Who do you miss on the radio?

[Dave Andrews]

Dave:

Charlie says thanks for remembering.

As for the Top 30 countdown, it continued for Van Dyke's tenure as KHJ's PD.

It probably died when Michael Spears followed him in May of '77, since (as I noted in the last post) Michael didn't do one at KFRC (CVD seems to recall that Spears' objection to the countdown was that you blow an entire hour playing the bottom third of your playlist all at once). If Spears didn't kill it, John Sebastian (who replaced Spears in January of '78) certainly would have.

The bottom third of the playlist isn't actually "blowing" an entire hour IMHO. Most new tunes debut in that area. Case in point: 1975's song of the year (at least in L.A.) "Love Will Keep Us Together" debuted at #26. Gotta keep it fresh....

Oh, and tell Charlie he's welcome.




(I still say Midnight Blue shoulda been #1 that year.....)

 

[michael hagerty]

Dave:

Charlie says thanks for remembering.

As for the Top 30 countdown, it continued for Van Dyke's tenure as KHJ's PD.

It probably died when Michael Spears followed him in May of '77, since (as I noted in the last post) Michael didn't do one at KFRC (CVD seems to recall that Spears' objection to the countdown was that you blow an entire hour playing the bottom third of your playlist all at once). If Spears didn't kill it, John Sebastian (who replaced Spears in January of '78) certainly would have.

The bottom third of the playlist isn't actually "blowing" an entire hour IMHO. Most new tunes debut in that area. Case in point: 1975's song of the year (at least in L.A.) "Love Will Keep Us Together" debuted at #26. Gotta keep it fresh....

True. In fact, it's mostly new tunes. KHJ rarely let records slip all the way to the bottom before dropping them entirely. Usually somewhere between 18 and 22 on the way down was the last stop.

But...Spears (if he were still with us) would probably argue that an entire hour of songs mostly made up of new (and thus unfamiliar) records added in the last two or three weeks) is not as compelling to the average listener as hearing a mix that's heavy on proven hits.

Which is why it was two other RKO PDs (Tom Rounds and Ron Jacobs) who invented American Top 40 and not Michael Spears.

 

[Dave Andrews]

True. In fact, it's mostly new tunes. KHJ rarely let records slip all the way to the bottom before dropping them entirely. Usually somewhere between 18 and 22 on the way down was the last stop.

In the 1960s, that was the case practicaly ALL the time -- #26 thru #30 were *always* new records it seems. Then a few records started dropping to #30 before falling off ("Operator" by Jim Croce went #12-#30 (THUD!))

I noticed an unusual practice in some of the 1972-73 KHJ surveys. A few songs would drop from the top 5 down to the 25-30 slot before being removed. This could have been because the next single from that artist was about to hit the charts. Two examples were "Alone Again (Naturally)" #4 - 27; and "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" #5 - 26.
Maybe they just didn't want to drop something out of the top 10, but they didn't have a problem when "The Streak" went #7 - off.

A sort of odd thing happened in the mid-1970s. There was a 26-week stretch where NO new tune debuted at the bottom -- "Tush" was the last #30 debut in July '75 until "Squeeze Box" in January '76. A lady I talked to on the phone said that #30 was being used for dropoffs. Good to see KHJ changed (or changed with) the times.