Are there any live overnight jocks left in 2020?

[tapesfromtheradio]

Bringing back a topic that’s been discussed here a few times over the years - are there any radio stations left in 2020 with a live overnight DJ? Do primary EAS stations still need a live body in the building 24/7?

Here in my midsized market (Richmond, Virginia) I haven’t heard anyone live between midnight and 5:30 AM in a few years. 1140 WRVA used to have live local news every half hour through the night, but they cut that some time ago. On the FM side, the last live overnight jock I remember was Kirby Carmichael on Q94 - but he was cut by former owner Clear Channel 14 years ago!

I know the economics of keeping an overnight DJ are not favorable nowadays, since few people are listening at that time and automation is ubiquitous, but I’m curious who the holdouts are in 2020. It’s still nice to hear a local human voice on the radio at 4 AM.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

Do primary EAS stations still need a live body in the building 24/7?

No. Even some National Primary stations, including WSM are not staffed overnight. I've worked for a couple of LP-1 stations which were not staffed overnight, going back almost 20 years.

 

[Kent]

KTXY 106.9 in Columbia/Jefferson City, MO was live in overnights not too long ago. Not sure if it still is or not, though.

As for whether or not LP's have to be attended 24/7, it depends on your state EAS plan. Some require it while others allow unattended operation so long as they have a loop to immediately relay anything that comes over. Some allow the LP2 to be unattended while the LP1 must have an attendant at all times.

I worked at KTXY about 15 years ago, and it was experimenting with allowing the Highway Patrol to originate the EAS alerts. I don’t know what became of it. The entire time I was there, we sourced the EAS off the board instead of built it into the audio chain. Since the state EAS plan required us to be attended, we trained new hires off the actual box. I was sacked at the same time they started experimenting with using the HiPo to originate the alerts and went straight to a competitor. We shared an engineer with them, and he and I had a nice long conversation after they botched an Amber Alert. I never found out if it was the HiPo or a newly trained person who sent the wrong code, but I never heard much more about that experiment over the next four years or so.

 

[Delete My Account]

I believe WXRT in Chicago still has someone in studio overnight.

 

[radio128]

Z100 and 106.7 Lite FM in NYC.

 

[kenglish]

In Salt Lake City, KSL has a person or two in the newsroom all night. I wouldn't say "jock", since it's not a music station. There may sometimes be a Board Op there, too. KSL is the PEP, SP-1 and LP-1.
Across town, I believe KSOP-FM has a live jock on their country station all night. They are one of those funny little family-owned duopoly stations that knows how to keep a loyal audience and stay pretty high up in the ratings, too.

My biggest gripe is that many EAS Alerts happen during hours when the stations are manned, but the State has no one on duty that is capable of initiating alerts properly.

 

[Tibbs4]

CBS-FM - Dave Stewart has been live. Currently working from home, but he lays the tracks in a few minutes before they come up on the log, so anything important ore newsworthy is just a minute away.

 

[Syfy]

Bringing back a topic that’s been discussed here a few times over the years - are there any radio stations left in 2020 with a live overnight DJ? Do primary EAS stations still need a live body in the building 24/7?

Here in my midsized market (Richmond, Virginia) I haven’t heard anyone live between midnight and 5:30 AM in a few years. 1140 WRVA used to have live local news every half hour through the night, but they cut that some time ago. On the FM side, the last live overnight jock I remember was Kirby Carmichael on Q94 - but he was cut by former owner Clear Channel 14 years ago!

I know the economics of keeping an overnight DJ are not favorable nowadays, since few people are listening at that time and automation is ubiquitous, but I’m curious who the holdouts are in 2020. It’s still nice to hear a local human voice on the radio at 4 AM.

850 koa has live news pretty much every half hour im pretty sure at night.

 

[MarcB]

In Hartford hip-hop station Hot 93.7 is live til 2AM. Automated 2AM-6AM.

I think a couple of the i-Heart Music stations in my area are Voice tracked overnight.

WTIC (AM), which runs Hannity until 1AM and Coast to Coast AM til 5AM airs local news at the top and bottom of the hour, but the Top of the hour local news is a quick update as overnights they air a few mins of CBS News.

The last all live and local music station in Hartford went off the air for good in August 2014 when they were sold to K-LOVE and that was 106.9 WCCC. They were live and local 24/7. They were Mainstream Rock until 2013 when they flipped to Classic Rock. After H. Stern went over to Sirius in '06? they didn't air any satellite programming (except for New England Patriots Football). They didn't believe in voice-tracking. They were independently owned by Marlin Broadcasting which also owned Classical 104.9 W-BACH (WBOQ) in the suburbs of Boston which later changed to (Soft AC?) North Shore 104.9.

 

[TheBigA]

I know the economics of keeping an overnight DJ are not favorable nowadays, since few people are listening at that time and automation is ubiquitous

The other side of this that rarely gets discussed is that it's also very difficult to find an experienced DJ who is willing to work that shift. Personally, I got stuck on that shift early in my career, and I quit after a month because I hated the lifestyle. it really cramps your life when you have to sleep all day and work all night. You can't really hire someone with no experience, because you need someone who can deal with emergencies and other issues on their own without waking up the day staff.

 

[Kent]

The other side of this that rarely gets discussed is that it's also very difficult to find an experienced DJ who is willing to work that shift. Personally, I got stuck on that shift early in my career, and I quit after a month because I hated the lifestyle. it really cramps your life when you have to sleep all day and work all night. You can't really hire someone with no experience, because you need someone who can deal with emergencies and other issues on their own without waking up the day staff.

A lot of us started out working that shift. In my case, there was someone at the AM news/talk station down the hall who was there to show me how to deal with emergencies. That, of course, was almost 30 years ago, and having multiple stations attended in the same cluster was fairly common at the time.

