By RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com, filed Nov. 25, 2010
Scott Shannon, mid-day host and creator of the True Oldies Channel, will be losing his mid-day spot on True Oldies 106.7. Local jock Kristen Charles will be taking over.
"We want to be live and local," said general manager Paul O'Malley. "I believe in live bodies as much as humanly possible talking to our customers and clients every day. It gives us a competitive advantage." Competition, in his mind, is not just other AM/FM stations but XM/Sirius, Pandora and iPods/iPads.
The branding and music mix has been adjusted as well though it's not format change. Its now called Atlanta's Greatest Hits, as the new logo shows. Presumably, the phrase "oldies" is now considered too "old" to draw younger listeners.
Among the artists featured on the web site banner: Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Billy Joel, the Rolling Stones, Elvis, the Beach Boys, Rod Stewart, the Supremes, the Monkees, Aretha Franklin, the Eagles and Jackson 5.
The playlist, which had been programmed by Shannon's True Oldies operation out of New York, had been a very deep mix of pop music from the 1960s and 70s with a bit of 1950s and 1980s thrown in. That, O'Malley said, won't be changing. But on Wednesday, the music mix appeared to be a bit more 1970s than before, with an average song age of 1972, according to Mediabase 24/7 vs. 1970 in previous days. And significantly more songs were played more than once that day. In the past, maybe five or six songs got repeated in a 24-hour period. On Wednesday, 21 songs were played twice.
The station, after it arrived in March 2008, did surprisingly well its first two years with the station usually ranking around 10th with a 4 share rating overall. It has been getting high 2's among 25 to 54 year olds until the past two months when ratings dropped off sharply. Its October Arbitron figures were its worst since the ratings system changed to people meters in early 2009.
Shannon is the legendary New York jock who created the Z100 "morning zoo" concept in the early 1980s. In the mid- 1970s, he ran then top 40 station 790/WQXI-AM in Atlanta and was an afternoon host.
In Atlanta music radio, mid-days are now virtually dominated by women. Shannon was one of the few male voices. Of 16 major stations with regular mid-day jocks below, 14 have female mid-day jocks.
Dave FM - Mara Davis
Star 94- Heather Branch
94.9/The Bull - Madison
Project 9-6-1 - Aly
B98.5 - Jordan Graye
99X at 97.9- Shawn
Q100 - Brittany
Rock 100.5 - Erin Watson
Kicks 101.5 - Sari Rose
Praise 102.5 - Darlene McCoy
V-103 - nobody right now
Kiss 104.1 -Cynthia Young
Fish 104.7 - Parks Stamper
El Patron 105.3 - El Sinverguenza (one male)
Wild 105.7 - Maverick (second male)
Majic 107.5 - Carol Blackmon
Hot 107.9 - Maria More
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By Rodney Ho, rho@ajc.com, AJCRadioTV blog
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