As for AM, we had a local station WHUT that played the top forty, and was always blaring over the screaming kids on our school bus. However, my top station was WERK out of Muncie, Indiana: top forty during the week, on the weekends they carried an oldies program that played tons of classic 50's and 60's pop. That show doubtlessly encouraged my fondness for the music of those years (to the confusion of some of my friends, at the time). Best of all, though, WERK carried Casey Kasem's American Top 40 every Sunday. That was a 'never miss', while reading the Sunday paper and often a stack of comics. That was the best way for a kid to keep up with the current music scene, in those pre-internet days. Now, what were your favorites? Where did you set your car stereo presets to? Did you go local, or listen to more distant broadcasts? Share those call letters that still come to your mind, accompanied no doubt by an unforgettable jingle...
13 comments:
Thru the late seventies 3 FM Rock stations battled it out for listeners in the Metro Detroit area. WWWW (W4), WABX and WRIF. When the dust settled only WRIF remained, until WLLZ (Wheelz) appeared in the early 80's. Hall of Fame dj Arthur Penhallow with his catch phrase "BABY!" was a WRIF mainstay.
I also used to listen to DR. Demento but for the life of me I can't remember what station it was syndicated thru. Loved it though.
On AM it was Tiger baseball thru WJR. Oh those summer evenings listening to Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey, heaven.
ahh the memories...
I didn't own a radio so I borrowed my mother's radio to listen to the UK Top 40 on Sundays on BBC Radio One in the late '70s/early '80s (I did eventually buy my own radio).
But in those days I didn't know that any other pop music station existed other than BBC Radio 1...
Turns out that my childhood and youth in Cassopolis, MI pretty much coincided with the town's Salad Days (for lack of a better word)-- when the population hovered around 2100 souls for a few years. And there was a BIG contingent of late baby-boomer kids coming of age there during the 70's and into the early 80's. So there really wasn't any radio within arm's-reach of any youth that wasn't tuned to WLS from Chicago- a beloved AM station we've mentioned a couple of times. Every car, every baby-sitter, every hang-out (well, okay-- there were two: The horrifically sketchy A&W, and the always-surviving Tastee-Twirl), and every transistor radio at the lake or out in someone's yard. Even my pop/rock-hating Dad would tune in most mornings going to work to catch Larry Lujack & Tommy Edward's ("Charming and Delightful Old Uncle Lar, and Little Snotnose Tommy") ANIMAL STORIES segments, and similar morning-radio nonesense. This is a guy who insisted (seriously) that the recording industry had reached its technical peak with Mitch Miller, and had just gotten sloppy with the advent of groups like the Beatles.
And to be honest, I don't recall FM radio even being available until the early 70's--- although, man, that depth of sound was just entrancing. We did get a stereo receiver with our new record player in the house sometime around '73, maybe, and my Dad quickly found a couple of more local (South Bend, IN) easy-listening type stations. . . and that was that. Percy Faith, 101 Strings, Ray Coniff, etc-- and some Mitch Miller, yep. He reeeeeally didn't want us playing loud rock or pop stations on that stereo, 'cause he had a feeling it would, like, damage the system somehow. . . BUT-- one nice association with those stations is that, on mornings when we had snow days (he was a school principal, so he was among the first to be informed}, he would turn it on early in the morning before we got up, so that the Muzak-y, instrumental stuff playing quietly in the wintery dark was a happy signal that we were gonna have the day off. . .
I tell ya, I do totally miss the long-gone WLS-- and even by the mid/late 80's it was morphing into more DJ/host talk & chat than actual music for a number of programs. So I suppose it's more of an evolutionary loss, rather than an abrupt sea-change.
And a particularly chilling memory. We would of course always hear the Chicago traffic reports (for a city about 100 miles away. . .)-- and I happened to be driving home from the store when a clearly distressed traffic reporter came on and warned people away from the airport, as it looked like a jet had just crashed in the area a minute or so before. It was the first report of the horrific American Airlines Flight 191 crash on that station. One of those oh-my-god moments. . .
HB
Red- what an awesome subject to serve up!
Chicago had / has its share of AM and FM stations for sure. And, I still listen to them as I drive to/from work a bit each day.
AM = WIND, WMAQ, WGN, WLS, WCFL.
FM = WXRT, WLUP, and WKQX. (Any of you out there remember the WLUP "Loop" girl and Disco Demolition. at White Sox Park??? HOLY COW!!!)
My fav memory though was spinning the dial (pre-digital precision) and seeing what AM stations were bouncing off the ionosphere, LOL. Indeed I did this two days ago and, who knows why, stuff was bouncing in from all over the USA to Chicago.
