“All Request” radio promotions are totally bogus, through and through. They are signs that a program director is either out of clever promotional ideas or is downright lazy.

As an example, let’s use our local rock station’s latest All Request promo. It was Robert Plant’s 61st birthday last week, so our local 101.1 FM classic rock mailed in their tribute with an “All Request Led Zeppelin Weekend.”

Which meant that they played whatever Led Zep songs they felt like playing. Sure, they attributed the songs to requests, and sometimes even mentioned the requester’s name and town or even played the phoned-in request. But of course they’d get requests for many of the songs they planned to play anyway.

And for the songs they would never dream of playing: they didn’t play. Radio stations do not break their own playlist rules. An open All Request Weekend at any classic rock station would never play a Celine Dion song no matter how many requests it got. A country station would never play a Tiny Tim song. A rap station would never play The Beatles.

All Request is bogus, a radio version of a cheap card trick. Seriously, guys, try to be a little more clever than that.