Just was curious, did the doo wop shop own Sunday nights, I can remember visiting my cousin in the summer of 1976, walking down Flatbush Avenue at night (before you needed a bullet proof vest lol) and every and I mean every pizzeria, steak shop and deli had Don K Reed blasting in their eateries, unbelievable.
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doo wop shop ratings
- Thread starter wibgradio99
- Start date
The question is whether anyone has Saturday night ratings from that era. While many publications showed the major M-F daypart breakouts, none showed weekend dayparts, particularly Saturday night and Sunday night which were the lowest usage times of the week.
It certainly would be interesting to see if any such ratings have been preserved. You might ask on the unaffiliated New York radio board, which goes into much more depth than we do; New York Broadcasting History Board
Thank you for the help, being from Philly and just visiting Brooklyn, I did not know if there were any other specialty shows on Sunday nights to compare them to, but if you go by the eateries and shops, the show had to be popular, the music of the shop spanned the black, white and hispanic audience, so I would not think many of these listeners tuned in cbs-fm at any other time..
Here is an interesting question; Doo Wop was not popular in Puerto Rico itself. I'd be curious to know if the New York Puerto Rican community, most of which formed in the 50's and 60's, acquired a taste for it and listened to that music when it was new.
Don and I were friends since I was his production assistant at WLIR in 1970. I used to occasionally meet up with him at CBS and hang during his weeknight shows. (Though not on Doo Wop Sundays, he juggled too much those nights.)
He once told me, over pizza, that the Doo Wop Shop was the highest rated, most listened to radio show in the New York City market on Sunday nights. Not some narrow demo, not just in Brooklyn, Most Listened To, Period, full stop. He worked 5 or 6 shifts a week, but the Doo Wop Shop was his baby, and he was very proud of its success. So what you write is totally believable.
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My suspicion is yes, younger Puerto Ricans enjoyed the authentic doo-wop as much as most other kids in the later 50's and early 60's. Adults not so much, just like their non-hispanic counterparts. It wasn't cultural as much as generational.
I know many doo wop groups consisted of all Puerto Rican singers from the tri state area, one that comes to mind were the VanDykes.
There were two Puerto Rican members in a major Doo-Wop group - Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers, plus there were a number of other Doo-Wop groups in and around the NYC area that had Puerto Rican members.
Don K. Reed's Doo-Wop shop was GREAT on CBS-FM!!!
I was not living in the NYC area at the time it was on CBS-FM but I had family & friends in NJ that occasionally would record the show for me and ship the "old fashion cassette tapes" to me.
Don did a great job on that show.
Al
Don K. Reed's Doo-Wop shop was GREAT on CBS-FM!!!
I was not living in the NYC area at the time it was on CBS-FM but I had family & friends in NJ that occasionally would record the show for me and ship the "old fashion cassette tapes" to me.
Don did a great job on that show.
Al
My good friend who lives in Brooklyn brought me over a few shows tonight, he taped from the summer of 1970, the host was Gus Gossert, don't know if I spelled it right but it was a Sunday night doo wop show on yes WCBS-FM. He was a good jock real laid back and the variety of the music was fantastic. This was before DKR I dont even think WCBS-FM was oldies then, did DKR get the idea from him, was he even a full time jock on the station. I know here in Philly WCAU-FM started playing oldies in 1971 and WCBS-FM came later after the success of solid gold radio 98.
Yes, you spelled Gossert's name right. He was the PD at WCBS-FM in 1970 and part of '71 when they were doing a pseudo-progressive format. It was much of the same AOR-style music that you'd hear on many FM's at the time (Moody Blues, Blood Sweat & Tears, Simon & Garfunkel, etc.) but more tightly formatted than WNEW-FM or WABC-FM at the time. Gossert gave himself Sunday evenings, and counter-programmed with a doo-wop show. But it was not called The Doo-Wop Shop back then.
Gossert had a problem with drugs, and eventually that got him fired from CBS. He moved over to WPIX for awhile, and I recall him also doing doo-wops on a weekend evening, I think Sundays (though not exactly sure). Eventually he moved down South to another market, and had a tragic early death that I don't think was ever solved. Speculation was that it was a drug deal gone bad, but that's as much as I know.
