It's back to radio promotions.
Just yesterday we had lunch at a restaurant that had iHeart's 80s online channel on in the background. It was mentioned that they would be doing a feature involving three songs that had something in common. Like I've been saying, great ideas keep resurfacing and are reinvented.
I immediately thought of Jacksonville's former oldies format, WKQL, Cool 96.9. One of the promos they had was the feature, "My 3 Songs." It was a play on the 60s/70s TV show "My 3 Sons" complete with the theme music. What was very special about that station was not only a great variety of music but their promos/contests were just a lot of fun. I heard this type of thing on another station or two in my business travels. Either others came up with the same concept or it was available to purchase.
Listeners would need to hear the second song before they could call in and guess the connection. It was a lot of fun. The connection could have been about mostly anything. Sometimes, it was tough like artists who were also song writers.
Cool 96.9 also did a "Name That Tune" feature in morning drive. Two contestants were pitted against each other. The one who could correctly identity a song in the fewest number of notes would win. If there were 5 wins, there was a $100 prize. So, a great promotion that didn't cost a lot of money. And yes, I won that contest quite easily. The station would call you up each morning in the 7AM hour. Luckily for me, I was available at that time. Also, this was done live and you'd get prompts saying how much time remained before going on the air. It built a level of suspense for the participants for sure. When I got to work, I was amazed just how many people figured I was on the air. I have what you'd call a distinctive voice. It's not for radio but easily ID'd.
Over the years, I kept a journal about effective promotions. There was one WKQL used during the holiday season called "The 12 days of Christmas." It was a game of chance and I'd hear a lot of water-cooler conversations about how lucky or dumb the caller was. It featured the P.D. in a slowed voice saying, "Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas!" He was Santa and there were around 7 opportunities to pick a prize. Some were clunkers (inexpensive part) and some prizes were quite good. The caller would need to say "Stop" and they'd get the next prize Santa would announce. I can't really do justice in words as to how exciting and how much fun that promo was.
The format conveyed that "good times" vibe that went beyond the music but the promos themselves. The PD who I mentioned earlier created one helluva station IMO. But, like we see here on The Treasure Coast, new owners come along who have different ideas. After the PD was let go and the station was in different hands, it lost its charm. The new PD had an impressive resume but at first I figured he knew very little about the Jacksonville market. As I had time to think about it all, he probably knew the oldies format was on borrowed time and the last thing that would have been done is improve the format to maintain its viability.
There were those who stayed with the format, evolving the music, and eventually rebranding to classic hits - usually the variety-based one utilizing those 3 major genre buckets I talked about earlier. Much has to do with the company and their philosophies and strategies. I often think if CBS Radio invested in the cluster that wound up being owned by CMG, perhaps WKQL would still be around today as a classic hits format. The truth is, we'll never really know.
There are stations that are well-represented on YouTube. I only found one aircheck of Cool 96.9. It's from 2000 and in short order so much would change...
Lots of those music buckets I mentioned earlier in play. The Motown/Soul bucket was well represented. For a diverse market that was Jacksonville, it helped the station compete well for that station most ciuld agree on at work That Motown/Soul bucket would be emptied with the format that followed..