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1490 WBCB "Joe Ference"

T

TalkerDude

Guest
In this day and age of automation and radio not caring about having air personalities being on the air 24/7 you must give major props to 1490 WBCB. They have live jocks on the air 24/7 and care about the community they serve. However, it is some of the jocks who work on these type of stations that do nothing but promote switching to automation. If anybody needs an example of just how bad these DJ's can be tune into 1490 WBCB tonight after 7 PM. You will hear Joe Ference and the Sunday night dance show on 1490 WBCB. Every break is the same and he always says "here at the B." Levittown is still in the city grade contour of B101 why would anybody say "here at the B" and have a major FM in hist market have the same name. I get really annoyed when DJ's on in small markets don't take the shift they have seriously and prevent people from being groomed. What's wrong with radio, I don't think Satellite and the IPOD are as bad as some of the small market jocks like Joe Ference who are on the air and just don't take it seriously.

Just My Thoughts!
 
>> Every break is
the same and he always says "here at the B." Levittown is
still in the city grade contour of B101 why would anybody
say "here at the B" and have a major FM in hist market have
the same name. >>

WBCB was around way before WDVR/WEAZ became WBEB, so they could claim the "B" name first. A few years ago WGPA in Bethlehem was "Sunny 1100" and WLEV started calling itself "Sunny 100.7" and they co-existed for a time.

Local stations have "local" talent because that's what they can afford. BCB has some good, some bad, some mid-range talent as suburban stations always have. Some have been around for years - Brooke St. Ives & Ramona Matthews were on Trenton's "Double T 93" country back in the 80's. But unlike most others they're still live & local 24/7, and deserve credit for not selling out to some corporate group or narrowcast. Remember when WNAR and WBUX were true suburban stations? WBCB still has classic country, standards, oldies, polkas, & Irv Homer - talk about radio exiles! So what if the legal ID Sunday mornings is "You're listening to WBCB, 1490, yours truly Bill Melody comin' at you from Levittown, Fairless Hills, Trenton or on the internet at dubya dubya dubya dot wbcb dot com" - at least it's still real local radio! Thanks Merryl!
 
Oh My God!!!!!!! Ask 100 people what the B is and they will say B101. Not WBCB! Even on Magnolia Drive.
 
Local Radio - Just A Chance to Express Yourself

Outside of the "radio geek" community, and those people in local government and in local service organizations who want to get on the radio, nobody cares if it's local. Most people who work in local radio at some point in their careers get themselves out at the first opporunity. Many on-air people are individuals with real day jobs for whom local radio is a hobby. For most people who own local radio stations, it's also a hobby. There may be a small core group of listeners and advertisers but most people in (fill in the blank here - lower Bucks in this case) are listening to big city radio.

Why is that? Mostly because most local radio is not very good. That is not so much because of the level of talent but because people in local radio (air talent and owners) are not as concerned with attracting and serving a talent but with doing what they want (again, local radio - as Dave Clarity used to say - is a hobby). And not to worry about anyone selling out: The major corporate owners aren't interested in buying.

Sorry. Good trumps local in radio.

>
> WBCB was around way before WDVR/WEAZ became WBEB, so they
> could claim the "B" name first. A few years ago WGPA in
> Bethlehem was "Sunny 1100" and WLEV started calling itself
> "Sunny 100.7" and they co-existed for a time.
>
> Local stations have "local" talent because that's what they
> can afford. BCB has some good, some bad, some mid-range
> talent as suburban stations always have. Some have been
> around for years - Brooke St. Ives & Ramona Matthews were on
> Trenton's "Double T 93" country back in the 80's. But
> unlike most others they're still live & local 24/7, and
> deserve credit for not selling out to some corporate group
> or narrowcast. Remember when WNAR and WBUX were true
> suburban stations? WBCB still has classic country,
> standards, oldies, polkas, & Irv Homer - talk about radio
> exiles! So what if the legal ID Sunday mornings is "You're
> listening to WBCB, 1490, yours truly Bill Melody comin' at
> you from Levittown, Fairless Hills, Trenton or on the
> internet at dubya dubya dubya dot wbcb dot com" - at least
> it's still real local radio! Thanks Merryl!
>
 
