The Old Days

[Radioboy989]

I was inspired by another thread...

What do you miss about the "old days"?

A couple of things that pop immediately to mind for me:
I miss REAL remote broadcasting from the state fair.
I miss being called upon to answer phones at the MDA and Easter Seals telethons.

How about you?

 

[FromTheSide]

989,

I miss cueing up a record...and;
Live LOCAL jocks, even after sundown, (why is the #35 market not worthy of good local jocks?)
Good jazz
remotes from the fair (I'm with ya)

I'm sure there are other things, but those are off the top of my head.

 

[Al Timiter]

You might think I'm crazy, but I miss running a "tight" board. (The kind you couldn't drive a nail through).

I miss shotgun jingles at the end of the stop set.

I miss the weather jingles...

I miss the challenge of creatively selling the station and being entertaining at the same time over a six second intro.

And yes, the remote shows (not "remotes" but actually doing the show from a remote location)

call me crazy.

 

[V.Riley]

This isn't all radio stuff I miss, but about half of it is.

American Top 40 with Casey Kasem
Columbus Citizen Journal
CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Fritz the Nite Owl
WXGT 92.3 (92X) and Suzy Wad
Flippo's Early Show
WXST 107.9 (STAR) and the DJs

 

[Radioboy989]

The tears are welling up!

REAL remotes...more better and cheaper technology to do the job these days and the concept of a remote has become a jock on a cell phone.

The Columbus C.J.-We SO need another real daily in this town.

Most Music 92x...I won Pat Benatar's Crimes of Passion album from Greg Jordan!

Tight boards, tight weather beds, and short intros...I'm tingling!

 

[Bill Harmonic]

Great jazz and Fritz the Night Owl can be found every Sunday night from 9pm until midnight on 103.5 and 104.3. I miss the old days when every station was programmed to win. When a cluster was two FM's and an AM. I miss segue's. I miss WCOL-FM when Bob Gooding was PD. I miss WCOL-AM when it had a fourty share under PD Brian McIntyre. (Says something for Great Trails) I miss the time when central Ohio had good radio.

 

[sparks794]

I miss when there used to be one owner per combo (1 AM, 1 FM) - I think radio sounded MUCH better when different owners were competing in the same market instead of a "group" going after it.

I miss LIVE radio - not today's "voice tracks"

I miss setting up for a fair remote - when you actually took a small studio and set ut up at the fair and did ACTUAL broadcast with ACTUAL live people live on the air - not taped and sent to the studio for air later that week.

I miss TV stations actually having a qualified engineer that was actually at the station on duty 24/7

 

[alans613]

This isn't all radio stuff I miss, but about half of it is.

American Top 40 with Casey Kasem
Columbus Citizen Journal
CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Fritz the Nite Owl
WXGT 92.3 (92X) and Suzy Wad
Flippo's Early Show
WXST 107.9 (STAR) and the DJs

Good news V.Riley...You can hear rebroadcasts of old AT40 with Casey Kasem on Mix 107.7/WMMX Dayton...They actually replay the entire four hour broadcast from this week in 1980-88...If you can't pick them up they do stream at wmmx.com I believe...I think Premiere just resyndicated the entire broadcasts back in the Spring...For a while those old AT40 rebroadcasts were cut to three hours because Premiere thought no one would recognize the less-familiar stuff #40-the mid-30s...
Funny you mention Suzy Waud and STAR...She actually filled in for a week for Kelly Quinn as co-host with Andrew Wright back in 2000 on STAR...Suzy was awesome on any station she worked for. She also had a short-lived stint on Z-93 as Morning Show Host with Kim Faris back in early 1997, in which she also did a tremendous job.

 

[V.Riley]

Thank you for that information alans613. I'll check out wmmx.com for the AT40 replay. I remember when Suzy filled in for Kelly. Agreed, where ever Suzy goes, it's great radio.

 

[Al Timiter]

Bill Harmonic: You made a real good and telling point about every station being programmed to win. I know 12+ is just a beauty pageant now but I miss working for a station that aimed to be Number One. If not 12+, at least in some key demos (plural). Now you hear "We know we can't be number one in so-and-so because of so-and-so but we're shooting for Top 5 in the so-and-so demo"

 

[Lamont Cranston]

You'll have to excuse this reference to another station out of market, but I am a transplant of 12 years.

I miss radio that was creative. If you remember, and could pick up at that time in the '70s, WOWO out of Ft. Wayne. Bob Seavers, The "Young" Chris Roberts (who owns an AM/FM in Van Wert), the "world famous fire escape," the nighttime janitor who would walk in, among tons of other simple things that AM station used to do.

I miss good, creative jingles that stick in your head YEARS after you've heard them.

I miss splicing tape, and finding the sharpest razor edge in the box. And when that edit was done, and you played it back - you shouted through roof when you nailed it!

I could go on, but I need a drink.

 

[sparks794]

I also miss lying in bed at night and being able to "DX" a wide variety of programming on AM. I had an old NC shortwave/AM receiver that was my grandfathers when I was a kid (somewhere around 10 years old) and built my own long wire antenna for it running out through the bedroom window and into a Popular tree by the house. Picking up WLS in Chicago was one of my favorites.

 

[wrmzfm100]

What I miss...

