If you haven’t heard it, the True Oldies Channel is a musical programming format that was produced by ABC Radio and now owned by Cumulus Media. It plays music from the 1950s through the early 1980s. Here is where you can see what music they play:
http://www.mediabase.com/whatsong/whatsong.asp?var_s=087074081066045070077
The music is done using what is called “Voice Tracking” – the host is a man named Scott Shannon, who you may also recognize as the announcer on the Sean Hannity Show. He’s also the morning co-host on WPLJ-FM in New York City. At one time, he was the VP of Programming for ABC Radio, but since the merger Citadel and then Cumulus, he no longer has that role. Given Lew Dickey’s desire to cut costs, I worry that some day I’ll tune in to Sean Hannity and hear some minimum wage intern from Memphis doing the network announcing.
For what it is (an automated computer playing songs with no live human), the True Oldies Channel is quite good. Whoever did the production work on it (probably Scott Shannon himself) got the best possible recording of the songs and performed digital processing on them to make them sound as pleasant as possible. The selection of songs is also generally music that you remember and probably liked. A thoughtful music programmer pays attention to the time of day and day of the week a song is being played. The songs you want to hear on the way to work are not the same ones you want when you and the love of your life are on the sofa at 9 PM and are hoping for romantic moments.
True Oldies Channel runs a significant number of radio stations – it’s VERY inexpensive programming for a radio station that continues to broadcast for no reason other than to preserve its FCC license. It requires no human at the radio station to do anything except maybe reboot a computer if it breaks. If the station does have some local ads, they can be inserted by the computer.
Some stations carry True Oldies only part of the day – like an AM station that goes to 5 watts power after the sun goes down and can’t be heard more than a block away from the transmitter, but is still required by the FCC to be on the air.
I’ve created a “Flagship” station for True Oldies, even though there is not any radio station that carries that actual designation (although WPLJ/HD2 perhaps is). Those stations that are a 24/7 True Oldies station and don’t even have a web site will just be set up as a “True Oldies Simulcast” in the database.
One problem with simulcasts is there is almost know way to know when they end. If a True Oldies station switches to ESPN Deportes 24/7, it could be years before I find that out.
Interestingly, Scott Shannon is actively getting listeners of the affiliate stations to download the iPhone app and stream the show directly – but frankly the stations carrying the show probably don’t listen to the own programming and don’t really have any other alternatives other than unplugging the transmitter and selling the metal for scrap.
The show is either very clever or is somewhat “actively produced” – meaning that maybe Scott sits down and records the song intros each week in a few hours and it is all spliced together. He played a song that mentions the date June 3rd, which is today’s date, and has mentioned more than one song at a time about the order in which they were played.
I see in the Radio Industry “Biz” that Cumulus has just appointed a new (relatively) young kid from Texas to become Program Director of WPLJ
This is interesting Art: Oldies station WRAD Radford, VA. has been around a long time. They had an actual news staff up until about 1982. Now the y are part of the cumulus mediocrity. Luckily they are playing Scott Shannon oldies. It is quite good. Not many commercials at all and ABC propaganda at the top of the hour. Better than what it use to be, It was bad muzic, Then before that through the late 90’s and up to about 09 it was Sporting News Radio, which was way better than Fox sports and ESPN(which just sux)!
Country music station just talk in the morning and New talk by cumulus around her is bad, its that new powered by the washington times. Its all fluff and commercials.
So this is a good break.
It probably won’t last here though, the program director for the local cumulus stations, group is a real Dork.
I like Scott Shannon
Parrott
The news above I take as very bad news. Scott Shannon was at least one time the Program VP of programming for all of Citadel
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-12-17/entertainment/17942319_1_sirius-xm-citadel-christmas-concert
Now he is only doing the morning show at WPLJ and just had a “kid” from Texas given the job of Program Director of WPLJ – they also did a move combining operations of WPLJ and WABC-AM. All of that signals to me that Scott Shannon is on the “short list” of ways to cut costs when contracts expire. Don Wade & Roma in Chicago are surely on that last, as well as Mark Simone.
Lew Dickey clearly doesn’t believe in “You have to spend money to make money” – if you were here a couple years ago, I was comparing radio to Krispy Kreme donuts – when profits start to fall, their solution was to raise prices and cheapen the ingredients – thinking a business is made a success by driving “gross profit margin” instead of Gross Profit. $.20 a donut profit on a million donuts is better than $.30 a donut profit on 10,000 donuts.