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Retro Mid-60's AM Bandscans Sought

1130 WCAR...WDFN and 1130 WISN interfered with each other there. Also WKTS...WCLB 950 Sheboygan WI and WWJ 950 Detroit, MI interfered with each other there. WDOR 910 Sturgeon Bay, WI interfered with WFDF 910 Flint, MI more as you went further West. You could receive WTRX 1330 Flint, MI (where John Landecker worked as "Dow Jones" in 1966 and where Wally Kennedy worked after being a Teenage Guest DJ at WLS and working at WEAW 1330 Evanston, IL, and later still at WSB, WCAU, and KYW) could be heard on the East side of steel buildings near there, rather than WHBL 1330 Sheboygan, WI. A lot of 1330s in that sentence! BTW, WHBL was one of the Charles L. Carrell mobile stations, finally settling in Sheboygan, WI after the FCC said they had to stay in one place.
 
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cyberdad said:
Let's see here, from 30 or so miles west of you (daytime unless otherwise noted)

1150: WISN 24/7. Very tough to pull out of WJJD splatter daytime, but alone on top at night with a fair signal
1220: WKRS (Waukegan, IL). Fair at best. WLPO underneath. Most of WKRS signal goes north. But the null in my direction is less severe than the null to the south. Meanwhile WLPO is oriented east-west, which would seem to explain why they'd be on top for you.
1230: WCLO (Janesville, WI), WJOB underneath
1260: WEKZ (Monroe, WI 1kw ND) weak
1290: WMIL (Milwaukee, 1kw ND) weak
1310: WIBA (Madison, WI) Fair at best 24/7
1320: WILS (Lansing, MI) Fair-Good nights. Blank daytime
1330: WEAW doing battle with WRRR (Rockford, IL) Two signals of fairly equal strength
1340: WJOL (Joliet, IL) weak with an even WRIT (Milwaukee) underneath
1370: WGRY/WLTH Barely audible
1380: WBEL, Beloit, WI (5kw DA-N) fair days, disappeared completely at night....when KWK (St Louis) would take over
1400: WRJN, (Racine, WI.) fair. I'd think this one would be doable at your location
1420: Blank (no WIMS)
1430: WEEF Weak. WCMY, Ottawa, IL sometimes underneath. At night WIRE (Indianapolis) and WIL (St Louis) would duke it out. KELI (Tulsa) would sometimes also surface
1460: WRAC, (500w ND) weak
1480: WGSB, (Geneva, IL 1kw oriented NE-SW) Fair 24/7 (except that they signed off at 10pm). Cubs sportscaster Jack Brickhouse was the owner (well, legally his wife owned it)
1550: WMIR, (Lake Geneva, WI (1kw directional e-w), weak.
1570: WBEE fought it out with WFRL (Freeport, IL). Similar to the "battle of 1330" except involving weaker signals. At night, XERF was fair at best, but usually owned the channel. Sometimes CFOR or CHLO came through or even rose to the top. More commonly CFOR.
1600: WMCW, Harvard, IL 500w ND, fair. No trace of WCGO
Click to expand...

Thanks for helping my memory with a few of those. Yes, WRJN was heard during the day along with WKRS/WLPO and WGSB weak. WLTH was a good Top 40 station in the late 60s. I actually had a button set to it on the car radio. When WLS or WCFL was playing a "stiff" or commercials, WLTH was a go to station for me.
 
radioman148 said:
WLTH was a good Top 40 station in the late 60s. I actually had a button set to it on the car radio. When WLS or WCFL was playing a "stiff" or commercials, WLTH was a go to station for me.
Click to expand...

....and my cue to hit the button I had for WOKY! :)
 
in the 1960s, stations played a lot of "local" bands, where local meant anything within 100 miles or so. WLS, WCFL, WLTH, WNWC and other stations would play stuff like obscure new tracks by The Cryan' Shames, NC6, Ides Of March, Buckinghams, etc. Some was good, some not quite as good, but unfamiliar to many listeners. In Michigan, they would play obscure Terry Knight, Bob Seger, The Unrelated Segments, The Tidal Waves, etc. on WTAC, WTRX, WKNR, CKLW, WKNX, WSAM, WPAG, WAAM, WIQB etc. They weren't all stiffs, but definitely unfamiliar. I know there was some "crossover" of the two areas, and the artists became quasi local. Terry Knight used to visit Bick Biondi, and Bob Dell (DelGiorno) brought a lot of the the Greater Chicago acts to Mount Holly, an early SE Michigan venue, back before he left to go to the big time stations.
 
