Re: WDRC / Big D

[mwaters@mail.wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Howard Glazer wrote:
<snip>
>The station has been promoting the upcoming week as its 40th birthday
>celebration, with guest appearances by many of the station's old
>personalities. Since both DRC-FM and its AM counterpart are way older
>than 40, I presume the reference is to the station's switch to a pop
>format. Maybe the "Big D" stuff will be kept around for this week of
>nostalgia, then dropped. Let's hope the station's new look doesn't
>involve playlist tightening.

        I've been out of town for most of a month and have not heard any
40th anniversary stuff. Maybe I'm wrong about 1958 and it was 1960 when the
AM went top 40. Maybe I have it mixed up with the call change to WPOP and
their switch to top 40. A mind is a terrible thing to lose.

        On a slightly different subject, there's a very long story over the
station's use of "America's first FM" as a slogan, which basically is
false, sort of. The short version is that the original WDRC-FM could make a
claim to being the first regular commercial license FM, but the company
gave up on FM in the '50s and what's now WHCN took it over. The current
WDRC-FM was a fresh license issued, IIRC, in the late '50s. That has never
stopped them from listing in places like Broadcasting yearbook an on-air
date of 1939 (and I've seen some mysterious references to 1936). That 1939
on-air date actually could be claimed legitimately by WHCN, which used to
list 1956. Somewhere on the internet there's a long essay about WHCN's
actual lineage to 1939. A search for those call letters probably would find
it.

>That music is 40 to 45 years old and has about as much of a connection
>to late '70s hits like Samantha Sang's "Emotion" and the Raspberries'
>"Go All the Way" (both heard recently on Oldies 102.9/Big D) as the
>music of Rudy Vallee had to Berry and Presley's hits. If the target
>demographic is 34-55, why not drop all but the biggest '50s hits, since
>few of your listeners have anything but early-childhood memories of
>them? WDRC-FM is a commercial radio station, not a museum.
<snip>

        I wasn't complaining or lamenting the music updating, just
commenting on it. I think of it as part of the procession of the oldies
formats. Some of what you used to hear on "oldies" formats like WDRC-FM you
now hear on the MOYL stations, etc. The fun thing about hearing WDRC do its
updating in music as well as in positioners / presentation / promotions,
etc., is that it's reacting to the "dancin' oldies" format on WZMX. It had
been pretty much going along steady without much change for a long time. It
was rather funny, for example, when WDRC suddenly popped up with liners
about "jammin' oldies" that vanished as quickly as they appeared after, it
seems like, one week.