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Sunday oldies shows
- Thread starter Kurt Toy
- Start date
I think it's more of a salute to the history of the market, such as Terry Lee's "Music for Young Lovers" on WIXZ... a wee bit before my time, but I think that's the way his last hour was programmed, and it was very popular (probably among the highest rated shows ever in the market, if my recollections are correct).
R
Radio_Realist
Guest
it was very popular
That's the key. The playing of slow songs for the final hours isn't a rule, per se, it's just a manifestation of the #1 rule in Pittsburgh radio. That rule is, "Never, never, never, ever do anything differently from the way whoever did something similar did it before you. If it was god enough for the pros of four decades ago, it should be good enough for you today. Don't rock the boat!".
That's the key. The playing of slow songs for the final hours isn't a rule, per se, it's just a manifestation of the #1 rule in Pittsburgh radio. That rule is, "Never, never, never, ever do anything differently from the way whoever did something similar did it before you. If it was god enough for the pros of four decades ago, it should be good enough for you today. Don't rock the boat!".
RD seems to mix the tempo pretty well even through the last hour of the 3WS show.
Radio_Realist said:it was very popular
That's the key. The playing of slow songs for the final hours isn't a rule, per se, it's just a manifestation of the #1 rule in Pittsburgh radio. That rule is, "Never, never, never, ever do anything differently from the way whoever did something similar did it before you. If it was god enough for the pros of four decades ago, it should be good enough for you today. Don't rock the boat!".
No argument there, Realist. I know of countless weekend oldies shows in Pittsburgh and its suburbs by countless jocks who live by that philosophy. One reason I can possibly think of is that if there's a risk of tune-out, hopefully it'll happen towards the end of the show. That might help the jock's show, but screw up the next jock coming in.
Don't Hoerth and RD both end at midnight, followed by satellite programming?
Boss Radio said:Don't Hoerth and RD both end at midnight, followed by satellite programming?
I believe so! However, a lot of the daytime oldies jocks in the Pittsburgh market (whom I won't name that are in the suburbs) do the final hour of their shows with ballads and such.
Save for CNN News, WJAS doesn't carry anything off of the dish. Even though the evenings/overnights are automated, the playlist is determined in house. The only variations to this are a few weekend shows (Swinging with Sinatra, Radio Deluxe, Big Band Jump) which come to the station as either CD or MP3 and Broadway show, which the PD Mike McGann puts together himself.
J
johnsummers
Guest
I remember DJ'ing my high school dances in the early 70's and even then it was more or less expected that the last batch of songs would be ballads, ostensibly, to allow the guys who wouldn't fast dance to get together with the object of their affection before the night was over. Maybe then he could 'walk her home'. The custom of playing ballads at the end of the show may be a nod to the good old days. This must be a universal thing though because, here in Dallas, there's a weekend oldies show on an AM station that does the same thing.....no "Sad Girl" by Jay Wiggins, though....(LOL).
johnsummers said:I remember DJ'ing my high school dances in the early 70's and even then it was more or less expected that the last batch of songs would be ballads, ostensibly, to allow the guys who wouldn't fast dance to get together with the object of their affection before the night was over. Maybe then he could 'walk her home'. The custom of playing ballads at the end of the show may be a nod to the good old days. This must be a universal thing though because, here in Dallas, there's a weekend oldies show on an AM station that does the same thing.....no "Sad Girl" by Jay Wiggins, though....(LOL).
Not a bad thought. When I worked at the old WACB in Kittanning years ago, we had first gotten nighttime power after years of groveling. We did a special show during the 11pm hour, right before the signoff at midnight, called "Candlelight and Gold". All slow tunes and power ballads. We never really made any money with it, but it was still a nice touch.
