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WUBE 1230 Cincinnati 1968 Scoped Air Checks Ready For Free Download

B

BobOnTheJob

Going back in time, Cincinnati was truly blessed with a 1000 watt day/250 watt night Top 40 station called Boss Radio WUBE at 1230 on the dial. Drake formatted, great jingles, "boss jocks"...all the elements necessary to create a Cincy version of Boss Radio. FRR, a regular poster on here, recorded countless hours of WUBE on Reel to Reel tape and he entrusted me with those tapes for a time. Keep in mind, young FRR's goal as a teen in the 60's was to record the music & not the things between. Fortunately he let about 86 minutes (scoped length) of the 'good stuff' between the tunes remain on those tapes. My winter project has been to scope down those tapes & put them in .mp3 format. Using Adobe Audition 1.5 as my scoping tool, I also added about 9db of HF EQ at 8khz & about half that at 4khz to help compensate for the fact that these 3.75ips tapes were recorded from a radio some miles from the frankly puny WUBE transmitter site on top of a building in downtown Cincinnati. All in all, it doesn't sound bad. It's not perfect...there are spots where the master tapes started & stopped, so there will be incomplete pieces here & there. In a very few places, a promo or commercial was left in place to further tie in the era. This has been a labor of love...they are free to download, enjoy & pass along as desired. My name is Bob Hawkins...I grew up in Cincinnati & spent many a mid-late 60's summer afternoon laying in the hammock listening to WUBE on dad's Motorola transistor radio in College Hill. These recordings brought back many fond memories of my teen years.

There are 4 files, ranging in length from 14 to 34 minutes. They are big files, so a faster than dial up connection is a must. The files are at www.bob-on-the-job.com . Enjoy!
 
Bob, you have done a wonderful job with these. You are to truly be commended for the time and effort it took to accomplish this task. Just a footnote here; I made these tapes on the weekends when I was home from college since Morehead State University had little or no good rock radio. I would record and listen to them the next few weeks or so. It often would aggravate me when I got busy and realized that I had taped all these jingles and ads and was "wasting tape without music". Who would have guessed years later that it was the jingles and ads that was of value? It brings back great memories for me and I'm sure the folks that choose to listen to these will feel the same way. Thanks again from all of us out there.
 
Thanks for sharing, FRR and Bob. That was some good sounding radio. I grew up just north of Cincy where the 1230 signal was not great but listenable during the day. I distinctly remember this short-lived era of WUBE. Too bad it didn't last. But then WSAI sounded pretty hot in the late 60s too, and with a better signal.
 
I moved to Cincy in the early 1970's and never realized WUBE was not always a country station.
 
Hugh Knowho said:
I moved to Cincy in the early 1970's and never realized WUBE was not always a country station.
Click to expand...
1230 was WCPO until the sometime in the mid 60's. It wasn't AC but it wasn't great top 40 either. When Boss Radio came to town, it was in it's prime. From what I gather, they were able to equal WSAI's ratings, but it was costing them too much to do it...Country was a better economic choice starting in the Spring of 1969. Up to that point, Cincy only had WCLU 1320 & WCNW 1560 (both daytime only stations) doing Country. I'm sure the spectacular double digit ratings of WCLU had a lot to do with their decision to flip it. That was pretty much all she wrote for WCLU. WUBE-FM was WCXL...a Beautiful Music station on 105.1. By the time you arrived, WWEZ 92.5 was also doing beautiful music....I don't recall when WCXL switched to WUBE-FM.
 
microbob said:
Bobonthejob
These tapes are fabulous. If you wan't to listen to how the Drake format sounded like on FM. Go to http://rewoundradio.com/ and listen to WORFM.
Click to expand...
I'd love to hear WOR-FM, but when I click on the link, I hear something called Rewound Radio with no jocks or jingles...just an oldies jukebox with an occasional liner. Do I need to do something other than click on the jukebox?
 
NoWayNoCC said:
I think this is the first time I've ever seen "double digit ratings" and "WCLU" in the same sentence.
Click to expand...
I understand the bizarreness of that concept, but WCLU once had billboards all over town & some pretty big name DJ's. That along with their pretty decent signal over what was at the time a smaller metro area (the population center was largely within what we now call I-275) and no competition pretty well gave them 100% of the country audience.
 
microbob said:
Here is the WORFM Tribute page with downloadable airchecks that were on the stream. Scroll toward the bottom left hand side

http://www.musicradio77.com/WOR-FM/worfm.html
Click to expand...
Thanks Bob...that do be good radio! Al Brady sounded even better on WOR FM than on WUBE as Big Al Law. Those years in Cincy must have been good for him. The jingles are well worth a listen as well.
 
I emailed Al Brady Law on Facebook that day the airchecks were posted and told him that he was "all over" the WUBE airchecks and he needed to check them out. Didn't receive a response though.
 
I thought WKRC was programmed by Arthur Carlson with Dr Johnny Fever in the AM drive
 
1230 was WCPO until the sometime in the mid 60's. It wasn't AC but it wasn't great top 40 either. When Boss Radio came to town, it was in it's prime. From what I gather, they were able to equal WSAI's ratings, but it was costing them too much to do it...Country was a better economic choice starting in the Spring of 1969. Up to that point, Cincy only had WCLU 1320 & WCNW 1560 (both daytime only stations) doing Country. I'm sure the spectacular double digit ratings of WCLU had a lot to do with their decision to flip it. That was pretty much all she wrote for WCLU. WUBE-FM was WCXL...a Beautiful Music station on 105.1. By the time you arrived, WWEZ 92.5 was also doing beautiful music....I don't recall when WCXL switched to WUBE-FM.
[/quote]

I don't know when you listened to it man, but WCPO was very much a good sounding straight ahead Top 40
station, on par with WSAI, at least during 1964 and 1965...
 
Thank you Bob for all your hard work and thank you FRR for recording these gems originally.
I never lived in Cincinnati so I never had the chance to hear the Cincy version of the Drake format.
I'm assuming during the weekdays the station was mainly playing current hits.

Thanks again to both of you.
 
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