WNEW Classic Calls Now CBS News in Washington

[athegymtday]

I am not from New York, and I know the WNEW Calls have not been used for many years but I am in Philly and we still have our classic rocker WMMR in the late 60's WNEW was their sister station and actually got many of the long time jocks from philly. Carol Miller, Cassity, Herman all playing progressive rock. I am somehow am saddened that the calls ended up in DC as a news station. I just realized that there has been WNEW-AM for some time sonow there is the new CBS news WNEW-FM.

Anyone have any bad feelings seeing what CBS did with them?

 

[kevinsealy]

As a life long listener of WNEW-AM 1130 a 50 year old who started listening to WNEW with my parent throughout the late 60s up until its last broadcast on December 11, 1992, I'm sentimental about the WNEW call letters. WNEW-AM as well as WNEW-FM are cultural institutions, and those call letters should still be on the New York airwaves.

But the suits at CBS must see some value in those call letters. They've dropped the WNEW call letters from 102.7 FM five years ago and replaced them with WWFS, while they've parked the WNEW call signs to a station in Florida whose format has no connection with either the old WNEW AM or FM. And now both WNEW-AM and WNEW-FM are both reborn as news stations serving the Washington D.C. area.




Thanks,
Kevin L. Sealy

 

[erwin33]

It's time for a WNEW Tribute stream with music from there AOR progressive rock days, like what WBCN is doing now with FreeForm BCN in Boston. The last tribute WNEW.com stream isn't anymore.

 

[pjc1961]

This topic originally appeared in this New York City forum thread:

http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=201730.0

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Re: the WNEW - "Where Rock Lives" CBS Radio site and audio streaming player:

they still exist, just harder to find due to the emergence of the new All News 99.1 WNEW-FM in DC which has co-opted the web domain www.wnew.com that the "Where Rock Lives" site had been using. The blog is updated daily while the audio player is an "on-demand" jukebox where you may skip up to 6 tracks in a session. The selections are a mix of current mainstream rock/AAA-ish variety and classic rock.

Current web address for (the former) wnew.com "Where Rock Lives": http://wnew.radio.com/
Radio.com Audio Player link for (the former) wnew.com "Where Rock Lives":
http://player.radio.com/player/RadioPlayer.php?version=1.2.13447&station=460

The currently non-working links below had been the direct URLs for the "Where Rock Lives" stream that could be plugged into various media players - this was a "live" stream that had some ads included:

http://provisioning.streamtheworld.com/pls/CBS_R20_460P_F128.pls
http://provisioning.streamtheworld.com/pls/WNEW.pls
http://provisioning.streamtheworld.com/pls/WNEWAAC.pls
http://provisioning.streamtheworld.com/asx/CBS_R20_460P_F128.asx
http://provisioning.streamtheworld.com/asx/WNEW.asx

As a side note, a lot of the radio.com direct URLs for their player-based online station streams have gone silent in the last couple of weeks and are now only available via the radio.com player.

 

[disney fanatic]

I remember the WNEW calls back then when it was on 1130 AM before it went to Bloomberg in 1992 and then the WNEW-FM calls has been a place for a rock station from the late 60's until 1999 where it went to Hot Talk for 3 years along with Opie & Anthony and the infamous St. Patrick's Cathedral incident called "Sex For Sam" until they both let go in 2002 and then went to a failed format geared towards women which was "Blink", but that blew up like a nuclear bomb, and "Blink" couldn't do it anymore. Too much of a female tilting station until it flipped to an AC station to compete with "Lite-FM" called "Mix 102.7", but shortly thereafter, the station went to a more rhythmic AC or what they called it "Jammin' Oldies" type format like the old "Jammin' 105" and the former "Rhythm 94.3" and remember Frankie Blue was on that station until he got let go for using the KTU call letters while he got drunk in the studio. "Mix 102.7" didn't do as much as KTU did, but that lasted about 3 years until went to "Fresh" as WWFS. They moved the WNEW calls to Florida, but didn't work as work, but after a few years, the WNEW calls is now part of the all news station in Washington DC to compete with WTOP and formerly WTWP when it was called "Washington Post Radio".

Remember there was a WNEW calls on a TV station? That was channel 5 back in the 70's and 80's when it was a Metromedia owned station until it was bought out by Fox Broadcasting in 1986 and changed the calls to WNYW and it becomes a flagship station for Fox.

 

[Rusty Muck]

It's time for a WNEW Tribute stream with music from there AOR progressive rock days, like what WBCN is doing now with FreeForm BCN in Boston. The last tribute WNEW.com stream isn't anymore.

The http://wnew.radio.com site still exists (only the WNEW.com domain was moved to become a re-director to CBSDC.com) but the stream isn't working right now.

Even still, the classic rock format has so bastardized the AOR progressive rock era (and rock & roll in general) as a 200-song playlist with limited focus or imagination, that I don't know if a freeform rock format could ever be recreated.

 

[Rusty Muck]

As a life long listener of WNEW-AM 1130 a 50 year old who started listening to WNEW with my parent throughout the late 60s up until its last broadcast on December 11, 1992, I'm sentimental about the WNEW call letters. WNEW-AM as well as WNEW-FM are cultural institutions, and those call letters should still be on the New York airwaves.

But the suits at CBS must see some value in those call letters. They've dropped the WNEW call letters from 102.7 FM five years ago and replaced them with WWFS, while they've parked the WNEW call signs to a station in Florida whose format has no connection with either the old WNEW AM or FM. And now both WNEW-AM and WNEW-FM are both reborn as news stations serving the Washington D.C. area.

CBS de-emphazied the WNEW calls on 102.7 10 years ago after the implosion of the "hot talk" format and infamous cancellation of O&A. Plus WNEW-TV has been gone for 25 years after they had to change to WNYW following Rupert Murdoch's purchase, and WNEW (AM) (as you noted) was gone already for 20 years.

Yes, there might still be some sentimental appeal to the call sign, but time has passed the WNEW "legacy" in New York by.

You can't blame CBS for wanting to create a new heritage for WNEW in Washington. (And for those who claim that WNEW only rightfully "belongs" in New York, remember that those calls also appeared on stations in Newport News, Virginia and Newark, New Jersey in the 20s and 30s. )