Posted by Allan Sniffen on July 18, 2004 at 15:55:03:
In Reply to: Re: Joe McCoy: Another Opinion posted by Josh M on July 18, 2004 at 15:37:19:
The bigger issue is that when McCoy really had to start doing some programming, he didn't rise to the challenge. He did fine until about 1998 by letting the station cruise along.
But that changed about the time Jammin' came in. Suddenly he had a perceived competitor and from that point forward, the changes at the station just didn't make sense. As I indicated above, adding Drake elements in a market that was never dominated by Drake's Top 40 approach (WOR-FM accepted) didn't harken back to anything the average listener would remember from a nostalgia pespective and from a format flow pespective, that news sounder added nothing nor did telling the jocks not to backsell. Those were changes that didn't address the possibility of a competitor given this market's history and the music that competitor was playing.
Then, after the Jammin "threat" passed, the issue of demos took precidence and what did CBS-FM do after not addressing the issue for years? It abruptly dumped the fifties music, canned its specialty programming and threw in the most AC'ish 80's music possible. Of course it didn't work. It was too much, too fast and, in some cases, just plain wrong.
I think the best example of how poorly the station was managed was Don K. Reed's Doo Wop Shop. Even I, as a critic of the station's fifties emphasis, argued that Reed's show was appropriate for Sunday nights. But McCoy cancelled it on the premise that the station had to move forward with its music. Fine. But, why then was that Norm N. Nite "Heart of Rock and Roll" show added a few months later on Sunday nights? Suddenly CBS-FM was back to playing fifties music on Sunday night. The only difference was the it wasn't called "Doo Wop" and Nite, instead of Reed was doing the show. There was no logic to that at all.
As I said, everything was fine when there was no demand for CBS-FM to do much of anything other than cruise along. But once circumstances demanded some real programming strategy, I just don't see that Joe McCoy came through. Certainly he was a competant PD who deserves credit for many things. But no way is he a "legend".