WPGC Aircheck - Scott Shannon - 10/19/80 - Sunday Night Oldies Show #5

Pirate Radio in LA came next for him followed by a return to the Big Apple as morning host of the syndicated 'Scott & Todd' morning show, originating at WPLJ. Today, Shannon has retired after many years in mornings at CBS-FM in New York while the music that made WPGC famous is heard on his True Oldies Channel online. Most recently, Scott was inducted into the NAB Hall of Fame.

Every Sunday night, 'Shannon on the Radio' turned back the clock to the Golden Years of Rock & Roll on WPGC, playing many of the very songs the station had made famous when they were new. This particular show aired the night before WPGC's 26th Anniversary on 10/20/80 (actually, the date was incorrect but let us not get bogged down in mere technicalities).

Scott often played songs off of vinyl records which had long since fallen out of the regular WPGC library. Predictably, the occasional disaster would ensue when a well worn 45 would skip painfully on the air. Such was the case on this show when Bobby Vee's, 'The Night Has A Thousand Eyes' got stuck in a rut. Moments later, Bobby Day's, 'Little Bitty Pretty One' does the same thing on the same turntable. Shannon's plea to 'Marty with the Party' for help was actually to WPGC engineer, Marty Sachs (who sometimes was heard doing a late night weekend shift himself).

Shannon spinned tales behind the songs and artists, played requests sent in by listeners and generally relived the era with them while obviously enjoying himself. Curiously, for a station that had such a wealth of jingles over the years, no era appropriate station jingles are heard on the show. And periodic segues from song to song with no identifying element between them are heard, something highly unauthentic to the period when those songs were new.

One of the highlights of the show however was Scott's practice of playing old airchecks. This night he featured one of Russ 'The Weird Beard' Knight on KLIF in Dallas from 1962. Interestingly, it happened to be the exact same one that Harv Moore had played on 12/31/71 as part of the Rock & Roll Generation special. One surmises the old tape must had been sitting in the record library all those years waiting for another play!

And speaking of the former WPGC Morning Mayor, a few moments of Harv in action from 10/10/72 are heard as part of a station montage produced by midday guy (and future WPGC morning man) Dave Foxx which also includes snippets of WPGC Money Girl, Carla with (another former WPGC morning man) Columbus, as well as part of a 'Missing W' promo voiced by then General Manager, Bob Howard.

As for current promos from this aircheck, two are heard. The first voiced by Dave Foxx is for a charity fundraiser for the Ronald McDonald House. The other is by the morning show of the time, Jim Elliott & Scott Woodside, touting their faces on the new WPGC Elliott & Woodside commuter coffee cup available at Washington area 7-Eleven stores.

The first round of Deregulation was still a way off yet so Public Service commitments still counted in 1980. WPGC Soundoffs had long been a vehicle for listeners to gripe about seemingly anything. Two are included on this tape; the first done by overnight jock, Shauna on capital punishment and the latter by Dave Foxx on questionable Redskins plays.

As for commercials, most contained herein are read live by Scott for Jack's Oldies in College Park (where no doubt replacement copies for many of the records that skipped on the air were acquired!).

The WPGC Sunday Night Oldies Show continued after Shannon left the station in 1981 with new host, Skip Nelson through 1982. When station management made the disasterous decision to change the format to Adult Contemporary late in 1982, American Top 40 was relegated to Sunday nights and the Oldies Show moved to Saturday nights, hosted by Lee Chambers.