Personally, I always found the night shift harder on the social life than the overnights. When I was sleeping while my friends were at work, it wasn't a big deal. I just had to remember not to go out drinking during the week. The bigger problem for me was just getting used to it. The first overnight shift went fine. The second and third were absolute killers. Once I got used to it, it wasn't that big of a deal. When I had free time when my friends were working and was headed to work when they were heading home, I found that to be lonely.

 

[TheBigA]

A lot of us started out working that shift.

Its a terrible training ground. None of the people I knew who started that way ever graduated to better dayparts. Once an OM finds someone who will do the shift, they're not encouraged to move him. The ones I know were mostly anti-social. They loved the shift because they didn't have to interact with anyone. The one who stands out in my memory did his shift wearing sunglasses.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

wpcv 97.5 Lakeland, FL has a live overnight jock.... even when they run a syndicated show on the weekend, theres someone in the building

 

[Groove1670]

I worked at an AM overnight that played 4 car dealership spots an hour (they got all the co-op rumored to be around 25k a month). My only mission was to play the spots and NOT to miss one. At the time they paid me about $12 an hour which was pretty decent starting out in for a kid just out of High School in 1986. Some nights it was okay, but for the most part it was boring. Watching the B/EZ FM didn't pick up energy. No coaching, just a loose format clock, but good folks to work for.

After 2 years I finally left and got weekends then middays across the street. I was dependable, but very green, and didn't see no advancement.

Unless it is a VERY large market. There is no ROI (revenue or listeners) for overnights. Even 7-mid live is questionable.

 

[Kent]

Its a terrible training ground. None of the people I knew who started that way ever graduated to better dayparts. Once an OM finds someone who will do the shift, they're not encouraged to move him. The ones I know were mostly anti-social. They loved the shift because they didn't have to interact with anyone. The one who stands out in my memory did his shift wearing sunglasses.

When I was starting, it seemed like a lot of people started in that daypart, or at least said they did. It was true, however, that the people who worked that shift generally had to leave the station, and probably the market, to get a better shift. People moving up within the same station from that daypart seemed rare.

One cluster where I worked had an overnight guy who definitely fit the profile of being anti-social. He was one of the most standoffish people I've ever met and worked the shift for roughly 15 years. New staff was even warned about him and not to take his attitude personally. If he ever showed up to work in a good mood, you knew he was probably drunk. He also refused to work any more than the 30 hours a week he worked on the overnight shift. One night, he attended a station event, showed up to work blasted afterward, and forged the log. He was fired about 48 hours later, and, the next business day, we were told we were being sold. I've always suspected he was fired more for refusing to work an extra six hours on Sunday morning, which management had long wanted, and the pending sale than for the showing up to work drunk. He'd done that several times before, and everyone knew he did it. He also listed the exact same times on the log for transmitter readings every shift the entire time he worked there. It didn't become a big deal until right before the sale was announced. His replacement was required to produce the Sunday morning lineup on the news/talk AM.

 

[TheBigA]

He also listed the exact same times on the log for transmitter readings every shift the entire time he worked there.

That's an important point. People may not know that they needed someone to do transmitter readings until the automated systems took over in the early 80s. In the real early days you needed a 1st Class license to do that, and I've had lots of older radio people tell me that's the only reason they got hired. Or they say it's the only reason they got the 1st class license, so they could use it to get hired. I bet a big reason why there are so few live DJs overnight is because of automated transmitter readings. The FCC killed a lot of jobs when they eliminated the 3rd class license requirement, and then approved automated transmitter readings. This was a long time before deregulation.

 

[Kent]

I worked at an AM overnight that played 4 car dealership spots an hour (they got all the co-op rumored to be around 25k a month). My only mission was to play the spots and NOT to miss one. At the time they paid me about $12 an hour which was pretty decent starting out in for a kid just out of High School in 1986. Some nights it was okay, but for the most part it was boring. Watching the B/EZ FM didn't pick up energy. No coaching, just a loose format clock, but good folks to work for.

If you made $12/hour on the overnight shift, you were lucky. In roughly 10 years in radio, I never made more than $10. At the time, I wasn't doing radio for the money. It was fun, but, eventually, I wanted and needed something more. Having had experience working for a telecommunications company and possessing an IT degree, I had opportunities not in radio that paid more than double my salary. I sent out a few tapes when I was looking for a better fit and a better living. I got a few nibbles, but none was willing to give me anywhere near what the opportunities outside of radio offered. So, I decided fun wasn't going to sustain me and took a job out of the business.

Unless it is a VERY large market. There is no ROI (revenue or listeners) for overnights. Even 7-mid live is questionable.

I was once told the #2 station in LA made no money on overnights. It had someone working there because it was a better lead in for the morning show than dead air, and, in the off chance something went wrong, the station could probably be brought back on-air before the morning show had to deal with it and potentially lose revenue on spots.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

I bet a big reason why there are so few live DJs overnight is because of automated transmitter readings. The FCC killed a lot of jobs when they eliminated the 3rd class license requirement, and then approved automated transmitter readings. This was a long time before deregulation.

On the other hand, if there were still a requirement for someone to be on duty and on site any time a station is broadcasting, a lot fewer stations would be broadcasting overnight.

 

[TheBigA]

On the other hand, if there were still a requirement for someone to be on duty and on site any time a station is broadcasting, a lot fewer stations would be broadcasting overnight.

I bet that's true, and I'd love to know what percentage of the stations were 24/7 in the 50s and 60s.

I think a lot of the romance about overnight DJs comes from listeners, not the people who had to work that shift.

 

[atthestars]

In Philadelphia, WMMR is still live overnights with Brent Porche.

KYW often pre-records overnight news, but has people in the building in case of anything major breaking.