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As long as we are remembering the past ....

And Raleigh is STILL the most under formatted top 50 market in America.
No Chr/rhythmic, No Alt, No Hot AC (RAL? pretty soft), no Active Rock ( picky, but I'd call 96 Rock Mainstream) and a couple others that escape me at the moment.
 
Man 94Z was the bomb.
I remember they did the Live Aid thing all day one day when I was a 13-14 year old mowing the grass.
They had the jingles and liners and played all the hits. "Aw aw ee ee tookie tookie!" The Tookie Bird would give something away. They had all the reasons to listen that I can remember 20 years later, which no station seems to have today.
 
I think time has a way of magnifying or confusing memories. First off, despite what has offen been mentioned on these boards, WBT-AM was NEVER a top40 or CHR. They made a good run at AC, but that's it. Overwise, in the 60s and 70s, there were only two really excellent top 40s in the Carolinas---WKIX and WAYS. WTOB, WCOG, WAIR, WIST were ok, with special small market mention for WMBL. Also, kudos to WAPE for covering both Carolina's coastal areas with major market Top 40. All the others mentioned, as well as WCOS, WNOK-AM, WQOK, WORD in SC were the pits, with WOOW and the Wilmington stations recieving special mention. But it is true that WGH, "Newport News: serving Norfolk-Portsmouth-Hampton-Chesapeake and Virginia Beach 24 hours a day" was also a great station, and they covered a pretty big piece of NC back in the day....
 
I remember a day in Wilmington when the GM, Engineer and I left 211 North 2nd headed to Greenfield Lake to check out the new WAAV (102.7) tower. The crew was topping it off that morning. When we pulled out the parking lot at the Cape Fear Hotel, you couldn't see the tower ... and we knew something was wrong. A guy wire had broken and the whole thing came down! It was swampy out there across from the lake, and there was a piece of a section of tower sticking out of the ground! When they finally pulled it out, it was two full sections! What a mess! Someone installed a turnbuckle in the cable backwards and when they applied tension, it broke! Tower workers went everywhere! Luckily, no one was seriously injured!

WAAV FM (beautiful music) was a money maker for quite some time. WGNI was on 1340 and had been a pretty consistent leader in Top 40. WHSL did well, too. GNI was more full-service at the time with pretty good local news.
 
Matt, Thanks for the info on Calvin. I'm not sure I wish I could get back into radio anymore. Merry Christmas to all of you.
 
Talk about remembering the past the 94Z Morning Zoo with Gary Dixon and "Tall" Donna Mason was the only thing that got me going in the mornings as a Junior High Schooler and High Schooler they had a great mix of zany patter interspersed with mainstream top 40 and novelty tunes that was always entertaining (at least to my mindset at the time) and probably inspired me as much as anyone to later become a club and mobile DJ later in life. Moreso even than the personalities on WDCG G-105. only exception noted is Keith Ramsey who I played 1 year of HS JV football with. (if you can call what I did playing) Keith showed me the basics of DJing (cueing a record and crossfading between songs with an 80's model Radio shack mixer that had no crossfader only individual channel faders and gave me my first copy of an entire American Top 40 with Shadoe Stevens (on vinyl with the national commercials on it) Keith used to handle the saturday midnight shift at WDCG in the late 80's
 
Does anyone know what happened to Kitty Kinnen? The last I heard she was commuting to the NC beach on weekends to do her "Jazz Brunch".

Thanks,
Stuart
 
I was reading the number of responses to this, and a lot of you like myself
remember those great stations, but we must not forget those AM outlets
that came in at night that set the standards for a lot of those who existed
during this fun period of broadcasting history, like WABC and WNBC in
New York City, and WLS Chicago, also other Eastern North Carolina stations
that many will remember include WGBR in Goldsboro, WEED in Rocky
Mount, and WFNC in Fayetteville when they were 50,000 watts and 940
on the AM dial, my how times have changed!
 
Some more... WGTM, "The Mighty 590"; WVOT "14-V O T", and "Willy" (WLLY). There was some excellent talent at all three stations back in the 60's & 70's. WVOT later morphed into "14K Gold" & then just "14 Gold" and was a good sounding station well into the 80's until a studio fire in 1992 and subsequent flip to all beach music started it's decline.

The less said about GTM & LLY since the early 80's, the better.
 
RobynWattsV2.0 said:
Some more:

WKSI from 1985 to around 1990-91 (afterwards, they've slowly declined until they went Country).

94-Z from 1984 to around 1988. Anyone remember the afternoon they've signed on, G-105 went into full panic mode and started giving away cash out the wazoo on the air ($1,000 per hour I believe).

Radio back then was waaay better due to the simple fact that competition kept everyone on their toes
Robyn
Click to expand...
 
tothedj said:
WFNC in Fayetteville when they were 50,000 watts and 940
on the AM dial, my how times have changed!
Click to expand...
I don't remember WFNC ever being anywhere but 640.

And they still are 50,000 watts during the day.
 
WFNC has been 10kw day / 1kw night (non directional) since they moved to 640 in the mid 80s. Prior to that it was 50 kw day (Non Directional) and 1 kw night on 940 with a pattern designed to protect a station in Canada - the null was so tight you could not hear WFNC at night on Fort Bragg.
 
I remember WFNC had the monthlong little business-card size ad in the Fayetteville paper(s then) that said "940" and the 9 gradually changed to a 6 over a few weeks until people figured out what it was about.
 
quadraphonic said:
I remember WFNC had the monthlong little business-card size ad in the Fayetteville paper(s then) that said "940" and the 9 gradually changed to a 6 over a few weeks until people figured out what it was about.
Click to expand...
I've only been interested in the subject since about 1980. Maybe this happened before that?
 
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