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WGLI Surveys Found!

D

DavidRJ

Remember when I posted a message last year asking about the availability of Long Island top 40 radio surveys? Well, I've just made an amazing discovery prompted by a post on another messageboard.

It turns out that WGLI's weekly surveys appeared in the Babylon Beacon newspaper from February 1968 through at least December 1972. (What's more, the Beacon is available on microfilm at the following Long Island public libraries: Babylon, North Babylon, Lindenhurst, and West Islip.)

One of the published WGLI surveys from late 1972 had a long listing of songs below the "Mighty Twelve", and several of those songs had a capital "A" next to them, meaning that the station was featuring cuts from the albums of the songs in question. I've also noticed changes in the format of the WGLI surveys, from "Top 40" listings in the late-1960s to "Top 30" listings by 1972. The last two published WGLI surveys of 1972 only listed the top 12 songs, so if anyone has any information about the songs below #12 on the WGLI surveys from late-1972 through 1975, please let me know.

I haven't yet looked into whether or not the WGLI surveys continued in the Beacon in 1973, but I do know that the Beacon no longer carried WGLI surveys by July 1974.

Did any other Long Island weekly or daily newspapers or music newspapers carry surveys from Long Island radio stations? I'm still looking for surveys from before 1968 and from 1973 through at least 1983.

Thanks in advance.

David
 
WGLI Surveys Found!--Update May 15, 2006

Since I originally started this thread nearly a year ago, I've been able to find out exactly how long the Babylon Beacon ran the WGLI surveys.First WGLI survey appearance in the Beacon: February 8, 1968 issue (February 5, 1968 survey)Last WGLI survey appearance in the Beacon: January 18, 1973 issueIf any of you would like to arrange a Long Island radio survey trade for any WGLI survey(s) from anytime during the date range mentioned above, please e-mail me with the date(s) you want and I'll go print a photocopy of that survey from the Beacon microfilms.Also, Al Case has posted a few of his mid-1960s WGLI surveys on his new website at http://mysite.verizon.net/al_case/index.html.Hopefully, the Babylon Public Library will install a new microfilm machine soon so that I can look at the 1958-1966 Babylon Town Leader microfilms to see if that paper carried earlier WGLI surveys.David[email protected]
 
To shed some light on these surveys from late 1971 through early 1973. WGLI was a pure Top40 station until early 1972. At that time Jay Mitchell shared PD stripes with WBLI. WGLI became a more Adult leaning format, hence the introduction of selected Album Tracks. The playlist was still pretty tight with emphasis on the hits, but we played quite a few album tracks at night and overnight. In the daytime, the Mighty 1290 was 50% gold and 50% new and recurrent. We also played a healthy dose of R&B. I remember our ratings were pretty good but WBLI eventually eroded our numbers. Jay now runs a couple of radio stations and is the publisher of the "Small Market Radio Report". You can google it. It's worth a read. I have a lot of respect for Jay. He knows his radio. :)
 
A big shout-out to BIG John for the kind words. It was a long time ago, but I joined WGLI in '68 as the night/production guy after graduating from college in NYC and a summer on the board at WABC. The format was Top 40 ... Gordy Baker was the PD/morning guy ... Sonny Taylor - later PD of WGCI/Chicago and now deceased - did PM drive and Barry Landers - later with WCBS/NY - did sports.

In 1970 or thereabouts, owner Marty Beck shipped me off to Patchogue to put WBLI on the air. (The format was his idea - "Rock it," he said.) The lineup included Barry Neal in the morning (now doing very well at Sunny in Las Vegas), me in midday, George Taylor Morris in the afternoon ... I can't remember who did evenings, but we had a bunch of house names so we didn't have to get new jingles all the time. Ken Kohl did a "progressive" show overnights; he went on to program WLIR and is now in Sacramento.

Shortly thereafter, Gordy left WGLI and I oversaw programming there. By then BLI had eclipsed everybody in Top 40 and we changed the GLI format to "Vintage 1290," Nostalgia.

In '74 Marty shipped me off to Hartford to manage their new purchase, Album Rocker WHCN.

Enough dewey-eyed reminiscences for now.
 
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