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cyberdad said:
@ mimo: As some of those here are aware, I have a little bit of experience with Kenora myself. On some of my sales trips, I had to travel from Winnipeg to Duluth, and Kenora was a handy place to spend the night. Anyway....I seem to remember hearing CFOB there daytime before before they left the AM band. They were 1kw on 640. Also did you ever hear either the Winnipeg area 810 or CJRL's sister station in Dryden, ON on 800? Offhand, I don't recall either of those myself. Just wondering. And now that I think of it, I'm also wondering if the 1250 from Steinbach, MB could make the daytime hop to Kenora. 10kw IIRC.
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I never did hear CFOB at My grandpa's cottage despite numerous attempts and effort. I did hear them while they were on 640 when coming up from or returning to the U.S. I never heard Dryden either, and Winnipeg's station at 810 might have been a ghost of a whisper at best. Their signal seems to be pulled in on the west and east sides. I think 1250 Steinbach might have been there, but I can't recall 100% I remember a few years back you mentioning being in Kenora and said that CJRL was still a good station to listen to. I certainly enjoyed them as did my cousins. My grandpa was a CKRC guy except for mornings when he listened to CJOB. My grandma only listened to CKRC. My parents never touched 630 again in Winnipeg after they went country, which was before I was born. I was very surprised to learn that they were a rock and roll station in the 60's.
 
Terry Knight was briefly a DJ at CKLW in the pre-Drake era

Schroedingers Cat said:
in the 1960s, stations played a lot of "local" bands, where local meant anything within 100 miles or so. WLS, WCFL, WLTH, WNWC and other stations would play stuff like obscure new tracks by The Cryan' Shames, NC6, Ides Of March, Buckinghams, etc. Some was good, some not quite as good, but unfamiliar to many listeners. In Michigan, they would play obscure Terry Knight, Bob Seger, The Unrelated Segments, The Tidal Waves, etc. on WTAC, WTRX, WKNR, CKLW, WKNX, WSAM, WPAG, WAAM, WIQB etc. They weren't all stiffs, but definitely unfamiliar. I know there was some "crossover" of the two areas, and the artists became quasi local. Terry Knight used to visit Bick Biondi, and Bob Dell (DelGiorno) brought a lot of the the Greater Chicago acts to Mount Holly, an early SE Michigan venue, back before he left to go to the big time stations.
Click to expand...
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
in the 1960s, stations played a lot of "local" bands, where local meant anything within 100 miles or so. WLS, WCFL, WLTH, WNWC and other stations would play stuff like obscure new tracks by The Cryan' Shames, NC6, Ides Of March, Buckinghams, etc.
Click to expand...

WNWC was the first FM station that I heard in the Chicago area that played any Rock & Roll. I think it was 7PM to Midnight every Monday through Saturday that they aired Top 40 music starting around 1966.
 
radioman148 said:
WNWC was the first FM station that I heard in the Chicago area that played any Rock & Roll. I think it was 7PM to Midnight every Monday through Saturday that they aired Top 40 music starting around 1966.
Click to expand...

My memory is pretty much the same thing. WNWC had a pretty good signal where I was (Wauconda). Seems to me that the top-40 show started on Friday nights, and then expanded out to other nights.

As for wishing you could catch WOKY, you were right in the null that was there to protect WBAA. You probably could have gone west and started to hear it. At night they sent a spike southwest in my direction. Daytime, it actually used to be listenable around Rockford, and at least audible all the way to Dubuque, Iowa on the Mississippi River.
 
This thread got me to thinking of the dial when I began DXing in 1970-71 from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I got started through listening to Cardinal games on KMOX and got curious what else was out there. At that time you could hear a lot of great top 40 stations from Tulsa, which kept me tuning around until I got hooked. Here's the lower half of the dial as I remember it:

