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Sol Weinstein

T

thirdendorsed

So I'm in New England. As a kid I used to strain my tuning abilities on a table-top dial-tuner AM radio to bring in WCAU, first to hear Phillies games and the Mighty Milk Star of the Game, but late to hear WCAU personalities. Newsman Harry McIlvane (sp?), Dom Quinn (in his first iteration), Andy Messer, Ron Owen (before he got the extra N) and of course By Saam, Richie Ashburn and Bill Campbell (who was gassed in favor of this guy Kalas from Houston).

One of the great programs on one-two-one radio was the Sol Weinstein talk program, with superheroes and plugs for Sol's writing, usually with lotsa spots for The Original House of Pagano. Kind of a local Jean Shephard, but with commercials. He lasted a year what with the Atlantic Coast Kid and subjects that for the time were off the range. Last show he said "this is Sol, it's time to do something else" as he faded into the midnight CBS hourly.

What was this show about? Who was Sol? Why did they hire him? Why did they gas him? What was going on at CAU at the time?

Oh, to prove I did listen: TEnnyson 9-6790 from the city; MOhawk-7 0500 from the suburbs, WOodlaw 3-5909 from New Jersey.
>_
 
He died late last year, and as often happens the obituary is a pretty good biography:

http://articles.philly.com/2012-12-10/news/35728643_1_israel-bond-variety-show-jokes

As for why WCAU hired him, Weinstein was an area guy who was getting some national attention with the Israel Bond parodies, so WCAU probably figured that he might produce something offbeat that would get people to sample the station. The talk format on CAU was still pretty new at the time and I think they were experimenting to see what worked and what didn't. I don't know why he left. I seem to recall that WCAU kind of stumbled into sports talk as a fit for the early evening slot and they may have expanded that all the way to midnight, but I could be totally wrong about that.
 
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