God, you guys must have really been reaching and gasping for air....We used to run Music to Watch the Submarines By in Florida..I never heard that about giving the "Geeks" a chance to "Walk their girl home" Hahahahahahahahahah Shades of Wally and Bev!..Where is this town ...In Smallville???hahahahah BIG APE! ;D ;D ;D
BIG APE said:God, you guys must have really been reaching and gasping for air....We used to run Music to Watch the Submarines By in Florida..I never heard that about giving the "Geeks" a chance to "Walk their girl home" Hahahahahahahahahah Shades of Wally and Bev!..Where is this town ...In Smallville???hahahahah BIG APE! ;D ;D ;D
You weren't too far off...formatically speaking, we were stuck in the 60's. We played a lot of music, had a full staff of live jocks, played everything off cue-burned records or aging carts that had to get shipped off to be rebuilt, an aging transmitter that had to be fixed constantly because it wasn't designed to go down to 28 watts at night (no LPB's back then), no audio news network (we still used UPI wire), and outdated format concepts...we aired BEDTIME STORIES as a regular feature at night!
I had a chance to be PD there right after Nicholas bought it... they had not yet moved into the building up at the transmitter site and the facility was literally a pile of junk.
The 45's were filed just by the first letter of the artist name, nothing more specific. So the afternoon guy would come in and just grab one letter and play all those songs that day (today's the best of "D"... Doobie Brothers, Dobie Gray, Desmond Dekker and the Aces....). God forbid he would have to get up out of his seat during his shift. He insisted on segueing music with commercials, then stopping to talk between the songs, and would only play one spot at a time so that the sponsors didn't get upset because their commercial was played next to someone else's. His formatics were totally inverted from what any sane person would do.
There was one sales guy who was upset that I was there... "all this professionalism" he'd say, walking around shaking his head...
When the owner wouldn't let me go buy some index cards (maybe $1 up the street at K-Mart) to set up a music file I started to question my decision and went back to my previous gig selling electronics...
The 45's were filed just by the first letter of the artist name, nothing more specific. So the afternoon guy would come in and just grab one letter and play all those songs that day (today's the best of "D"... Doobie Brothers, Dobie Gray, Desmond Dekker and the Aces....). God forbid he would have to get up out of his seat during his shift. He insisted on segueing music with commercials, then stopping to talk between the songs, and would only play one spot at a time so that the sponsors didn't get upset because their commercial was played next to someone else's. His formatics were totally inverted from what any sane person would do.
There was one sales guy who was upset that I was there... "all this professionalism" he'd say, walking around shaking his head...
When the owner wouldn't let me go buy some index cards (maybe $1 up the street at K-Mart) to set up a music file I started to question my decision and went back to my previous gig selling electronics...
Parttimer said:I had a chance to be PD there right after Nicholas bought it... they had not yet moved into the building up at the transmitter site and the facility was literally a pile of junk.
The 45's were filed just by the first letter of the artist name, nothing more specific. So the afternoon guy would come in and just grab one letter and play all those songs that day (today's the best of "D"... Doobie Brothers, Dobie Gray, Desmond Dekker and the Aces....). God forbid he would have to get up out of his seat during his shift. He insisted on segueing music with commercials, then stopping to talk between the songs, and would only play one spot at a time so that the sponsors didn't get upset because their commercial was played next to someone else's. His formatics were totally inverted from what any sane person would do.
There was one sales guy who was upset that I was there... "all this professionalism" he'd say, walking around shaking his head...
When the owner wouldn't let me go buy some index cards (maybe $1 up the street at K-Mart) to set up a music file I started to question my decision and went back to my previous gig selling electronics...
Wow...quite a story. They really didn't have a system until they finally appointed a music director in the late 80's. She catalogued all the music and designed the music format clock, complete with a book listing all the songs by title and artist. She even wrote a manual for the most dense person off the street (in this case, me) to be able to come in and do an on-air shift. It was surprisingly organized for what they were doing.
It helped our cause, but we were still doing such outlandish stuff that undid everything good that was done. To the Nicholases' credit, they sank a good bit of money into the place and bought some real equipment. The station didn't have a production studio of its own until they built the new building on Bunker Hill Road. Up to that point, spots were made before sign-on and after sign-off.
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