Indeed, when I was gifted my Hungarian grandmother's 1942 Zentih Model 10-S-669 art-deco radio, I had a grand time spinning that knob on the AM, FM,and SHort Wave (!) dials getting stations world wide! (This was early 1970s)
Now with internet I am far more often driving and listening to UK's Talk Sport station with Hawksbee and Jacobs b/c they do soccer better than anyone in the English-speaking world. ALso I listen to France's BFM stations and Germany's Bayern 5 station.
Today, Saturday, I will set the FM to 90.9 WDCB b/c they will be playing jazz/ big band all morning from the 1940s or so and then at 1 PM start 3 hours of old-time radio. You can get this on internet too at WDCB.org. It's good stuff!
Colin - I think you UK folks should do a nice blog for us like you did with the UK Marvel comics. I am often confused about BBC 1, 2, and 3 and if you have / had other stations or just the BBC controlled ones? B/c when I hear about BBC banning this or that song it sounds like they would control all the radio stations?
Charlie, all of what I'm about to post is from memory, so it's not necessarily definitive.
The BBC is sort of owned by the state, in the same way that utility companies and the post office used to be. It's funded by a license fee payable by any household that owns a TV or watches broadcast TV via the internet. It used to have the broadcasting market pretty much all to itself but, from the 1950s onwards, commercial TV stations began to be licensed in ever increasing numbers and now there are zillions of the things.
Back in the 1970s when Colin and I were growing up, there were three national TV networks, BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. Then, in the early 1980s, Channel 4 was launched. It was a commercial station owned by the same people as ITV but was partially funded by the BBC's license fee. Then, in the mid 1990s, Channel 5 was launched which is also commercial and has no affiliations to any of the other networks.
Also in the 1990s, satellite TV came along which opened up the way for there to be virtually limitless numbers of channels, and then digital TV came along which saw the launch of even more channels. Now there are hundreds of channels available and the BBC has, arguably, seen its importance as a broadcaster decline in recent years, with ever dwindling viewing figures.
When it comes to radio, the BBC had the market all to itself until the 1970s when commercial radio stations were allowed to be launched in various cities around the country. There were also, from the 1960s onwards, pirate radio stations who used to broadcast from boats just outside British waters where the authorities couldn't get at them.
Again, since the launch of digital broadcasting, a massive number of radio stations have come into existence.
When the BBC bans a record, it just means it's decided not to play it due to it containing content that might be in violation of the BBC's rules. The record can still be played by other broadcasters and is still available for sale.
When it comes to what I used to listen to in my youth, I used to mostly listen to Radio 1 which is a music station aimed at teenagers and young adults. I'd also listen to Radio 2 which is like Radio 1 but aimed at more middle-aged people. The truth is that, back then, the two station's playlists were often difficult to tell apart.
I'd also listen to Radio Hallam which was the local commercial station and Radio Sheffield which was the local BBC station. Hallam was clearly aimed at a younger audience than Radio Sheffield and featured less spoken content. Radio Hallam's one great claim to immortality was that it once played the nuclear attack alert as the introduction to a show and caused panic amongst a fair section of its listeners who thought they only had three minutes to live.
Needless to say, the station got into hot water over the incident.
Great synopsis of the history of British broadcast history, Steve-- thank you! It's always been a bit of a mystery to us folks over here stateside.
This Blog's "Ride the Retro Metro" posts always leave me wondering what the BBC's gameplan was with their programming in those 70's/80's slots--- 'cause to this unfamiliar American eye, it looks like an incredibly unwieldy 3-way patchwork hybrid of 1) Very popular American programs (although-- The Waltons? Seems so. . . un-British, y'know?); 2) Regular scripted British shows (comedies, dramas, detective, etc) that have cool titles, but are just unfamiliar to us; and 3) Trapped-in-hell informational/educational fare with titles like "Britain's Most Exciting Aquaducts" and such. By any chance, was this a common topic of conversation in those days?
HB
As a kid it was mostly AM radio for me, back when AM stations were rock instead of country or all-talk; my parents listened to country stations (my dad still does).
Later I discovered FM and the station I listened to the most was probably Z-99. It's still around, but their programming is a little too pop-oriented for me these days, so when I listen to the radio (which isn't often) I usually go for 94.5 Jack FM. As you can see by a quick perusal of the Song History, it's all classic rock from the 60s to the early 90s, so it's right in my wheelhouse. Of course, a lot of the songs are CANADIAN classics, so probably not familiar to all you non-Canucks out there :)
Humanbelly, because the BBC is paid for by everyone who has a TV, it has to provide programming for everybody. That was especially true back in the days when there were only three channels and there was effectively a captive audience. Also, for a long while there was government legislation compelling TV channels to show educational programming as well as entertainment.
The American shows were mainly there because it was cheaper to buy second-hand shows than to make new ones, so they were a low-cost way to fill out the schedules. I'm fairly certain the government passed legislation at one point to limit the amount of American shows on the BBC, in order to force it to make more of its own programming.
