Atlantic Oldies 2NG

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.