Overnights in a Golden Age of Top 40

There are two things about a late 1984 aircheck of WCZY (Z95.5) Detroit, that really stand out in 2023.

One is that overnighter Doug Dunbar is talking every other song. There are at least seven breaks in his first hour, including weather beds, top-of-the-hour IDs, etc. Talking seven times an hour, even in afternoon drive now, would move you into that small group of shows that have been determined to be personality-intensive and “more than just music.”

The other stunner by 2023 standards is that WCZY’s music is almost entirely current and recurrent. Even when the stations involved in the CHR comeback of 1982-85 modified Mike Joseph’s all-current “Hot Hits” formula, as previously heard on rival CHR WHYT, it was mostly by adding recurrents and a few very recent gold titles. The unscoped version of the Dunbar aircheck is 80 minutes; on it, Z95.5 plays a single one-year recurrent and a single gold title that’s almost two years old. 

An unscoped version of the Z95.5 aircheck was sent to me by reader Patrick Mondro. More than a decade ago, another longtime reader, Rob Zerwekh posted a scoped version on YouTube with comments from Dunbar himself. It certainly plays differently now than it would have in 2010 during the most recent moment of dominance for mainstream Top 40.

In our ongoing debate over whether 1983 or 1984 was the better year of the ’80s CHR revival, there are some who believe that hit music had already peaked by December. From a 2023 standpoint, though, Z95.3’s playlist that week was an embarrassment of riches. The outlier ballads are just that. Julian Lennon’s “Valotte” — already ironic on this day when we’re getting a similarly placid “new” Beatles song — is fine between “Like a Virgin” and “Lovergirl,” because there aren’t four other songs grinding things to a halt that hour. (There’s one other, “Sea of Love.”)

Mondro sent me this aircheck in response to a recent column about whether radio should still talk over intros. In 1984, the WHYT/Z95.5 battle is interesting as one of many format wars taking place during peak CHR, but also as a talisman of how a Z100 New York vs. KIIS L.A. battle might have sounded. Z95.5 was KIIS’s Gannett sister station under PD Lee Douglas; WHYT had some Joseph left in its DNA, along with PD Gary Berkowitz’s own touches, but it was also the station that had adapted Z100’s “hot rocking, flamethrowing” persona. (You can hear more of both stations here.)

For a market so enshrined in Top 40 history, CHR had an uneven presence in Detroit. At least three Top 40s had already been in and out of the format between 1980 and 1983 when WCZY began evolving from Soft AC. In the fall ’84 Arbitron survey, Z95.5 was up 4.1-4.3, edging WHYT 4.8-3.9. But in the winter, both stations were up, with WHYT (5.0) nudging back ahead of Z95.5 (4.8). Suddenly, the Urban battle between WJLB and WDRQ wasn’t the only fierce one in the market.

The 20-year-old Dunbar would go on to become one of WHYI (Y100) Miami’s best-known jocks of the late ’80s/early ’90s; he’s currently a TV anchor in Dallas. Some of what he’s doing here is basic — encouraging listeners to drive home safely from the bars through a weather advisory, more listener shout-outs in one break than many stations do in an afternoon these days — but there’s a little bit of personality flex. 

If you’re in the “all old radio is over-romanticized” camp, (which most ROR readers are not), you might ask what was so special. I like this aircheck as a reminder of what a consistent level of customer service sounded like. It’s definitely fun to hear now — Mondro says he’s listened four times — but also a pep talk for radio to get its energy and swagger back. There’s also one more “it couldn’t happen now” moment. The upcoming New Year’s Eve countdown was going to have a live cash giveaway of $100 every hour.

It’s also nice to share a Z95.5 aircheck when its successor, WKQI (Channel 95.5), has been one of the major CHR success stories in recent months. This month, it’s off 8.4-7.2, but that’s still a big number in the format now. And in July, its 9.6 was equivalent to both CHRs combined in some mid-’80s books. Channel 95.5 was fun and encouraging to hear on a recent trip to the area. There’s not exactly a CHR war going on in Detroit, because CIDR (Virgin Radio) Windsor, Ontario, doesn’t try to compete there, but I did enjoy punching back and forth between them.

Here’s Z95.5 just after 3 a.m. on Dec. 28, 1984, beginning with the likely second song of the hour:

• Midnight Star, “Operator”
• Duran Duran, “Union of the Snake” — a year old — only one of two songs that were
• Prince, “Erotic City” — like a lot of the edits I heard at the time of this NSFR song, this version is incomprehensible in what it decided to keep and cut
• Honeydrippers, “Sea of Love”
• Cyndi Lauper, “Money Changes Everything”
• Stevie Wonder, “I Just Called to Say I Love You”
• Madonna, “Like a Virgin”
• Julian Lennon, “Valotte”
• Teena Marie, “Lovergirl”
• Survivor, “I Can’t Hold Back”
• Steve Perry, “Oh Sherry”
• New Edition, “Cool It Now”
• Philip Bailey & Phil Collins, “Easy Lover”
• Culture Club, “Time (Clock of the Heart)” — about 21 months old, the oldest song of the hour
• Pat Benatar, “We Belong”
• Chicago, “You’re the Inspiration”
• Glenn Frey, “The Heat Is On”
• David Bowie, “Blue Jean”