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

TomásEstefan said:
My first station: In its day, the nation's highest rated radio station: KFWB Color Channel 98 Hollywood, CA (Which, for some who may not know, is within the City of LA)
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And my first really favorite overall station was Kluge's WHK, Color Channel 14, in Cleveland. I had previously followed jocks like Freed and "Mad Daddy" but not stations... but WHK put the music, the imaging and the staging all together, all day long.

Amusingly, well over a decade later, my mother married the chairman of the board of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He had encouraged the sale of WHK to Metromedia, and thought I was an idiot to be in radio at all. He did not enjoy knowing that Kluge had made WHK the market's most profitable station, and did not understand how "playing the same songs over and over" could be a good business plan.
 
When I was 4(1967) my mom always listened to Demand Radio 79 (KTHT). When we moved to South Texas the following year it was KTSA, KEYS and KRYS
 
ted chittenden said:
Let's see. In late 1960s-early 1970s Los Angeles, I liked KHJ-FM and KNX-FM whenever I could hear them (they were very fuzzy around my Tujunga house). ON AM and FM, I liked KGBS (at least when Bill Ballance wasn't doing his "Femine Forums,"; and KRLA. (KHJ's signal was a bit weaker in Tujunga and I tended to think their jocks were too loud). After we moved to Phoenix, while I listened to KUPD, KRIZ, and KRUX each for a bit, I ultimately went for KOOL-FM because they played the oldies; in Tucson, it was the (then) mostly-automated KHYT on 1330 I liked the best for the same reason.
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I beg to differ: I think Bill Ballance was the best thing about KGBS! (His show BTW was for a time simulcast on KSDO). His (now unacceptable) descriptions of people were very funny. Such as: "Are you a 'porker' my dear, and is your husband a 'pencil-necked' geek? But he also was self-deprecating. A local paper did an interview of him, along with a photo and he said "My gosh, look at my hands - they look like old garden tools!"

I should also add that for a time when I worked at my Aunt's business on LA's Mid town Western Ave, if you stood out on the side walk after about 10:00 weekdays, you could hear Ballance's program in the background because so many people driving by with open windows listening to the show.
 
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My Dad had an old reel to reel where he is trying to get me to sing songs with him at age 3. I do but at the end of a verse I add page 2 or Good Day! Hearing that in my 60s, I evidently was listening to radio and seemed to like Paul Harvey. I couldn't say Paul but I could say "Fall" so I'd close with Fall Harvey Good Day! Not sure the Nashville station running ABC and Paul Harvey but I recall we listened to Paul regularly back arounf 1959.
 
cartman2002 said:
I wanna ask this question since when I was 4 or 5 years old, I listened to WHYN 560 in Springfield, MA as a kid when it was a top 40 station but when I was 8 I listened to another Springfield, MA station named WAQY which later became Rock 102 and then when I got older I started listening to a variety of stations involving AC, Top 40, Oldies, Alternative, Classic Rock, AAA among other formats?
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Had to think on this one, because I listened to so many as a kid. The first one, was more than likely, the old WGLD, Highpoint, NC, at 100.3 FM. The first stations I discovered on my own, were WPAQ, Mount Airy, NC (740 AM), WPET, Greensboro, NC (AM 950) and WKEW, Greensboro, NC (1400 AM).

Romans 11:33-36 KJB

Josh

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Back around 1970, I asked a neighborhood amateur why WAMM 1420 (Casey Kasem and Jim Hampton worked there) had to sign off the air. He told me that it was because WHK was a CLEAR CHANNEL STATION. As a very early Class III-A station, WHK was well protected and came in virtually alone at Night, but I wondered why he thought that it was a CLEAR CHANNEL. I used the 1960 NAB Engineering Handbook as a reference for a research paper on DXing I wrote in English Class, and I knew it was a REGIONAL CHANNEL in 1969. WAMM/WFLT applied for 5000 watts DA-2 around 1980. They got a CP that required 9 towers but they never built it. They got a 142 watt PSSA with the same two tower near cardioid DA in the 1980s. With the DA (originally to protect the WHK ground wave Days) and near central city location, the signal did and does quite well. The nulls just go over small portion of the city, less than a mile from the city limits.
 
It was legendary Top 40 station WABC 770 New York. I didn't care much about music until my family went to a summer resort in the mountains north of NYC when I was about 10. The teenagers in the clubhouse all had WABC on. (50,000 watts were enough to give it a good signal 50 miles north.) I wanted to be like them and would listen to the hits, even if I wasn't in the group.

When I got back home, I was hooked. Dan Ingram, Cousin Brucie, Chuck Leonard, Ron Lundy. They became my influencers and I would mail a self addressed stamped envelope each December to get the "Top 100 of the Year." It took me until I was ready to go to college to make the switch to WABC's sister station, 95.5 WPLJ. Jim Kerr, Carol Miller, Pat St. John, Tony Pigg, Jimmy Fink. Great memories!

Eventually I would work with Miller, Fink and St. John. Kerr would be one of my union leaders. And Leonard would be a member of the parish council and lector at my church.
 
