Format: Top 40
Branded: “Hot Hits”
Featured Air Personality: Pete Michaels
Original Comments
Look what we found gathering dust! A pristine “Hot Hits” recording from Philadelphia’s Hit Music Leader, 98-Now! From the overnight hour of 1-2am, Pete Michaels is on with a super high-energy show! This is scoped, and so you get a very good idea of the Hot Hits format, at the apex of it’s success.
There are a LOT of jingles, mostly from JAM. The early TM “Fusion” jingles had been replaced in ’82, so you won’t hear those on this recording. But the formatics are all there, including talkups INTO jingles, OUT OF jingles, and anywhere that consultant Mike Joseph could get the jocks to speak. A jingle is played after EVERY element, which makes for exciting, if not monotonous listening – there had to be a significant burnout factor with this format, which is probably why when WEGX “Eagle 106” came along in 1987, that would spell the end of Hot Hits on 98.1.
Fans of the Hot Hits ™ format will truly enjoy this 7 1/2 minute scope of WCAU-FM!
Always love me some WCAU-FM! But, this is most-definitely NOT 1985. I’m assuming “2/15” was written on the skimmer tape and the year was guessed. Judging by the music/jingles, this was actually February 15, 1983.
Thanks for the audio 🙂
….a little overboard on the jingles but otherwise, a pretty good aircheck.
This sounds strikingly familiar to WHYT FM 96 here in Detroit from the early 80s (same format) and quite popular at the time.
Thanks for sharing Steve.
But not only that, come in 1989 WIOQ will destroy Eagle 106 as Philly’s newest CHUrban giant and a worthy successor to WUSL A.K.A. POWER 99fm under their moniker as The new Q102.