Posted by Bob Harrison on October 15, 2009 at 15:36:31:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hall Oates...on a country station? posted by Ed Salamon on October 15, 2009 at 12:45:17:
Ed: Thanks for sharing your recollections of WHN. Somehow I had remembered things quite differently, so I dug up some old end-of-year record lists. A couple of observations:
1. WHN definitely skewed towards the middle-of-the-road pop side of things. For example, their #12 song of the year in 1979 was (yawn!) "Just When I Needed You Most" by Randy Vanwarmer. This record peaked at #71 on Billboard's weekly national top 100 country charts. "Escape" by Rupert Holmes was #31 for the year on WHN, and it never hit the weekly national top 100 country charts at all! There are quite a number of similar examples in other WHN year-end lists.
2. In all fairness (and contrary to what I posted earlier), WHN did play some non-country acts that might be considered more "rock" oriented. "Let Me Love You Tonight" by Pure Prairie League and "I Can't Tell You Why" by the Eagles both made the year-end top 105 on WHN in 1980. Neither of these hit the weekly top 100 country charts nationally. Several other examples can be found in other years.
All in all, with regard to "non-country" hits on WHN (that is, records absent from the national country charts), a "middle-of-the-road" selection was more likely than a rock-leaning one. However, no matter how you look at it, the folks at WHN (like WJRZ earlier) never let the national country charts serve as the final word on what was played on the station.
Bob H.