Saturday Night Oldies

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Saturday Night Oldies was a Saturday-night music and talk show on WABC Radio in New York City.

History[edit]

WABC Radio (770 AM, New York City) played rock and roll from 1960 until May 10, 1982, before changing to a talk radio format. With talk shows not quite as popular on the weekend, Tim McCarthy, WABC President and General Manager, and Phil Boyce, Operations Manager and Program Director, decided to bring back the oldies music on Saturday nights. Saturday Night Oldies premiered on December 3, 2005, exactly six months after WCBS-FM (also in New York) dropped the oldies format on June 3, 2005.

Mark Simone hosted the show, which featured popular music from the late 1950s through the 1970s with an emphasis on songs that became popular, but have largely been forgotten. Original WABC jingles from the station's Top 40 era were played and Simone took phone calls and reads posts from the Message Board discussing a wide variety of events in popular culture from that time period.

The crew included Mike Gunzelman, the producer, and Mike Savilli on controls.

In July 2009 the show was renamed Saturday Night and shortened to 3 hours, airing from 6 PM to 9 PM. Newer music was played, as well as oldies, and a wider range of guests from the entertainment world were interviewed along with more discussion of entertainment issues.

In September 2010 the show was shortened to two hours, from 7 to 9 PM. It was also announced at that time that the Saturday Night show would soon be going national, and would be syndicated to stations in other cities.

The show was heard for the last time in December 2012 when Mark Simone resigned from WABC and joined WOR where he is heard Monday - Friday from 10 AM - 12 noon.

Features[edit]

  • B-sides of 45s played
  • Beatlespectacular - in-depth look at the Beatles
  • Fake breaks – old radio and TV commercials
  • Mystery DJ - guess the voice of a radio deejay
  • Stump the Host - callers try to stump the show’s host
  • Triple plays - 3 songs from one recording artist played

Guest interviews[edit]

Slogans[edit]

  • "Saturday Night Oldies. What an awesome idea!"
  • "Who else could pull this off?"
  • "Around here we STILL play the hits!"
  • "This is the station you grew up with. Who said you had to grow up?"

External links[edit]

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