Say that somebody (A-HEM) wanted to do a Rock & Roll Oldies show with music that KOOL and KLTH don't play. Would it be possible for such a person to get on the air at any of the following stations, and if so, what would that person have to do?

* KPSU (1450 AM)
* KBOO (90.7 FM)
* KRRC (97.9 FM -- may be off air soon)
* KOOR (1010 AM)
* KLYC (1260 AM)

KPSU usually requires that you're a PSU student (they do make exceptions) and when I went there, they asked me to train on the board (even though I obviously had the experience on the board and then some) and you have to make a demo of your show (not out of the ordinary) and you'll have to pay money to get on the air. Which was enough to peeve me before I was on the air at my current gig.

Also, expect to get the crappiest day part here.

KBOO is very political...there are a lot of office politics that go on here. It can take YEARS to get on the air...because everyone wants a slot...and you'll have to start doing the crap work as if you're an intern.

The others, I have no experience with. Good luck, my friend. Hopefully you can have some fun with some public station around here.

Thanks. I had suspected that somebody on this board had already done the legwork on researching this issue. There is another forum participant to whom I had suggested that he look into doing an oldies show with music like what "Super 62 KPOJ" played during its brief existence, rather than just complaining that this music was no longer available on the air. I'm hoping that this information will help him out.

Alfredo it might be worth checking out other community radio stations in the NW. If you have the ability to pre-record a show that would fit into a particular market that might at least open some doors.

My wife and I syndicated a 30 min. radio show on 4 commercial stations a number of years ago. By having the product already made it really helped.

Astoria has KMUN.
http://www.kmun.org/

"KBOO is very political...there are a lot of office politics that go on here. It can take YEARS to get on the air...because everyone wants a slot...and you'll have to start doing the crap work as if you're an intern."

Interesting. From the bit of (perhaps useless) inside information I got, they look for something truly different, and if it is, talent and who you know won't matter.

Stream it on the internet,or post it on a website.
There are stations that would play it,if you could get it to them.

I'm a bit disappointed that the person for whom I was trying to collect this information has not yet chimed in on this topic (hint, hint).

I am a bit pressed for spare time right now, but this would be a fun project to try someday. If I were to do it myself, I would try to team up with an older person who has some firsthand knowledge of the history of the music. I was born in 1974, but the person whom I was thinking of (again--hint, hint) once alluded to having grown up in the 1960s and therefore would remember when the music first came out and the AM Top-40 stations and DJs that played it.

>>I'm a bit disappointed that the person for whom I was trying to collect this information has not yet chimed in on this topic (hint, hint). <<

And why would you expect that person to chime in?

The only thing that person's posted is the same drivel about how oldies need to be back on 910, 620 and any other station that used to run the format.

As for this person actually doing something to accomplish what they post about? That'll happen as soon as gas goes back to a dollar a gallon.

> And why would you expect that person to chime in?

Because he seems to stick his two cents in on every other topic.

> The only thing that person's posted is the same drivel about how oldies need to be back on 910, 620
> and any other station that used to run the format.

I would hope that we would both be proven wrong, but my hopes for this happening are rapidly diminishing.

Heck, if I wanted to indulge in fantasy, how is this: Bustos will sell off all of its Portland stations, as they are all tanking. The new owners of 1520 launch an oldies format there that is a re-incarnation of the short-lived KYMN.

If they do go Oldies again on 1520 , I hope they dont bring back the KYMN mic channel reverb" YUCK !

Make it sound more like circa 1520/KSGO ( Solid Gold Oldies ) from about 1984' broadcast era of that "60s leaning 70s" oldies format they had at the time.

The first time that I heard a radio station use reverb on the mic channel was on WFBG-AM in Altoona, PA. My impression was that it sounded like the DJ was in an auditorium or concert hall. When saying the call letters, they would deliberately pause between each one and emphasize the "F" so that it sounded like "Www *F*fff Bbb Ggg!" At the time, the reverb sounded cool to me, but perhaps hearing reverbed DJs year after year would get old. Or, maybe the reverb just makes a bad impression on some people (back in college, I suggested patching in a reverb unit to my co-host on the morning show; he thought that this was a TERRIBLE idea and thus it was not done).

