Posted by Jimmy on July 19, 2004 at 04:21:36:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Joe McCoy: Another Opinion posted by Allan Sniffen on July 18, 2004 at 21:39:14:
A few points in no particular order.
Here are some things I heard on CBS-FM that I didn't hear on other oldies stations when I traveled around the country in the 1980's and 1990's.
* The number of old time jocks. Sure K-RTH had Real Don Steele and WJMK had Biondi (and for a while Landecker). And Hy Lytt was down in Philly. CBS-FM wasn't the ONLY station with old time jocks, but one of the few that had so MANY (not just one or two tokens).
* 1200 songs in rotation. Yes, they didn't have competition. But neither did, say WJMK in Chicago, but they never went above 600-700 in regular rotation (this information comes directly from their former music director).
* Good "oldies appropriate" imaging. Too many stations were "too cool for the room" in the way they staged their featurs or locked out of elements like stop-sets. I'd sometimes shake my head and wonder "is this an Oldies station I'm listening to, or a CHR"? Thanks to Joe's guidance, CBS-FM never made that mistake.
* The Brown Bag Special. Other stations did "lunch time all request" type shows, but none had it so theme-centric and this was always one of my favorite CBS-FM features.
* The Rock and Roll Greats Radio Reunion. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty positive Joe was the first to pull this off (later other copied the idea).
* Specialty weekends that were more than just taking all the Beatles records you can find, slapping together two or three sweepers, telling the jocks to "sell the Beatles weekend" and that's it. "Specialty weekend in a box - Presto! Just add water!". When CBS-FM did a weekends you could tell they really worked on it, dug up old interviews, commercials from the era, they weren't just going through the motions.
* The Saturday and Sunday Top-20 countdowns. Very few stations would count down more than, say, the Top 5. CBS-FM did all 20 and the real legitimate songs, not a "fake" list.
* Jocks were allowed to have personality. Bob Shannon had all his little features like "letters" and "Rockology 101" and heaven knows what else. Ron Lundy was allowed to have his studio "sidekicks" like "Mamma", Bobby J and Norm Nite could actually TALK about the music instead of just liner-carding it. This was NOT the way things were at many major market radio stations where the presentation was far more milquetoast. Most other PD's told their jocks - even the old legends - to shut up and let the music be the star. Joe realized the jocks are part of the fun too.
* Top 500 countdowns from the mid-80's on. I'm pretty sure CBS-FM was the first to start these (now everyone does them, but I think CBS-FM was the first, as far as oldies stations go, to take listener votes and count them down).
* Their Christmas programming has always been top-notch and oldies audience appropriate. What other New York station plays "Holly Jolly Chistmas" by Burl Ives.
* One thing we will NEVER know is what kind of corporate political battles Joe had to wage. Until a few years ago, CBS had a pretty low hourly spot count, NOT because they had a poor sales staff, but I'll bet (though I don't know) that because Joe was able to press sales and Maura Mason to keep things to 12 units and hour.
Finally, if it were so easy for Joe McCoy to do, why didn't WJMK, K-RTH, WOGL, WODS, WBIG, KOOL-FM, and all of the other "heritage" oldies stations sound this way? Almost none of them had DIRECT competition (a few may have dealt with a Classic Hits, Jammin Oldies or Oldies Based AC at one time or another).
Even back in 1995 people were talking about how great CBS-FM is...."much better than that station in my market that just plays the same songs over and over and doesn't let the jocks talk".
If it were so easy, the PD's of these other stations would have executed the format the same way.
But they didn't.
Because it's not so easy.
And because McCoy was and is a damned fine PD.