Radio Drops #2: Play Goldfinger at 7:25 and 9:25

Radio Drops #2 is about one scheduling idea: playing Goldfinger at 7:25 and 9:25. The video runs 2:06.

Watch the video on YouTube: Radio Drops #2: Play Goldfinger at 7:25 and 9:25

When the Movie Lets Out

It’s late winter 1965, maybe early spring, and I am 16 years old. I’m a part-time disc jockey, about to go full-time. I sign on for my Saturday night shift at 7:00 and get a call from Buzz Bennett, the program director.

I’ll talk about Buzz in future Radio Drops. The man was a genius in his own time, and I was lucky to have been hired by that guy.

Buzz says, “Steve, tonight at about 7:25 and about 9:25, I want you to play Goldfinger,” the Shirley Bassey song.

This was strange: Goldfinger was off the playlist. We had essentially burned it out, and it had been dropped. Back in those days you didn’t play a song for at least a year after you dropped it off currents, when it qualified as an oldie. Strange, I know, but that’s the way it was.

Buzz wanted it played then because Goldfinger, the James Bond movie, was playing at the theater, and it let out at 7:15 and 9:15. “When people get in their cars, I want them to hear that song. It tells them we’re with them in the moment. We’re hip, we’re part of the scene, man.” And he hung up.

I’ve thought about that little programming gem a lot over the years, and you can still use it.

“Murder on the Dance Floor” was a hit in 2001. In 2024 it was featured in a Netflix movie, and suddenly it’s topping the charts on Spotify and iTunes again. Same thing happened about a year earlier with a country song, “Tennessee Whiskey,” featured pretty prominently in a George Clooney movie I think was also streaming on Netflix.

Whenever you find a song in pop culture, in TV, movies, even commercials (they’re beginning to use oldies in commercials), and it fits the format you’re playing anyway, put it into a higher rotation for a little while. It’ll do you well.