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Atlanta Radio Dial 1966-1967

jabba17

jabba17

From 1966 and 1967 AJCs:

WPLO 590 Country
WSB 750 Popular (NBC)
WQXI 790 Top 40
WERD 860 R&B/Jazz
WGST 920 Popular (ABC)
WIIN 970 Popular
WGUN 1010 Country (Mutual)
WBIE 1080 Standards (CBS)
WGKA 1190 Classical
WFOM 1230 Top 40
WTJH 1260 Country
WOMN 1310 Popular
WIGO 1340 R&B
WAOK 1380 R&B
WAVO 1430 Religious
WYZE 1480 Town & Country
WYNX 1550 Town & Country
WAIA 1570 Country (became Top 40 WBAD in 1967)

WABE 90.1 Educational
WGKA 92.9 Classical
WKXI 94.1 Finance
WAVO 94.9 Religious
WKLS 96.1 Standards (Stereo)
WSB 98.5 Popular (Stereo)
WLTA 99.7 Standards (Stereo)
WBIE 101.5 Standards
WPLO 103.3 Popular

By my reckoning, only 6 AM stations and 2 FM stations have the same call letters today. Not counting call letter moves, like WPLO, WGKA, or WGST.
 
94.1 was finance??????? Really? Was that even a format in 1966?

I wouldn't know, I was interning at 1010 WINS, so maybe it actually was.


4 were Standards.

6 were Popular (which I assume is what Scott Shannon plays on TOC and WLS, currently.)
 
WKXI mixed financial updates with instrumental versions of popular hits like the Hollyridge Strings covering Beatles hits as well as popular instrumentals of the day like Herb Alpert's TJB, Brasil 66, etc. It was a pretty cool format; not Top 40, not Standards... more like contemporay elevator music. ;) They were also the Atlanta Falcons first FM flagship.
 
The AJC used the term "Standards" to refer to Beautiful Music almost up until the demise of the format in ATL. They may have switched to calling it BM when Peach was the only holdout.

"Popular" is what used to be called "Middle of the Road" or MOR, more or less the same as a soft AC but without the ostensible emphasis on contemporary songs (although many ACs play 20-40 year old stuff today, too). That's what WSB AM played back in the early 70s.

It appears that all of the commercial FM stations were BM or classical at some point (not sure about WPLO-FM; they were the first AOR station in ATL, predating 96 Rock by a few years). The question is whether or not they were all that format at the same time. IIRC WBIE-FM went country the next year, in 1968. WGKA flipped to top 40 WZGC in the very early 1970s, as did WKXI to WQXI-FM (94Q). WKLS, of course, became 96 Rock in 1974. WLTA flipped to AC in 1980 or so, WSB-FM a few years later, and Peach a few years after that. When did WAVO-FM (AVOndale Estates, the original city of license of the AM side) get sold and flipped to Peach?

When did the FM no-simulcast rule kick in? I wonder if WSB-FM, WAVO-FM, and WBIE-FM were simuling their AM sides? Is that what pushed WSB-FM and WAVO-FM to BM and WBIE-FM to country?

The WPBC (WAVO) studio, transmitter, and array in Scottdale next to I-285 and the apartments where the Softball Country Club used to be had a sign that outlasted the WAVO calls. You could even see where the "94.9 MC" was blacked out, leaving "1430 KC", after the FM side was sold off.

Also interesting is how the AJC described urban stations over time--going from "R&B" to "Soul" to "Black" to "Urban".

"Town & Country" was used to differentiate more urbane/contemporary country stations from more bluegrassy, "cornpone" stations. WPLO was a pioneer of the T&C format and I am not sure why they aren't listed as such here.
 
jabba17 said:
From 1966 and 1967 AJCs:

WPLO 590 Country
WSB 750 Popular (NBC)
WQXI 790 Top 40
WERD 860 R&B/Jazz
WGST 920 Popular (ABC)
WIIN 970 Popular
WGUN 1010 Country (Mutual)
WBIE 1080 Standards (CBS)
WGKA 1190 Classical
WFOM 1230 Top 40
WTJH 1260 Country
WOMN 1310 Popular
WIGO 1340 R&B
WAOK 1380 R&B
WAVO 1430 Religious
WYZE 1480 Town & Country
WYNX 1550 Town & Country
WAIA 1570 Country (became Top 40 WBAD in 1967)

WABE 90.1 Educational
WGKA 92.9 Classical
WKXI 94.1 Finance
WAVO 94.9 Religious
WKLS 96.1 Standards (Stereo)
WSB 98.5 Popular (Stereo)
WLTA 99.7 Standards (Stereo)
WBIE 101.5 Standards
WPLO 103.3 Popular

By my reckoning, only 6 AM stations and 2 FM stations have the same call letters today. Not counting call letter moves, like WPLO, WGKA, or WGST.
Click to expand...
jabba17 said:
The AJC used the term "Standards" to refer to Beautiful Music almost up until the demise of the format in ATL. They may have switched to calling it BM when Peach was the only holdout.

