I knew Rosko briefly, and I knew a number of the staff at CBS-FM starting in '72. Unless he snuck in there to do vacation relief while I myself was away on vacation, Rosko never worked at CBS-FM. Besides, at that period of his life, Rosko was living and working in France.
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WCBS-FM in NYC in the late 60's
- Thread starter alok
- Start date
Thanks to all that commented on WCBS-FM The Young Sound, especially showing the NYC ratings during that time . . . good stuff.
Like I said, I remembered it (The Young Sound) well, and liked it. I doubt any of my friends at the time, late 60's would have listened to it, they wanted 770 WABC or more so 570 WMCA or WOR-FM 98.7 ( some were even getting into WNEW-FM 102.7), as I have said before my friends hated when a DJ would intro (talking over) the beginning of a song as WABC jocks did often.
Especially BIG DAN . . . I loved when they (Dan too) talked over the beginning of a song!!!!
an example . . . BIG DAN did this to this song, I'm sure other DJ's around the country did this one too . . .
GIMME SOME LOVIN' . . . Spencer Davis Group . . . 1966
ya got about 26 secs . . . Ingram would maybe do the weather over the beginning and always end up saying this next . . . real - quick and then at the right time would ask . . . HEY GUYS WHAT DO HORSES EAT ... HEY !!! (HAY), the group screamed!!!!!
YES I LOVED IT!!!!!!!!!!
I don't care what you think I LOVED IT !!! . . . sometimes he'd do something different with the other HEYS in the song!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, the HEYS!!! near the middle & near the end of the song!!!!
Like I said, I remembered it (The Young Sound) well, and liked it. I doubt any of my friends at the time, late 60's would have listened to it, they wanted 770 WABC or more so 570 WMCA or WOR-FM 98.7 ( some were even getting into WNEW-FM 102.7), as I have said before my friends hated when a DJ would intro (talking over) the beginning of a song as WABC jocks did often.
Especially BIG DAN . . . I loved when they (Dan too) talked over the beginning of a song!!!!
an example . . . BIG DAN did this to this song, I'm sure other DJ's around the country did this one too . . .
GIMME SOME LOVIN' . . . Spencer Davis Group . . . 1966
ya got about 26 secs . . . Ingram would maybe do the weather over the beginning and always end up saying this next . . . real - quick and then at the right time would ask . . . HEY GUYS WHAT DO HORSES EAT ... HEY !!! (HAY), the group screamed!!!!!
YES I LOVED IT!!!!!!!!!!
I don't care what you think I LOVED IT !!! . . . sometimes he'd do something different with the other HEYS in the song!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, the HEYS!!! near the middle & near the end of the song!!!!
I would respectfully dispute that. WRFM FM was a pioneer Beautiful Music outlet from Fall 1957 and did pretty well into the mid 60s. When the Latter Day Saints bought it they switched it to MOR for two years which did less well and was not until 1968 it went back to Beautiful based upon the programming at KPOL in Los Angeles, a year before Marlin Taylor took over managing and programming in the Summer of 1969.
Flow was apparently very important in John DeWitt's The Young Sound for the CBS FMs. The aspect anticipated by a couple of years the kind segues that Phil Stout would make at Stereo Radio Productions. Other stations that bought that CBS FM format paid top dollar. For the time.
Maybe. I found a story in a 1963 issue of Broadcasting magazine that described the format as a mix of classical & pop, with stock market reports:
Around that same time, the station took out an ad in Broadcasting that described its format this way:
I also found this report of the station sale to Bonneville in May of 1966:
Days were pop LPs much favoring instrumentals. Traded time for the recordings. Evenings they aired Classical for a couple of hours. They had Casper Citron in late eve modified had I guess you might call it an erudite talk and interview show, then jazz for a couple of hours. I never heard them but have had it from regular listeners during that late 50s to mid 60s period who listened regularly. and I have seen a number of schedules in the newspapers and FM guides. When World wide Radio (Bonneville) took over they appointed an MD who had been with Beautiful WBOS A/F Boston which was Beautiful and I used to listen to almost daily at that time. But he or they decided to take it MOR as their goals at that time did not include making money. However that had changed by 1968 and they got Paul Bartlett who had been at the Annenberg Triangle FM in Fresno to bring it back to Beautiful Music. Who was replaced by Marlin Taylor in 1969 and under him WRFM FM went to ARB #3 over-all in a year and a half.
