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WRAL 101.5 Raleigh Drake Chenault Hit Parade Demo 1974

This great....I remember vividly visiting my grandpa in the VA hospital in 74 and hearing RAL doing this type presentation...I was 7 at the time...Funny how some stuff sticks with you
 
On that tape, you hear the Drake V/O guy talking the music and giving the time checks. The snippets of commercial are local WRAL folks.

Oddly, what this tape does not show is the hourly instrumental walk-up to the :55 mark, the two seconds of silence and the North Carolina News Network sounder that always let you know that you were listening to WRAL. That kind of stuff just wasn't slick enough to go on Drake's demo tape.

Later ....
 
Cool link.

I was WRAL's first "live" afternoon DJ in 1982. We were still running the D-C Contempo 300 format on the Shafer Automation.
We had a "live" assist controller in the studio and used a very expensive Neumann U87 microphone.

During my two year tenure at WRAL, we dubbed all the music on to carts and went "live", still using Drake Chenault's format for a short while longer.

Was going "live" better? I don't know. I do remember one Arbitron book had afternoons with a 28 share with women 18-49!!

Bill Campbell (now KIX 102.9)
 
After listening to this, i remember catching WRAL-FM during the time when music was migrating to this part of
the band, Drake Chenault had a good presentation doing this, and the "mix" of music was just right, while in
time they chose to go "live", and the format was tweaked, many stations during this era was doing the same
thing "Stereo 101" did, some locally, other subscribing to a service that was customized, two good examples
were "Rock 93", WITN-FM in Washington, and WQSM in Fayetteville, if anyone has a copy of these, please post
them.
 
Matt Smith said:
On that tape, you hear the Drake V/O guy talking the music and giving the time checks. The snippets of commercial are local WRAL folks.

Oddly, what this tape does not show is the hourly instrumental walk-up to the :55 mark, the two seconds of silence and the North Carolina News Network sounder that always let you know that you were listening to WRAL. That kind of stuff just wasn't slick enough to go on Drake's demo tape.

Later ....
Click to expand...

That IS Bill Drake on the demo doing the I.D.
 
That's a great find. Of course it's a D-C studio demo that just happened to use WRAL call letters with cherry picked music and probably manually switched, not run from automation. Hit Parade was a good format that got good numbers in Raleigh in the mid '70s, although the music tended to be a little west coast oriented (like some Beach Boys mid-charters that were probably not played as currents in many markets). The Hit Parade jingles were resings of the package that Drake put on KHJ when it went Boss Radio in '65, by the way.
 
I wonder what happened to the Aussie night guy from the early to mid 80's Bob Barneswath???? Spelling not close but I loved the guy on the air...I heard he went to Chicago after leaving Raleigh...Anybody know????

Allen
 
Bob Barnes-Watts. Very nice guy. Left 'RAL for KBEQ in Kansas City, then to WFYR in Chicago.
His British accent was pretty cool at the time (think Remington Steele) He looked nothing like Pierce Brosnan.
Last I heard he was out of radio. He had been in the railroad industry in England.
 
All the Southern Broadcast Stations used the Drake "Shotgun" Jingle.. WTOB, WKIX Etc!
 
Of course, WNCT/107.7 in Greenville was using an identical Hit Parade format in 1974. Actually WNCT had been with Hit Parade since at least 1968. Needless to say, there was a lot of siganal overlap, even though both stations were on shorter towers at the time, they were still 100k. WRAL had been hampered for years with being the flagship affiliate of the Tobacco Radio Network which featured Cousin Jesse Helms with his inflamatory commentary. I couldn't listen for that reason. I believe in 1975 WQDR cranked up, changing radio forever in Raleigh and central and eastern NC.
 
I think WRAL ran 250 kW before they went to the big stick. They had a pair of 20 kW RCAs in parallel. They were mono with two Woody Hayes background music SCAs until the mid '70's (my timeline may be off a little - too long ago).
 
tothedj said:
WNCT-FM didn't shift to a pop music format until 1992, WQDR in Raleigh signed on the air about 1971.
Click to expand...

Not to be picky, but I think the call letters were changed from WPTF-FM to WQDR in late 1972 or early 73. I would bet WPTF's FM came on the air (or signed on the air) in the late forties. This was right around the time when broadcaters were beginning to see the potental of the FM band.
 
ncradioeng said:
I think WRAL ran 250 kW before they went to the big stick. They had a pair of 20 kW RCAs in parallel. They were mono with two Woody Hayes background music SCAs until the mid '70's (my timeline may be off a little - too long ago).
Click to expand...

You are exactly right on that! They were actually listed by the FCC as experimental for 250KW. You are real close on the time-line
 
tothedj said:
WNCT-FM didn't shift to a pop music format until 1992, WQDR in Raleigh signed on the air about 1971.
Click to expand...
Sorry, but WNCT-FM most certainly was "Hit Parade," the same automated format played later on WRAL-FM, from 1968 til at least 1970. I was a student at ECU and listened from time to time, since it was one of the few FM signals that came in clearly. WITN-FM, 93.3 also boomed in, with "beautiful music," but I wasn't going to touch that. Oher strong FMs in Greenville at that time--96.9 (WEDR ?) and the Tarboro station on 104.3--ironically both now Raleigh market stations. WRAL-FM also came in, but not as clear. Pretty slim pickins on FM in the "Athens of the East" at that time. At least we had WOOW....
 
stevations said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF6AEvlM7T8
The record was sent to stations around the US to promote the D/C automated format.
Were these Drake announcers or DJs from the Raleigh area doing the weather and local ads?
Click to expand...

WAXY-106 (105.9) Fort Lauderdale used the Hitparade format in 1970 and 1971. It was always interesting to watch the automation magically start each reel and cart with technical precision. The reel with the current songs would automatically rewind.

WRAL did more than most automated stations to make the format sound really good!

WAXY started with a Broadcast Products AR-1000 system and changed to a Broadcast Products AR-2000 with actual computer memory rather than thumb switches. It controlled 6 Scully reels, 4 SMC carousels, and 6 ITC cart slots.
 
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