This has quickly become a weekly must hear for me, and I don't have a lot of those. I usually catch it on Saturday afternoon off of The Jewel in Newmarket. There's one other thing to add to what my frequent debate partner paterson1 noted. I've noticed that the program segment lengths tend to be a lot longer than some syndicated shows. Instead of going to a break after every three songs or so, like way too many formats, this one often gives you up to 20-25 minutes before throwing to spots. That's a pretty generous clock.

As an example, the Top 5 countdown segment plays all five songs, before pausing. There's no tease like "and what do you think #1 will be? We'll tell you right after this..." 

As a listener, I appreciate that. It makes it a lot easier to stay tuned when the inevitable spots do run. And as many here know, I'm an inveterate station switcher. Not on this show.

I often find it more interesting to hear what Roger has to say about the music he plays rather just listen to the songs.

mace wrote:

I often find it more interesting to hear what Roger has to say about the music he plays rather just listen to the songs.

As Smokey Robinson would say, "I second that emotion." While it's fun to hear some of the more obscure hits, if there were a scoped version of the show with just the stories he tells, I'd listen to that and save a few hours!

RadioActive wrote:

This has quickly become a weekly must hear for me, and I don't have a lot of those. 

Same; it's really great. Not many of those left. Strombo on CBC Music, and the evening R&B show on G98.7 are my others.
 

In my case, it's Jewel 88.5. But it also airs at the same time on Jewel 92.1 in Brantford. So you can hear it in either locale depending on where you are on the weekend.

I prefer it when Roger picks the tunes.
 

Tickle Trunk wrote:

I guess it's a downer day for me. Here in 2020, people actually request songs off their radio? With the countless apps out there that will play your song instantly (most of the apps are free) why wait 2 weeks for a VTd show? Today's show injected very little of the famed hosts personality.

Yes it's true that you can hear practically any song at any time. However, in requesting a song, some people like to express their feelings as to why they are requesting it. The memories, good [first high school relationship, passing that grade 10 math exam] bad [first high school breakup, or in my case the geek who never had a chance with the HOT girl in grade 9 English] all come flooding back when you hear the first few notes.

One of the first things I learned working for a Top 40 radio station is that the request lines they had back in the day were pretty much a total sham. Since most of what was being asked for was going to be in the regular rotation anyway, they'd simply ignore the request and just play it when the time came. Occasionally, they'd have an answering machine record the listener making the request and then use that to intro a song they were going to play at that time anyway. 

It made it sound like "we play what you say" and it might have helped with listener involvement and record research, but in my experience, it was more a gimmick than anything else. The Ashby Show is different, in that it takes requests for obscure oldies and since there's no real "playlist," they're actually fulfilling the wish and making it a feature of the show. 

But I still prefer leaving the bulk of the choices to the pros.  

Roger Ashby's all request show was ok, but I agree with the other posters here preferring the regular program.  I do understand why it was done if only to get caught up on all the requests that he has received over the past few months. Wouldn't be surprised if Roger does an all request show every three or four months, since he likely gets a lot more requests than what he can handle in a regular show.  Those calling in will appreciate their song played. Listening to the requests on the weekend, it is obvious Ashby's audience likes the show and the music he is playing.

RA is correct, many of the requests received at a top 40 station likely will be coming up in the next hour or two. If the song requested had just been played, I would tell the caller this and suggest something that I knew was going to be up in the next 15 minutes. For most people this was fine, problem solved.

So it is really how requests are handled and just letting the listener know if you can or can't play the song, or suggest something else.  Most callers were actually easy to get along with when it came to requests. 

Other than specialized shows (top 9 at 9 etc.) most stations don't actually solicit requests that much and really didn't either when I was in radio.  If someone requested a song from a few years ago and I knew that the song was quickly available in the library, sure I would play it and I would always let the caller know when the selection would be played.  But most requests tended to be for that new song by so and so...(yes, the "new" song we have been playing 6-7 times a day for the past three months..)

Last edited by paterson1 (May 19, 2020 11:37 am)

 I was honoured to have been hired by Bell Media and Roger to write and produce most of the imaging for the Roger Ashby Oldies Show.  Tom Jokic, Roger's longtime CHUM FM producer also wrote some of the break starters.

No explanation on their website, but what's interesting to me is that there's nothing but dead air on their Internet feed. Usually, when a station goes off the air, their "listen live" function still works on the web. Nothing but hiss there as I post this.

Update: Just out of curiousity, I dialed the numbers on their site. Nothing connected. Total power failure? Not sure why their phones wouldn't be working along with everything else. Also, their website has hash marks in the "last played" section where song titles should be. It's the same thing at their KX96 site. Nothing but carrier at 95.9, where the music should be.  

Whatever is going on, it sounds like (or rather doesn't sound like!) a massive outage of some kind that's not at the TX.  

Last edited by RadioActive (May 31, 2020 5:04 pm)

Are Ashby's shows archived anywhere? It would be nice to hear them "on demand."

Well whatever it was, both KX and CKDO are back on as of 5:45 or so. I wonder how long the outage lasted?

Hacked