Ten Great Listens in Ten Days

I’ve stepped up my radio listening in the last week or two. On Monday, I had a list of 50 stations I’d been meaning to get through. By Wednesday, I’d been through about a third of it. Sometimes hearing a lot of generic radio slows my roll, so it says something about this week that I was energized by what I was hearing — even if the most prominent listen was prompted by one of last week’s biggest bummers. Here are 10 great listens in a row.

1. Andre Gardner’s Final Top 10: Of all the layoffs in the radio industry, broadcasters have been particularly disheartened by the departure of Classic Rock WMGK Philadelphia afternoon host Andre Gardner, a beloved DJ at a consistently successful radio station. Coming on the heels of other Beasley station and personnel losses, Gardner’s firing prompted hundreds of comments from listeners, broadcasters, and even PD Eric Johnson.

Beasley allowed Gardner to do a final WMGK show, but I managed to hear him on the afternoon before, including counting down the top 10 albums of 1981. What stood out was Gardner’s ability to be enthusiastic about songs played hundreds of times, and to say something different about them. He came out of “Werewolves of London” with “Oh, Warren, we miss you every day.” He backsold Journey’s “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)” with “ah, the drama that is Journey 2024! [That’s from] back in the better days.”

Later, during the countdown, Gardner set up “Don’t Stop Believin’” by asking, “Is there no end to how many copies this album is going to sell?” He noted that Stevie Nicks’s “Bella Donna” got to 4 million copies faster than any Fleetwood Mac album. He played a montage of hit pop singles from 1981 (“Endless Love”! “Theme from The Greatest American Hero”!) and reacted to them. Through it all, he was your buddy in the passenger seat, never the guest lecturer. 

I hope I’m taking a Fresh Listen to Gardner on a new station soon. If you’re in the same position, I hope that goes for getting to hear you back in action, too. There was some consolation in knowing that Gardner was not the only personality I enjoyed that week

2. Two small-market Country giants. I’ve always enjoyed CFCW Edmonton, the Canadian equivalent of WSM-AM Nashville in terms of heritage and a yesterday-and-today mix. I may have been hearing heritage Country KRRV Alexandria, La., for the first time.  I came away from both feeling that I had heard more spontaneous-sounding personality (CFCW p.m. driver A.J. Keller and his KRRV counterpart Scotty Mac) than usual, and that I knew something about the markets by the time I left. (Terri Clark is still a major presence on CFCW, but last week she was playing Alexandria.)

3. Two great medium/small-market CHRs. WHYA (Y101) Cape Cod, Mass., is home base for syndicated LiveLine nighttime personality Mason, but it was middayer Billy Teed that I heard this week. Like column favorite KMVQ (99.7 Now) San Francisco, Y101 does a great job of riding Chappell- and Sabrina-mania. (“She’s been on a roll lately,” Teed said in setting up Carpenter’s “Bed Chem.”) It’s also very reminiscent of classic ’80s/early-’90s CHRs like Z100 New York or Kiss 108 Boston in its pacing. (Teed talked seven times that hour.) 

WXLK (K92) Roanoke is a heritage CHR that has rebounded 4.2-7.8 during the last year. It’s playing up its “more than 40 years” legacy. Like great medium-market CHRs, it managed to sound adult-friendly without ever sounding too adult. (I heard Olivia Rodrigo’s “Get Him Back,” Jelly Roll’s “I Am Not Okay,” and Ludacris’ “Stand Up.”) Middayer Freddy Mac reported on Roan changing managers. He also backsold Mark Ambor’s “Belong Together” as “bluegrass, but pop.”

4. WOCM (Ocean 98) Ocean City, Md. When I told reader Stewart Riegler that I had listened at his suggestion last weekend, he encouraged me to go back during the week, when it was hosted. I need to do that, but I was still pretty happy hearing The Dare’s “Perfume” into Freya Riding’s “Castles” on a station that bills itself as “The Best of Rock,” but goes well beyond that, including a considerable reggae component. Co-owned with a local venue, WOCM had a ton of local spots, as well as both club and concert calendars.

