Not much. I'm not sure Ladd has as much freedom as you think he has. I know a lot of people over there. If a channel has a PD, he is the one picking the music. Most of the channels have PDs, including the artist channels.
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Not much. I'm not sure Ladd has as much freedom as you think he has. I know a lot of people over there. If a channel has a PD, he is the one picking the music. Most of the channels have PDs, including the artist channels.
Seacrest's show is not really live anywhere. He only goes in to the studio once a week, and the rest of the time he does bits and pieces which are assembled into the clock of each station that runs the show. It's not chopped... it's made in work-parts to begin with.
I concur. I interned at a very major market Top 40 station in 1963, and deviating from the music playlist was a firing offense (and it was a union shop). Even changing the order of the songs would result in a suspension!
A big part of that is he's created a brand. A big part of it came from Idol. That's what DJs have to do today. They can't do what DJs did 40 years ago, because it's obsolete. So they have to create a personality in the way an actor creates a character. Truthfully that's what Wolfman Jack did. I know people who worked with Bob and they tell me he was nothing like the guy who howled on the radio. He created a character, and that's who people wanted to hear. Today, there are people such as Seacrest and Bobby Bones and Elvis Duran and a lot of other similar characters. They don't read liner notes, they don't talk about the music, but they entertain. That's what I look for in a DJ today.
Scott Shannon still talks about the music during his occasional segments on the True Oldies Channel. I never heard him in his prime, but to me his voice now is nails on chalkboard -- sounds like someone's grandpa -- and he talks WAY too slow. Is this what listeners in New York thought was a great disc jockey back in the day?
Let's just say it's not what he did at Z-100. But that was a long time ago.
He owns this Oldies Channel thing, and he can do what he wants with it. Similar to Dees.
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TeaPartyDude
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I think Cousin Brucie owns the oldies but goods market. He is the OG!
For a lot of years, by day Wolfman was Bob Smith, station manager. He recounts in "Have Mercy" that George Lucas was trying to get ahold of Wolfman Jack about a project (before "American Grafitti") but he couldn't get past Bob Smith.
I didn't say that I thought the DJ should be picking the songs, but using the word "curated" I can see where you would get that impression. Perhaps wrong choice of word. What I mean is like a good docent at a museum, a good DJ should help you get more out of the music that is presented (regardless of who chose it), either by giving you information you may not otherwise know or just by being entertaining along with it. The jocks on SiriusXM's Little Steven's Underground Garage is a good example of the former - I always learn something new about the music from them. The Real Don Steele would be an example of the latter. Both bring something to the table that keeps one engaged as a listener to something that is hopefully better than a jukebox.
Ladd has almost complete freedom over his show (You can tell, just turn on his show and "Soul Kitchen" by the Doors will probably be on), Same with Earl Bailey. I don't know if Earl is the programmer for the channel, but if not, I believe he has quite a bit of input.
I think the direction that Ladd gets is "you can do your free form thing, but you can't play nothing but deep tracks for four hours, here is the minimum amount of time we want you to spin the hits that fit the format (even though the channel is called "Deep Tracks").
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I'm 66, started listening to Top 40 when I was about 11 - about 1963 - just before the "British Invasion" - so KFWB and KRLA. DJs even then had no control over the playlist, though I got the impression that they had some discretion in picking "Goldens" (Oldies), though even then it would have to have been something that had been a top hit. IIRC, early "free form" FM radio jocks in the late 60's had some freedom to choose songs, but that didn't last long. You probably have to go back to the "Payola Scandal" era of the early and mid 50's to find DJs that could pick their songs.
But of course, there are exceptions. Jim Ladd...those special weekend only Oldies shows...certainly nobody even told Dr. Demento what to play, but these are outliers.
But of course, there are exceptions. Jim Ladd...those special weekend only Oldies shows...certainly nobody even told Dr. Demento what to play, but these are outliers.
If we're going back that far let's not forget Chuck Cecil, Andy & Virginia Mansfield, Dick Sinclair, Ira Cook, and Larry Finley to name just a few. These were pre-rock and roll hosts still active in the late fifties, early sixties. They all had personal collections which they used to supplement more contemporary material.
ChannelFlipper said: " There was a time when you could think of the DJ as somewhat of a "curator" of the music that was presented."
part of a definition of 'curator': a keeper or custodian of a museum or other collection ;;;; So that's not picking the music, is it?
part of a definition of 'curator': a keeper or custodian of a museum or other collection ;;;; So that's not picking the music, is it?
I don't think that's what he meant, but DJs don't keep music either. It's stored on a hard drive. They're not playing their personal collection. Radio stations have been getting their music free from record labels since the 1940s.
As I've said before, that view of a DJ is pretty obsolete, at least for commercial radio. Sirius is a subscriber-based non-commercial system. The examples you give, with Little Steven or the Outlaw Country channel (which Steven runs) are all examples of that. But of course their listeners are for the most part over 55. Certainly Steven is programming to people of that age. I know the Outlaw guys are too. Ladd isn't aiming at the same age group he was talking to when he was at KMET. Those people are now retired. It goes back to what I said about who pays. If you're the one paying for the service, you can get free form radio. If an advertiser is paying, they have a very different set of priorities. As I said I know a lot of people at Sirius, and I would encourage anyone who wants radio from the 70s to pay $15 a month, because it will go to my pocket.
I had a rental car for a few days with Sirius/XM. I listened to Cousin Brucie's show for awhile. It was excruciating. "The Cuz" just prattled on for many minutes, and took boring phone calls. Imaging myself as a kid again, it reminded me of having to listen to my mother listen to Pamela Mason's mid-morning gab show on KABC circa 1963 and dull phone calls from "seniors." The music was fine. Perhaps this is because I grew up with The Real Don Steele - 10-15 seconds of clever patter, then done.
Back in the late 70s at a station I worked at the DJs were allowed to pick a song an hour to play as long as it fit the format. The trouble began when they started playing the same damn songs every day so management said YOUR song choice goes down to a song per shift and it can only be played once per week. So to retaliate, the jocks picked a song that, although it fit the format, would have never been played in regular rotation. PD said "That's it, you will no longer get to pick a personal favorite. You will follow the playlist from here on out!" And in the mid 80s at an oldies station I worked at I would have people call up and request a song that wasn't in our library and they were popular songs. I ended up bringing in most of my personal oldies collection to use on the air when people called for requests and basically followed the playlist but ended up slowly drifting away from it. PD, MD didn't care. Station owners had no interest in spending money to fill out the oldies library. Think they were just using it for a tax writeoff.
He has lost several mph off the old fastball since his halcyon days at WABC -- and yes, I often listened to his show from suburban Boston. What he's doing now is strictly a nostalgia gig aimed at an audience of NY/NJ/CT people who grew up with his show in the '60s (as usual Big Apple-centric SiriusXM ignores the fact that Morrow is a nobody to much of the country.) rather than an attempt to present old music in a tight, lively format. I doubt this is what most of the subscribers thought they'd be paying for, but he's only on twice a week, and the other jocks (with the exception of the gabby Phlash Phelps) run a much tighter ship.
Dear sweet God, yes...I avoid 60s On 6 on the weekends for that very reason.
I lived in Noo Yawk in the late 60's and disliked him way back then. Thank goodness for WOR-FM!
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