Following the departure of Howard Stern to Sirius in December 2005, WOCL’s Modern Rock format fell on hard times. Drew Garabo and Savannah were brought in following their departures from crosstown FM Talker WTKS to host mornings, but the format floundered behind 101.1 WJRR for the young male audience it desired. Finally on Friday, January 4, 2008 at 10:00am the station dropped Modern Rock and began stunting with Bill Drake’s “History of Rock and Roll” until the following Thursday, January 10.
That day at 12:40pm, the station began a year-by-year montage similar to the one used by sister WCBS-FM New York the previous summer, which led up to the launch at 1:05pm and 9 seconds of “Sunny 105.9 – Orlando’s Greatest Hits”.
John Kinney
Having been an on-air veteran radio announcer, I’m happy to finally see a station play the best hits from several decades instead of stuck in an “oldies” format. I always thought the term “oldies” was a negative description of a station’s format. The younger demographic would turn off simply because of the “oldies” identifier. The older demo really did not want to be reminded of being old. What Sunny 105.9 is doing now is what many years ago as a program director I wanted to do then. I was repeatedly shot down with the excuse that a format ranging through too many years would not work, that the idea was to find a target audience and play to them. I rain many compliments down onto the people responsible for making Sunny 105.9 the extreme success I know it will be. If you have the need for a part-time announcer (it seemed I always did), please contact me at the above e-mail address or give me a call at 407-282-7432
Bill Shelton
What a refreshing change to the metro-Orlando media. I worked radio in the 70’s for the “mom and pop” radio stations. The PD was hired to call the shots and that was the key to our success.
That was when PD’s came up through the ranks and knew how to run a station. Since the advent of the “networked” radio stations, the programming is now performed in some metropolis by someone totally out of touch with the local communities they serve. Bring back the cart machines, turntables, and CD players and some real personalities. I don’t want to hear John Tesh, I want to hear someone I can relate to! Sunny 105.9 at least has a great music format and great air talent. Where else can you hear the Beach Boys and Journey without changing stations???