540 nothing day, XEWA strong night
550 KFRM very strong days, KSD nights
560 KWTO Springfield MO day and night
570 WFAA day/night
580 WIBW Topeka strong day and night
590 nothing days, nights WOW and Cuba
600 nothing days, Cuba and KTBB Tyler TX nights (IIRC, Cubans on 590, 600, 640 were simulcast in those days)
610 WDAF KC day and night
620 KWFT Wichita Falls, TX day and night
630 nothing days, KXOK (top 40 with the great Mason Lee Dixon) nights
640 WNAD Norman OK days, strong Cuban nights
650 nothing days, Clear WSM nights
660 KSKY Dallas days, Mexico City Radio Juventud top 40 nights (no WNBC)
670 nothing days, strong WMAQ with Cuba underneath at night
680 KFEQ St Joseph MO day and night
690 KGGF Coffeyville KS day and night
700 nothing day, clear WLW night
710 WHB KC day and night (excellent top 40 station)
720 nothing day, WGN strong and clear night
730 despite KRMG splatter, KKDA Dallas days, strong XEX at night
740 local KRMG
750 through splatter, KSEO Durant OK during the day, WSB at night
760 nothing day, clear WJR nights
770 nothing day, usually KOB nights, WABC usually in but weak
780 KSPI Stillwater OK days, clear WBBM nights
790 don’t remember anything here, maybe Memphis at night?
800 OKC religion days, mix of PJB and XELO nights
810 weak KCMO day and night
820 WBAP day and night
830 nothing days, clear WCCO nights
840 nothing days, clear WHAS nights
850 KRPT Anadarko OK days, clear KOA nights
860 KOAM day and night
870 weak KJIM Ft Worth days, WWL night
880 nothing days, KRVN signed on sometime in early 70’s, dominated nights
890 OKC religion days, the Big 89 WLS nights
900 don't remember days, XEW strong night
910 KGLC Miami OK day and night
920 nothing days, I think Little Rock nights
930 WKY day and night
940 nothing days, Mexico City strongest at night, also sometimes KIOA
950 KFSA(?) Ft. Smith days, mix at night including KIMN
960 splatter
970 KAKC, local Drake top 40 day and night
980 splatter
990 KNIN Wichita Falls top 40
1000 KTOK weak days, jumble nights (no WCFL)
1010 nothing days, KLRA Little Rock nights
1020 nothing day, KDKA night
1030 nothing day, KTWO and WBZ mix night (!)
1040 nothing day, WHO clear night
1050 KFMJ Tulsa days, XEG Monterey strong nights
1060 nothing days, WNOE nights
1070 KFDI Wichita days, nights KFDI and weak KNX
1080 KRLD day and night (had progressive rock at night for a while)
1090 nothing day, KAAY nights (Beaker Street!)
 
From somewhat compromised (and hopefully, understandaly so) memory, here is the local NYC AM dial as it might've appeared in the newspapers around 1963.
The NY Daily News and the Long Island Press both had such columns.

540 -- WBIC (Islip NY). They were local MoR with --despite the 250 watts -- a big signal. Their Italian show on weekends used to get listeners from Queens and Brooklyn.
570 -- WMCA New York. It was the home of the Good Guys, virtually all of them becoming NYC legends with their homey and schtick type of Top 40. WMCA often got better numbers than WABC in the Five Boroughs.
620 -- WVNJ Newark was a Beautiful Music station.
660 -- WNBC was a somewhat frisky MoR station with a mammoth signal, full service radio.
710 -- WOR was also full-service Mor, to me a bit more conservative in approach. By that, I mean cautious, not political.
770 -- WABC was straight-ahead Top 40. After a while it became like 'Top 2', lol. DJ legends abounded there.
830 -- WNYC New York -- iIrc -- was a daytimer that had to sign off at sunset in Minneapolis. Lotsa talk shows and some classical.
880 -- WCBS was MoR. I grew to like their Sammy and Cole and Rosemary music. I still enjoy it.
930 -- WPAT was licensed to 'Paterson NJ', but come on .... they'd send their signal and their Beautiful Music straight through Grand Central Station on its way out to sea.
970 -- WJRZ Hackensack was the station. They had been a sort-of MoR and then went Country-Western in the mid-Sixties. Their C&W format was basically Top 40 in delivery -- jingles and all -- only with cowboy records. I liked 'em!
1010 -- WINS was 'Rock and roll', day-parted. During the daytime they were subdued with it all, but Murray the K at night was one of the group's four transistor radio stops.
1050 -- WHN was trying to elbow into the NYC 'MoR' scene by then. For us, originally it'd been 'WMGM' (after having been WHN * previously *)
1130 - WNEW. It was the Frank Of Your Life Format, somewhat mischievous with the premise. 'Willie B' and others did it as straight as possible. The great Gene Klavan was the anarchist who did mornings. Wow, what a listen he was.
1190 was WLIB. Originally it was a daytimer, an ethnic station of sorts. They had to protect WOWO Fort Wayne. The engineers here will know if WLIB signed off at local SSS in NYC or in Fort Wayne.
1280 -- WADO. They had a pretty good signal -- perhaps the best of the 'regionals'. WADO had a lot of foreign language programming -- Italian, Spanish -- but also was spawning a seminal Top 40 sound of its own a few hours each night.
1330 -- Was a shared-time arrangement between the predominant WEVD (towers in Queens) and WPOW (three towers in Staten Island). When the more distant WPOW was on, near sunset we'd be able to get some neat 1330 SSS DX.
1380 -- WBNX was ethnic and preachers from way back. They were ANOTHER shared-time station, the main facility, with a religious WAWZ 1380 in New Jersey broadcasting for a few hours each day.
1430 -- WNJR Newark was R&B/Soul. Good music. I'd heard this guy named Steel Colony doing both a DJ shift and newscasts. WNJR was another easy null.
1480 -- WHOM New York was another regional, religious and foreign and sometimes R&B.
1520 -- WTHE/WFYI from Long Island was listed in a newspaper column or two. Even before SSS they and their MoR/Country/Whatever this week would be blown into the fisheries by WKBW
1560 -- WQXR .... The Mozart Of Your Life.
1600 -- The Big 'RL'. Despite this station sending most of their 5000 watts straight down Flatbuch Avenue, Soul Radio 16 could be a pretty easy null where we lived. I remember one night hearing WBOS Boston with 'RL on!
 
