The news that Scott Shannon was leaving mornings at WCBS-FM New York on Dec. 16 was shortly followed by Shannon’s own announcement that he was not done with radio. CBS-FM will continue to carry his America’s Greatest Hits syndicated countdown, while WCBS-FM-HD-3 will still carry the True Oldies Channel programming that Shannon launched in 2004. (Here’s what I wrote at the time.)
At the time, TOC was part of a quickly-growing effort to do ‘50s/early ‘60s oldies on AM as an updated version of Adult Standards. As you would expect, that window moved over the course of 18 years, especially as ‘60s oldies became the thing you couldn’t hear on a big-market FM Classic Hits station.
As Radioinsight’s Lance Venta noted, the wording of Shannon’s goodbye left the door open for something like a reappearance on crosstown N/T WABC’s growing oldies bloc. Presumably he would make an arrangement that has the blessing of Audacy, which is continuing to clear a syndicated show and give TOC (now in its second incarnation after a mid-’10s hiatus) an over-the-air outlet in New York.
I listened to TOC on WCBS-HD-3 this weekend, but I also checked it out on Vic Canales’ WWNN/WIRK-HD3 (Oldies 95.9/106.9) West Palm Beach on Tuesday. JVC Broadcasting’s WSVU uses Shannon and the network’s Robby Bridges but also its own talent in other dayparts. Bridges was doing middays that day. It was a great showcase for the network, given the combination of live hosting and, believe it or not, the stopsets, both because they added localism and eliminated the fill songs.
It’s also worth noting that Canales’ station was sponsoring an oldies concert. In the early days of TOC, that would have still been early ‘60s vocal groups. Now it was “Saturday Night Dance Fever.” The lineup was Tavares, the Trammps, Evelyn “Champagne” King, Heatwave, France Joli, Lime, the Blue Notes, and Felipe Rose of the Village People.
Here’s the True Oldies Channel as heard in West Palm Beach at 11 a.m. on November 1:
- Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds, “Don’t Pull Your Love”
- Kingsmen, “Louie Louie”
- Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On”
- Beatles, “I Saw Her Standing There”
- Neil Diamond, “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon”
- Ray Charles, “Hit the Road Jack”
- Carly Simon, “Nobody Does It Better”
- Zombies, “She’s Not There”
- Eric Clapton, “Lay Down Sally”
- Archie Bell & Drells, “Tighten Up”
- Gallery, “Nice to Be with You”
- Petula Clark, “I Know a Place”
- Simon & Garfunkel, “Mrs. Robinson”
- Alive & Kickin’, “Tighter, Tighter”
- Dave Clark Five, “Do You Love Me”
- O’Jays, “Back Stabbers”
The current incarnation of TOC is much more focused than the early days. I like it!