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Are there songs that specifically bring back memories of DXing?

Despite volumes being written on this board and on Facebook, none of these greedy, money-grubbing radio group owners have figured out the mass market demand for radio stations that play every song ever recorded since the beginning of time in one gigantic rotation. They just haven't figured out that literallly everyone has 50,000 songs on their phone that they all like equally; or they having nothing but obscure indie bands on their phone.

This in reality describes such a miniscule amount of the audience you'd never be able to program to it, let alone keep the lights on. Every amateur programmer who gets their hands on an LPFM or dying AM station insistes that decades of resarch is wrong, and that if you only played all of Donny Osmond's greatest hits, you'd be number one in every demographic.

The reality is, it's a 20 minute drive to work. If you're playing 4 songs in a row that no one remembers, your audience isn't going to unanimously say "Oh wow, I haven't heard that in years and I love it". More like, "what the hell is that", which is EXACTLY what my wife said on our recent long road trip when an oldies station popped on "Bertha Butt Boogie"
 
hawaiigar said:
This is funny .....

Which of these is the most overplayed song on US radio?
Click to expand...

That poll is just about a decade old. And the sample size is 100 people, with no distinction for age and gender. To put it in perspective, 47 year olds back then are out of the radio sales demo today.

The best source of data is either the BDS or MediaBase industry service. "Brown Eyed Girl" of recent has been around the 120th most played song. About a third of the monitored station do not play it at all or play it once or twice a week, often dayparted. In the biggest markets, we find a majority of stations in the light-to-none play.

The greatest number of weekly plays is 10, and that is in a station in Salt Lake City... not New York or LA. Most are much less, in what is considered "light rotation".

However, on on-demand services, it is the 32nd most played song... when people get to pick the exact songs they want to hear. Of all the coupla' thousand songs that charted in the classic hits core era people who spend their money to hear songs they pick place "Brown Eyed Girl" in the top few songs out of all of them. But radio has lessened the airplay because the song has less 25-54 appeal, and they don't look at what 55 and over consumers of on-demand are doing.
 
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gr8oldies said:
The reality is, it's a 20 minute drive to work. If you're playing 4 songs in a row that no one remembers, your audience isn't going to unanimously say "Oh wow, I haven't heard that in years and I love it". More like, "what the hell is that", which is EXACTLY what my wife said on our recent long road trip when an oldies station popped on "Bertha Butt Boogie"
Click to expand...

Over a decade ago another programmer and I were listening to an "oldies" station in Jackson Hole, WY. They played many very secondary hits. But when they played some 1970 bubble gum song like Yummy Yummy or its equivalent. We knew that they were programming out of a book of charts and not for what people today want to hear.

Stations like those drove many people to satellite radio in more rural areas, where stations, instead of emulating major market operations, played anything that had charted 40 years ago whether anyone wanted to hear it at all today.
 
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Kane Brown "What Ifs" (I received K92.3/ORLANDO in York, ME outside of the typical E-Skip season clear as a bell!)
Childish Gambino "Redbone" (I received MIXX 99.3/NEWPORT, RI clear as a bell up in Newton, MA. And even more impressive, it was right next to the tower home to almost every TV station in the Boston market, plus a half dozen radio stations!)
Both songs were playing when I heard those two stations.
 
Aside from the sound of Pete Franklin's toilet on WWWE, I thought of a few other tunes I specifically remember hearing via DX:

1. Chic, "Dance Dance Dance," on WLIF 1190 Dallas. I don't remember that WLIF was a nighttime regular in my area at that time, so it was a fluke that let it in one night.
2. Heatwave, "Always and Forever," WABC 770 New York.
3. The Who, "Squeeze Box," KOMA 1520 Oklahoma City. (not really DX since KOMA was a nightly event in my area in those days)
4. EVE, "Let Me Blow Your Mind," KYLD FM 94.9 San Francisco (heard way up in the Sierra Mountains about 225 or 250 miles from SF).
5. Ke$ha, "TiK ToK," XEWA 540 San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
 
There was a song from a Canadian band called Pukka Orchestra called "Listen To The Radio" which actually described DXing in one verse, as follows:
"Atmospherics after dark
Noise and voices from the past
Across the dial from Moscow to Cologne:
Interference in the night
Thousand miles on either side
Stations fading into the unknown"
 
No particular song reminds me of DXing, but a recent song heard while DXing sort of haunts me for some reason.

Sometimes when I'm bored with DXing I tune in KKOV 1550 Vancouver WA, as they play an interesting mix of standards, oldies and 70's/80's leaning classic hits.

I was writing on my computer one evening and there it was: "By The Time I Get To Phoenix", by Glen Campbell (this was about a year ago or so). For some reason the song itself, its sad subject matter, the phasing and distant sound of it via AM at night was very provoking. I still remember it as I write this.
 
