July 2, 1989 Harvey Holiday returned to the Philadelphia airwaves with the 5 hour doo-wop oldies show. He was off the air a few months after the demise of "Solid Gold 102" in the 1987 Oldies War. The show had a 6 month hiatus around 2000 but remarkably was returned to the air in the shorter, pre-recorded version (with Holiday by then committed to middays). It is amazing that Philadelphia still has a doo wop show on a major station (music otherwise relegated to non-coms like WRDV or time-selling stations like WNJC or internet-only stations like PGR) even in a condensed Sunday night timeslot (New York's legendary doo wop show with Don K. Reed was cancelled many years back by WCBS-FM & is now on an internet-only station run by the vocal group The Belmonts).
The first generation of legends of Philadelphia rock & roll radio - Joe Niagara, Hy Lit, Jocko, Georgie Woods, etc. may overshadow the current voices but give Harvey Holiday the credit he deserves as a survivor, from the Hyski's Underground/Music For the People progressive era at WDAS-FM to the R&B format where he began the Sunday show in the early 70's, a brief change to WUSL-WFIL in 1985, to WPGR, then WIOQ...then he was added July 2, 1989 for Sunday nights only but worked his way to Saturday afternoons, then specialty shows evenings, and finally middays. I'm not sure, is there anyone on that long locally anymore (with the exception of Jerry Blavat buying time on local stations since 1962?)
Its interesting that WOGL has sort of become the 'WPEN' of the baby boomer generation. WPEN phased into the standards format about 1978-1979 as their listeners were 50-60-something & went off about 20 years later as the audience that survived was 70-80-something. As WPEN went along the big band sounds were phased out for WIP-style soft AC. I would suspect WOGL will last as they have by phasing in newer music as we boomers continue to age. As the prime doo wop audience (the people who remember it as 'new') would be over 70 now it will be interesting to see how long Street Corner Sunday keeps going after 25 years.
The first generation of legends of Philadelphia rock & roll radio - Joe Niagara, Hy Lit, Jocko, Georgie Woods, etc. may overshadow the current voices but give Harvey Holiday the credit he deserves as a survivor, from the Hyski's Underground/Music For the People progressive era at WDAS-FM to the R&B format where he began the Sunday show in the early 70's, a brief change to WUSL-WFIL in 1985, to WPGR, then WIOQ...then he was added July 2, 1989 for Sunday nights only but worked his way to Saturday afternoons, then specialty shows evenings, and finally middays. I'm not sure, is there anyone on that long locally anymore (with the exception of Jerry Blavat buying time on local stations since 1962?)
Its interesting that WOGL has sort of become the 'WPEN' of the baby boomer generation. WPEN phased into the standards format about 1978-1979 as their listeners were 50-60-something & went off about 20 years later as the audience that survived was 70-80-something. As WPEN went along the big band sounds were phased out for WIP-style soft AC. I would suspect WOGL will last as they have by phasing in newer music as we boomers continue to age. As the prime doo wop audience (the people who remember it as 'new') would be over 70 now it will be interesting to see how long Street Corner Sunday keeps going after 25 years.