Mike Joseph's jock list

[Radio Bob]

Could be. Both of the Detroit-side Top 40's had to combat 50 kw CKLW. Neither 1310 nor Storer's 1500 (and its collection of towers) could really cover the market.

Detroit, like Cleveland and Buffalo, were squeezed in between NYC and Chicago and none of them got a good set of AM signals. That meant that Top 40 did not always have the best signals. Look at McLendon's WYSL in Buffalo, WERE, WHK and WIXY in Cleveland, too.

That's true at my grand parents home in East Detroit ( now East Point ) WKNR 1310 could not be heard at night and downtown Detroit was ruff for it at night too. WJBK 1500 was alright when running 10k days and 1k nights but when they added the towers and power it seemed to be weak in East Detroit WXYZ did have a better coverage as their site is North of Detroit and the WKNR and WJBK sites were South. WIXY at Cleveland had a straight six tower array shooting North from south of Cleveland which pulled East and West in. WERE coverage was similar with no signal West at night. WYSL was running 250 watts at night until the power increase so it wasn't good more than 4.5 miles away from the tower site. The increase didn't help as they were on a channel ( 1400 ) that saw everyone else increase by the same amount so interference remained the same. .

 

[Oldbones]

I disagree somewhat about Buffalo. WGR and WBEN are, even now, full-market signals day and night. WKBW/WWKB is high on the dial, yes, but was beautifully engineered in the early 1940s with a transmitter site that turned out to be in the right spot. There has been very little population growth into the null zone south and west of the site in Hamburg, and most of the growth has been into the main lobe going north and east.

I grew up just outside Claremont, N.H. and KB boomed in like a local at night, could even be heard during the day in the winter...a good 400 miles away!

Still seems like a lot to be saying after every single song, and that's not how I remember WHTT Boston doing the format. What were some other Hot Hits stations? Maybe airchecks of some of them are on YouTube and can refresh both our memories.

AFAIK WCAU-FM and WBBM-FM were the only CBS O&Os actually consulted/programmed by Mike. I believe the rest of the CBS FMs were all programmed in house, highly influenced by MJ's formatics, but with no involvement by him. Probably didn't want to pay the fees when they could do it themselves.
In fact, crosstown competitor WZOU used the "Hot Hits" positioner when they went CHR in '84. WHTT was always "Hitradio".