Hmmm, this topic seems to come up pretty frequently, doesn't it? Or maybe that was just at the BAB? It least it seems familiar, I'm getting a sense of deja vu...
Anyway, when I was really little, I listened to whatever anyone older (my mom, my sister or my brother) was listening to. Mostly it was an AM top 40 station broadcasting out of Portland, OR, call letters KGW. (I later learned that Mel Blanc got his start in show biz doing a show for this very station - back in the 1920s!)
As I approached my teens, I started listening to an FM rock/hard rock/AOR station, also out of Portland, KGON, which became super-popular as the disco-era came to a close. That station was pretty much the only one I listened to from late elementary school until I graduated from high school. For a while, there was a competing station in Portland, KRCK, which more exclusively played heavy metal, but I stayed loyal to KGON (also, that station apparently couldn't compete with the latter, either, as it switched to a classical music format).
Currently, I only listen to radio as background noise in the office, or when driving (when I take hikes with the dog or do yard work, I listen to podcasts). Here in Croatia, there's a mix of public (state-owned) stations, and a lot of commercial ones. I switch around between a few Zagreb-based commercial stations, Radio 101 and Yammat (both of which play a mix of contemporary and older music in a number of genres, not just rock but also R&B, house, etc., by both Croatian and foreign - read US and British - performers) and Gold FM (as the name suggests, older music, mainly rock, mostly pre-2000).
Killraven- love your enthusiasm for radio baseball! I have been listening to the Reds and Marty Brennaman this evening over WLW. Somehow, it just sounds right on AM, static and all.
Charlie- there is something almost magical, indeed, about late night tuning on AM radio (and short wave, too). Even though the internet provides us with instantaneous communication around the planet (something that's already pretty much become routine, oddly). There's an immediacy to hearing that voice emerging through the crackle of the miles...
Steve DC- thanks for the lesson on the BBC! We can always count on you for some generous background material on things we Yanks sometimes find mysterious.
Edo- you're quite right, we've touched on this subject before. I'm vulnerable to the occasional 'senior moment' these days! And regarding your Croatian public radio, how is their programming? Is it similar in format to the BBC?
Red, in theory, yes, the Croatian national broadcaster (known as HRT, which is the abbreviation for Croatian Radio-Television) is supposed to function like the BBC in the UK. On the radio side, there's three national channels/stations, and then most cities and larger towns have their own local HRT station. They, the local branches, mainly play contemporary/pop music, both Croatian and foreign, have news bulletins every hour on the hour, with longer news shows at certain times of the day (noon, 6 p.m., etc.) and usually have some kind of local-interest programming; as for the national stations, HR1 is more news-oriented, with lots of political-economic analysis and commentary and interviews with newsmakers, etc., HR2 plays more music, mainly contemporary/pop/rock, while HR3 has segments with classical, jazz, etc. and airs radio dramas, shows about science and the arts and so forth - more 'cultured' stuff. There's also an international channel called the Voice of Croatia (which I used to work for). However, a big problem here has always been that HRT has never been as independent as the BBC, which is mainly reflected in the news programming. Parliament has oversight authority over it, and after every election there's always a shake-up at the top as the director general and main editors are replaced to suit whoever the new guys in power are - and it's always worse when they're right-wing conservatives.
My parents always had a radio playing in the house, so I listened to whatever they were listening to for a long time......ranging from country music at first, then later on a couple of pop stations. One parent preferred country, the other one pop, so I got a dose of both. For Christmas one year, I got a clock radio, so I got to listen to a few of the pop/rock stations that were in a 25 mile radius.......I lived in a very small town, so really all I got to listen to was Top 40 most of the time. There was one dude who came in late on Saturday nights and he would play ALL kinds of music.....you might hear Led Zeppelin, the Isley Brothers, or a shot of Top 40 pop or R&B. He was my favorite because he introduced me to a wide variety of musical styles.
My first car was a '62 Plymouth Fury, with push-button transmission. It had an AM radio, which is what I got to listen to while driving. During the daytime, there were several great AM stations that played Top 40 or R&B. The longer I listened, the more I liked the R&B stations.......they played more songs and had fewer commercial breaks, or at least shorter ones. At nighttime, I was able to pick up WLAC in Nashville, WLS in Chicago, and they were fantastic, especially WLAC......lots of great music.
The night stations also allowed me to listen to sports, too. During the summer, I could hear the St. Louis Cardinals or the Texas Rangers playing baseball, and occasionally I could pick up the NBA games during the winter time. Of course, there were TONS of college football games in the fall. That was back when you only got to watch the occasional ball game on the weekends, before all the cable sports channels. Sometimes I really miss that.
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