I tuned them in by mistake Wednesday afternoon and they were playing oldies, I thought they would be a bit different, BUT, it was the same worn out Soul, R&B and Motown, in the clone of all the other Philly oldies stations, past, present and probably future. With the exception of WCAU-FM, Solid Gold Radio, under the guidance of the Great Diamond Jim.
 
> I tuned them in by mistake Wednesday afternoon and they were
> playing oldies, I thought they would be a bit different,
> BUT, it was the same worn out Soul, R&B and Motown, in the
> clone of all the other Philly oldies stations, past, present
> and probably future. With the exception of WCAU-FM, Solid
> Gold Radio, under the guidance of the Great Diamond Jim.
>

Then you missed 95PEN circa 1975-76, all nationally charted pop songs from 1956-1963. A great sounding station, but not accepted well, finally adding Joe Niagara, Hy Lit (briefly), current songs, and more of a "Philadelphia" sound before they went to the standards format.

My memories of WCAU-FM are of a canned sounding 'oldies' station with more current "future golds" than oldies, more what would pass for AC today. By comparison at the time I was in college and could listen to the early years of WCBS-FM which sounded much better in my memory. Maybe at the time I was more into Hyski's Underground & early WMMR, but my memories of CAU were song, jingle, song, etc. and not much talk from the jocks. Was there a time they sounded more live and uptempo?

WBCB plays all kinds of music at different hours. I especially like the morning drive Wednesdays "Radio Ranch" with a good dose of real classic country, Ernest Tubb, Marty Robbins, etc. (also Saturday afternoons & Sunday mornings). Not many other commercial stations will play ET's "Driftwood on the River of Regret" in morning rush, but I heard it last week!
 
You should hear the show now he is calling it club BCB and then playing Berl Ives.
 
Whoever that was on WBCB who referred to the station as " The B" should have been instructed not to. When WBCB first went on the air in 1957, the station called itself " The Big B", and continued making references to itself as The Big B almost into the '70s.

I wanted to add my comments about WCAU-FM to this thread,because I spent a year there doing evenings, when they moved Joe Niagara to Mornings. WCAU-FM was hampered by a lot of intervention from CBS ownership in New York, and its " Tiffany network" attitude which treated the FM division as the ugly step-sister, and every other entity as Cinderella. WCAU-FM launched in September 1970 totally automated, and in mono.

By 1972, CBS built studios for WCAU-FM and went Stereo ( for months, Nettleton and Wade did their shows from makeshift studios in a trailer in the WCAU parking lot), ultimately adding more automated and live voices. I was part of the last wave of hires at WCAU-FM, replacing Long John Wade. At the time, there was to be a 6-10PM hire and a late-nite person. When Kris Chandler became available, they created a mid-morning slot for him, and changed my shift to 7-12Midnight. The jocks at WCAU-FM were designated " per diem" employees, none of the GMs of the CBS FM Stations were vice-presidents at the time. I was there from Summer '74 to Summer '75, and during that time they changed the format of WCAU-AM twice...firstly to a more personality talk format featuring former Top 40 jocks, like John Wade and Dick Clayton...then the decision to take WCAU into head to head battle with KYW as an all news station.

WCAU-FM was playing a wide spectrum of music from MOR sounding fifties titles to Future Gold. When WPEN AM/FM debuted in March '75, WCAU-FM tightened up its act, refloated its " Oldies Authority" moniker, and recorded an all new jingle package from Sundance Productions. Until several changes of the guard in New York, CBS didn't get FM Radio until almost 1980. Nettleton worked very hard under some very adverse conditions for any Program Director.
 
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