"Popular" is what used to be called "Middle of the Road" or MOR, more or less the same as a soft AC but without the ostensible emphasis on contemporary songs (although many ACs play 20-40 year old stuff today, too). That's what WSB AM played back in the early 70s.

It appears that all of the commercial FM stations were BM or classical at some point (not sure about WPLO-FM; they were the first AOR station in ATL, predating 96 Rock by a few years). The question is whether or not they were all that format at the same time. IIRC WBIE-FM went country the next year, in 1968. WGKA flipped to top 40 WZGC in the very early 1970s, as did WKXI to WQXI-FM (94Q). WKLS, of course, became 96 Rock in 1974. WLTA flipped to AC in 1980 or so, WSB-FM a few years later, and Peach a few years after that. When did WAVO-FM (AVOndale Estates, the original city of license of the AM side) get sold and flipped to Peach?

When did the FM no-simulcast rule kick in? I wonder if WSB-FM, WAVO-FM, and WBIE-FM were simuling their AM sides? Is that what pushed WSB-FM and WAVO-FM to BM and WBIE-FM to country?

The WPBC (WAVO) studio, transmitter, and array in Scottdale next to I-285 and the apartments where the Softball Country Club used to be had a sign that outlasted the WAVO calls. You could even see where the "94.9 MC" was blacked out, leaving "1430 KC", after the FM side was sold off.

Also interesting is how the AJC described urban stations over time--going from "R&B" to "Soul" to "Black" to "Urban".

"Town & Country" was used to differentiate more urbane/contemporary country stations from more bluegrassy, "cornpone" stations. WPLO was a pioneer of the T&C format and I am not sure why they aren't listed as such here.
Click to expand...
jabba17, to answer one of your questions, it was 94.9 FM WAVQ, not O, that got sold in 1977. Therefore, flipping from being a Christian station to beautiful music & easy listening. They did adopt the WPCH calls at the time of that flip. Then they flipped to AC in 1983, but didn't adopt the Peach name until 1991. You're right about 94.9 on the fact it was sister station to WAVO 1420 AM, not 30, now known as present-day WATB. In speaking of WATB, according to Wikipedia, WATB 1420 has been issued a construction permit from the FCC to move up the dial from 1420 to 1430. More details are at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WATB. That is all.
 
AMFMRadFan said:
jabba17, to answer one of your questions, it was 94.9 FM WAVQ, not O, that got sold in 1977. Therefore, flipping from being a Christian station to beautiful music & easy listening. They did adopt the WPCH calls at the time of that flip. Then they flipped to AC in 1983, but didn't adopt the Peach name until 1991. You're right about 94.9 on the fact it was sister station to WAVO 1420 AM, not 30, now known as present-day WATB. In speaking of WATB, according to Wikipedia, WATB 1420 has been issued a construction permit from the FCC to move up the dial from 1420 to 1430. More details are at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WATB. That is all.
Click to expand...
I knew the FM side of WAVO was originally WAVQ, but that's how the AJC had it, both years. I was honestly surprised to see that they had the FM side listed as WAVO (and not WAVQ) but they had the FM side of WQXI as WKXI.

Side question: Why did WAVO and WQXI adopt different calls for their FM sides, but WSB, WPLO, and WBIE did not? Or did they and then change them to the heritage AM calls the first chance they got?

Thank you for the corrections on WATB and the 1420. For some reason I always forget 1420's present-day calls. I was reading a scan of the AJC and between the quality of the scan and the quality of my eyesight...well you know how that goes. I might have also had the WATB CP in the back of my mind when deciphering the scan.

I do remember that WPCH was using the Peach moniker back in the BM days. They would announce something like "W-P-C-H. Peach. FM 95. Relaxing!" They also had BM at least part of the day (overnights?) as late as 1985.
 
I'm trusting the failing memory of an old man, but I think FCC rules at the time did not allow WQXI AM and WKXI FM to have the same calls because they had different cities of license (The FM was licensed to Smyrna, the AM to Atlanta). That rule was relaxed later, at which time 94.1 became WQXI FM. I know because by 1971 the WKXI calls were freed up, and I adopted them on an FM I owned in Jackson Miss.

I was in Atlanta in 1967, and would mention that one station was missing from the above list ... WACX 1600 Austell country.

I was surprised to find that despite the market having so many AM signals, I couldn't understand why so many of them were daytimers. And because of bad ground conductivity and bad DA patterns, some of the signals at night didn't cover much of the city.

The several easy listening FMs were similar except that WKLS had more big band music than the others. The previous description of WKXI FM (business news and instrumental versions of top 40 music) is accurate.
 
And 1570 in the summer of 67 was indeed WBAD... but I wouldn't call it top 40 ... it was more like what we back then called psychedelic or underground rock
 
jabba17 said:
Why did WAVO and WQXI adopt different calls for their FM sides, but WSB, WPLO, and WBIE did not?
Click to expand...

