This is a spinoff of the “obscure #1 song” thread.
In 2007, I was driving through the Oklahoma Panhandle at dusk, and while searching the radio, I found a station that only played songs that had hit #1 on the charts. While they never said this was the official format, the songs followed no other pattern, based on the songs I knew.
It gets weirder.
It was obviously “canned”, because the songs that were played did not match the ones announced, either ahead of time or afterwards.
Are there any Dopers from that area who remember the station, or have encountered another one like it?
I lived briefly in Sioux City, Iowa in the late 1990s, and the station we usually had on at work switched formats, from top 40 to general soft rock. That was OK, until we realized that they played the same songs at the same time every day.
Gotta say that the “all Beatles” or “all Led Zeppelin” or other single-band format stations were rather unusual too, especially in the pre-Sirius, etc. era.
In the late 80s and early 90s, I listed to Jonathan Brandmeier, a DJ / morning show host here in Chicago. He interviewed the program manager of a station (down in Florida) that had gone to “all Led Zeppelin”. The story was that they were going to be going to a new format in a few weeks anyway, and, as a publicity stunt, they went All Led Zep (and they were purists; no Robert Plant solo, no Firm, etc.) until the new format was ready to go.
I have, a couple of times, heard stations going through similar things regarding format changes – they fire the on-air staff, and air a strange mix of music for a few weeks, until they formally switch to the new format.
When I go back to my Eastern Washington hometown, I always check out KYNR Toppenish. Run by the local Indian tribe, it’s a mix of half-Native American programming and half JackRadio style variety. There have been times when they go straight from Blondie or Alice Cooper into traditional Tribal chanting. And when they’re playing Native-only programming, it veers from chanting to hip-hop to extensive coverage of Native news items.
The alltime weirdest was a believe-it-or-not station in Alaska that broadcast whale sounds all day! Alas the station ceased broadcasting a few years ago.
In 2010, I turned on the radio one evening to make sure it would be loud enough to wake me up the next day. Hotel California was playing.
In the morning, I was woken up by the sweet chords of… Hotel California. OK, it looks like this station does not own many records. That evening: Hotel California :dubious:. Same song the following morning .
It went on like this for days. Hotel California was the only song they played (I checked: after the solo fade-out, it went back to the opening arpeggios, on and on and on).
Until one day, they started playing Billie Jean. And only Billie Jean :smack:.
I used to drive past a house with a small billboard in the front yard telling people to tune into some specific radio frequency. The homeowner broadcast on that frequency offering to sell you the tools/info to do the same. But, due to the geography of the location you only heard his station for a few seconds unless you happened to get a red light.
All Elvis. It was a chosen format not a fill the gap between formats. He was prolific so it wasn’t as limited as something like an All-Zepp format. Not sure how long it lasted.
All Christmas music. They started that several months before Christmas.
Not an odd format, but an odd format switch. The legendary rock station KZAP in Sacramento got caught up in the kountry muzak mania, maybe late 1980s, and switched without warning one Sunday night.
I have always loved imagining all the aging rockers having their clock-radio go off that Monday morning and sitting up with a truly fervent *What The F…
*University radio stations are always good for a laugh, or were in the pre-corporate, pre-revenue stream days. I recall one fairly stoned DJ mumbling that they had to do a commercial, and then after several seconds of dead air, saying, “Aw, the hell with it, I can’t find the tape. Back to the music” - and rolling some indie long before indie was anything but small university stuff.
Boston’s WERS is pretty wide-ranging. It’s a station run with public support and staffed in part by Emerson University students. Weekdays, it plays mostly alt-rock new and old, with some other rock thrown in. Weeknights it has an R&B/soul show. Weekends it broadcasts shows featuring a cappella, Broadway, klemzer/Yiddish.
There was an “eclectic music” station on Live365. I have forgotten the name, and it’s long gone now. It lived up to it’s brand: in one hour I heard a folk song from Peru, a piece by Stravinsky, some Zydeco, a hymn in German, a Japanese pop song and some Latin jazz.
Sometime back in the late 80’s or early 90’s, I forget exactly when, there was a radio station in Kansas City that filled the couple weeks’ gap between format changes by going all polka. That was actually kind of fun!
I did rotations on an Indian reservation, and they had a community station that would take anyone who wanted to do a show, within FCC regulations. One of the pharmacists I worked with did a show for a while, a couple hours a week, and the shows I remember include a man who would come in for 15 minutes every day and read the Bible in Navajo, and of course there were the kids who came in after school and played whatever they wanted. At the time, their #1 request was “Achy Breaky Heart” by…
The Chipmunks
Another pharmacist, who despite this being the “Beavis & Butthead” era had never seen it, said, “What the hell is this crap?”
We have a pretty out there “normal” station here in Phoenix/Mesa. 100% automated, no DJs, no commercials, and they play everything rock. Obscure, deep tracks. Station has to be a hobby. I’ve heard songs on there I’ve never heard before!
There was a country station in a small city near me growing up. But all the farmers went to bed early, so they changed their night programming to ~album rock. Not at all pop.
So at 6pm, off went George Jones and on came Frank Zappa.
A few years ago, the state of Illinois enacted a ban on cigarette smoking in bars, restaurants, etc. The ban went into effect on January 1st.
On December 31st (the day before the ban), a classic-rock station in suburban Chicago (95.9, The River) played nothing but Boston’s “Smokin’”, all day long. They interspersed plays of the song with PSAs for stop-smoking help, and vowed that, as of midnight, they would never again play “Smokin’”.
Internet radio has opened up all sorts of opportunities for unusual formats. The best one I found was “8bit FM” now sadly closed. But they played nothing but computer game style electronic music. It was actually really good!
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