5. KXOJ Tulsa, Okla., is the longtime Christian AC that, atypically, became the flagship station of the expanding Stephens Media Group. It’s always been, for me, one of the showplace stations of the format, and in September it was the format leader. The best break from middayer Kevin Davis was on behalf of Megan Woods’s “The Truth” — “an outstanding new song from a brilliant new artist” that was, on first listen, not unlike hearing Lauren Daigle’s “You Say” for the first time.

6. WRLT (Lightning 100) Nashville was a harbinger of Nashville’s rise in the non-Country music community, but also a stealth influence on Country songwriters and musicians. When I last heard it a few years ago, WRLT had been buffeted by two new non-commercial competitors, whom it had joined in soliciting listener donations. It felt back in stride this time, still with a significant amount of industry-targeted advertising. There was also a sense that you could hear any song from the history of the station at some point. (In this case, it was the Dandy Warhols’ “Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth” in between James Bay and Catfish & the Bottlemen.) 

7. KDGS (Power 93.5) Wichita, Kan., could have been in a recent article about Hip-Hop/R&B stations that had resisted the format’s travails. The Audacy outlet is No. 1 in Wichita under longtime PD/morning co-host Greg Williams. It has interesting, intense-but-not-snarling or screaming imaging from Joe Cruise. It remains aggressive on new music from both the Hip-Hop and Rhythmic AC charts. 

8. Caravan Radio – In recent years, I’ve heard stations for the Australian trucking industry and the UK’s builder-oriented Fix Radio. This online station was launched recently to target British motor-home owners with a deeper mix that spans ’80s to now and Blur to the Jonas Brothers. There are promos soliciting listeners’ favorite travel locations. There was a feature about why it was better to buy your RV at a dealer, and other shoppers’ tips; e.g., make sure you’ll be able to easily access the bathroom in the middle of the night. I’m usually looking for sense of place from my radio tourism; this one was particularly geared to wanderlust.

9. KIOA Des Moines, Iowa, not from its current incarnation in Classic Hits, but in its original Top 40 incarnation from September, 1964, about five weeks ahead of a presidential election. (VP candidate Hubert Humphrey was in town campaigning, according to the unedited newscast.) An unscoped 30-minute listen to a great moment in hit-music history from a station that remained musically distinctive for years. I also liked coming across Chicago R&B legend Herb Kent on an early 1965 tape of R&B powerhouse WVON.

10. Catching up with two morning shows. I got to know Country KNCI Sacramento morning co-host Tom Mailey first through his social-media presence (in case you’re wondering if that really works), but enjoyed hearing him in action with the station’s Pat, Tom & Cody, a two-person show recently because Sacramento radio vet Pat Sill is out on medical leave. That hour was the “Minute to Win It” — the contestant swept all the questions — and a teaser from Cody about an upcoming “Red Flag Warnings” feature about men who tell inappropriate jokes on dates. I listened during the 6 a.m. hour, heard 13 songs and still felt like I was hearing a full-service morning show.

I went back to WSB-FM (B98.5) Atlanta’s Tad, Drex & Kara at the suggestion of talent guru Tracy Johnson. Their showcase phone feature that hour was not “Second Date Update,” but “Forgive & Forget” — featuring a newly divorced woman who not only wanted to revert to her maiden name, but change her kids’ names as well — and subsequent listener calls. The show (actually a best-of episode) was a great showcase for B98.5’s especially bright version of bright AC. (If you’re reading this on Thursday, Johnson and Radio Content Pro are hosting a “Lunch and Learn” at 1 p.m. today.)

Bonus: Richard Phelps’s “Hitradio KKHV” gets a plug every year for his pop-up tribute to Back to the Future’s fictitious radio station, as imagined during both 1955 and 1985. That happens to coincide with the oft-reviled “We Built This City” by Starship being a hit. Here’s what Phelps did with the famous Les Garland jock break in the middle of that song.