Have A Happy July 4 Special Weekend

It may be the third week of June for most of you. I schedule music logs for radio stations so for me it’s already the Fourth of July and I am now plotting a special weekend for a client. The fireworks have begun. 

I still enjoy hearing special weekends. I still enjoy even the extra effort that goes into planning and executing them. I particularly appreciate the “digging in the crates until you find the song that makes everybody shriek and run to the dance floor” aspect. 

And now, some thoughts:

If you don’t believe in special weekends, I understand. “Weekends are the time when I break habit and try other things on the dial,” says James Cridland. “Hearing music is out of the normal weekday playlist seems a missed opportunity though. If I’m trialing your station for the first time, shouldn’t you give me the music you’d normally play?”

For Classic Hits stations in particular, weekends are prime time. Even the “All-‘80s Weekend” on a station that mostly plays ‘80s is taking away a third of the hits from listeners that may not get to hear them the rest of the week. 

For Top 40 and Hot AC stations in this era of increased throwbacks, chances are that hearing “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” does not involve the same element of surprise that it did three years ago when the “Throwback Weekend” was a big deal. It might still evoke the same amount of delight, however, at least until the currents are better.

When I was learning radio history, often through airchecks, special weekends were often the things that were most likely to have been documented. I would have rather heard a station’s regular format, but it was the July 4 “Firecracker 300 Countdown” that somebody had been motivated to tape. Even then, it was informative to know that “Kung-Fu Fighting” might have ever been in the top five of such a countdown, even in July 1975.

But special weekends still have their fans. “I love the special weekend programming we do on WMGK Philadelphia,” says André Gardner. “I always loved doing special weekends. They hyped up the staff, kept things fresh, gave sales something to sell,” says John Trapane. Michael Davis, owner/PD of Kentucky’s WMTA (Star 107.3) likes them most as a relief button for those stations that are tightly formatted all week. In general, when I put the question to Facebook friends, there was roughly a 50/50 split in terms of those still in favor of special weekends or any weekend specialty program in general.

Special weekends have (mostly) survived PPM. Special weekends were a part of the debate that began with metered-measurement of radio ratings about whether a station should ever deviate from format in any way. Many still advocate special weekends (or other special programming) for image reasons, but veteran PD Brian Thomas believes “they work in the ratings, but the need to be very special.”

Special weekends are even harder to execute these days. As a rookie program director, the special weekends were literally one of the things that taught me to do a better job of communicating with my air-staff, including part-timers. It was the reminder that you were far more invested in the details of your radio station than even reasonably attentive staffers.

So now consider today’s radio. Even five years ago, the special weekends I scheduled for Classic Hits stations in about a dozen markets rarely sounded the same in any two of them. Some voice-trackers might let “Driver’s Seat” play on your “Lost Hits Weekend” and not explain it at all. Others would talk about the “Lost Hits Weekend” even when they were playing “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions” (and not to tease the next special song either). 

There was also the issue of differing effort from the radio stations themselves. Did a programmer have the time or inclination to generate the stagers, or were they busy with a four-station cluster? Had they already burned through their remaining imaging for the month? Eventually, I went to the easier-to-execute, easier-for-the-audience-to-grasp all-‘80s weekends. But then I wondered if listeners were missing “We Will Rock You.”

For that reason, special weekends are better on stations that are still able to put in the extra effort during regular programming. I enjoyed hearing a lot of the Memorial Day specials that I previewed a few weeks back.  I even got a column out of the “Yacht Rock Weekends” that I heard on several readers’ stations. The best Memorial Day weekends were the most elaborate ones—e.g., the WOXY Cincinnati Reunion on Inhailer Radio or WXPN Philadelphia’s different year every hour. WXPN’s special programming is a signature of the station, but it’s also in character with their “bastion of real radio as you remember it” status during the week.

I still want special weekends to be special. You would expect that from a longtime advocate of playing “hits plus carefully calculated variety.” There are Classic Hits stations with 230 song libraries that do very well playing the 140 ‘80s songs they were going to play anyway on an all-‘80s weekend. I feel cheated by the ‘80s weekend that is “Eye of the Tiger” into “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” with no spikes. 

As with doing special weekends at all, I completely understand if you just want to play the hits. Since the advent of the Adult Hits format more than 20 years ago, I’ve been more cynical about programming that creates the “illusion of variety.” Listeners don’t need your entirely pre-programmed all-request lunch hour, and that probably goes for the special weekend that isn’t special. 

That said, veteran jock/programmer Willie B. talks about the value of special occasions (first day of summer, core artist in town, new Star Wars film) as a way of repackaging the hits. That can be true, but it raises the bar for programmers, imagers, and air talent to work even harder together to make the special weekend special.

Over the last few years, broadcasters have landed on personality as radio’s point of differentiation in the streaming era. I still regard curation as an equal tentpole. When the two of them work together, the special weekend is worth the special effort. I’m looking forward to hearing what you come up with for July 4.