I have some vivid memories of radio especially from about 1975 through 1977 of a couple of top 40 stations. The funny thing was these were small market stations, not slick in presentation and not great jocks but they held the other elements that made listening to the radio fun.
There was a two year attempt at all hit radio in Oklahoma that, I suppose failed, but the concept was sure interesting. The station played 15 currents and three album tracks. All the songs rotated out in 4 weeks. They played ONE recurrent from the past 6 months once an hour. The rotation was approximately 70 minutes on the Top 15 and 90 minutes on the album tracks. Naturally the format was live jocked with jingles and most talk over intros of the songs, just like you remember from the heyday of top 40. One Sunday I stopped in to visit. I learned the thinking was to stick with the biggest hits only and burn through them quickly. There was an emphasis on 'Now' in all they did. It was very concept and very restrictive but I thought it was a great concept. If I recall correctly, they had 18 recurrents. All music was on cart, a true luxury at the time with two triple decker cart machines (man was that fancy for small market radio then...a town of maybe 25,000 then).
The station I really liked was all requests and dedications all the time. At best they had maybe 6 or 8 commercials an hour played one at a time since they only had one cart machine. They had 51 current hits in the studio, the magic number to allow each song to play about every 3 to 3.5 hours in theory but in reality the phone line ruled rotation and it wasn't to rare to hear a really popular song played every 45 minutes if the callers were constantly requesting it. To be honest it was not the jocks or the format that hooked me but the felling of being a part of the station by listening. If you listened frequently you recognized names and such. After all this FM served a community at best was 10,000 people and judging by the requests they must have been #1. What struck me was they played no recurrents or oldies. There was an element of reflecting life in the community and involving listeners with the station. I doubt they did any local newscasts but you had an idea of what was happening in town by listening to the jock. In fact, the jock might say so and so at the concession stand at the ballpark wants to hear this one and she says the score in the 5th inning is.... Like I said, the station wasn't really professional sounding. You could tell the jocks were likely in their first job and you could tell. The equipment wasn't great so glitches were not uncommon, yet the station was fun. In fact, there was no rotation rule, no hot clock and few restrictions for the jocks.
I have great memories of other stations as well but these stood out because they weren't the norm and as a guy yet to get my first paid radio job might have just seemed more accessible to a greenhorn like I was. For some reason the major market stations with their great talents didn't have the same grassroots feel of these two stations. These stations were more raw and unpredictable than the major market stations.
There was a two year attempt at all hit radio in Oklahoma that, I suppose failed, but the concept was sure interesting. The station played 15 currents and three album tracks. All the songs rotated out in 4 weeks. They played ONE recurrent from the past 6 months once an hour. The rotation was approximately 70 minutes on the Top 15 and 90 minutes on the album tracks. Naturally the format was live jocked with jingles and most talk over intros of the songs, just like you remember from the heyday of top 40. One Sunday I stopped in to visit. I learned the thinking was to stick with the biggest hits only and burn through them quickly. There was an emphasis on 'Now' in all they did. It was very concept and very restrictive but I thought it was a great concept. If I recall correctly, they had 18 recurrents. All music was on cart, a true luxury at the time with two triple decker cart machines (man was that fancy for small market radio then...a town of maybe 25,000 then).
The station I really liked was all requests and dedications all the time. At best they had maybe 6 or 8 commercials an hour played one at a time since they only had one cart machine. They had 51 current hits in the studio, the magic number to allow each song to play about every 3 to 3.5 hours in theory but in reality the phone line ruled rotation and it wasn't to rare to hear a really popular song played every 45 minutes if the callers were constantly requesting it. To be honest it was not the jocks or the format that hooked me but the felling of being a part of the station by listening. If you listened frequently you recognized names and such. After all this FM served a community at best was 10,000 people and judging by the requests they must have been #1. What struck me was they played no recurrents or oldies. There was an element of reflecting life in the community and involving listeners with the station. I doubt they did any local newscasts but you had an idea of what was happening in town by listening to the jock. In fact, the jock might say so and so at the concession stand at the ballpark wants to hear this one and she says the score in the 5th inning is.... Like I said, the station wasn't really professional sounding. You could tell the jocks were likely in their first job and you could tell. The equipment wasn't great so glitches were not uncommon, yet the station was fun. In fact, there was no rotation rule, no hot clock and few restrictions for the jocks.
I have great memories of other stations as well but these stood out because they weren't the norm and as a guy yet to get my first paid radio job might have just seemed more accessible to a greenhorn like I was. For some reason the major market stations with their great talents didn't have the same grassroots feel of these two stations. These stations were more raw and unpredictable than the major market stations.