GT&GO.
The WAYS playlist at its height (again, about those same years that you're speaking of) was somewhere between 800-1000 songs. Granted, there was a good deal of "platooning" and "layering" going on with about 300-400 of those songs. By that I mean that there were a number of what are commonly called "lunar" records that were not the top-testing songs out there, which would be popped in and out of the rotation over a period of time. I generally tried to do a gentle "sweep" of the library about once every 3-4 months. Again, all the "power" and "secondary" tunes (the ones you'd ALWAYS expect to hear on a typical Oldies station) would rotate quickly. But we'd use special features like the "Top 10 at 10" and other features, plus some occasional "oh, wow" records at various times to try to keep things a little more "variable". Granted, there was a good bit of "smoke and mirror" work going on there, but it seemed to have worked.
As to the "50's Hall Of Fame", understand that I tried very hard to make that show work. I thought Dan Greenfield (aka "Doo-Wop Dan") did an admirable job with the pre-production for, and the on-air presentation of, that show. I even pulled a turntable out of mothballs for him to use for some really hard-to-find stuff that he had in his personal collection. I think he may have even played a 78 or two during the run of that show. Would I have liked to see the show have a chance to grow an audience by giving it longer than the 8 months it was on? Sure. But there were some other issues there that I couldn't really discuss regarding the future of the station, and everyone on the WAYS staff at that point was in peril of losing their job, because of the pending sale of WDEN's 105.3 frequency and their pending move to 99.1 (we didn't know about the 105.5 frequency that would fall into place once the behemoth 'DEN frequency went away. I think McCoy did, but he's the type of person who WANTS you to feel threatened with unemployment). No matter, the day after I cancelled the show, I was hired to program another station in another market, and gave my notice to leave US Broadcasting (THAT is another story for another time).
Yes, Don McCoy and Doug Grimm LOVED to have their cars shiny and their gas tanks filled, so we ran a LOT of trade with Fountain Car Wash. Believe me, it was a thorn in my side.
The thing to remember about keeping a HUGE playlist is that you have to be able to drive Cume to the station. Generally, most folks that would listen to any format (oldies, classic hits, AC, country, you name it) are very busy and don't spend a great amount of time with a particular station, so the TSL is tricky to build. You do that with promotions and other things to get the listeners you have to stay with you for as long as possible. But if you can drive cume (in other words, mostly play songs that are VERY familiar to the average listener), then obviously the more people you have tuning in will also help drive your TSL higher, which translates into better overall share points. Conversely, if you play a song that, for average Jane Doe listener, is unfamiliar to them, you risk the dreaded "button-push" even earlier. Yes, I understand that oldies stations are guilty of playing "Satisfaction" and "Oh, Pretty Woman" and every Beatles song that charted prior to 1968 over-and-over (yes, even THAT one from the Dave Clark Five), and we don't play the deeper cuts and certainly don't play every Top-10 song ever charted, but the reason is simply that, aside from music geeks like us, they just don't stand the test of time. Sorry, I know there's a lot of good stuff out there that's ignored by mainstream radio, but that's the reality of the business.
I hope we can have intelligent conversation on this board about things that generally make sense. This is a good example. BTW, I have very few good airchecks of those years; I'd love to hear some of the stuff. Would you shoot me an email at david (dot) nolin (at) cumulus (dot) com and let's see if we can arrange to maybe let me bum a few of those airchecks? I'll spring for the blanks and even the postage.
Scott,
I'm prepared to call a truce if you are. I know who you are; I have for awhile. I respect your credentials, and I appreciate your comments about the (lack of) audio quality of the radio stations in the Macon market. I know that Hugh and John are top-notch engineers and would not have a slacker working for them.
I do, however, disagree with the way that you generalized ALL of the stations (whether implied or otherwise) as sounding horrible (specifically, "like dog-squeeze"). It seems to me that, as picky as you are about those kinds of things, the better way to approach it would have been to offer some SPECIFIC instances of what you heard in your last market visit. Then perhaps you wouldn't have gotten the treatment from me that you have gotten. I can handle constructive criticism (believe me, I'd much prefer that over SOME of the battles I've been dragged into the last few years). What puts a burr in my butt is broad generalizations... "you work in MACON? OMG, you SUCK!" I'm sure you understand that if you hear that enough, it starts to give you a migraine. And admit it, Scott, that is EXACTLY what happened here.
I work very hard to make the stations I am responsible for sound as good as possible. Do I always succeed? No. It's a constant battle, from re-doing audio files in the automation system to tweaking the processing. But I think, at least in the case of WPEZ and WAYS, they both sound a heckuva lot better than they did when I first took over programming them (the WAYS in this case being the 1500AM signal).
So please, if you come back through in the near future, flip over to Z and let me know what you think. I'd be interested to hear another trained set of ears.
In the meantime, I'm going to continue to work on cleaning up the "dog-squeeze". Maybe soon I'll have all the smell out of the rug as well. ;D
TDO
David Nolin
