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Great All-Night Shows

S

Santa fe

A recent thread mentioning station overnight sign offs got me thinking about when I was a kid in the summer of 1966 and I would sometimes get up before dawn, grab my little Panasonic AM radio and earplug, go downstairs in the quiet house, sit in the easy chair by the front window and listen to the all-night shows as they gave way to the mornings shows.
This is all from memory, so here goes: Back then, WGAR 1220 signed off every night at 1AM and back on at 530AM, all the other major stations were 24 hours. There was Rick Shaw on WHK, Bobby Magic on WIXY (I think he had that shift the entire time WIXY existed), Jim Gallant on WKYC and Dave Hawthorne playing Jazz on WJW. Gary Short did a live alI night local call in show on WERE, but I'm not sure if that was in 1966. I don't recall who was on WJMO or CKLW. There were almost no commercials overnight, unlike today where they seem to have as many as in drive-time.
And they would hand off to the morning shows: Emperor Joe Mayer on WHK, Al Gates on WIXY, Charlie and Harrigan on WKYC, Ed Fisher on WJW and WGAR would sign back on with Tom Armstrong.
Great memories and great shows!
 
Bill Mack on WBAP. All night trucking show. WBAP had a reach over most of the western US at that time. I was just a kid at that time riding with my Grandfather who drove a Kenworth. Long before tattler boxes and CB was the primary form of communication. And remember listing to 820 at a truck stop in far west Texas.
 
When Pete Franklin was at WERE, after his Sportsline show, he did another show called After Hours. I don't know if it went all night or just until the wee hours. Also, in the late 60s/early 70s, Norm N. Nite did an overnight show called Nite Train on WHK.
 
Some of the all-night good music shows were legendary: the Music 'Til Dawn franchise sponsored by American Airlines on WCBS, WBBM, KCBS, WWL and a bunch of other stations, some CBS, some not, with individual hosts playing the same music; Franklyn MacCormack with music and poetry on WGN's Meister Brau All-Night Showcase; John McCormick – "the man who walks and talks at midnight" on, as he would say, "the 50 thousand red-hot watts of KMOX, St. Louis"; Jay Roberts on WJR Detroit with NightFlight 760 (which evolved from Music 'Til Dawn, keeping the all-night flight motif); Franklin Hobbs and Hobbs' House on WCCO in the Twin Cities; and the syndicated-via-tape Dolly Holiday show on a bunch of stations, notably KOA Denver and WBT Charlotte.

Today, I can't think of any similar shows on the 50 kW blowtorches beyond the All-Night Jukebox on CFZM 740 Toronto. (WGN does run a Sinatra-oriented show late on Saturday nights, but it's not an all-nighter.)
 
I can't tell you much about Cleveland in 1966, but I wouldn't think CKLW would have had anything but a jock with the regular format. By the summer pf 1967, when The Big 8 Drake format was fully installed, there's an aircheck of Billy Mack on the all-night show, doing the regular format and even reading commercials and commercial tags. Billy went on to be known by his real name. Kris Erik Stevens, on WLS and many other stations, as well as having a long career as a voiceover artist. Other all night jocks followed.
I remember listening to Listo Fisher all-nights on WOWO. Carol Ford got her start all-nights on WOWO in the early 70s.

As we all know, Larry King ruled the night for a number of years. WLW originated Dale Summers' "Truckin' Bozo" show, which is credited or catching the DC Snipers.
 
Larry Glick's all nighter talk show on WBZ Boston kept me awake many a night as I drove in the foggy backroads of Appalachian Ohio and West Virginia after signing off stations at Midnight and going back to my dorm room at Ohio University. He was legendary, in practicing the real art of conversation.
 
And Bill Corsair’s all nighter talk (with his listeners, the “rascals”) on 50,000 watt WCAU-AM in Philly. As well as the national Mutual Herb Jepko NightCap show
 
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