Anybody remember when radio was fun?

[rwells2265]

My good friend Russell Wells, now in Savannah GA, had a program called Thursday on the Rocks, which spotlighted artists from the 1960s and beyond in the rock era. RW would dig deep for some classic tracks in the station's collection. He got requests from all over south Alabama and into northwest Florida when his show was on FM. I'll never forget the day we changed formats, RW was out and I filled in for him...this was in 2000. He had regular callers with requests, but we had changed to a lite format. And in the middle of a record, I get this angry call:

"Where the h**l is RW? And what the f**k is all this Lionel Richie s**t?!"

I remember that night well. Why DID you play that "Lionel Richie @#$%" anyway? You ran off my audience, y'know that??!! ;D

TOTR was truly the most fun I've ever had in radio. It resembled much of how Sirius 16 "The Vault" sounds today. Classic rock with old WTBF jingles .... I used my regular name for my "daytime" gig (WT-something or other), so I had to use something else. Since I had no desire to use an airname ("Shotgun Russell Records and/or Carts Wellsdecker"?), I just used my initials - R.W.

Then I found that old Pepper-Tanner LP back in TBF's production room .... "ALPHABET SHOUTS" Dropped the needle on it, and as I was listening to it I thought, "And the point IS....?" But then I got to "R!!!" And that little light bulb went off.

Spliced 'em together and I made my own shout. Best of all, the price was right. Ahhhhh, that was such a fun time. I miss doing that show.

Thanks for the compliment, my friend ... let me know where to send that check. ;-)

--Russell / "R.W."

 

[Brad_Wright]

I agree with Terry. The request line is a must. You can throw out numbers all you want to, like 5% of the listening audience will call but ya' know what, I KNOW that those people are listening as opposed the "theoretical" mf'ers that MIGHT be listening who aren't calling.

 

[MBird]

You reminded me of an interesting point on this subject . . .

WTBF had a great "radio is fun and we also take requests" (since we're on the subject) show every night for years...no matter what the daytime format was, at night, we rocked with Nite Flite. After sundown, baby, we kicked out the jams like the Carpenters on Goodbye to Love!

Monday - "Nothin' But The Blues"
Tuesday - "8-Track Tuesday" - '70s music
Wednesday - "Wednesday Night Jazz"
Thursday - "Thursday on The Rocks"
Friday - "Free Form Friday" - anything goes after a ball game
Saturday - "Saturday Night Fever" - disco
Sunday - "SONday" - contemporary Christian

That all changed on January 20, 2000 when we adopted the "Soft Relaxing Favorites" format...which, coincidentally, is the night I played all that 'Lionel Richie s**t', because management said we had to!

 

[mrjay]

2 am this morning....i kid you not - request lines flash, couple is driving from kansas to the races....hard funkadelic leftovers, couldn't *believe* a station was still live and local and playin something different. was sooo excited, told me what to play, thanked me for being there. very much worth it...
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