As I wrote in an earlier post (#5), in the summer of 1970 Don K. Reed was still doing the morning shift at WLIR in Garden City/Hempstead, Long Island. We had just switched formats from, what I can generously call "All Over The Road", to album rock. I was his production assistant during AM Drive, though his shift continued till noon. He wouldn't get hired at CBS-FM until December '71.
Initially he did weekends and fill-ins. In May '72, the staff was told of plans to dump the pseudo-progressive and change format to oldies. (That decision *might* have been a result of WCAU-FM's success in Philly.) The early evening jock got offended, expressed his displeasure on the air and was summarily fired. Don was asked to fill in until the new format launched in early July, and in the personnel shuffle he got a fulltime slot in late evenings, M-F 10pm-1am or 10p-2a, something like that, plus one weekend shift.
One of the other jocks who got hired was Norm N. Nite from Cleveland, and he did early evenings Sun-Fri. He started calling the Sunday evening show The Nite Train, and heavily featured doo-wop and group harmony music (which at the time was only 10-20 years old). A couple of years into his stint, he moved to WNBC, and Don was asked (by then-PD Bill Brown) to move to Sunday evening and do a similar show. But for obvious reasons, CBS-FM couldn't continue to use the Nite Train name, which is when the Doo-Wop Shop was coined. The music was more tightly focused on New York area groups, Don started featuring (and sometimes interviewing) singers and groups, and the program lasted for 28 years until CBS started phasing out all their specialty shows. And in an incredible irony, they got so much blowback from cancelling Doo-Wop Shop that management created a new show, originating from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, hosted by ... Norm N. Nite. That lasted until June 2005, when the whole shootin' match got blown out in a genius move by CBS management, turning CBS-FM into a "Jack" station.
thanks for the info, your a wealth of knowledge, I still could never understand why they pulled the plug on WCAU-FM to Disco late 75, with a 4.2 share, when WCBS-FM kept going, the Disco format never reached a 2.0. Maybe the competition from WPEN, which folded years later had something to do with it, who knows. The Geator on Sunday nights was our answer to the shop but never came close lol.
Quick question did DKR every play Whenever a Teenager Cries by Reperada and the Delrons a big NYC hit, on the shop, they were a local girl group some consider this song as early female doo wop, if not was it ever played on CBS-FM during their regular broadcast day. I did here it on WCAU-FM when they were solid gold radio.
I think it's a safe bet that he played it once in a while.
Can I swear to it? One particular song, over a 33 year run on an oldies station that had thousands of songs in its record library, and abandoned oldies 18 years ago? No way to be sure after all these years.
>>>>Quick question did DKR every play Whenever a Teenager Cries by Reperada and the Delrons a big NYC hit, on the shop
It's a pretty safe bet it was played although I couldn't swear to it either.
Reparata and The Delrons were live in studio guests on "The Doo Wop Shop" several times including:
7/4/82 - WCBS-FM 10th Anniversary Special Live from Romeo and Juliets in Brooklyn, NY
11/28/82 - WCBS-FM New York City Artists Weekend along with guests The Belmonts and Johnny and Joe
1/5/86
1/24/88
The song did not appear on the Top 101 Doo Wop Songs list.
It's a pretty safe bet it was played although I couldn't swear to it either.
Reparata and The Delrons were live in studio guests on "The Doo Wop Shop" several times including:
7/4/82 - WCBS-FM 10th Anniversary Special Live from Romeo and Juliets in Brooklyn, NY
11/28/82 - WCBS-FM New York City Artists Weekend along with guests The Belmonts and Johnny and Joe
1/5/86
1/24/88
The song did not appear on the Top 101 Doo Wop Songs list.
... where it immediately got better 25-54 sales numbers than the oldies format.
They only switched to classic hits later after seeing what some adjustments to their Philadelphia oldies station did in the tests of the PPM in that market.
The mid 1970s battle between WCAU FM and WPEN was likely the last time an AM emerged as the victor and survivor.
I remember WPEN (95 PEN) they sounded great back in the mid 70's, with the oldie format they had.
The only problem was after PEN beat CAU by a small fraction and were the only game in town they shafted the loyal audience and inched away from the oldies format and went adult contemporary.
That "loyal audience" had become so old that even local direct accounts did not buy on the station. A "loyal audience" that no advertisers want to reach means that a station has to change format.
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