By Andy Furman
NKyTribune staff writer
Monday will be his first day on the job – again.
“Dangerous” Dan Allen will be behind the microphone spinning the oldies on WDJO after a brief sojourn at another radio station for about three months. Perhaps he thought the grass was greener. But he truly missed doing what he does best – spinning the requests at noon daily on his Dial-A-Hit specialty.
“We kept the door of his office open all the time,” Greg Beers, WDJO Station Manager told the Northern Kentucky Tribune. “He was always going to be welcomed back.”
Traveling from station-to-station, or city-to-city is the life of a radio warrior. It mirrors being a minor league baseball player – city-to-city until you make the show.
“I was what you’d call a ‘Chart Junkie’,” he told the Northern Kentucky Tribune. “When I was a student at New Haven Elementary School, I would ask the kids to tell me their Top 40 songs.”
These days, callers ask Dan Allen to play their favorite songs.
His radio road trip started at WNKR in Falmouth.
“I was 27 and did Sunday night oldies,” he recalled.
Rising Sun, Ind., was next at WSCH.
“They had a country music format,” he said. He lasted there about seven or eight months.
Then it was a three-month stop at Covington’s now defunct WCLU.
“I did Morning Drive back then,” he said.
That was a three-month stay.
“I left,” he said, “after several of my checks bounced.”
Radio took Dan Allen to 49 states and countries all over the world.
“I did work for RCS – Radio Computing Services — for 13 years,” he said. “We sold, installed, and trained as well as designed programs for radio stations. We actually computerized weekly music charts – a first.”
Dial-A-Hit was born in 1990, he says, on WGRR (103.5FM).
“Callers would dial me up and request their favorite songs.”
Dial-a-Hit is alive and well – again – from noon-to-one starting Monday on WDJO (99.5, 107.9 FM, 1480 AM, and the iHeart app).
“Our audience requests are always popular and combine that with some humor, well, you have a winner,” he said. “And our music is in your blood forever.”
The oldies format works, he says, because there’s an oversaturation of commercials and a reduction of other radio formats.
“Call it radio chaos,” he said, “and it’s not for the better.”
He says WDJO is the only station that doesn’t run away from 50.
“We’re a fun radio station; the way radio was when you loved radio; and we have more and better music than anyone else.”
And Monday, they’ll have Dan Allen – again.