KKOV Vancouver airs the America's Best Music satellite format.
I heard KUBA-1600 Yuba City last Monday during the midst of the total eclipse, around 10:20am local time. They are Oldies/Classic Hits, and what were they playing as totality passed through Oregon? 'Moondance' by Van Morrison! Thought that was a clever song to air as the moon took 95.3% of the sun here!
 
Since our DXing crew lived in the northeast part of the contagious 48 states, we'd get lots of Canadian AM stations at night and overnight.

My buddy Vinny is *still* looking for what no doubt was a Canadian re-make of the Robin Luke song 'Suzy Darlin' ....

CKCY (and two other Canadian stations) regularly played the great 'Treasure Song' by Bob McBride, former singer for Lighthouse ....

CHML once played a nice version of 'Funny How Time Slips Away'. It wasn't Willie Nelson.

And the Halifax station on 960 -- I forget the calls -- played the Ian Thomas original of the America hit 'Right Before Your Eyes. Pretty darned good!

Ahhh. Memories.
 
Well, we're now in September so CFZM should start coming in occasionally soon in Yakima, same with KVOX/Fargo. I'm 2000 miles from Toronto and sometimes they boom in late at night on the loop. But WBBM has to be strong at the same time.
P.S. that was Chic's first single, 'Dance, Dance, Dance'. I've only heard it once, on KLAN/Glasgow MT, but that was their online stream. I've never heard it here via Es, but it's pretty short for skip, about 650 miles. You'll hear 'Good Times' and 'Le Freak' much more often.
 
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Steve Green NEPA said:
Since our DXing crew lived in the northeast part of the contagious 48 states, we'd get lots of Canadian AM stations at night and overnight.

My buddy Vinny is *still* looking for what no doubt was a Canadian re-make of the Robin Luke song 'Suzy Darlin' ....

CKCY (and two other Canadian stations) regularly played the great 'Treasure Song' by Bob McBride, former singer for Lighthouse ....

CHML once played a nice version of 'Funny How Time Slips Away'. It wasn't Willie Nelson.

And the Halifax station on 960 -- I forget the calls -- played the Ian Thomas original of the America hit 'Right Before Your Eyes. Pretty darned good!

Ahhh. Memories.
Click to expand...

I remember hearing Can-Con hits while DXing the BC pop stations in the 80's. Some of that stuff was quite cool.
 
Steve Green NEPA said:
And the Halifax station on 960 -- I forget the calls -- played the Ian Thomas original of the America hit 'Right Before Your Eyes. Pretty darned good!
Click to expand...

I had to look that up as I had forgotten them, but they were (and still are with their FM flip CHNS. They were Nova Scotia's first radio station, signing on in 1926.
 
CHNS.... Did any of you guys ever hear them on 49-meter shortwave? CHNX 1kw on 6130 IIRC. I heard them a few times here in Northern Illinois. But once at a meeting I attended on Cape Cod, they were an easy catch with a good signal. I thought it was very cool to have an oldies station on SW. But I think they left the band in the late 90s
 
ai4i said:
Their parent medium wave station was on nine something,
but they are only on FM now.
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960. Easiest NS to hear in the Midwest.
 
@ Cyberdad:

Indeed I do remember getting CHNX 6130. I was in a basement apartment in Philly, 1990 or so, and calibrating the new homemade dial on the Lafayette 600-a. The 49- and 41-meter bands were a lot of fun to listen to. I couldn't 'count' any new AM stations on my main Totals List from NYC, and I was only going to be in Philly temporarily before moving up here for good. So I got into short wave in a big way. (A particular favorite was Radio Rumbos and their dual-auctioneer morning news team hitting the doorbell gongs in between stories.) I even have one of those thicker loose-leaf books pretty much filled, strictly with short wave DX. That Lafayette was quite a cooker of a radio.
 
I never did hear them on Shortwave, as I was too far west at the time. I did catch them on AM in their final days, which was ended in October of 2006. I moved to Ottawa at the end of November of 2005, and did catch them nightly until the FM move. They were on Shortwave until 2001, apparently. A lot of Maritime AM's made it out here at night..now the only one I can still hear is 930 CFBC in St. John.
 
Steve Green NEPA said:
@ Cyberdad:

Indeed I do remember getting CHNX 6130.
Click to expand...

In suburban Boston, three of the Canadian AM relays were regulars on 49 meters in the daytime -- CHNX, CFRX 6070 Toronto (CFRB) and CFCX Montreal 6005 (CFCF). CFCF was the first English-language flagship station of the Montreal Expos, and I remember hearing the final innings of the team's first-ever game -- an 11-10 win over the Mets, who would go on to win the World Series -- on CFCX in 1969, after getting home from school.
 
I heard CFCX once or twice on 6005. Cuba on 6000 used to step on it, so it was rather tough duty, given that the signal was always weak here to begin with.

I also remember the baseball games. And being annoyed trying to listen to Cubs-Expos on CFCF a couple of times when heading from Montreal to Toronto or Ottawa. Very directional signal on 600 which became pretty much unlistenable once I got into Ontario. Meanwhile, the French broadcast on CKAC would be booming in just fine!
 
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