The reverb topic has come up before on here. What I find fascinating is that reverb was used widely in the midwest, east, and south, but rarely in the west. Always wondered why.

My teen memories of taking trips with the family to the midwest was highlighted by listening to the big AM top40's, WLS, WCFL, CKLW, KDWB, and many others, on a warm, humid night with that reverb coming from everywhere only to be broken by a scratch of audio lightning from some faraway thunderstorm. Totally ingrained in my radio brain ever since.

I found the thread where that was brought up:

../208652/220451.html"#f7f7f7" align=left> Author: Rongallagher
Thursday, May 29, 2008 - 8:21 pm

WFBG was the heritage Top 40 in Altoona. Tony Booth was the PD for many years. I loved that station; I used to listen to them when I would spend summers there growing up.

I really liked the reverb.

Wow! I'm surprised that somebody else here listened to "The Mighty 1290, Www *F*fff Bbb Ggg" I moved to Altoona in 1986. When I first visited Altoona in the spring of that year and heard WFBG, I was surprised that this was not a simulcast of an FM sister station. During that first visit, some type of real estate agent or apartment locator lady took us around town. She was in her 20s, and her car was an economy car that had an AM-only radio; the radio was tuned to 1290. At the apartment rental office, where my dad ended up signing the townhouse lease, there was a radio tuned to 1290. In stores, there were radios tuned to 1290!! There were billboards around town proclaiming WFBG and its uber-famous Sean McKay. I knew then that I was in a very different place--almost like in a time warp.

In the mid 1980s, WFBG-AM was still one of those radio stations that tried to be all things to all people. There was "Lunch With the Oldies," adult contemporary in the afternoons, and teenybopper top-40 in the evenings. On the weekends there were "Dial-and-Deal" segments, oldies shows, and a coundown show. The formula still worked well in 1986 and 1987; I remember hearing Run DMC, The Outfield, El Debarge, Lionel Richie, Debbie Gibson, and Tiffany played on WFBG.

The reverb was removed in late 1986, when WFBG upgraded its studio facilities as part of an upgrade to AM Stereo.

Several things happened in 1987 that brought WFBG's dominance of the market to a very abrupt end. First, their star DJ, Sean McKay was arrested on drug charges. Later in that year, WALY-FM signed on the air with a heavy publicity campaign and a full-time AC format. Just a bit later, CHR WPRR-FM started promoting heavily, pulling the youth listenership away from 1290. I was able to observe this firsthand: in 1986 and 1987, WFBG and their youth show, "The Top 9 at 9" was hugely popular with my classmates. By the fall of 1988, most of them had stopped listening to WFBG in favor of WPRR and, to a lesser degree, WBXQ-FM, which was CHR-leaning for a short time. From the point of view of many of my classmates, the music selection on WFBG wasn't as good (possibly because much of the day it was playing stuff for their parents) and the gags that the DJs did were deemed corny and stupid. The minimalist approach of the FM CHRs was seen as being better.

A few years after I moved away from Altoona, WFBG flipped to nostalgia to go up against WKMC, and the AM Stereo was shut off. Later the format was switched to talk, and it remains that to this day. The ratings of today's WFBG with respect to other stations in the market are pretty pathetic.

WABC in New York runs an oldies show on Saturday evening with Mark Simone. They have his mike on a reverb for that program. As in 790 - WABC, just like the '60's. It is streamed online.

Hey Alfredo,you're handy with a soldering iron,right?
Small transmitters aren't terribly hard to build.Start your own neighborhood station.

That was going to be my suggestion, buying a Part 15 AM Stereo transmitter. That would've been if someone absolutely HAD to be "on the radio," and had the technical expertise to set it up.
My other suggestion was going to be that an online service, namely Live 365, would probably be more practical, as well as reach more people.

...I think it is more like, I have to deliver the transmitter and studio equipment to 62kgw's location....