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Pittsburgh Radio Wars

P

Pratte4Life

The featured column on this site remembers some of the great radio wars in various markets throughout the country.

But it mentions none in Pittsburgh.

So it got me thinking what some of the great radio wars in Pittsburgh have been over the years.

And I couldn't really come up with many good ones. I remember when two stations would have the same format- say WDVE and 97 Rock back in the early '90s or so- or when Pittsburgh had three country stations during the Garth Brooks boom- but would these qualify as "wars?"

Would WDSY and Froggy now be a "war?" Would 104.7 and KDKA be a "war?"

Are we using the word "war" out of context and in a very offensive way since nobody is dying in a competition for listeners, ratings, and ad dollars?

Any nominations?
 
There was a one-sided Top 40 battle in 1973 when 13Q hit the air and pretty much blew KQV away after more than a decade of dominance in the format. 13Q was very aggressive with a $13,000 cash call contest which was the biggest prize the market had seen to that point.

WPEZ pretty much piggybacked everything 13Q did and promoted itself by saying the records sound better in stereo. They were pretty blatant. When 13Q did the Ultimate Ripoff, 'PEZ did the Ultimate Zip-off.

When WIXZ hit the air in '69, KQV was concerned enough to have staffers monitor the station around the clock for music and advertisers.

When the Beatles hit in '64, KQV and Clark Race of KDKA competed to get records first. Both stations had weekly survey sheets and would mark which songs were first heard in Pittsburgh on their air. There's a famous story about how the Beatles allowed no live broadcasting of their press conference when they came to town. KDKA taped the press conference for later use. KQV hooked up a 10-second delay to stay within in the rules while getting it on the air first.
 
KDKA vs. KQV-- through the 60s and into the 70s. I've worked with guys who were on both sides of the war and it was fun, heated and sometimes personal. Some of the best jocks that ever cracked a mike in this town were part of it: Quinn, Brinkman, Fred Winston, Clark Race, and Bob Tracey just to name a handful.

KQV vs. 13Q-- ABC had squeezed just about all of the talent off of the corner of Walk and Don't Walk by that point. Heftel brought along Jack Armstrong, Don Cox and Buzz Brindle (before the MTV days). It was loud and fun and resulted in KQV being sold off.

Nothing newer than that. There were brief skirmishes here and there since, but nothing on the order of those "take no prisioners" battles mentioned above.
 
There was a very brief time where Y97 unseated DVE, when Y97 first brought Jimmy & Steve back to town. However Y97 couldn't keep it together, and DVE brought in Gene Romano to be the PD. Game over.
 
I remember when 97 was giving DVE a run for their money. Didn't DVE have a TV commercial where a jock was throwing away all the heavy metal; or something similar? My guess was DVE was sweating due to "classic tracks" on magic 97. 8)
 
I think I'd include the "stealing" of Jack Bogut by 1250 WTAE and the consequential move of O'Brien and Garry to WHTX. The AM/FM initially gave KDKA a challenge for a quarter or two if I recall correctly...and Hearst (WTAE/WHTX owners) certainly started a war of sorts.
 
What about WAMO and WZUM when WZUM had Frankie Crocker?
 
WPEZ and 96KX....ehhh...kinda??

WJOI and WSHH ;D

When KQV was the dominant top 40 and WZUM came along, I found myself listening to 'ZUM more than KQV, all the while thinking that they were just as popular. Of course, the reality was that 'ZUM never even got close. Perception is a funny thing.
 
icybluelake said:
Yeah. I don't think it lasted long though. Maybe a year, tops? My memory might not be too clear.
Click to expand...

The revolution was on the airwaves from August of 2005-May 2006. I actually liked the revolution much better than the X. The revolution played a lot of good alternative stuff that 1510 AM X 15 played when I worked there.
 
They did.

Somebody help my memory if I get a fact or two wrong, but Beaver Falls had an AM-FM combo with WBVP as the AM and a rock station at the FM.

The FM went through a few playlist and name changes- going from a rock station that was quite frankly very dull (they tended to play Tom Jones a lot) to a hair band station (The Force) that I really liked.

But alas, it was a hair band station in 1994. So the format was soon turned to "The Revolution," and Clear Channel had "The X." Both were modern rock stations branded as alternative.

As I recall, "The Revolution" was actually the more popular of the two stations. But then that's when Clear Channel started buying up frequencies- and they bought WAMO's old 105.9 frequency for "The X" and gave WAMO 106.7, which was where "The Force" and, I presume, "The Revolution" had been.

Which we now can see was sort of the beginning of the end for WAMO.

What this allowed Clear Channel to do was merge "The Revolution" and "The X."

And there was a lot of disapointment from Gen X and Y on that.

The other thing that happened out of that "war" that The X eventually won was it started to brand WDVE, which had been THE cutting edge station in Pittsburgh, into your father's radio station.

Maybe not completely- I submit to you that classic rock does better in Pittsburgh than it does in other markets and there has to be an audience under 35 that listens to it for that to be the case- but so many of my friends quit listening to "Paulsen and Krenn" after The X picked up Howard Stern.

I heard WDVE was TOO Pittsburgh. While that's never a complaint from me, when the liner they played after identifying the city was "Don't feed dem ducks- dey got disease" it tends to put a damper on things.
 
WORD v. 106.7 ------the ratings will come from a PPM------"POWERFUL PROVIDENTIAL METRIC STONE
 
Parttimer said:
Wasn't the Revolution one of the 10,000 formats on 104.7?
Click to expand...

Yes. The revolution lasted about as long as when 104.7 had top 40 station Energy 105.Energy 105 lasted from May 1989-Jan 1990. I wonder if News Talk 104.7 has been the longest format for 104.7?
 
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