Was nothing new then. Some DJs were doing that back during World War 2. I don't know - I did like some personalities but mostly I wanted to hear the music.
I feel much the same way about top 40 radio. I always felt that there was a lot of album rock listeners who somehow felt themselves above the "immature" top 40 crowd.
And as for the "hey" comment, I seem to recall Big Dan using that line as a talk-up to "The Most Beautiful Girl" by Charlie Rich.
Ingram ultimately chiseled his name onto the AM radio dial by the tight board and verbal timing that was reinforced greatly (or maybe vice-versa?) by his naturally sarcastic outlook PLUS the use of such to play around with the ten or so songs WABC programmed for him to play over a few hours. And he may as well have invented and patented the Voice Shout concept.
If any renewed 'inspiration' was necessary for him to showcase the talent he had, the various new jingle packages helped -- MORE sounds for him to keep the legacy moving in his wise-guy narrating style.
With it all assembled as one entity, his handling of drive-time commerce was a masterpiece instead of a juggling act.
His subsequent time -- 12 years -- at WCBS-FM with its wider daily playlist afforded him a lot more elbow room, and he used that gleefully, right in stride.
If any renewed 'inspiration' was necessary for him to showcase the talent he had, the various new jingle packages helped -- MORE sounds for him to keep the legacy moving in his wise-guy narrating style.
With it all assembled as one entity, his handling of drive-time commerce was a masterpiece instead of a juggling act.
His subsequent time -- 12 years -- at WCBS-FM with its wider daily playlist afforded him a lot more elbow room, and he used that gleefully, right in stride.
Correct on all the above comments, did not know that in the 1940's DJ's talked up a record!!! . . .
Anyway, I still LOVE BIG DAN's way of doing Top 40 radio . . . as I said many times my friends preferred WMCA 570, then WNEW-FM 102.7 came along, and many went to that.
That WNEW-FM group did not even care much for 98.7 WOR-FM, I liked 98.7 when they started with RnR in the mid 60s.
I stayed with BIG DAN, until my wife & I moved west in 1970 . . . out in the SF Bay Area . . . for me it was KFRC 610 & KYA 1260, did not bother much with the FM dial until KFRC stopped playing Top 40 in the 80's
As far as wanting to hear the music . . . I had a record player at home and an "8 track" tape player in my car, later a cassette player . . . but for radio the DJ was just as important as the music, for me!
I did install an FM converter in the mid 60's in my car, for WOR-FM.
Anyway, I still LOVE BIG DAN's way of doing Top 40 radio . . . as I said many times my friends preferred WMCA 570, then WNEW-FM 102.7 came along, and many went to that.
That WNEW-FM group did not even care much for 98.7 WOR-FM, I liked 98.7 when they started with RnR in the mid 60s.
I stayed with BIG DAN, until my wife & I moved west in 1970 . . . out in the SF Bay Area . . . for me it was KFRC 610 & KYA 1260, did not bother much with the FM dial until KFRC stopped playing Top 40 in the 80's
As far as wanting to hear the music . . . I had a record player at home and an "8 track" tape player in my car, later a cassette player . . . but for radio the DJ was just as important as the music, for me!
I did install an FM converter in the mid 60's in my car, for WOR-FM.
When I first moved to NYC at the end of 1979, Rosko was doing evenings on WKTU.
As someone who was in jr. high school during the Young Sound years on WCBS FM, the format was clearly not skewed toward me. Being objective, it wasn;t a bad concept -- trying to slot between "beautiful music" WTFM and WPAT and personality/middle of the road WNEW-AM and WHN-AM -- but likely fell victim to a lack of promotion.
For radio pros who worked in New York or LA at the time, was "The Young Sound" automated or just live-teched off reels and carts by a board op?
