Roby actually replaced Charlie on overnights when Greer left WABC for WIP in Philly in August of 1969. Greer just fed up with doing overnights saying 6 hours was too long.
Roby was put on the shift to finish out his contract as the magic he had in Miami never worked in NY.
Roby starting the 'Paul is dead' nonsense also showed the sheer power of WABC at night. I was in Boston and word spread like wildfire about what was going on at WABC. This is a world with no-emails, cellphones, twitter and answering machines and still we knew. If I recall I was listening to Larry Glick on WBZ and somebody called saying WABC was reporting Paul was dead.
In those AM radio ruled the overnight world. WBZ estimated that Glick alone had 2 to 3 million listeners at his peak.
In the early 70's you had Herb Jepko covering the nation with just 3 stations (KSL,WHAS and WBAL) and that prompted Mutual to hire him to do overnights. Jepko was finally let go and Mutual tried Long John Nebel next and when Nebel died of cancer in 1978, Mutual in desperation tried some guy from WIOD in Miami - Larry King.
radioman148 said:
cyberdad said:
I remember Joel Sebastian playing the Jack Jones version of "My Kind of Town" at the top of his show.
And I agree that Charlie Greer was an excellent jock. Where I was in college in Iowa in the late 60s, we'd often flip over to WABC when Wolfman Jack finished up for XERF Most nights XERF only had him on for an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less). But my memory of WABC overnights in those years was Ron Lundy. Back then, WABC still had a fairly decent signal by the time it got to the Mississippi river.
Charlie Greer was an excellent over night jock.
Bob Lewis was the original all night host on WABC "The All Night Satellite" he called it, until Ron Lundy came to WABC in Sept 65. Then Lundy hosted the show for a year or so before moving to mid days. I believe Roby Young hosted it after Lundy until Young got fired for the McCartney rumor.
Then Charlie Greer came in from his day time slot.
