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What was the first radio station you grew up listening as a kid?

Mike Sheridan said:
That was on a tape circulated around radio stations years ago!
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True. I had a copy within days of it being produced back in 1974. Howard Hoffman was one of the guys involved, along with Pete Salant, Amos B. Moses and Randy West.

Howard tells Dan O'Day the story of how it happened:



Okay, so clearly, Howard and Dan are having some fun. Howard did tell REELRADIO the full story in 1996, in writing, and here's that:


"I returned to WALL/Middletown NY in August 1974 after a lengthy 3-month gig as production director at WDRQ/Detroit, so I was primed to do anything that could shoot down formatted index-card radio. Radio itself presented the ammo.

Randy West (also at WALL at the time) and I were driving around greater Middletown listening to WWDJ through the static shortly after Mark Driscoll took over the reigns. They had already shortened their moniker from 97/WWDJ to 97/DJ - but for reasons known only to Driscoll, they started calling it "9/J" (using the slogan Pass the J - the formatic lasted about 9 hours before they went back to "97/DJ"). Randy and I stopped the car, looked at each other and simultaneously yelled, "What's NEXT?! They're just gonna open the mikes and yell 'NINE'!?! Epiphany.

A few weeks later, we were joined by Pete Salant and Amos B Moses in the production studio at WALL, and created the Nine tape under the influence of some refreshments which sure made the whole thing seem a lot funnier. (We were later pleased to find we still laughed after the "refreshments" wore off.)

We were supposed to write an ending to it, but Jim Brownold (then-production director at WPLJ/New York) got a copy of the work in progress from me. The ABC engineers heard it, dubbed off a trillion copies and Ninewas out there. The version they spawned was before all the processing and post-production which I quickly performed due to demand. We never did make an ending for NINE, and as it turned out, we never really needed it... the whole thing is one big payoff.

So for the record, here is the cast of NINE in order of appearance:

Pete Salant - Narrator
Howard Hoffman - "Nine-Double-O Radio Good Guy"; 2d NINE jock
Amos B Moses - "Johnny West"
Randy West - "Bob Roberts"; THE NINE jock
Rene Tetro - NINE Newsman
A real WALL listener - Excited "phrase that pays" caller
The NINE jingle came from a WABC "Old Gold 1969" jingle.
For authenticity, the NINE news sounder was WWDJ's news sounder. Don't Ask.

And to Mark Driscoll, who now knows he unwittingly inspired this masterpiece... thanks."
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Gregg. said:
For me, it was WABC 770. It was NYC's premiere Top 40 station. It was so strong in the ratings, when a car went past you, chances are you'd hear it playing on the car's radio. Walk in a store where the radio was controlled by young people and it was on there too. I was amazed that as a kid, when I got into some of my friends' parent's cars, it was playing there as well. I guess the parent either wanted to keep up with the current hits or played it as a favor to the kids in the car. And where I lived, the tower in Lodi NJ was visible every night from my family's picture window in the living room.
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My Aunt and Uncle listened to WABC when they lived in the NYC area in the mid '60's too. My cousins listened of course but the music was true top 40. Hello Dolly by Louis Armstrong was a big hit in '64, Herb Alpert, Sinatra, and Dean Martin also had hits. The rock and roll of the Beatles, and even the Stones was palatable to most adults if they had kids.

Stations like WKBW and WABC had a lock on teens, they were always reaching for young adults and adults. This got them buys from banks, finance companies, etc.
 
I grew up in Providence, RI in the 1950s. My mother always had on a radio during the day, tuned to WHIM 1110. "Pappy" (Carroll) Philbrook was the morning man, as well as the CE. Later there was "the winning hand" of Ken Garland, Jay Dunn, and Charlie Jeffords. WHIM back then was a 1000-watt non-directional day-timer that could best every other signal except that of 5000-watt WPRO(AM), ND-days.
 
Probably WEBR 970 AM, 1960s. One AM radio in the kitchen, and their morning show was always on as we got ready for school. By the late 60s, I had a transistor radio, and that was tuned into WYSL 1400 or WKBW 1520 after school.
Dad always liked listening to CHML 900 AM, or WHAM 1180 AN on Sundays. He was of the big band era, and WHAM had a solid programming block of that music on Sundays. But on weekend mornings, he would have WBEN 930 AM tuned in for the local news.
 
Oxnard-Ventura CA (one market north of L.A. on the 101), in the 1960s:

For me, it was a flip back and forth between the two top-40 stations, 1520/KACY and 1590/KUDU. My mother preferred the MOR "good music" on 1450/KVEN. At one point we got a portable radio with FM and was amazed to find 1450 simulcasting on 100.7 as KVEN-FM. (My mother was surprised as well.)

That same radio was also better at receiving the Los Angeles AM stations and I was even more amazed when I discovered that the "announcer" on Laugh-In was also on 710/KMPC in the afternoon ... and just as absurdly funny. That was Gary Owens, of course, who I (much) later became friends with and who was just as funny in real life.
 
K.M. Richards said:
Oxnard-Ventura CA (one market north of L.A. on the 101), in the 1960s:

For me, it was a flip back and forth between the two top-40 stations, 1520/KACY and 1590/KUDU. My mother preferred the MOR "good music" on 1450/KVEN. At one point we got a portable radio with FM and was amazed to find 1450 simulcasting on 100.7 as KVEN-FM. (My mother was surprised as well.)

That same radio was also better at receiving the Los Angeles AM stations and I was even more amazed when I discovered that the "announcer" on Laugh-In was also on 710/KMPC in the afternoon ... and just as absurdly funny. That was Gary Owens, of course, who I (much) later became friends with and who was just as funny in real life.
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Just curious, did you ever listen to 1340/KIST?
 
K.M. Richards said:
It never came in very well where I lived but we would drive up to Santa Barbara once in a while and I got to listen to it then.
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Sounds like the experience I had when we would drive over the hill into Hollywood and environs and tune into 1230/KGFJ so we could hear all the R&B hits. KGFJ was barely audible in the West Valley where we lived.
 
TomásEstefan said:
Must have been a very early SWLer!
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Supposedly, I was about 6 months old when my father lifted me up on his ham shack table in front of his Hammarlund receiver. I proceeded to grab one of the tuning knobs and started twisting. Once I came across the clock tone of WWV, I stopped turning and listened intently. When the voice then minute tone hit, I would clap my hands and laugh. My father said I repeated the same for several minutes, but when he went to lift me off the desk I would get very upset.
 
TomásEstefan said:
Sounds like the experience I had when we would drive over the hill into Hollywood and environs and tune into 1230/KGFJ so we could hear all the R&B hits. KGFJ was barely audible in the West Valley where we lived.
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Interestingly enough, KGFJ came in better at my house than did KIST.

One thing that still sticks in my mind was how KGFJ would call their Gold selections "dusties".
 


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