I am curious to know if Sklar is the programmer at WABC that hired Chuck Leonard?
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Rick Sklar hired Chuck Leonard?
- Thread starter chuckmcmillan
- Start date
Yes. (However, Dan Ingram recommended to Rick that he consider Chuck when the shift opened up*.)
* Two slots opened in short order. One was when Bob Dayton was fired, and that was filled by Ron Lundy. The other was after Scott Muni was let go and Bruce Morrow was moved into the earlier evening slot, which opened up his old pre-midnight slot, which is what Chuck was hired to fill. Sklar's book discussed all this.
Thanks a lot, Weiserguy.
WMCA played, in general, more new music than WABC. The playlist was longer, they enjoyed breaking new records, and some of that was soul and R&B. WABC was more conservative in their music selection and had a tighter playlist.
But in order to do a true apples-to-apples comparison, you need to look at the difference in their signals. WABC was this big, honkin' 50,000 watt signal that covered *everywhere*. (Given the right atmospheric conditions, WABC could be received in as many as 38 of the 48 continental states.) WMCA was a low-end-of-the-dial directional station, which aimed its signal into the five boroughs and immediate surrounding areas, but was at a disadvantage to the west and south. So they had to program for the areas they covered, and that population, so they competed not only with WABC, but to an extent WWRL. Hence their greater emphasis on R&B/Soul music than WABC.
I don't know if hiring Chuck increased WABC's ethnic audience. But he was a great disc jockey, and it sure didn't hurt. And while the crossover audience that also listened to 'RL probably knew he had previously worked there, a lot of "white" listeners probably didn't even realize Chuck was black until they saw a photo of him on one of the WABC handout surveys. (I used to work at a Sam Goody back in the day, and we often had a stack of their surveys in the area where we sold the 45's. WMCA's too.)
WMCA did eventually hire Frankie Crocker, but by 1969 it was too little too late. The loss of longtime jocks, the hiring of the wrong replacement jocks, a new program director who was a bad match for the market, the "unburdening" of WABC's programming by ABC corporate management, the desire of WMCA's owner to program a talk station for adults instead of pop music for (as R. Peter Straus saw it) kids, the maturation of pop music happening in the late '60s, and the success of WOR-FM all contributed to WMCA's decline and downfall. And they could have had the entire air staff be Frankie Crocker and it probably not have made any difference.
They also had fewer commercials than WABC, and they had no network obligations forced on them by corporate. For example, The Breakfast Club from Chicago or Speaking of Sports with Howard Cosell. Sklar hated those network shows and lobbied to get rid of them as his star rose in the company.
Absolutely agree about The Breakfast Club. It was already an anachronism on the day WABC launched in December 1960. (I remember hearing it as a kid on some snow day or school holiday and thinking, "What is this sh!t?") But Cosell was a little different. (a) Howard was entertaining, (b) it was a short - 3 or 4 minutes - feature, and (c) it aired during Ingram's show, and gave him a lot of fodder to play off of. It was hilarious stream-of-consciousness humor. Some of the outtakes that Dan used as drops are still classic.
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