• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

WCBS 880, the day before they were to go all-news in 1967, a plane hits its High Island tower

A

alok

Since the subject matter recently about WCBS 880, I thought this would interest some of you, hopefully it was not mentioned already.

I remember this event, I was growing up in the NYC area at the time.

A plane hit the tower on High Island for WCBS 880 & WNBC 660, they shared this tower.

It happened, the day before 880 was going to go All-News in 1967.

I recall too that when WCBS and WNBC got back on the air at the WLIB or WABC site, there was modulation from one of the "helper stations" (either WLIB or WABC) mixed in with either WCBS 880 or WNBC 660 for awhile. Don't remember which one this happened too.
If anybody has corrections to this feel free to post.


here is the story . . .

https://durenberger.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/HIISLAND.pdf

the site today, (this is just east of Bronx, NY in Long Island Sound)

Google Maps
 
alok said:
A plane hit the tower on High Island for WCBS 880 & WNBC 660, they shared this tower.

It happened, the day before 880 was going to go All-News in 1967.
Click to expand...

If anyone doubts it, Keith Olbermann included an aircheck of the News format launch in today's podcast. It very clearly included the legal ID "WCBS-FM New York."
 
K.M. - OK on ID on the WCBS aircheck of WCBS first day doing news, being WCBS-FM.

Roddy - OK on the WLIB towers, you said WLIB move to the new 5 tower site in 1965, I thought it was 1967? The new WLIB 5 tower array is right near 1010 WINS array in Lyndhurst, NJ.
Roddy, do you know approximately where this original WLIB Queens site was located at in Queens?
 
Y2kTheNewOldies said:

Here's the place to find the airchecks of WCBS-AM over the years. Yes this fansite includes some of WCBS 880's best reporting.
Click to expand...
It's not a "fansite", it's a tribute site put together by Don Swaim, a longtime WCBS staffer. He had access to clips and actualities that no normal outsider would have, including historical rareties from the CBS network and from the days when WCBS was still "WABC". You can lose an afternoon exploring that site.
 
Weiserguy said:
It's not a "fansite", it's a tribute site put together by Don Swaim, a longtime WCBS staffer. He had access to clips and actualities that no normal outsider would have, including historical rareties from the CBS network and from the days when WCBS was still "WABC". You can lose an afternoon exploring that site.
Click to expand...
When the soon to be WHSQ/former WCBS-AM had the WABC call letters it stood for Atlantic Broadcasting Company the owners at that time. That's one I had to consider how and why 770 AM had to call themselves as WJZ blue network for some time before they got the WABC calls.
 
Y2kTheNewOldies said:
I had to consider how and why 770 AM had to call themselves as WJZ blue network for some time before they got the WABC calls.
Click to expand...

The WJZ call letters were randomly assigned. The American Broadcasting Company didn't exist until 1945. NBC was forced to divest the blue network, and that led to ABC. WJZ became WABC in 1953.
 
What was the format of WCBS prior to the All News format anyway? In those days the only NYC stations that I was paying attention to were WABC and WMCA...
 
Time Traveler said:
What was the format of WCBS prior to the All News format anyway? In those days the only NYC stations that I was paying attention to were WABC and WMCA...
Click to expand...

MOR. Arthur Godfrey hosted a mid-day show.

From what I can see, Arthur continued on the station until 1972. The station also aired an overnight music service until 1970.

During the same time, WABC was still airing the old blue network Breakfast Club variety show hosted by Don McNeill until 1968.

Rick Sklar talked about it in his book. He was furious that this show, as well as the evening news & sports blocks, were bringing down his ratings.
 
