Atlantic Oldies 2NG

Well, I had to update the blog software and discovered that I hadn’t really updated the blog in a seriously long time. No surprises on my part, added a new family member in February, so sweet & also changed jobs in July so been crazy crazy crazy.

In the last couple of years I’ve added over a thousand tracks, many Top 40 but also some rarities and obscurities too. Listening a lot recently, I’m starting to feel some hours have more obscure than what we know, and it makes for an odd hour. Some hours are great, some not so much!

Let’s not mess too much, but I’m starting to go through the scheduling and library trying to separate the lesser known hits and keep the rotation down on them and filling in more Top 40 hits from ’55 to ’85. I’ve started Tuesday Twinspins and also brought back the Wacky songs as well as the TV/Film Theme tunes. Hope you like them and feedback is more than welcome.

I also have some new jingles, they will debut Sunday 28th October but I’ll try and Soundcloud them beforehand. Very happy how they have turned out. BBC Radio 1 and many US stations used these in the late 60s & 70s.

Anyhow, enough waffle from me, some tweaks coming and small programming schedule changes on the way too. Nothing major.

What a wonderful expression. “Jumping the Shark” is well used in the TV industry when the series “loses the plot” or has moved well away from the established formula . It came from Happy Days when the Fonz literally jumped the shark in water-skis.

So, ultimately have we at Atlantic Oldies 2NG “jumped the shark”?

Why do we ask? Well, we have started to run a show “Call me Number 1″ which looks at the songs that made Number 1 from around the world. That in itself is not a big deal, but we, as an oldies station tend to play songs from 1955-1985. This new show covers 1945-2005. That’s thirty years that generally I don’t play. 1945-1955 and 1985 to 2005. So, have we “jumped the shark”?

I tend to think we haven’t, we love great music and having listened to the show many times, I’m always entertained by the songs that make Number 1 from other countries and how many songs I remember and loved. I also think generally that most of our listeners agree with that too.

Now, here’s the thing. We will be “jumping the shark” on the Diamond Jubilee weekend. I shall explain more later…..

When I started the Listener Top 100 I actually believed it wouldn’t take long. What I didn’t allow for in my time calculations was a very energetic two-year old, a very pregnant wife, my busy real work & creating/decorating a new kiddie room. What time I had was consumed with other stuff so slowly I was able to work on the Top 100 and finally we had the list. Had to find some songs, which took a bit of work but we did it.

I started to record the shows and received a little surprise. When you record the shows, you actually focus a lot on the list, and when I reached number 86, I thought, that’s funny, that song received more votes! I was sure of it. So, stopped the record and revisited the list. Nope, list showed it was number 86. Went back to the actual survey and discovered, due to my stupidity (or incompetence) I had managed to export only 75% of the list. Bottom line, I had to start the whole list again.

I’m beginning to think this whole thing is jinxed. That said, list is recompiled and I’ll start recording the shows on Thursday night. Brain thinking that I should be completed by the following week so we can air the Top 100 in two weeks. Only curve ball now, will Junior #2 show up early? Knowing my luck it’s now guaranteed. Extra car seat ready, bag ready, emergency plans for looking after Junior #1 ready.

Do I bite off more than I chew? You betcha. Thanks for listening, Richard

So, we closed the Top 100 listener survey in October. There were some great song choices, more varied than last time. I believed it would be a quick task to work out the Top 100, then record the shows. Oh, how the mighty will fall!

So, here’s the deal on why it is taking far longer than I anticipated. Compiling the list took a while, mainly due to extracting the data from the survey, but also many entries had typo’s, meaning I had to manually correct in the spreadsheet. By correcting some incorrect spellings it actually changed the number one song. That is now done.

As expected, I didn’t have all 100 songs in the library, so I have to find the missing songs. Nearly done on that one.

Then to record the shows. Each day will have 20 hits, culminating on a Friday with the Top 20. Last time I did a simple Show, “That was…, This is… at number x”. This time, for some of the songs I want to give some good facts about the song and/or artist(s). This research takes longer.

Excuses done, so when will hear the shows. Soon. I hope to record the shows all next week, so we can play them mid-December. Do remember though, “The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men…”.

