TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Oldies Radio Thrives On Gift Given By '60s

ADVERTISEMENT

By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 1, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY - The '60s, the legendarily spasmodic decade that, even now, looms uncommonly large over life in America, wrought plenty for which its survivors are properly rueful.

But this is not about those lamentable excesses, the self-indulgent habits of self-destructive pursuits of "liberation" and

"idealism" unfettered by, oh, let's call it Reality. This is, instead, the one thing - without question - the '60s got absolutely right.

OK, besides quarter-a-gallon gas and $5 fill-ups.

Whatever else history has said, and continues through revisions (as more of its generational cohort discovers sobriety) to say about the '60s, its music was perfect. Whether the listener followed Timothy Leary's prescription - turn on, tune in, drop out - or was a young Goldwater Republican attached to his hang-ups, the soundtrack of the decade made sense ... had a good beat and was easy to dance to.

It was melodies and harmonies and ringing guitar work wrapped around lyrics that, while striving for immediacy, often found timelessness. Something, indeed, was happening here.

More than 40 years down the road from the summer that launched Woodstock, a good portion of the population who came of age under the influence of Hendrix, Joplin and the Turtles have found the mellowness for which they agitated in their youth. But even though they are no longer tempted to make war and require a chemical boost to make love (some things never change), their link to the music remains ironclad.

Despite that loyalty and the size of the cohort, there is only one place to find those songs on the public airwaves in the Tampa Bay area. WJQB, 106.3 FM, based in Palm Harbor with its transmitter in Spring Hill, is that station, and the greater Nature Coast - give or take a couple of miles east of Interstate 75 when the meteorology is favorable - is its stomping ground.

Bay area baby boomers living closer to the center of the state may complain, but WJQB managing partner Steve Schurdell doesn't. Thriving under the "True Oldies Channel" banner, WJQB targets listeners ages 35 to 60 who no longer "have the wolf at the door," who are either approaching or are solidly in their peak earning years. And who are firmly committed to the acquisitiveness of their youth.

Saturday, in a celebration of the station, the music and a certain history-making radio personality, Schurdell staked out space at the heart of the annual Main Street Blast to welcome Scott Shannon, an unapologetic disc jockey - no highfalutin' "host" is he - who in less than four years has made "True Oldies" a national brand.

A Man Of Great Ambition

In a blue-checked button-down shirt, olive drab shorts and boat shoes, Shannon spent the afternoon schmoozing with fans and clients of the station while waxing rhapsodic about rock 'n' roll. Inspired after sneaking in a hug, Hudson oldies fan Art Giordano, "a truly excellent house painter," says wife Amy, shrieks, "You da man, Scott Shannon! You da man!"

For aspiring members of the on-air staff, such as morning-drive newcomer Trevor Joe Lennon, recently of Daytona, he imparted - according to weekend weather announcer Chelle Fontaine, of Hudson - "industry secrets." Says Fontaine, "Voice inflection, that's the key."

This fount of fascination and wisdom would be the same Scott Shannon who, in partnership with Cleveland Wheeler, revolutionized drive time in the early 1980s by originating the bits-and-hits "morning zoo" format for WRBQ, 104.7 FM. Still coaxing commuters to work, since 1991 in New York, Shannon re-energized his roots with an oldies format that, with ABC doing the marketing, recently added its 60th station.

His ambition rivals that of talk host Rush Limbaugh: a nationwide network in which travelers seeking, as Shannon says, "music that doesn't rhymes with truck" are never beyond earshot.

That's all well and good for the hall of fame DJ with more history to make. Back on the Nature Coast, where in January 2005 WJQB became the first True Oldies station on the FM band, what matters is what a steady diet of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys and Buckinghams does within the Nature Coast's rollicking free market.

The good times? Let 'em roll. Explains Carl "Cem" Maier, the station's general sales manager, "We walk into businesses and we hear our station being played."

During the channel's big bands/American standards days, Maier adds, "That never happened."

Boomers' Layered Interests

Port Richey's Emma Austin, a self-published romance novelist, partners with the station whenever she attempts to populate a book-signing event, on the theory that True Oldies listeners also grew up reading. This stands to reason. An audience interested in lyrics could also be expected to be interested in printed prose.

It also turns out to be a demographic interested in the performing arts, as Butch Pellicane, operator of the Show Palace Dinner Theatre in Hudson, has discovered. The fact that it sounds like home, in upstate New York, is merely a bonus.

So is this: The heart of summer is upon us, and for music fans of a certain age, summertime means '60s rock 'n' roll, as sure as a trip to the beach means a head full of Sun-In, baby oil laced with iodine and the guy on the transistor radio counting down the hits and announcing that it's time to turn over.

Good times.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT