Westwood
One had long had success with its '60's based Oldies
Channel. So in the mid '90's when industry interest
in '70's music flourished, it wasted no time in launching
the first all '70's satellite format. Perhaps it should
not have rushed into it as quickly they did. In its initial
offering, the format was a schizophrenic combination of
a Top 40 wannabe Oldies format with a laid back, album based
Classic Rock presentation. Equally two faced was the library
which included unlikely songs heard back to back like Foghat's,
'Slow Ride' into KC & The Sunshine Band's,
'That's The Way I Like It'.
The
lemming factor being what it is in the industry, affiliates
jumped at the chance of becoming what should have been a
newer, younger, hipper version of the Oldies
Channel.
And in like fashion, they promptly abandoned the format
as soon as the novelty factor wore off about a year into
the format.
When
I moved down the hall from the Oldies
Channel
to the '70's Channel late in 1997, the former had
one of the highest affiliate counts amongst the eight formats
in the building while the latter had the lowest and was
in danger of extinction. VP of Programming, Charlie Cook
and Program Director, Jim Hays gave me the green light to
revamp the format musically, focusing on straight ahead
Pop (not Rock) titles along with Top 40 on-air mechanics
associated with the era. Songs like John Denver's, 'Rocky
Mountain High' replaced those such as Joe Walsh's,
'Rocky Mountain Way'.
In
addition to doing afternoon drive and music logs, I oversaw
all the on-air imaging including writing and researching
all sweepers, drops, stagers, contesting elements and formatic
features heard on the format. Over the course of a year
an imaging library was created that could be used thereafter
indefinitely, not unlike similar materials I had worked
on for the Oldies
Channel.
In short, the '70's format was converted into a legitimate
Oldies station that just happened to play a library of songs
a decade newer than most.
Unfortunately, Westwood One's sales department
put virtually no effort into pitching the revamped format
to affiliates. Having lost money on it from its troubled
start, the decision was made to pull the plug and convert
it to the format de jour, Rhythmic Oldies as 'Groovin'
Oldies'. If the format has sounded as good on its first
day as it did on its last, no doubt it would still be around
today, particularly in light of recent efforts by established
Oldies stations to lose their top heavy, aging demographics
for more desirable younger ones with advertisers.
What's
a '70's format without a Disco show? In
addition to hosting afternoons, I also hosted, 'Saturday
Night Disco Fever', an obvious play on both 'Saturday
Night Fever', as well as TV's, 'Disco Fever'.
Because
of the often extreme reaction to Disco, care was taken to
stick to just the biggest, most mass appeal dance hits of
the era. There were in short, no marginal tunes ever played.
The music alone was not the only compelling justification
for breaking format for such as show. Listener interaction
was.
For
that reason, the
show was deliberately request-based by callers and heavily
driven by personality phone bits, a skill I had honed years
earlier doing nights at many a teen oriented CHR. Reaction
to the show was phenomenal, generating more interest than
the rest of the '70's format did at that point. Plans to
possibly syndicate the show however through the resources
of Westwood One fell through when the '70's
format was abandoned.
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