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It was forty years ago today...

passtheword

passtheword

that Birmingham's WSGN dropped its longtime Top 40 programming for an adult standards format known as "Real Music" (IIRC, by this time, WSGN had morphed more to an adult contemporary sound). I remember my dad telling me a few days prior that WSGN would be changing to an easy listening format on Feb. 24. Sort of a bittersweet time for 15 year old me at the time...growing up listening to WSGN's popular music format but also being enamored with my new interest in adult standards music. The adult standards format and WSGN came to an official end a short fourteen months later on 4/26/85 when the station was sold to Katz Broadcasting, owner of WZZK-FM, with 610 becoming WZZK-AM, a zombie simulcast of 104.7 FM.
 
It seems odd that they would purchase an AM just to simulcast. Most of the simulcasting that went on in the 80's occurred with an already co-owned AM/FM.

Is this around the same time that the 610 studios at the transmitter site were vacated?
 
Voicetrack of Reason said:
It seems odd that they would purchase an AM just to simulcast. Most of the simulcasting that went on in the 80's occurred with an already co-owned AM/FM.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that FM didn't become standard in vehicles until either the 1982 or 83 model. At the time, the people who wanted to listen to WZZK but didn't have FM in their vehicles outnumbered the population that had FM in the car. So, buying an AM to simulcast made better sense than it looks today.

My dad gave me his old car when I turned 16 in 1991, and it was a 1981 model. Dad never paid for anything extra. So, AM was all it offered. My dad added a Sparkomatic FM converter around 1986, but it didn't work well. If other FM converters worked similarly, you might as well have just listened to AM. That I didn't have any accidents trying to change stations on that FM converter is a miracle. As a male-bonding project between my junior and senior years of high school, we got rid of the AM radio and converter and put in an AM/FM/cassette stereo.
 
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