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Where Oldies Music Still Lives

I was in a restaurant playing WZKY. A recorded voice (there are no DJs) said Ace Hardware (actually, there was a longer name but it is an Ace store) was playing the station. Tell us you are listening and we may give you a shout out.

http://www.1010wspc.com select WZKY
 
The station, KZQZ, is owned by, "Insane Broadcasting"...that is funny, in an interesting way.

Probably a fun place to work.
 
klutch00 said:
Near Knoxville Tennessee, WKCE just signed on with an oldies format
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1000 watt daytimer. Surrounded by translators on just about every possible frequency. Transmitter site to the southeast of Knoxville, so the signal would be listenable in the larger community but subject to the usual interference sources. Flipped to Oldies from a homebrew News format which had only been put in place in July, and they did Oldies from January to July after less than a year doing Comedy ... before that, ESPN in Spanish from 2007 to 2010 and in English for four years after that.

This looks like a "hail mary pass" move. Four format flips in under two years?
 
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K.M. Richards said:
1000 watt daytimer. Surrounded by translators on just about every possible frequency. Transmitter site to the southeast of Knoxville, so the signal would be listenable in the larger community but subject to the usual interference sources. Flipped to Oldies from a homebrew News format which had only been put in place in July, and they did Oldies from January to July after less than a year doing Comedy ... before that, ESPN in Spanish from 2007 to 2010 and in English for four years after that.

This looks like a "hail mary pass" move. Four format flips in under two years?
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More museum than format. Big Mama Thornton? Joe Turner? The Clovers? Really? Looking through six hours of playlist info, I can't find a single song (other than Christmas selections) from later than 1967, and most of the music is from way, way before then. Musicologists and the "if it was a hit, play it" club will love it, but I can't this station gaining any significant audience -- not even an audience large enough to make WKCE attractive to local mom-and-pop advertisers. And what sort of advertisers would be interested in an audience of a few dozen oldies buffs, nearly all in the 60s or older? Secondhand stores? Vintage record shops? Brylcreem? Moxie? DeSoto?
 
CTListener said:
More museum than format. Big Mama Thornton? Joe Turner? The Clovers? Really? Looking through six hours of playlist info, I can't find a single song (other than Christmas selections) from later than 1967, and most of the music is from way, way before then. Musicologists and the "if it was a hit, play it" club will love it, but I can't this station gaining any significant audience -- not even an audience large enough to make WKCE attractive to local mom-and-pop advertisers. And what sort of advertisers would be interested in an audience of a few dozen oldies buffs, nearly all in the 60s or older? Secondhand stores? Vintage record shops? Brylcreem? Moxie? DeSoto?
Click to expand...

I looked at many hours of programming (the website is quite clean and nice as far as showing the music) and found that, other than Christmas tunes, a third of the songs are unfamiliar to me, a third are what I'd call very secondary but by known artists and a third are "strong" memory songs.

I am barely... by 5 days... a Baby Boomer. If I don't know a third of the songs, it means the appeal of this format is to folks well into their 70's and not Boomers. I don't know a) how many are living b) how many use the radio and c) how many advertisers will care.

I hope they can make it, as this kind of unique format catering to seniors would be terrific if it can be monetized.
 
TheFonz said:
Now if they could only hire Dick Biondi.........................
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On a daytime AM outside of a large market?

And that music mostly predates what Biondi played on WLS... think Four Seasons and not Four Preps.
 
klutch00 said:
Near Knoxville Tennessee, WKCE just signed on with an oldies format:

https://www.facebook.com/1120wkce/?fref=ts
http://www.1120wkce.com/

Much emphasis is placed on 'graffiti-gold' (pre-1964 material).
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It seems to be a little heavy on "gold country" but otherwise a lot like the full service stations of the 50's. I like it so far and part of that is not knowing just what song may pop up next. The country music is probably OK with the Knoxville market. Hope they can get enough revenue out of local businesses to stay for awhile.
 
landtuna said:


It seems to be a little heavy on "gold country" but otherwise a lot like the full service stations of the 50's. I like it so far and part of that is not knowing just what song may pop up next. The country music is probably OK with the Knoxville market. Hope they can get enough revenue out of local businesses to stay for awhile.
Click to expand...

Wasn't Knoxville the market in which a country station used to get ratings in the high 20s/low 30s routinely back in the '70s? I would think classic country oldies would do very well with boomers and older there. I just don't know how they'll do on a 1 kw AM that's playing them along with the Beatles, the Ronettes and Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels.
 
CTListener said:
Wasn't Knoxville the market in which a country station used to get ratings in the high 20s/low 30s routinely back in the '70s?
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You may be thinking of WIVK. Also, WXBQ in nearby Bristol TN gets huge shares. These ratings continues well past the 70s.
 
CTListener said:
Born in late December 1964, then? Happy birthday!
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In early December of 1954 I put my first radio station on the air!

If I had been born 6 days earlier, I would not have been a boomer.
 
landtuna said:


It seems to be a little heavy on "gold country" but otherwise a lot like the full service stations of the 50's. I like it so far and part of that is not knowing just what song may pop up next. The country music is probably OK with the Knoxville market. Hope they can get enough revenue out of local businesses to stay for awhile.
Click to expand...

It's not even in Knox County. It is a local station to Maryville and the 5 mV/m does not even cover 5% of the Knoxville metro area.
 
TheFonz said:
Biondi started in music radio at WKBW, Buffalo NY in 1958. The Four Seasons had their first chart hit, Sherry, in 1962.
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He hit the big-time at WKBW, but IIRC, his music-radio career started in Alexander LA in the early '50s.
 
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