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changing history

O

oldtimeradio

I've been thinking about this for a long time, but only recently figured out a way to ask the entire board. One of the stations I used to work at has revised their history on their website, but also (the last I looked) in the Broadcasting Yearbook. The format that was on the station when I was there has been completely wiped away (not mentioned) from its history. Even after writing a letter to the station the history wasn't changed. I did receive a letter thanking me for being a part of the station.

Has anybody else on this board looked at stations they used to work for to see if the history of the station is even mentioned on the website, and if that history is correct?

At this point in time, I do not know if this thread has been mentioned/discussed anywhere else on this board.

Thanks.

Mike
 
Never heard of a station changing their own past history though I guess Buffalo's WKBW-TV may qualify since they did change the meaning of their call letters from "Well Known Bible Witness" to "We Know Buffalo's Watching" some years back.

Of all the stations I have worked at over the years, actually I can't think of any of them that has "history section" on their own sites but their histories is on Wikipedia and yes I have seen some quite a bit of "changing history" there or at least "hiding history".

Back in the mid 90s I was working in the Winchester, Virginia radio market. What started out as a pissed off pre-teenage girl getting upset because a jock at a local Hot AC station ( WFQX ) had forgot to play her request ( The Tag Team's "Whoop There It is" ) ended up several months later, ALL of the local radio stations and Arbitron getting together and all had agreed to throw out the book and start all over the again. In a nutshell the girl started a rumor that the jock had AIDS then the jock wanted to "prove her wrong" only to find out he did have HIV and within no time most of the other jocks got involved, people protested, fighting, people quitting their jobs, pickets, boycotts, etc..it really was a soap opera. Anyway the rumor and the jock's health status went as far as affected the ratings of just about every station in the market.

Over the years I have noticed this bit of history appearing on the various Wikipedia pages of the local radio stations in the market..BUT usually within no time this bit of history gets deleted on their pages as if whoever did the deleting doesn't want people to know what happened even though it has been talked about on DCRTV in the past and back in 2003 the local Winchester Handley Regional Library had an exhibit on the history of the local radio market and some of that exhibit ws about this incident, even showing some of the letters WFQX had received in the mail back in 1995..including one from Missouri..where somebody had sent the station a bunch of razor blades some of which had blood stains on them. Enough to send a chill down the spine.

Anyway as they say..one can't change history but it doesnt stop people from trying.
 
Hm. Maybe this is more a "big city station" would do.

The station I am referencing actually went on the air in 1965, but in the Broadcasting Yearbook they claimed it was three or four years later, and never claimed that they had purchased it from the original owner.

On their website they were a little more truthful except that the station played beautiful music (you know elevator music) not classical music, and that they changed from classical to country, completely leaving out the fact they had a progressive rock format for a year or two.

It just makes it rough for those of us that like to know what radio stations used to do since their inception.

I suppose that since the bean counters control the programming they also need to control the history of the station. I just hope that their creativity in (re)writing history doesn't leak into the way they keep their logs or into their accounting. ;-)

I don't mean to start trouble...I'm just saying.......
 
Mike said:
Hm. Maybe this is more a "big city station" would do.
Click to expand...

Maybe nobody there really knows what the history is or was. And they are unlikely to believe an outsider unlesssome kind of evidence (like copies of pages from Broadcasting) are presented. Or photocopies of pages from Yearbooks at www.americanradiohistory.com
 
I've very rarely seen any broadcaster's websites with a history section. One of them was WISH-TV, which described how the "WISH" empire began with an AM station in the 30s. They however failed to mention that the WISH radio stations were shut down in the early 80s. Of course, by that time, the ownership had split and the WISH radio had become WIRE and WIRE-FM, so perhaps there was no expectation to mention this.

There's lots of cases in small towns where someone put on an AM allotment in the 50s as a young entrepreneur, then an FM with docket 80-90, and has now retired and sold. But the station's history really rests with that founder.
 
Actually, WISH AM/FM became WIFE AM/FM (1310 AM, 107.9 FM). WIRE was always at 1430 until changes were made...whenever they were made. I had moced out back in the seventies ;-)

Mike
 
My former station ran legal IDs and other station identifiers saying that they had been broadcasting since 1947. It was actually 1948 from what I understand, but I wasn't born yet, so what do I know? At any rate, there is nothing about their history on their website. What's more disturbing is that they give the impression that they have been broadcasting under their current format (Christian talk) since then, when in reality, they were a top 40 station in their heyday, and have only been Christian talk since the early '80s. (They have an old top 40 survey framed and hanging on the wall there, and I found a few more on the internet which I also framed and hung on the walls there.)

Another station once gave the impression that one of their (former) employees had been there since 1981. He had originally been hired in 1981, but had not been there continuously since then.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
I've very rarely seen any broadcaster's websites with a history section. One of them was WISH-TV, which described how the "WISH" empire began with an AM station in the 30s. They however failed to mention that the WISH radio stations were shut down in the early 80s. Of course, by that time, the ownership had split and the WISH radio had become WIRE and WIRE-FM, so perhaps there was no expectation to mention this.
Click to expand...

WISH AM 1310 went on the air in 1941. WISH-TV Channel 8 started in 1954 (ABC primary until 1956, CBS thereafter). I forget when WISH-FM 107.9 went on the air, but my guess is somewhere around 1960.

WISH sold the AM and FM stations to Don Burden in 1963, who changed the calls to WIFE AM-FM, although I believe there was another short-lived callsign for a few weeks in '63 (I forget what it was). Burden lost the licenses in 1976. I don't believe AM 1310 ever went silent, but the FM was off the air until 1984.
 
Mike said:
According to the book: "From Crystal to Color WFBM," WIFE-FM went on the air in 1961, WFBM-FM in 1959, WAIV in 1961, WFMS in 1957, and WIBC-FM in 1960.

See typical radio and TV schedules at: http://broadcasting101.ws/skeds.htm
Don Burden loses Radio Stations: http://broadcasting101.ws/donburden.htm
The rest of the contents: http://broadcasting101.ws/index2.htm ;-)

Thanks.

Mike
Click to expand...
Thanks for the url listings.
Takes me back. I wonder if Bill Baker was still doing the drive time in '62?
Used to ride my bike up to Glendale Shopping Center in the late 50's to watch Easy Gwynn do his show from the mini-studio, then we would walk over to the Glendale hobby shop followed by a viit to Roderick St. John's to look at the trad clothng we couldn't afford.
I had forgotten that Dick Summer had come back to Indy and WISH,. Of course, by then we were all listening to Dick Biondi and WLS and didn't notice.
 
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