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WVLT - What Happened ?

I miss volvo, gerace and delsi, what a great lineup four years ago, they knew their oldies and played all the "oh wow" gems, not like these two doo woppers, who play only uncharted "geat" goodies. My best to Fleetwood, he is first rate material though.
 
That's what you get when you have club DJ's doing on-air work. The audience is one big wedding reception and in between "The Chicken Dance" and "The Hokey Pokey," you get their version of what an Oldies station should be: B-sides, off hits, and non hits. This is 2006, you're in South Jersey, not South Philly, and the "yon teenagers" are looking at Leisure Village sites. Get a PD in there to run the show and tighten up the product. Although The Geator believes that music "from the heart and not the research chart" is best, it isn't necessarily making for good radio.
 
GlennSummers said:
That's what you get when you have club DJ's doing on-air work. The audience is one big wedding reception and in between "The Chicken Dance" and "The Hokey Pokey," you get their version of what an Oldies station should be: B-sides, off hits, and non hits. This is 2006, you're in South Jersey, not South Philly, and the "yon teenagers" are looking at Leisure Village sites. Get a PD in there to run the show and tighten up the product. Although The Geator believes that music "from the heart and not the research chart" is best, it isn't necessarily making for good radio.
Click to expand...

The Geator is brokered. He buys the time. He sells the spots. He promotes his personal appearances. He makes out like a bandit - better than anybody on the air and collecting a salary.
 
And the Geator is also now hawking old TV shows on DVD on the QVC shopping network.
 
dustyvinyl said:
And the Geator is also now hawking old TV shows on DVD on the QVC shopping network.
Click to expand...

Shilling on QVC is about as low as one can stoop in this business, which is known for low stooping.
 
I know Blavat is brokered, but that doesn't mean they need to run that drek. His program is God awful.
Sorry Geator fans. I grew up in South Jersey and never quite warmed up to his "style," which has worn quite thin over the years.
 
Although I do not live in South Jersey nor do I hear the stations from down there, this is an interesting thread.
Being that I have never heard The Geator or WVLT, I can not be a judge of how the station and its contents are presented, but I do have a question or two to all of you:

A major complaint throughout this board deals with boredom and annoyance toward stations (mainly CHR and Oldies) which have a very small playlist and only deal with the same old big hits that everyone has heard too many times. On the other hand, this thread seems to complain about the oldies being played on parts of WVLT including non-charters and b-sides. I, for one, would like to hear something different from "In The Still of the Night," "MacArthur Park" and "Sh-Boom" every #$@ time I put on Oldies radio. Isn't there room for some of the old ones that we DON'T get to hear anymore? I feel that way every time I hear the same garbage on stations that claim to play the Greatest Hits of the 70s and 80s... There were so many other great songs that there HAS to be room on the air for the more obscure but still great tracks - atl least for a small chink of the day or once every long while on a regular playlist. Why is WVLT, which sounds somewhat inovative in this approach, being slapped for doing what many seem to want?

I am in the radio business and I am not a big fan of these "tests" and stations only playing songs that "test well" in a room full of people who listen for hours to different songs and vote. While I agree that testing songs should still have a big role in HELPING determine a playlist, why don't programmers remember WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE is the music being tested on? Why is it that people who actually HAVE 5-6 hours at a time on their hands are actually being used to determine what the working and money-spending public have to hear on the radio?

Again, I can not opine on WVLT itself (Hey, if the presentation is bad, the best formates will fail), but I just wanted to pose this question to you.

Thank You.

Lando Griffin
 
I have no problem with the "oh wow" song being played, as the major dilemma facing Oldies radio is that there is no new music. There is plenty of music available to Oldies stations, but some of the songs being played on WVLT are so unrecognizable or simply bad. I hadn't heard The Five Man Electrical Band's "Absolutely Right" in ages until yesterday afternoon, and it was a great treat, marginal a hit it may have been. Granted, that song probably wouldn't get played on WOGL, and having the freedom to play it on WVLT is fine. I think the attention given to certain music there is overstated and takes away from the "oh wow" factor, and the time tested oldies as well. They do tend to center on pre-British Invasion music, but I don't hear a lot of Elvis, either. Great tracks and "oh wows," fine, but let's not get so obscure that you have tuneout. And certainly it's difficult to support a music format with all the talk programming.
 
GlennSummers said:
Great tracks and "oh wows," fine, but let's not get so obscure that you have tuneout. And certainly it's difficult to support a music format with all the talk programming.
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The occasional "oh wow" song is OK, pretty much regardless of format (as long as it's not soooo obscure that people stare at the radio wondering what the hell they are listening to). However, an entire station of "oh wow" songs along with wannabe jocks who think they're hitting Philadelphia from Cumberland County is one massive trainwreck. (WVLT is 6,000 watts and Philadelphia is 33 miles away)

Then, there's the brokered programming. Lots of brokered programming. Their Friday night line-up: 2 hours of brokered disco (where the host talks over the music, all the time.), followed by 2 hours of brokered slow doo-wop, THEN 2 hours of HIP HOP (on an "oldies station"), then back to oldies.