Last edited:
Time Traveler said:
Pretty much what I thought...
Click to expand...
Back then, in the '60's before the cutover to all-news, WCBS's AM Drive show was hosted by Jack Sterling, a typical full-service MOR program with news (CBS net & local), sports reports, weather, school closings when appropriate, and music that listeners born before WWII would appreciate. Other staff announcers played similar music, and they were news-heavy, carrying all the CBS net newscasts (all 5 minutes of them each hour plus a trailing :60 spot), the CBS World News Roundup (at 8 am), the World Tonight at 7 pm, and the Lowell Thomas report sometime in the 6 pm hour. They also carried play-by-play in the evenings (though I don't remember which team), and overnights they (and all the other CBS O&O's) carried American Airlines' Music Till Dawn. Oh yeah, and there was Godfrey's show.

This wasn't my own cup of Pepsi, but it appealed to both my parents, so the station was on in our house for hour after hour, day after day, and I grew up with it. They were both born in the 1920s, so smack in the demo WCBS was aiming for.
 
Weiserguy said:
This wasn't my own cup of Pepsi, but it appealed to both my parents, so the station was on in our house for hour after hour, day after day, and I grew up with it. They were both born in the 1920s, so smack in the demo WCBS was aiming for.
Click to expand...

Bill Paley himself recognized things needed to change. Bill was from that generation. He could see where things were going. So it was his decision to phase out this programming that appealed to people over 55, and replace it with something new. So here we are, over 50 years later, looking at the same situation, and responding the same way. People were angry when Arthur Godfrey went away. People are angry now. But change has to happen. For the exact same reason.
 
alok said:
Since the subject matter recently about WCBS 880, I thought this would interest some of you, hopefully it was not mentioned already.

I remember this event, I was growing up in the NYC area at the time.

A plane hit the tower on High Island for WCBS 880 & WNBC 660, they shared this tower.

It happened, the day before 880 was going to go All-News in 1967.

I recall too that when WCBS and WNBC got back on the air at the WLIB or WABC site, there was modulation from one of the "helper stations" (either WLIB or WABC) mixed in with either WCBS 880 or WNBC 660 for awhile. Don't remember which one this happened too.
If anybody has corrections to this feel free to post.


here is the story . . .

https://durenberger.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/HIISLAND.pdf

the site today, (this is just east of Bronx, NY in Long Island Sound)
Click to expand...
 
@Kemosabe -- Thanks much for the Sterling writeup. That was a good read. Interesting that he worked at WMBD. Overnights near JFK Airport in Queens they'd be there on 1470 regularly in the 60's, same kind of easy-listening MoR as WCBS, and sponsored too! By the Adams Street Supermarket.

@Weiserguy .... Even as a kid I liked Beautiful Music. Still do. What's more, as a teen in broadcast school, where the others slung their Motown, 3 Dog Night and Stones, I went through the whole course picking and playing Chacksfield, Gleason, and the Billion and One strings.. Further, my first full-time job was at a B/M station on Long Island!
The DXing punk in me, though, used the WCBS American Airlines Music Til Dawn you mentioned for their sign-off. IIrc the jock's surname was Hall. The song they played as a theme was 'That's All'. I'd hear that and go flipping around the dial looking for those Monday morning Star Spangled Banners from stations signing on for the week.
Once nailed some guy with a British accent coming in faintly instead of WCBS. Turned out to be the BBC -- on 881. A wild guess was that WCBS may have been off the air that early morning.
 
Queens schooled and raised here, hoping not to swerve too far Off-
topic
On car trips with the Folks to see grandfolks in North Bergen NJ, I was always curious about the lone tower, right-hand side, lit at night, just before you drove into the Queens-Midtown Funnel. Am still curious.

On the Bronx side of the Whitestone Bridge -- the downhill ramp into the Bronx -- there were four or five lit towers in a box off to the left. A USGS map had them marked as 'Radio Towers'. I doubt they were AM sticks .....

Girlfriend and I were cruising around Long Island, driving east on Sunrise Highway, a dusty 4-lane road then that went through some sandy pine barrens for a good ways. I told her I remember seeing a cluster of five towers once, 'around Yaphank, inland' and said I wanna find them.
We approached some big green highway sign -- one with an arrow that said 'Yaphank' to the left and 'Bellport', the other way.
Innocently (yeah, right) she supplied, simply, 'Towers'.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom