're trying to achieve with your rotation. Without answering this question you run the risk or either not being able answer any of the questions that follow or else implementing a rotation system that is internally inconsistent. The way I answered this question is 'everyone waits a comparable amount of time for their first song' with the caveat that 'where possible and appropriate, everyone waits a comparable amount of time for subsequent songs'. In other words, in a perfectly balanced rotation, everyone waits the same amount of time for each song. It's answering this question that I believe causes the most amount of disagreement. My reason for answering the question in this way is: everyone who sings gets at least one song, that one song should be treated the same regardless of whether they submit it at the beginning of the night, an hour in or two hours in (here's where you get the next round of disagreements). There is an argument to be made that someone there since the beginning has made more of an investment in the show than someone who comes in half way through, but only if a) they spend money, b) they sings songs which assist in the creation of a favourable atmosphere and c) they don't leave half way through. I have no control over a) & c) and while I technically do have control over b), I choose not to exercise it. This leaves me with no way to determine in advance whether that person at the beginning of the night really *is* going to represent more value than the person who comes in half way through. To be fair, they do represent a certain value, they help me start my first rotation. For that I am thankful for without them I have a very subdued first round. The benefit to them is that they have the opportunity for more songs should they choose to avail themselves of them.

The important point to make is that while I may be aiming for everyone to wait the same amount of time for each song, I don't know ahead of time how long each song is, how many more 'new singers' I'm going to get or whether someone who has sung one song will put down subsequent songs after they have sung their first. This uncertainty is what creates an imperfect rotation system.

It's been my experience that people in the first round have waited roughly 30 min from the time they hand in their song to the time they get up to sing. This can vary of course but it's around this mark. As the first round continues, new singers continue to get up and those who have already sung wait a longer and longer amount of time for their second song. This is where my caveat comes into play; at what point do you start round two? You could continue taking names and getting up new singers until you have no more new singers. This would seem the logical approach and I know it's the approach taken by many hosts. My view of it though is that if there is an average wait of 30 min for a singer's first song and you have 30 singers, singer #30 has waited 30 min for their first song but singer #1 has now waited 2 hours since singing their first song. Is this fair? My view is that if there is a way to ensure that singer #30 waits a comparable amount of time for their first song as singer #1 did for theirs but singer #1 waits a comparable amount of time for their second song, then the rotation should be altered to bring this about. This is where the 1old/1new function comes into place, however I would go so far as to end round 1 at such a time where there were only a small handful of new singers still to go and slot them into the beginning of round two. Some have argued that by being in round two rather than round one, they have somehow missed out on a song, however what is really going on is that the singer is still waiting a comparable amount of time. Yes, there will be a few round one singers slotted in before them and if the end of the night comes around and they are a handful of people away from getting up next then doing this did in fact cost them a song at the end of the night. My view though (and one person said I was a socialist for doing this lol) is that by taking a small amount of time from the wait time of a whole bunch of people and spreading it around, low and behold, everyone actually waits less for their song in the long run. It doesn't always work and as I said before, the mechanics of how I implement this has changed over the years as my understanding of singer and crowd behaviour has changed.

At the end of the day, one of the worst things you can do is have someone wait more than an hour for their first song and while you simply can't please everyone all of the time, there's no harm in trying to get that figure as high as possible and being altruistic in my view is the best way of doing it.
Submitted by LeatherBaron on 22-07-2011

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