Good morning everyone,

Yes, I’m writing this at 4am while we all work through the night covering Hurricane Irene. No, 2NG is not covering it, but my day job is. I work at a TV Station in the Nations Capital and we’ve been very busy with live shots from the Metro area as well as Ocean City, MD and Kill Devils Hill, NC.

It’s been some time that I last wrote on the blog, and yes, I’m not the quickest at updating this! I do however update our Facebook page frequently, as well as Twitter and so I ask you join us there. I also plan to get the newsletter out at least monthly. You can Sign up here.

So, in the last few months I’ve been adding a lot of music to the library. In the next week another 150 songs will appear and they include many tracks I haven’t heard in years as well some Canadian oldies that are superb. (Thanks Rick).

I’ve also been looking at the schedule for our presenter driven shows and there probably will be some small tweaks. I’ll update those on the web, Facebook, twitter and the newsletter.

Finally, September will be your final chance to let us know your Top 5 oldies. We’re compiling the 2011 Listener Top 100 and we would love for you to give us your input. You could win an Atlantic Oldies 2NG T-Shirt or Mug.

Have a great day and see you soon, Richard

Over three years ago I wrote a post about the mix of music and how it varied from the fantastic mix to a really not so good hour. That post really hasn’t changed much and even though the library has grown a lot, the theory still applies..

I try and listen to the station when I can, along with others to get a feel. Sunday was always a good listening day but since Natalie became a toddler we spend a lot of Sunday out and about. Well the weather put a kibosh on that today so I had Atlantic Oldies 2NG on all day.

I’m really blessed that we have a great range of DJ’s on the station and today all the shows sounded excellent, then at 3pm we went back to the great mix. I’ve been listening for most of the afternoon and evening. Each hour was a marvel, even though the computer picks the tracks, this was one of those days when each track seemed to make sense after the last track. I’m sure some bad hours will be creeping around the corner but today, in my humble opinion, it was a great day on the station.

I know my blogging has been virtually non-existent but hopefully now with my Apple reconditioned iPad (saves a lot of money) I can blog a lot more easily than before.

Take care, Richard

As usual, when I go into the Blog software, I discover I haven’t actually blogged for a seriously long time. Well, we need to do better don’t we Richard? SOUND FX: Me going outside into the frigid air and hitting myself on the head with a wet haddock! By the time I’m done the haddock will be frozen.

So, during the last two months of 2010 we asked our listeners to help us with what they like and we had a survey. We received over 50 responses, which by survey standards is not that many. Now, that said, we did receive some good quality answers and that is what we wanted. First, let me congratulate wildrover for being our survey winner. We put all the names on paper and then live on our New Years Eve show pulled that name out from a paper bag!. He picked an Atlantic Oldies 2NG Mug.

Well, I was a little surprised to see that generally, most of you were more than happy with the mix of music, most liked our presenter-driven programming that we have, and also like the little features such as wacky and film/TV themes. We received some individual feedback and to those, I will reply by email to you personally. I really do appreciate the feedback.

One point that did stand out the apparent repetition of songs in the playlist. Currently the station has over 3,500 oldies in rotation (and grows by about 50 or so a month) and ALL the songs are in rotation for the week. Theoretically that means it takes around 6-8 days for a song to repeat. There are some complexities such as not repeating an artist within two hours and other rules, so a song can come back up within a few days. Playlist Scheduling is an art unto itself and is a highly regarded skill in the radio industry. I won’t say I’m proficient but I do experiment and revise the schedules to see if I can improve the mix. I love hearing songs I haven’t heard for a long time and like you, I sometimes wince when I hear the same song again. In some cases that is the way it was scheduled or, in a few rare cases, it appears we have two copies of the same song, labeled differently. That is easy, I could have it listed as say, “Jay & The Americans” or “Jay and the Americans”. Easy to miss.

Either way, I keep going through the library looking for these and every time I think I’m done, I find one more!!

And finally, I strive to ensure that you only hear the original recordings. Some online oldies stations don’t care, but I do. We’ve replaced many over the years but I know we have a few re-recordings lurking in the bowels of our library. If you hear one and you know it isn’t original, then please email us. In some odd cases, I can’t find the original, but I really really want to know.

So, hopefully the next blog post will be soon. As ever, thanks for being a listener.

