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1260 Going Country Gold

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Returning this thread to its actual topic "1260 Going Country Gold" - while driving in the 1260 signal area (on the 2 Fwy) I noted that 1260 AM has already transitioned to playing country music (which means the Taylor Swift temp format concluded early). 105.1 HD4 remains oldies (I did not hear the presence of the K-Surf moniker in its presentation) presumably through just this coming Monday, when we're told it will sync with 1260 AM for the new classic country format.
 
Returning this thread to its actual topic "1260 Going Country Gold" - while driving in the 1260 signal area (on the 2 Fwy) I noted that 1260 AM has already transitioned to playing country music (which means the Taylor Swift temp format concluded early).

Maybe Saul got tired of hearing her. It would be totally in character for him to end a stunting format early.
 
I was under the impression that "classic country," as a genre and radio format alike, was widely agreed to be anything prior to Garth Brooks that's also amplified in whole or in part (meaning excluding 100% acoustic recordings from the middle-early 20th century a la Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys).
I once saw a station mentioned in Billboard magazine that described its music as "Garth free". But "Friends in Low Places", "Two of a Kind, Workin' on a Full House", "American Honky-Tonk Bar Association", "Papa Loved Mama" and "Longneck Bottle" are real country. I don't care for anything else Garth did.
 
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I once saw a station mentioned in Billboard magazine that described its music as "Garth free". But "Friends in Low Places", "Two of a Kind, Workin' on a Full House", "American Honky-Tonk Bar Association", "Papa Loved mama" and "Longneck Bottle" are real country. I don't care for anything else Garth did.

This is Real Country:

 
Returning this thread to its actual topic "1260 Going Country Gold" - while driving in the 1260 signal area (on the 2 Fwy) I noted that 1260 AM has already transitioned to playing country music (which means the Taylor Swift temp format concluded early). 105.1 HD4 remains oldies (I did not hear the presence of the K-Surf moniker in its presentation) presumably through just this coming Monday, when we're told it will sync with 1260 AM for the new classic country format.

Maybe Saul got tired of hearing her. It would be totally in character for him to end a stunting format early.

I tuned to 1260 today, and found them playing a loop of “Gone Country” by Alan Jackson.
 
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What kind of propaganda was it? Do you remember much about the messaging? Were they broadcasting outright lies, like classical agitprop? Or was it primarily white propaganda (truths the Cuban government rather its people not hear)?
The Radio Americas programming was a not-so-covert CIA promoted anti-Castro message all day long. It was done by exiles in Miami who had been in radio before the revolution. The main messages were about the people still in Cuba who opposed the Castro regime who were still alive and either sanctioned or in prison or those killed or "disappeared" by the Castro government. The content included things about the confiscation of property, the totalitarian government restrictions, the growing population in the political prisons and such.

It was what you call "white propaganda" done by people who had to flee their homeland... people who had seen their family members killed or imprisoned... people whose homes and possessions had been "nationalized".

I'm an honorary member of the Association of Cuban Broadcasters in Exile so I know a lot of the story.
Also as soon as I saw your quotes on the word "owned", I instantly thought to ask whether you felt it may have been a CIA front. But your answer came as soon as I read your subsequent post. Sounds like the kind of adventure that would have been fun as a kid in deed, but a little alarming to think back to from the perspective of an older, wiser adult.
No different than having my own station taken over, briefly, by guerillas, or ´being beaten up on the street in other points of my career. Oh, and having the building I was in bombed by the Sendero Luminoso in Perú...
Do you suppose it goes without saying that anything Cuba had for successfully interfering with American broadcasts was being supplied by the Soviets?
Even the transmitters were built by and installed by Russia. In the later 60's, the manufacturer of those Russian transmitters tried to sell them throughout Latin America. On one occasion, I was visited by a "sales rep" offering me the 60 kw and 120 kw AM transmitters at amazingly low prices. The salesman was, of course, Russian. But he was accompanied by a silent guy in a classic ill-fitting Russian suit who just watched what went on... obviously KGB to the core.

At the time, I believed in lower power stations in each market, not national or regional signals so I did not buy a Russian Svetlana rig with way too much power and with proprietary "only from the USSR" tubes.

"You will buy our transmitter, yes? Or else we will be having to shoot you."
 
Stunts usually are 24/7.
And I think that the effectiveness of stunts died with the onset of the digital dial. Nobody manually does mechanical tuning across the band any more.

Last such stunt I did was in 1980. And even then I doubt it had much effect. Just do it and move on.
 
The pre-launch stunt for KRKE two years ago was a 15-minute mashup of 80s song segments with sound effects and the like, which repeated for a couple of days before I replaced it with an electronic "tick-tock" effect the day of the launch. That played for 12 straight hours with "KRKE" and "93.7" shouts and whispers every couple of minutes. Of course, that was a new station and not a format flip; unless I had a good reason to stunt these days, I would just cut over to a new format at midnight with no advance warning.
 
I wonder how many here realize that Alan was a board op and "Go-Fer" at The Nashville Network before he got his music industry break?

At some point before "Here In the Real World" and that first big album, I was visiting my friend John Pate, the CE of WSM and the related operations out at Opryland and in a walk-through of the facilities I was introduced to Alan. A few years later, when I was in charge of WTNT in Tallahassee we co-presented Alan's show in Albany, GA. I said to him that I had met him before at the studios and he said, "Oh, yeah, I think you are John Pate's friend."

Things like that show amazing "people skills" and when you see them you realize that success in those cases is not an accident.
 
The pre-launch stunt for KRKE two years ago was a 15-minute mashup of 80s song segments with sound effects and the like, which repeated for a couple of days before I replaced it with an electronic "tick-tock" effect the day of the launch. That played for 12 straight hours with "KRKE" and "93.7" shouts and whispers every couple of minutes. Of course, that was a new station and not a format flip; unless I had a good reason to stunt these days, I would just cut over to a new format at midnight with no advance warning.
Hey K.M. How come you don't see much stunting these days when there is a format flip? Thanks
 
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