Retro Mid-60's AM Bandscans Sought

[Schroedingers Cat]

Thanks Steve. I also had a clock radio the first time I noticed that there were several NYC stations immediately adjacent to several Chicago stations, near where I lived . Apparently one night I had the radio facing just the right way to hear the NYC stations. This was so early on that Cousin Brucie wasn't even at WABC yet.

Well, a little more on topic rather than off on a "DX tangent", I can't begin to tell you how many times I shut the radio off listening to WLS The Big 89, and woke up to the clock radio, listening to WCBS Newsradio 880. Or was it just 88 back in the day?

 

[WorldFamous]

Minor point of correction: in 1967, the call letters on 1260 Indianapolis would have been WFBM.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Minor point of correction: in 1967, the call letters on 1260 Indianapolis would have been WFBM.

Just noticed your screen name. Did the Woof Boom name date back to when Harry Bitner owned WFBM, Wood (WOOD) and Woof Doof (WFDF)? But what did they call WTCN?

 

[gr8oldies]

Indeed correct.

Minor point of correction: in 1967, the call letters on 1260 Indianapolis would have been WFBM.

 

[gr8oldies]

I remember WCBS as Newsradio 88 and WBBM as Newsradio 78.

Well, a little more on topic rather than off on a "DX tangent", I can't begin to tell you how many times I shut the radio off listening to WLS The Big 89, and woke up to the clock radio, listening to WCBS Newsradio 880. Or was it just 88 back in the day?

 

[gr8oldies]

Having not come to Western Ohio until 1967, and not heard CKLW until summer (last month of the fake-Drake "Fun Radio 8", and first couple of months of Real Drake "The Big 8", I've got no knowledge of whether or not top 40 fans looking for alternatives to WOWO and WLW found the Bud Davies/Tom Clay/Robin Seymour version of CKLW appealing, or if it was mass discovered in my town in '67. WONE might have been another possibility.

 

[WorldFamous]

Just noticed your screen name. Did the Woof Boom name date back to when Harry Bitner owned WFBM, Wood (WOOD) and Woof Doof (WFDF)? But what did they call WTCN?

I'm sorry but I can't say with any certainty. My understanding (but don't know for fact) is that on-air it dates to the 1960s and Time-Life ownership. That's not to say that it wasn't used in-house but not on air earlier than that. Certainly with those calls it wouldn't surprise me that it was an early nickname.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

I don't know if they ever used Woof Doof on the air, but it was a common term among radio people, especially people who had worked there, and radio hobbyists. The thing that caught my eye is that in David's archives of Broadcasting and the Broadcasting Yearbook, the advertisements showed all the stations owned by Harry Bitner, under a corporate name or his own name. Of course, there are all kinds of pronunciations and animal nicknames and even plants, that go along with call letters, officially or unofficially.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

@ Schroedinger:

For as far back as I go -- and liked the station more than I liked WINS -- WCBS had been 'WCBS newsradio 88'.

It had to be over ten years ago that they re-positioned as 'New Radio Eight-Eighty'.
That tilt in the earth's axis had people on a few radio message boards fearing minor things, such as locust plagues, bleeding house walls, Armageddon, the Rapture, etc. Nothing major.

But you are right. They had been News Radio 88 for quite some time.

 

[charlestondxman]

It was "News Radio 880" as far back as about 2000 or so. I started listening to their skywave signal during the late afternoons when they got the Yankees radio rights in 2002.