Does anyone know where I can get a decent copy of WKTU's current full TOH? I listen to them online on my laptop, but I have no way to record the stream. Or can anyone get me a copy of WKTU's TOH? Thanks in advance.
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Current WKTU TOH
- Thread starter ExplorerXLT76
- Start date
ExplorerXLT76 said:
Maybe I have not been in radio long enough to know the acronyms, but what is a TOH?
H
HighDef
Guest
OH MY GOD!!!!! Something David Eduardo doesn't know!!!!!!!!
TOH = Top Of Hour...and they have a Reelworld jingle package, the demo is in High Fidelity at Reelworld.com, enjoy!
TOH = Top Of Hour...and they have a Reelworld jingle package, the demo is in High Fidelity at Reelworld.com, enjoy!
HighDef said:
Since so few IDs are at the top of the hour, the acronym seems rather dumb. I suspect it is an aircheckers term, as I have never seen it used by actual stations... we usually call it the ID, or legal ID. And we usually place it in a "natural break in programming" which is defintiely not at the top of the hour.
DavidEduardo said:
I've seen it constantly since I started following radio discussions online over 10 years ago, but that's just a guide.
What's not a guide (technically) are the FCC rules. Unless you're a classical station running a 40 minute piece, there's almost certainly going to be a break somewhere +/- 5 minutes of the top of the hour. Certainly if you have time to run a sweeper, there's time for a legal ID. The FCC doesn't seem to care much though, so you're probably ok. They probably realize that the rules need to be updated but haven't gotten to it yet. Maybe in another 20 years or so.
A
abonita
Guest
DavidEduardo said:
David, some of us professionals at actual stations use the term as well.
The TOH is not necessarily the Legal ID. In Z-100's early years, the legal was hidden somewhere around :52, while the TOH proclaimed, "Serving the Universe ... Z-100, New York"; at my current station (before we went all-Christmas), the legal (WJRZ-FM, Manahawkin) would usually lead into the TOH jingle ("WJRZ ... the Jersey Shore!")
Anita
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BACKnUSSR
Guest
Yup Anita is 100% correct. TOH is a VERY commonly used term to describe the ID piece used to "kick off" the hour...(its not always the actually Legal ID). Z-100/NY is a perfect example (hiding "WHTZ Newark-New York City" [only the WHTZ Newark part being the legal] in the :50 stopset.) And I would say that MOST radio stations run some sort of ID at the Top of The Hour (that doesnt mean EXACTLY at :00:00) but usually pretty close.Anita Bonita said:DavidEduardo said:
David, some of us professionals at actual stations use the term as well.
The TOH is not necessarily the Legal ID. In Z-100's early years, the legal was hidden somewhere around :52, while the TOH proclaimed, "Serving the Universe ... Z-100, New York"; at my current station (before we went all-Christmas), the legal (WJRZ-FM, Manahawkin) would usually lead into the TOH jingle ("WJRZ ... the Jersey Shore!")
Anita
BACKnUSSR said:
Interesting. Since many of us do not believe that the top of the hour has any listener significance, I suppose that is why I never picked up on the acronym. The bulk of stations I hear have the ID out of the last stop in the hour, and sweep across the top so I guess this is one of those "void where prohibited, not legal in Nebraska" things.
The whole construct that gives significance to :00 and, sometimes, :30 seems to come from both the mid-20th Century ID requirements and the structure of network programming in the first 30 years of radio. In a PPM world... coming but delayed... the top of the hour has no meaning at all to radio.
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BACKnUSSR
Guest
DavidEduardo said:
Maybe not. But you must admit its pretty common.
Here is a partial list of the stations in NYC who DO it ....
WXRK, WCBS-FM, WCBS-AM, WINS, WPLJ, WQHT, WKTU, WLTW, WWFS, WQXR, WBLS, WRKS, WPAT-FM, WABC, WOR,
WWPR, WQCD, WSKQ, WEPN, WBBR, WFAN
A
abonita
Guest
DavidEduardo said:
Again, I respectfully disagree. It's one of the little programming tricks of telling the time and identifying the station in one elegant and memorable sweeper and/or jingle. We offer appointment listening to listeners: Traffic & Weather together on the 8's, the Contest of the Day at 7:20, etc. Especially in morning drive, that TOH serves a very useful purpose: it orients people.
"WFIL, Philadelphia" and "WABC AM & FM, New York" are uninspiring legal ID's. The TOH from the "Philadelphia Story" PAMS jingle package with its spine-chilling closing chord and Dan Ingram's "More Music! on ... " into the Contempo jingle -- now, that's RADIO.
Anita
HighDef said:
Why would anyone record WKTU's top of the hour? Are they switching formats or imaging soon?
Nobody mentioned that the city of license for WKTU is Lake Success which is a small town in Nassau County just over the NYC line. The official ID is WKTU-Lake Success. I rarely listen to the station so they may just whisper Lake Success and loudly say New York City. Back when WTFM was at that frequency, they seemed to be "proud" of Lake Success. I believe that many years ago there was a Long Island Station WGLI-FM at 103.5 FM.