So, once again, my blog updates seem to be quarterly!! Truth is that is kind of embarrassing. Weekly at the very least but with a 11 month old, time really really does fly.

A few friends have suggested I launch a Facebook page for the station, and so I did that today. Why not take some time and become a friend of 2NG. Just click here and then “Like” us. I would love to hear from you on that. You can also follow us on Twitter as well at www.twitter.com/atlanticoldies. Modern social networking for old music!!

Summer is a great time to do some major tweaks to the station. I’m pondering some small changes to the rotations with some of the DJ’s as well as maybe some schedule changes for the shows. Nothing decided yet, but if you have any thoughts, then please let me know. Email me or post a comment to this entry. We’ve already made one change last week, you no longer hear the news during the week. We’re an oldies station and we’re concentrating on the music.

So, off to the heat as we enjoy! those muggy DC days. I’ll be back again soon, certainly less than 90 days!!! Thanks and see ya soon.

I really am getting slack on writing blog posts. I have made a spring resolution(!) to improve that!

Two weeks ago the clocks moved forward here in America, and so psychologically my brain started to think Spring was on the way. It’s something we in the Washington, DC area really needed. We were whacked by the snowiest season on record. Normally we see around 19 inches or so, but we received over 72 inches as recorded at Dulles airport(IAD) which is just 30 minutes away. No doubt I burned a lot of calories shoveling merrily away but I have never seen anything like it!

All though this Natalie just carried on growing and growing! It was a shame she is too young to enjoy the snow. If I was a kid again, I would have been in my element but alas I couldn’t relive those moments with her as I don’t think sledding with a 6 month old would have gone down well!!!

Atlantic Oldies 2NG goes on from strength to strength. We were featured prominently a while ago in the Windows Media Guide and so we saw an influx of listeners. One of the sad things is that when the feature is removed, the listeners go as well. A few stay and I did receive some nice emails.

April is almost here, so time to break the back with yard work. Need to plant more grass and also do more exercise. All things I don’t like. Now, I do like recording my show (Rick Ainley) and sometimes I get the chance to do the Sunday show live. Hopefully I can do a few live ones in April. Time and Natalie will tell.

Hopefully we will be bringing back our Top 100 songs in April as well as some other features. More to follow.

Have a great Spring, keep listening and let us know your feedback.

Well, it has been some time since I last wrote a blog entry. As usual, time gets away and before I know, we’re at the end of 2009. So let me wish you all a very Happy New Year and I thank you for listening to 2NG Atlantic Oldies. It’s been a pleasure and I hope you’ll continue into 2010.

We took steps to save money last year. Internet Radio doesn’t make a profit generally unless you run 200 bland channels etc. I now share a server with a friend and this helps cut down the costs. This way, I hope to keep the station going well into 2010.

The last few months have been very busy for me, so 2NG kind of ran on auto-pilot a bit. Well that changes now, I’ve regained some time back and focused more on 2NG again. In the next few days a lot more songs will be added to the mix (over 500) and I’ll be jiggling the rotation a bit to make it a fresher sound. As always I’d love to hear from you with comments, good or bad.

I’d also like to thank the people who do shows on 2NG. Without them, I’d be a great oldies jukebox, but each of these help create a better sound with their own styles. Each one different. Each has created a great show, and so, in Alphabetical order we thank, Kurt David (Takin ya Back), Roger Davies (Rare 60′s), Mike Landecker, Bill Rollins (Teatime Special), Richard Todd (Retro Chart Countdown) and Mike Walker (Saving the 70′s). I’d also like to thank “Spy“. He contributes quite a bit to my weekly show including “Spy’s Triple Tenuous Connection”. We keep getting offers of more shows and so there may be some additions in the coming weeks.

Myself, I enjoy recording my show (Rick Ainley) and have been fortunate to also have shows on a European powerhouse. BigL 1395kHz from the Netherlands. You can hear me on Saturday and Sunday mornings at 0300 GMT, 0400 CET right across Europe. I felt really proud to actually hear my own show last weekend whilst we were in the UK. Admittedly I was driving in Cleethorpes at 3am because my precious daughter was teething and needed some good old fashioned driving to “calm down”.

Now, that my sanity has returned, I hope to be creating more blog entries soon. Thanks for reading.

The Proud Father