Back in the day Mike Joseph had a standard list he would give each jock to follow. It was something like for each record played you had to give, time, temperature, name of artist, name of the song, name of the show etc.. I seem to remember there were 14 things you were required to do but can't remember what over ten were. Anybody who worked with Mike remember the dread list?
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Mike Joseph's jock list
- Thread starter Radio Bob
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I sent an email to a friend who was PD at Mike's longest listing Hot Hits station. Let's see what he remembers!
I remember the Hot Hits format when it was on 103.3 in Boston in the mid-'80s. It was a tightly structured format when it came to what the jocks were allowed to say, but they surely didn't rattle off 14 items after every song!
I think the list was made up of the elements that had to each be done a certain number of times an hour. Remember, Hot Hits even had some song segues where there would be song-jingle-jock liner-jingle-song... two jingles in one transition!
What I remember was title and artist for every song, station slogan and frequency between every song , jingle between each song plus an occasional name credit and occasional tease for future shows and occasional temperature and always give temp with a place from the location list. . .. but there seems to me there were 14 things you had to do and I can't remember the last 5.
Still seems like a lot to be saying after every single song, and that's not how I remember WHTT Boston doing the format. What were some other Hot Hits stations? Maybe airchecks of some of them are on YouTube and can refresh both our memories.
When you talk about Mike Joseph, you have to be specific to which era and which format. Mike did AM Top 40 at specific stations in the 50s and 60s. Then he got into the format consulting business in the 70s, when he created Hot Hits for CBS. That was more of a group thing than what he was doing earlier. Then of course he created the Movin' format in the 2000s. Hot Hits was mainly an FM format, so I doubt very much there were host elements between "every song."
Maybe you can tell us which station you're talking about.
Hot Hits was first instituted at WKAQ (AM) in San Juan in 1968. The whole thing of song-jingle-talk-jingle-song with two jingles in one break was pioneered there, as was the energy level, audio processing and the like. They zoomed to #1 and stayed there until early 1971 when Mooney's WUNO beat them with the help of Scott Shannon.
The difference with the late 70's Hot Hits was more in the reduction of the playlist to under 30 singles in some cases and even tighter talk.
Yes! We can almost create a timeline of how Mike adapted Hot Hits over the decades.
Plus he was mainly the consultant. If I remember correctly, he worked with PDs at each of the stations who implemented the format. Those PDs had some leeway. So this idea of hard rules of what DJs said doesn't fit with that.
There IS a Hot Hits jock instructions document (or at least a believable looking fake). It was floating around somewhere a few years ago... maybe on Facebook.
The one I saw was from the launch of WBBM-FM. It specified how often the personalities mentioned the calls, the frequency, neighborhood mentions, time & temp, cross plugs, jingle placement, weather forecast formatting, all of that stuff. There was also one from WHYT that was 99% the same but with the Chicago-specific references updated for Detroit.
The one I saw was from the launch of WBBM-FM. It specified how often the personalities mentioned the calls, the frequency, neighborhood mentions, time & temp, cross plugs, jingle placement, weather forecast formatting, all of that stuff. There was also one from WHYT that was 99% the same but with the Chicago-specific references updated for Detroit.
Some that come to mind were WTTO Toledo, early 70's WKNR Detroit late 60's, WKFR Battle Creek late sixties.
With Mike's stations, he usually hired or recommended the PD. And, from my experience with several of the PDs for his Puerto Rico station (market 12 at the time) he allowed zero deviation from his rules.
Yes no deviation at WTTO . At WKNR ( Detroit) there was a very testy moment between Mike, the GM and the morning jock as told to me recently when the jock wanted to ad lib. The Jock won.
From what I've read, the air talent at WCAU Philadelphia had a lot of latitude with the rules.
From what I can see, Joseph was PD at WKNR (AM) before he launched the Hot Hits format. I don't see Toledo in his resume.
What he did at individual stations was different from his Hot Hits format. A lot of the Hot Hits stations were CBS-owned FMs.
There are plenty of such stories. Those I have heard were about situations where a group owner hired Mike, and the local GM and PD were not "always" pleased. Mike could be abrasive.
Example: at WKAQ, Mike stayed at one of the beachfront hotels in San Juan (there are really no other options there) and, during his market visits, he had the PD drive in the horrible local traffic every morning to have breakfast with him. The breakfasts were very long, as Mike liked to repeat and drill in his instructions.
While lecturing the PD, Mike's coffee would get cold after he took barely a sip. He would ask the wait staff to refill his cold cup, often six or seven times each morning. He was not courteous. But one morning, as Mike went to his room before leaving for the station, the PD saw the waiters laughing and giggling. He walked up to them and plainly asked what was "so funny about the S.O.B. he had to deal with every morning". The waiters, hearing that remark, admitted that for days they had been pissing in his coffee after the second or third refill.
On another occasion, Mike made the GM... a guy who was competent and well liked in the industry... get so mad the normally calm manager punched him while arguing by the elevator.
Mike was not very tolerant of those who did not follow his instructions. He was fond of saying that he had made WABC #1 in the biggest market, so he did not have to listen to people in small markets...
I thought that Jay Blackburn was the PD at Keener in the early 70's.
First "Hot Hits" was in 1968, and it was very similar to what he did in the 70's and into the 80's.
How about late 60s?
Could be. Both of the Detroit-side Top 40's had to combat 50 kw CKLW. Neither 1310 nor Storer's 1500 (and its collection of towers) could really cover the market.
Detroit, like Cleveland and Buffalo, were squeezed in between NYC and Chicago and none of them got a good set of AM signals. That meant that Top 40 did not always have the best signals. Look at McLendon's WYSL in Buffalo, WERE, WHK and WIXY in Cleveland, too.
I disagree somewhat about Buffalo. WGR and WBEN are, even now, full-market signals day and night. WKBW/WWKB is high on the dial, yes, but was beautifully engineered in the early 1940s with a transmitter site that turned out to be in the right spot. There has been very little population growth into the null zone south and west of the site in Hamburg, and most of the growth has been into the main lobe going north and east.
So that's three very full-market AMs for a market of a little over a million people - and one that remained compact enough into the 70s that signals like WYSL and WNIA/WECK on 1230 could still reach most of the audience.
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