Jack and Dick on WBNS
Dave Logan and Denny Nugent on 610TVN
Wes Hopkins, Jim Davis and Harry Valentine on 1230 the "New" WCOL
Dave Lee (middays) on 55KRC (fantastic segues into stopsets that you couldn't do today.)
WONE, when it was country
WOWO with the great Top Of The Hour ID "W-O-W-O Fort Waaaaaaaaaayne!"
Growing up in Grove City in the early 70's...the only station you could get well at night was WCOL. So I began listening to WLS, WCFL, CKLW, WABC.....and my love affair with radio began.
The 92X/WNCI war...a true Top 40 battle with flamethrowing jingles and yes...Suzy Waud. Didn't her husband work at BNS?
Growing up listening to Spook Beckman and Dick Zipf....then working across the hall from both of them at WMNI/WRMZ
Listening to the "Unrock" WRFD sign off at sunset (with the DJ saying something about making way for New York) and then WCBS magically appearing

On a clear night....driving west on 270 in Obetz and topping the hill just before the TVN towers. Watching those six towers glow and the WMNI array blink in the distance behind them just seemed so cool.

 

[phatdaddy]

I miss my old Motorola six-transistor radio playing Cousin Brucie from WABC, Art Roberts and Dick Bionde from WLS. Summertime visits to my grandmother's house in Columbus where I could listen to "the new WCOL", even at night. I miss the fun I had stringing up a longwire antenna down home and wrapping several turns of it around the above-mentioned radio so I could listen to WCEF in Parkersburg or WKEE in Huntington because there were no local stations which played "Rock & Roll" in the mid-sixties.

 

[gcotton]

I know this is a radio board, but I truely miss when WBNS 10-tv did their noon and 5 pm news live from the state fair. They actually had a mini studio built right in the middle of the mid-way.
Also, anyone in their mid to late 30's has to miss the old 92-x days. Then the Hot 105.7.

 

[xmusicmatt]

I know this is a radio board, but I truely miss when WBNS 10-tv did their noon and 5 pm news live from the state fair. They actually had a mini studio built right in the middle of the mid-way.
Also, anyone in their mid to late 30's has to miss the old 92-x days. Then the Hot 105.7.

I miss the WBNS TV fair broadcasts too.. I also remember WNCI doing shifts from the fair too with their blow up radio they had.

 

[dgendvil]

I wish there would be a website of mainly old taped Columbus airchecks, mainly AM/FM telescoped/scoped broadcasts from the 60's-90's. I know other markets have it like San Francisco, Minneapolis, Houston & Louisville, Ky. have them. Hope it helps.

 

[alans613]

I know this is a radio board, but I truely miss when WBNS 10-tv did their noon and 5 pm news live from the state fair. They actually had a mini studio built right in the middle of the mid-way.
Also, anyone in their mid to late 30's has to miss the old 92-x days. Then the Hot 105.7.

I miss the WBNS TV fair broadcasts too.. I also remember WNCI doing shifts from the fair too with their blow up radio they had.

The old WNCI blow-up radio was called "The World's Largest Radio".
TOTALLY agree on missing Hot 105/107, and for a year(Dec.93-Jan.95) the awesome Kiss-FM, with Joe Kelly doing mornings and letting the music do most of the talking(Now THERE'S a way to compete with 'NCI's nonstop talk in the morning LOL!). Other jocks from that station off the top of my head: Joe Bahama(nights), Pete Dylan(middays), Bo Michaels(afternoons). Also loved their imaging. I actually have the Hot 105/107 to Kiss-FM flip from Dec. 15, 1993 on tape...Last song on HOT was Jimmy Cliff's "I Can See Clearly Now" and first song on KISS was "Make It Happen" by Mariah Carey. Bo Michaels was on the air at the time of the flip(5 PM). 107.1 KISS-FM left the airwaves on Jan. 30, 1995, replaced by the awful 70s Arrow(The Classic Rock Arrow at 105.7 was OK)...Some of the last tunes I heard that day: "Every Day of the Week" by Jade, "Rhythm of the Night" by Corona, and "Bang and Blame" by R.E.M. At the top of each hour, and sometimes in-between songs, they would say "Keep listening for the new sound of 107.1 Friday at 5-WAHC Circleville-Columbus". Also to note: I remember that a couple months before the flip, KISS was promising "Perhaps a new tower in the months to come"...Unfortunately, that new tower never came... :'( I also believe that KISS would've been the last time WNCI had a Pop CHR competitor in the market...Also note that for a brief period, back in 93-94 WNCI was masquerading as AC, which meant KISS was the only Pop CHR in Columbus...

 

[xiradiodotcom]

Also to note: I remember that a couple months before the flip, KISS was promising "Perhaps a new tower in the months to come"...Unfortunately, that new tower never came... :'( I also believe that KISS would've been the last time WNCI had a Pop CHR competitor in the market...Also note that for a brief period, back in 93-94 WNCI was masquerading as AC, which meant KISS was the only Pop CHR in Columbus...

I remember the whole "new tower" commercial and was very disappointed by the change to 70s. I think I have some old tapes of Hot 105.7 somewhere. I'll have to dig those up and post them.

 

[Whodey07]

I miss the Grego show.