Gregg. said:
It was legendary Top 40 station WABC 770 New York. I didn't care much about music until my family went to a summer resort in the mountains north of NYC when I was about 10. The teenagers in the clubhouse all had WABC on. (50,000 watts were enough to give it a good signal 50 miles north.) I wanted to be like them and would listen to the hits, even if I wasn't in the group.

When I got back home, I was hooked. Dan Ingram, Cousin Brucie, Chuck Leonard, Ron Lundy. They became my influencers and I would mail a self addressed stamped envelope each December to get the "Top 100 of the Year." It took me until I was ready to go to college to make the switch to WABC's sister station, 95.5 WPLJ. Jim Kerr, Carol Miller, Pat St. John, Tony Pigg, Jimmy Fink. Great memories!

Eventually I would work with Miller, Fink and St. John. Kerr would be one of my union leaders. And Leonard would be a member of the parish council and lector at my church.
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Seems like the contours should go out further into Long Island Sound and perhaps the Hudson River Valley. Did Ed Buterbaugh draw this coverage map?

WABC


WPLJ

 
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WCPA-AM Clearfield, PA was my first radio station. Listened to it off and on through much of my childhood. The sister station, WQYX, was the Hot AC that I learned about in my teens. Gratefully had a chance/opportunity to work there for approx 15 months. Loved it!
 
I know that I'm both new to the board and late to the post...but I grew up in Pittsburgh listening to KDKA when they still played music (I specifically remember Trish Beatty) and listening to Roy Fox and John Cigna at night before he moved to mornings and the "K-Team". Almost left out Jack Bogut and although they weren't on KDKA, O'Brien and Garry on WTAE were one of my favorites. I'm quite sure I'm leaving out some...
 
Welcome PA Radio Fan. This is a good thread. When I got my own SuperSensitive Sony for FM, AM FM Cassette Recorder in 1971, I got into more serious FM DXing. After Docket 80-90 began dropping in stations and signing on in the late 80s and 90s, the band began to get crowded. Then other drop ins, upgrades made possible beginning with Docket 80-90, new Classes such as C1,C2,C3,C0,B1 started to crowd the band, then LPFMs, Translators, IBOC, border stations in Canada, and DXing has gotten a lot harder. Even electronic noise now shows up on FM. You should ideally have a very good tuner, such as a McIntosh or Carver, or new DSP models and now a custom outside FM antenna and rotator that allows attenuating both back lobes and side lobes by 30 dB or more.

Joni Mitchell stayed frequently in a house in Flint where the owners had a folk rock venue called The Sippin' Lizzard in the late 1960s. Recently, a friend of mine found online a Real Estate Picture of the house a few blocks away from his house. It has an ancient model Channel Master 9 element FM antenna on a rotator and pointed East Northeast, in the direction of Toronto. We wondered if Joni used it to tune in to Toronto stations when she stayed there, at a distance like was possible then. My friend asked the current owner and offered to buy the antenna, but he refused. The house is in disrepair, but looking at the "very very very fine house" Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell lived in in Laurel Canyon a few years later, it really doesn't look much better! Location location location!

en.wikipedia.org

Our House (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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Schroedingers Cat said:
Welcome PA Radio Fan. This is a good thread. When I got my own SuperSensitive Sony for FM, AM FM Cassette Recorder in 1971, I got into more serious FM DXing. After Docket 80-90 began dropping in stations and signing on in the late 80s and 90s, the band began to get crowded. Then other drop ins, upgrades made possible beginning with Docket 80-90, new Classes such as C1,C2,C3,C0,B1 started to crowd the band, then LPFMs, Translators, IBOC, border stations in Canada, and DXing has gotten a lot harder. Even electronic noise now shows up on FM. You should ideally have a very good tuner, such as a McIntosh or Carver, or new DSP models and now a custom outside FM antenna and rotator that allows attenuating both back lobes and side lobes by 30 dB or more.

Joni Mitchell stayed frequently in a house in Flint where the owners had a folk rock venue called The Sippin' Lizzard in the late 1960s. Recently, a friend of mine found online a Real Estate Picture of the house a few blocks away from his house. It has an ancient model Channel Master 9 element FM antenna on a rotator and pointed East Northeast, in the direction of Toronto. We wondered if Joni used it to tune in to Toronto stations when she stayed there, at a distance like was possible then. My friend asked the current owner and offered to buy the antenna, but he refused. The house is in disrepair, but looking at the "very very very fine house" Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell lived in in Laurel Canyon a few years later, it really doesn't look much better! Location location location!

en.wikipedia.org

Our House (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Thank you for the warm welcome!
 
When I was 10, I went to a camp in the Pocono Mountains. And blaring through a loud speaker was WABC. I immediately began noticing radio rotations as it seemed Hanky Panky was playing all the time. I recall my dad driving around in his car and listening to WOR. THe first stations I listened to were WEST AM/FM in Easton Pa and NBC Monitor on the weekends. But really around 68, I was all about the Top 40 stations and the ones from out of state that boomed in at night. WLS, WKBW, CKLW, etc
 


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