It had to do with the city of license. At the time, your FM must have the same city of license as your AM to use the AM calls with the "FM" suffix. WQXI was licensed to Atlanta...WKXI to Smryna. WAVO was licensed to Avondale Estates...WAVQ to Atlanta. WSB/WSB-FM and WPLO/WPLO-FM were Atlanta all the way, with WBIE/WBIE-FM both licensed to Marietta.

There were also very specific rules about identifying the city of license. In those days, you could NOT say "WTJH, East Point-Atlanta". In fact, many applications for dual-city licenses were denied to prevent confusion. The first relaxation occurred in 1983, with the ability to add additional communities to the legal ID. If AM, you must put a 5 mV/m signal over the communities you added...70 dBu with FM. Today, of course, you can say "WCEH, Hawkinsville-Norfolk-Beaumont" if it will tickle her fancy. Ask her permission before you attempt to do so would be my advice.
 
sportsradiofan said:
When did Mr.Wilder switch WBIE to country?
Click to expand...

According to Marshall Leach (RIP) and the AJC it was 1968, at least on the FM side. It looks like the rest of the dial stayed the same, except for WGKA-FM flipping from classical (to what?) and some of the smaller country AMs adding gospel. WABE added stereo.

http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~mleach/radio/warp/1968.html
 
And although WGUN and WTJH were listed as country in this time frame, their actual formats were a mixture of country with some significant blocks of paid religion (then known as "preacher tapes").
 
J Alex Bowab said:
I was in Atlanta in 1967, and would mention that one station was missing from the above list ... WACX 1600 Austell country.
Click to expand...
The old AJC "Radio Dial" was inconsistent in what they called an ATL station. I remember in the early 80s, they would include 105.5 WCHK in Canton but not WWID 106.7 (which you could receive over much the metro even before they moved in) or WFOX in Gainesville.
 
jabba17 said:
sportsradiofan said:
When did Mr.Wilder switch WBIE to country?
Click to expand...

According to Marshall Leach (RIP) and the AJC it was 1968, at least on the FM side. It looks like the rest of the dial stayed the same, except for WGKA-FM flipping from classical (to what?) and some of the smaller country AMs adding gospel. WABE added stereo.

http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~mleach/radio/warp/1968.html
Click to expand...
Other changes included WRNG 680 taking to the air as ATL's first talk station, WPLO-FM flipping from MOR to Top 40, WKXI changing calls to WQXI-FM, WERD flipping from R&B to gospel, WACX 1600 signing on, and WGKA-AM flipping to MOR.
 
I remember WRNG coming on the air... mid to late 1967, known as RING radio, owned by Smithgall broadcasting, owner of several other Ga stations... it was a 25 kw daytimer... ads in the newspaper showed a phone booth, accentuating its telephone-talk format.

Back to an earlier comment I made about the availability of night signals on AM in 1967 ... 590 and 750 had no problems... 920 was non DA but only 1 kw nite... 790 dropped to 1 kw DA night ... 1380 had a horrid DA pattern that made it inaudible anywhere north of downtown ... 1340 and 1230 were class IV signals that didn't do much. Cities much smaller than Atlanta had more nighttime AM signals... between that and the terrible ground conductivity, it's no wonder that the audience migrated to FM sooner than it did in other cities.
 
Yes, Atlanta and Washington, DC apparently sneaked out for a smoking break at the FCC AM allocations meeting. Both really got the short end of the stick, and both were the leaders in the move to FM.
 
I remember Radio Shack pushing cheap AM radios as gifts--the old "Flavoradios" and the like. Nobody in ATL wanted one, since all you could reliably pick up was WSB and maybe WPLO, WGST, and WQXI when the sun was up. Everything else was hit or miss. Radio Shack couldn't figure out that nobody in ATL wanted an AM-only radio.
 
J Alex Bowab said:
I remember WRNG coming on the air... mid to late 1967, known as RING radio, owned by Smithgall broadcasting, owner of several other Ga stations...
Click to expand...
I Googled "Ring Radio" and found an FCC listing of radio, cell, etc. towers in Norcross. One of the towers in the 8-tower WCNN array is listed as being owned by Dickey Broadcasting, and the other 7 as being owned by Ring Radio Company.

There's a great aircheck of Neal Boortz on the GRHOF website signing off WRNG in its daytimer days, complete with the "Ring Radio Company" statement of ownership.
 
Other changes included WRNG 680 taking to the air as ATL's first talk station, WPLO-FM flipping from MOR to Top 40, WKXI changing calls to WQXI-FM, WERD flipping from R&B to gospel, WACX 1600 signing on, and WGKA-AM flipping to MOR.
Click to expand...
WGKA signed on at 1600 as an Atlanta station in 1955. They moved to 1190 in 1967, and WACX signed on in 1968 as an Austell station.
 
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