Rosko was the longtime off-screen voice of CBS TV sports. Totally separate from the radio division.
I'll refer you to post #2 in this thread that has links to two articles detailing the specifics of the format.
In answer to your question, it was automated, but programmed by CBS corporate.
The articles cover the programming concept and the taped distribution. They don't mention whether the format was designed for "live assist" (a board op running the reels and carted voiceovers with local time/weather/news) or automation (load it up, set it and forget it). I suspect that many CBS owned stations -- especially in union strongholds such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago -- had live board ops running things. Keep in mind, we're talking 1966-'67.
Because they were aiming the format at both owned stations and independent, they had to consider both. But you're right about New York. The union work rules in New York required union technicians to be involved in some way. They might just be the ones who loaded the tapes and babysat for an hour. It may have been more. The goal with every union contract was to lessen technician involvement. So this was a bridge format to get them to a point where they had DJs working combo style. WABC got to that point during the late 60s.
I can tell you for a fact that WCBS-FM had live board ops ("engineers") working across the glass from the live jocks at least as late as 1972. I think it was another couple years before the jocks went combo, but it definitely hadn't happened in '72.
WABC kept separate engineers 24-7 at least through 1979. (Same with WPLJ, though they went combo first and I don't recall which year that was.) WABC had live engineers even after they went talk in 1982, but I don't recall if there was any interregnum when talent comboed between '79 and the day the music died.
The dentist's site has pictures of WABC DJs working combo before that. My guess is it happened after WABC moved from 1926 Broadway to 1330.
Having said that, it wouldn't surprise me if they kept the engineers on staff, but had the DJs work combo. ABC played a lot of games with engineers at this time. They produced programming outside of union facilities (such as American Top 40) and had union engineers in NYC do "QC" (quality control) and then put their union label on the master tapes in order to go around union requirements.
Going back to The Young Sound, the linked articles said the music was on tape. It didn't say where those tapes were assembled. My guess is it's not inside a CBS union facility. They likely had them done outside the building. I don't know when CBS-FM went combo, other than I agree The Young Sound tapes were run by union engineers. Some of the engineering may have been on a case by case basis, as needed by union talent.
I won't dispute that before 1966 (when ABC and WABC moved from 1926 to 1330) there was no combo. But that doesn't mean there was after that point. My understanding is the live engineer arrangement continued until at least 1979, and possibly past that point. If you have seen photos of jocks running combo, I'd appreciate you linking to them. (For copyright reasons, please don't copy any photos from that site onto RD.) My recollection is the move to combo really got rolling in NYC only in the mid-seventies.
I believe you're describing the 1980s or '90s, not the 1970s. ABC hadn't yet acquired the AT40 company Watermark until then, so would have no reason to end run the union with AT40 production in non-union facilities.
The chronology is that The Young Sound stopped airing on WCBS-FM in late 1969, at which point CBS launched a live & local format of (for lack of a better term) "soft progressive" music. Some hits, a lot of album cuts, nothing too hard. That lasted until June of 1972, when they launched the "Golden 101" oldies format for which they became legendary. The Young Sound probably continued being produced beyond that point (1969) due to the needs of their own O&O's and contractual obligations with non-O&O subscribing stations. I can't tell you where the project was produced or when they finally banged the last nail in its coffin.
I don't want to belabor this point, but I just refreshed my memory on the dentist's site, and you should too. Here is a photo montage from August 1978, when George Musgrave was engineering George Michael's evening show. Allan does a nice job of narrating the photos, and it should be obvious that Musgrave was board op'ing and Michael was doing the show (though there were split responsibilities, like the jock had the cart carousels behind him and was responsible for feeding them to the engineer as needed, and he in turn loaded them up and fired them off on cue.)
Another short montage shows the studio at 1925 Broadway in 1964. Much simpler, but a similar setup. No glass between jock (Scott Muni in these) and engineer.
Another short montage shows the studio at 1925 Broadway in 1964. Much simpler, but a similar setup. No glass between jock (Scott Muni in these) and engineer.