Atlantic City is a rare market; the TSA contains four oldies stations (WMID-AM, WTKU, WILW, and WVLT). Each station does oldies very differently. WMID is an amazing 50s/60s oldies station, WTKU is the mainstream oldies station that runs a typical 300 song playlist, WILW is really focused on Cape May County and Wildwood's doo-wop roots. And then there's WVLT.
 
Cumberland County is NOT part of the Atlantic City - Cape May market.
WVLT has sometimes shown up with a fractional number in the AC rankings (sometimes not). It sometimes shows up in the Wilmington numbers, as well.

There was a time when Oldies stations had competition within the format in many markets. Now, remaining Oldies stations are without competition and the audience is down to core, P1, die-hard Oldies fans with longer TSLs. It may be time to rethink the play-list strategies. The XM and Sirius Oldies channels have short play-lists but those play-lists are changed frequently and each current play-list goes more deeply into hits of the period. That said, they don't go for obscure cuts or B sides and they seem to stay away from songs that just don't hold up well. But bottom line: Programmers don't have to worry so much about Oldies lovers tuning out if they hear one clunker.
 
...unless that clunker is "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro...

;D ;D ;) ;) ;D ;D :D :D

(Had to fix a typo)
 
I think it was hy Lit that said every oldie has a memory. I haven't listened to WVLT much at all since Andy Volvo left. But since this thread began, I started to sample it. I was thrilled to hear a stereo version of Neon Philharmonic's "Morning Girl" in the mix. I smiled all the way through Magic Lantern's "Shame Shame". And sat through the noise to wait for the hook of the Castells "So This Is Love" to identify it. All mixed with "standard" oldies.

Guys, this is what I read everyone complaining what is missing on most oldies stations. They're delivering, and no one will sign for the shipment!

Independent stations gotta do what is necessary to keep the lights on. Used to be, stations had blocks of time Sunday mornings for Public Affairs Programming. Many ran church services, which were actually paid programmimg. Some ran underwritten "Health" shows. All paid. Today, they run infomercials and brokered time. Same church, different pew.
 
I also have one of my pushbuttons set to 92.1. And when I can get it (depends on which way I'm driving) and when they are into regular programming, I enjoy it. It does have it's rough edges but mostly it's a nice sample of 60s Oldies.
And yes, it's what a lot of people on this board SAY they want and then complain about (while at the same time going on - and on - and on about canned vanilla syndicated Oldies on a flea-bite station in Wilmington.
Or wax nostalgic about stations that went off the air 30 years ago. It seems a lot of people would rather remember the music and the radio style than actually listen to it.

People on this site also complain about corporate owners and long for the good old days of local owners. And then complain about the result. A station that runs stuff they don't like in order to pay the rent. A station poorly managed in ways that can be heard on the air. Welcome to mom and pop radio like it used to be.

What's true for 50s-60s-70s music - and 50s-60s-70s radion - and for most everything else from one's past: Some of it was good; most of it was crap and people choose only to remember the good stuff.
 
All in all, what I'm trying to say about WVLT is that there are easily solved problems that would improve the on-air product and make the station more marketable for advertising. I know it's in Vineland; I know it's trying to be a Philly station. Concentrate on being the local hometown station, and that should pay off.
 
In a nutshell, you have two guys that think they are programming in their garage for their friends. They think the only music ever made was the soul/doo wop category, if you tell them about BI or other brands of music they will wag their heads. This also goes for the Geat and his one style of sound, what I mean is, the music would be better if the original jocks I mentioned came back, not these one-sided, musical taste, club hounds. I did hear Fleetwood play 13 questions by Seatrain, now that is an "oh wow" cut, we need more of that and less of Pooky. I am listening to WMID as I type this, what an oldies station, top notch in every way, why Philly does not have this type format, even on a rimshot, is beyond me. Even without jocks the station makes you wonder and guess whats up next, which is what an oldies station should be all about, "whats going to be played next". XM's 50's and 60's are often predictable, repititious and stagnant, yes you Terry, which should not be, kudos WMID. AOL has a load of oldies formats (many unique styles) on AOL Radio, and they don't repeat, give it a try, don't know how its done but its good listening.
 
Lando Griffin said:
...unless that clunker is "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro...

;D ;D ;) ;) ;D ;D :D :D

(Had to fix a typo)
Click to expand...

Irony here...I think one of the listeners to my show requested that song for me to air Saturday, lol. Thanks for the unintentional reminder! ;D

Anyway, I think Glenn hit the nail on the head. If you want your station to be successful, brand yourselves as what you are, no more and no less.

In this example: If you're a Cumberland County based and centric station that serves it's area in principal, bill yourself as such and not as a multistate juggernaut of a station. You might get more listeners/sponsors if you do so, and you might reap greater rewards in the end.
 
Jim: With that signal they could fringe out and hit some outlying areas and still be a hometown stations as well. A little promotion here and there wouldn't hurt, and your can still serve your home base while reaping the rewards from new listeners and sponsors who probably don't know you exist.
 
JimWilliams said:
In this example: If you're a Cumberland County based and centric station that serves it's area in principal, bill yourself as such and not as a multistate juggernaut of a station. You might get more listeners/sponsors if you do so, and you might reap greater rewards in the end.
Click to expand...

A principal is the head of a school.
A principle is an assumption or paradigm.
Remember: The principal is your pal.
 
Oops, my bad. Guess I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue.
 
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