Thanks for the NYC post Steve. I'd be curious what the dial was like at night DX-wise. I'm not speaking of rarities, but the stuff that used to come in most nights.
Adding to my list the other day, I remember I used to hear WWRL once in awhile at night in the Chicago area.
 
I asked David Eduardo this, and he thought it was possible but wasn't sure.

Are you talking WADO when it was owned by Bartell Broadcasting? They owned WDRQ, WOKY, and KCBQ, so it wasn't much of a stretch to program Top 40. But were the announcers in Spanish doing English Language Top 40? I remember one night in 1971 when I heard "Maggie May" as a current #1 followed by Spanish Language announcers. I always assumed it was WADO since they had a wide open two tower pattern which was the equivalent of 1 kW off the back of the array toward Michigan, and a large range of azimuths around that direction. When they were going to 50 kW Daytime, they were often running STA nondirectional, I assume at 12.5 kW. WWRL is frequently heard in Michigan during CH and at Night, and was even when it was just 5 kW Daytime. The Assistant Engineer at WAAM 1600 Ann Arbor said they heard WWRL frequently on their off air monitor after they signed off, every Night at around Midnight at the time.
 
I looked at a lot of those regional hits on ARSA, and it becomes apparent that many of those "stiffs" were good quality tracks, they just didn't get NATIONAL airplay. From seeing the peak chart position on Billboard, you can surmise that songs like "Love You So Much" by NC6 and "It Could Be We're In Love" by The Cryan' Shames would have made the Top 10-20 nationally if they had been played nationally and not regionally. "Love You So Much" by NC6 is better than "I Will Always Think About You", which is a nice song, but sounds like it was manufactured to be a hit. The other thing you notice is that if a track didn't get airplay on WABC and WLS, it stood almost no chance of being #1 Hot 100. And being close to #1 on WCFL but not played on WLS wasn't good enough either. "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man", though #1 WCFL and #2 WLS, wasn't played on WABC, and only hit #17 Hot 100. Right now, without signing up again with a screen name, I can't access those details on ARSA. I noticed that WNWC was playing some of these songs close to first. Always saw the Day site tower of WLTH along the expressway and next to the railroad track in Gary passing through, and that was another early add local band station. I would have potted the Farfisa organ track down a little on "It Could Be We're In Love" though, if I were the Recording engineer, as it gets a little tiring on repeated play.
 
