WLNG out of Long Island, New York plays a broad mix from the 50s until the 90s; I’ve even heard the odd early 2000s hit on there. It’s good ‘old school’ radio with jingles and personalities as well, though they’ve toned that aspect down a bit in recent years with a change of ownership.
WLNG during the day and Radio Caroline at night is a good way to go, if you want a break from the same old same old. These correspond to the times when live DJs are on at these overseas stations.
Closer to home, the Wayne Mac run Retro Stream (weekends only) runs plenty of 60s and 70s feature weekends. Unfortunately there’s no announcing here, though sometimes he plays retro jingles and advertisements.
Too bad Geelong doesn’t have a DAB+ transmitter on its own, they would have 3GL with its 50s and 60s music! Hopefully soon they will be on air full time with a live stream and website (unless they lease 1341 to the likes of Vision, RSN, SEN Track or the like).
Mildura has or had a station on 1611 called Old Gold. I looked for their website but all I could find was a site in Chinese with a big porn ad at the top.
The ABC would have to do a modern oldies format right - personality radio in more than just breakfast, memorable jingles, constant forward momentum, keep the listeners excited and anticipatory. You cannot beat a Pandora or a Spotify with the old way doing of music radio. That worked in 1984 – today it doesn’t.
There’s an irony in that: radio used to be ‘personality plus’ in the boss jocks era of the 60s, then we moved away from that in the ‘more music’ 80s and 90s. Now, the jocks have to be boss again.
WLNG, Radio Caroline and BBC Radio 2 offer a modern iteration of the ‘boss’ format; WLNG even has some of the old PAMS jingles. In general the UK does personality radio much better than elsewhere.
Jack Spector (“Fabulous 57” WMCA, NYC) mentioned in one of his last interview that in the 1960s rock radio era of “his” WMCA, listeners knew all the jocks on a station but "that’s hard to find now, outside just your morning guy (AU radio = breakfast show)).
Along with the jukebox/pokies machine combo format. that “only in breakfast” approach no longer works in an era of thousands of stations.