Bruce
Bruce
Anita Bonita said:
As always, there are many ways to program.
I see pompous IDs as "its all about us" instead of being all about the listener. In many cases, the calls are irrelvant, partiuclarly as we move to PPM. There is pretty much no minute in the hour that "wins" as the start of a listening incident, so thinking in a circular clock rather than a linear one may be just wrong... listening starts and stops at random.
The 7:20 contest is something I laughed about with Shannon on one occasion. He picked the time as it was inside the most listened to quarter hour on the station. However, it is not necessarily the most listened to for every station... and with 40 minute AMD TSL, most of the listeners will never be available for the 7:20 time today.
The legal ID, especially for FMs that have names or slogans, is distracting. So it is best put where it does not harm the imaging, a music sweep or even the talk on a personality morning show.
BruceS8852 said:
That's a flashback. I remember WTFM from 1978 when I did due diligence on it and it was in a fairly run-down building on an expressway access road out in or near Lake Success in the Friendly Frost building... the station's rather bankrupt owners at the time. Even less fun was inspecting the directional FM antenna on the roof of one of the Twin Towers.
David:
Interesting arguments against making the beginning of each hour a real showpiece.
I agree with Anita and disagree with you. Putting formatic benchmarks at several places in the hour "anchors" the experience for listeners and it can be a real opportunity to drive home the spirit and enthusiasm that the station should have.
PPM or not, in my opinion, programming just for the meter holders is a huge mistake. You need to have bodies. Lots of them. They may or may not have a meter and it doesn't matter. You've got to increase the odds that the meter will come within earshot of your station -- whether by voluntary choice of the meter holder or involuntarily due to the meter passing within earshot.
Interesting arguments against making the beginning of each hour a real showpiece.
I agree with Anita and disagree with you. Putting formatic benchmarks at several places in the hour "anchors" the experience for listeners and it can be a real opportunity to drive home the spirit and enthusiasm that the station should have.
PPM or not, in my opinion, programming just for the meter holders is a huge mistake. You need to have bodies. Lots of them. They may or may not have a meter and it doesn't matter. You've got to increase the odds that the meter will come within earshot of your station -- whether by voluntary choice of the meter holder or involuntarily due to the meter passing within earshot.
DudeFan said:
I am not suggesting programming just for meter panelists, but to the knowledge that the meter brings us. Whether you belive the NY results (I dont, and can't with a defective panel), you have to take into account the fact that listening starts and stops anywhere in the hour, with the top of the hour being no more significant a place than at minute :17 or :47.
Interrupting music flow or cluttering a morning show with a staged ID that does not answer in any way the WIIFM (what's in it for me) questiion for the listener is not good audience maintenance. I'd rather stage at the beginning of a sweep, and start with a fullfillable music promise or tease, as opposed to stopping down for an ID with no benefit.
Obviously, this works best with live personalities, not voce tracked juke boxes with an antenna. I'm lucky to work mostly with highly talent driven formats, so I can be a bit glib in suggesting that canned IDs today are not as effective in reaching a listener as many other program elements.
Traditional benchmarks in radio are truly programming to recall, or the diary. They don't enhance the listening experience, just the ability to recall what to write down in the little booklet. We have been using these devices so long, we think that they are not only good programming but that the listener likes them. This is a good time, pre-PPM, to rethink formatics and structure. We don't measure recall any more.
Here's one from March 2007
http://www.tophour.com/audio/New York City NY/fm1035_2007-03_wktu_jlehmann.mp3
http://www.tophour.com/audio/New York City NY/fm1035_2007-03_wktu_jlehmann.mp3
Even WWFS 102.7, which likes to bury their legal ID, runs a TOH ID jingle saying "Fresh 102.7 New York", instead of just "Fresh 102.7".BACKnUSSR said:
Legal IDs have gotten a lot more clumsy lately with the requirement to separately identify HD(1) channels, such as "WCBS-FM and WCBS-HD1 New York", which is 101.1's current legal ID.
Gee ... I guess David forgot about those "random times" of 20/20 news in the Drake era ... when stations STILL ran (and still do) a 3 second Johnny Mann calls and COL ... or, as they do at K-RTH ... a Charlie Van Dyke sweeper/promo INTO the TOH legal jingle that lasts for ....
:35 seconds at times...
Staging ID's at the TOH still work. I just don't like :35 seconds of them, especially ... even with Charlie Van Dyke, who I think is tops.
:35 seconds at times...
Staging ID's at the TOH still work. I just don't like :35 seconds of them, especially ... even with Charlie Van Dyke, who I think is tops.
oaktree said:
Except that Jacobs and Drake did that to stay away from the times when other stations had news. When KHJ went to news, listeners who wanted music spread to multiple stations. When the others went to news, only KHJ had music. They made an FCC mandated negative into a positive!
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