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Schroedingers Cat said:
I looked at a lot of those regional hits on ARSA, and it becomes apparent that many of those "stiffs" were good quality tracks, they just didn't get NATIONAL airplay. From seeing the peak chart position on Billboard, you can surmise that songs like "Love You So Much" by NC6 and "It Could Be We're In Love" by The Cryan' Shames would have made the Top 10-20 nationally if they had been played nationally and not regionally. "Love You So Much" by NC6 is better than "I Will Always Think About You", which is a nice song, but sounds like it was manufactured to be a hit. The other thing you notice is that if a track didn't get airplay on WABC and WLS, it stood almost no chance of being #1 Hot 100. And being close to #1 on WCFL but not played on WLS wasn't good enough either. "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man", though #1 WCFL and #2 WLS, wasn't played on WABC, and only hit #17 Hot 100. Right now, without signing up again with a screen name, I can't access those details on ARSA. I noticed that WNWC was playing some of these songs close to first. Always saw the Day site tower of WLTH along the expressway and next to the railroad track in Gary passing through, and that was another early add local band station. I would have potted the Farfisa organ track down a little on "It Could Be We're In Love" though, if I were the Recording engineer, as it gets a little tiring on repeated play.
Click to expand...

The fact that "It Could Be We're In Love" by the Cryan Shames was only a hit in the Chicago area and a few spots in the midwest always puzzled me. It was #1 on WLS & WCFL for a month and never got above 80 on the Billboard charts. You would think with the power and reach of those two stations that it would have been more popular nationwide. I'm not saying that it should've been a big hit everywhere, but the fact that it was such a giant hit on "LS & CFL" I would think that it would have climbed a bit higher nationally than it did.
 
Controversy surrounded quite a few tracks that were regional hits. "Timothy" by The Buoys, Rupert Holmes' attempt to get noticed in the recording industry, was never played on WLS, though close to #1 on WCFL. "Ariel" by Dean Friedman was never played on WABC, though the "censored" version hit #4 on WLS. It was a HUGE controversy in New York, and probably cost Dean Friedman a much more commercially successful career. "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" wasn't played much outside the region because of a lyrical similarity of one word to an obscenity, and Dick Clark didn't want to put Seger on live because he thought that he would change that lyric. That probably held Seger's national career back several years. The original version of "Stoney End" by Laura Nyro was only played on a handful of stations, until the intro verse was rerecorded, and of course, Barbra Streisand later had a hit with it, though the first verse still contains a somewhat offensive borderline slur that could have been written out and made it an even bigger hit had it been eliminated. Same with why "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Rhapsody In The Rain" weren't bigger hits at the time, though all the mentioned tracks are very tame by today's Rap "standards". There are many other examples that could be mentioned, even from very early in the history of recorded music, and popular music from the 50s to today, of controversy, even over a single track, holding recording acts back.
 
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@ Radioman:

http://www.airport-jfk.com/map.php

was the DX spot. We all hung out where that hidden '678' emblem is, behing the red pinpoint.

Nighttimes at that age, where every teen seemed to have their own transistor radio for those socially crucial front stoops, guys and gals, we'd all be able to pick up WKBW. Sometimes WARM 590 from Scranton, WPOP Hartford, WOWO Fort Wayne and WPTR Albany were audible on those little things.

Like I've been told about the 'serious' pool players of the time did, converging on some unlikely, dumpy pool hall in Manhattan for the serious money stuff, the serious DXers would take to their inside radios -- usually early Monday Mornings.

We had a crew of four DXers. Radios ranged from GE clock-jobs to Pilot Hi-Fi's to Zenith consoles to rabid Emerson table radios that would give you a shock, to the later Lafayette HA-600's and 700's to Atwater Kents to American Bosch's. The AM dial was far clearer then, so we virtually could hear a station on every AM frequency during the course of an early Monday morning. This was possible even though many of the big local NYC stations had their towers in north Jersey and would send a lot of wattage at us so they could claim populous borough of Manhattan.

On those good radios, Radioman, it was normal to hear WSM 650, WMAQ 670, WLW 700, WBBM 780, CKLW 800, WGY 810, WLS 890, CHML 900, and so on .... KMOX 1120, WRVA 1140, WWVA 1170 ..... each night; no problem.
If the frequency was 'open' and the sideband-slop from the NYCers was minimized, we'd hear something.

Off the top of my earphones from back then: WKBW 1520, WBZ 1030 and WOWO 1190 were the three most prominent pop-music stations of those nights to make it to us punks and punkstresses down by what was known at the time as 'Idlewild Airport'.
 
Thanks Steve. I also had a clock radio the first time I noticed that there were several NYC stations immediately adjacent to several Chicago stations, near where I lived . Apparently one night I had the radio facing just the right way to hear the NYC stations. This was so early on that Cousin Brucie wasn't even at WABC yet.
 
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