ABC Radio Network

[DavidEduardo]

Hal Neal was bound by those same constraints when he was at Wixie, and when he moved to WABC (and Fritz took over). Arguably, the constraints were greater in New York with corporate right there watching. But WABC thrived though the 60s and into the 70s; Wixie slid downhill. Yes, AM top 40 was not destined to last forever but top 40 Wixie died before it's time.

Think signal.

(And remember the elephant in the room... CKLW)

The first market Arbitron issued a report for was Detroit. And it was one of the first markets where advertisers in general abandoned Pulse and Hooper in favor of the new survey. While Hooper and Pulse tended to use much smaller survey areas... Arbitron, coming from TV measurement, defined metros consisting of multiple counties that extended often as far as the borders of the next market began. So Detroit suddenly became geographically larger, and the stations with bad signals died.

Keener and Wixie could compete in the smaller market; they played one of the classic Top 40 battle games for a while. At the end of the 60's, Drake's re-do of CKLW ended the game. Evenutally, none of the AMs could not hold up against WDRQ and the FM onslaught.

And WXYZ, due to signal and direct competiton, never had the huge WABC or WLS-like numbers that would make corporate listen to pleas about restricting the net junk.

WABC had coverage of multiple states daytime and listeners in several dozen at night. It did not have a competitor like CKLW with a vastly better signal. It was the 800 lb. gorilla.

WXYZ had miserable local market coverage by daytime, and at night it was even worse. And it had a monster-signal AM competitor.

It's signal, a monster competitor and the redefinition of the metro.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

The grand design was for ABC to have four demographically distinct affiliates in each market. Rarely, could they get all four cleared. All this sounded good in theory but ABC ended up taking what they could get in some markets.
In Detroit, they put Entertainment on WXYZ, then an ABC-owned station. Information ended up on WEXL, a country station. FM went to WOMC, then a beautiful music station. Contemporary was left out.
Back then, a lot of stations didn't want to bother with a network.
At WXYZ, it took them a while for them to figure out what to call the network news. For years, Wixie had promoted itself as ABC and now ABC avoided use of those initials on radio. Also the idea of "Entertainment News" didn't quite work. They just started calling it "network" (not "the network," just "network"), which also sounded strange. But by 1969, WXYZ was in free-fall and ABC ended up unloading it and selling it to the guy from sales who mismanaged the station into oblivion.
Entertainment wasn't really targeted to small market stations but running news on the half hour (directly up against Mutual) and giving Don McNeil and Paul Harvey to Entertainment sort of created that impression.
ABC would have done better if they'd offered a service like UPI Audio, paid for by network advertisers and carried on class A phone lines, letting stations take whatever they wanted as long as they ran the spots.

ABC had a much easier time clearing affiliates in Flint, Fred, maybe a couple years after you left WFDF, which was NBC until WJR became NBC, and they switched to CBS along with WWJ. There was just too close to a City Grade signal from WJR for them to not be able to keep NBC. WKMF 1470 was the ABC affiliate before the four networks came to be, and it became the American Entertainment Network affiliate. Former ABC affiliates WTAC 600 and WTRX 1330 jumped at the chance to affiliate again. Top 40 WTAC became the American Contemporary Network affiliate, and the newly Adult Contemporary formatted WTRX was the American Information Radio Network affiliate, leading into the "Full Service" format era of the 1970s and 1980s.

WGMZ-FM 107.9 became the American FM Network affiliate while still owned by John McGoff's Panax Corporation, with a dayparted AC/Beautiful Music Format. Metrocom bought WGMZ-FM and continued the affiliation while programmed by Bob Layne/Bob Liggett. The affiliation continued for a while when Long Island based Beck Ross Communication bought WGMZ-FM in 1970 after a quick flip, and to Automated Reel To Reel Beautiful Music. Ross is George Ross of "The Apprentice", and Donald Trump's right hand man. WKMF/WGMZ was one of George Ross' earliest investments, continuing until Beck Ross VP/GM Allan William "Bill" Lee of in between years WHCN Hartford fame bought the station in 1984, and flipped to Adult Contemporary WCRZ "Cars 108", call letters of which have been attributed to Bill Lee's son Edward David Lee. The American FM Network continued on WGMZ for a while, but as I recall, was eventually dropped.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Previous Electronics classes at my high school built a Heathkit FM Tuner and a Heathkit Amplifier, and wired speakers into the drop ceiling. Another Class mounted a Channel 6 Yagi pointed at Detroit FM stations such as WKNR-FM and WXYZ-FM, just as Arthur Penhallow started at WXYZ-FM. It changed to WRIF during the year I was in Electronics Class. I still remember these two kids in Electronics class imitating "Arthur P" and saying things like "Now we're going to play another cut from Mister Hendrix". Then the Student Teacher would come in and yell at us for turning the bass way up on the Heathkit Amplifier, doing his best to imitate Scotty from "Star Trek", "I don't know how much more Bass those speakers can handle", and presaging the role of Joel's father in "Risky Business" by noticing a "preponderance of Bass".

 

[FredLeonard]

I was at WFDF when it was still NBC and I was out of the market and not paying attention to Flint after ABC split. Thanks for the update. Before WFDF, I worked for Panax (aka "The Midstate FM Network"), which was an interesting operation. The "network" was connected by OTA relay, like many attempts at creating networks for FM back then. Another example was The New York Times' QXR Network. Everything was fine as long as everybody took the "feed." It was like old fashioned Christmas tree lights. If one station is not up, everybody further out is out of luck. Midstate had really good state capitol news coverage (until WWJ hired the guy away and then didn't let him keep working the capitol beat) and, of course, Jim Rockwell's outstanding jazz show. They also did a weekly experimental arts and culture show that was NPR quality several years before NPR (and light years ahead of what educational radio was doing).

FDF was also a class act in many ways. But as I worked in other markets around Michigan, I could never get away from Dan Hunter and Jack Shannon and those damn Yankee commercials (WHERE??? ..... ONLY AT YANKEES!!!).

After the ABC split, I was working at an all news station in Denver which took the Information Network. It was fun having the network on in the newsroom and hearing the different newscast feeds. At the time, each network got a very distinctive product. Plus the ABC line also carried several newscasts each for the Intermountain Network. Those were produced and carried at another station in town using the Information style and sounder, although that station did not take any newscasts from any of the ABC networks. As I recall, ABC managed to get all the networks cleared in Denver, sort of. Entertainment and Contemporary were on rim-shots with poor coverage. This was asked in another thread before: We were on Mountain Time and at some point in the evening newscasts started coming out of LA. Not sure if the Eastern and Central time zones got those or not.

Interesting that TAC (Trendle and Campbell) became an American Contemporary affiliate. After Trendle sold Wixie to ABC, he bought WTAC, along with Allan Campbell, who'd been his sales manager at Wixie. If you watch the Lone Ranger on Cozi, notice the program credits say created by George W. Trendle, produced by Trendle, Campbell, Meurer, Inc. (Ray Meurer was Trendle's lawyer.)

Trendle and his partner bought Wixie in the first place after being forced out as operators of Paramount theaters in the Detroit area. They had a non-compete for theaters, so they went into radio. A few years after Trendle sold Wixie to ABC, ABC was acquired by Paramount Theaters.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Was that Tim Skubick, who was Jeff Stevens at WAMM, which was also owned by Panax/MidStates/John McGoff, and continued to be owned by Panax after they spun off WGMZ to Metrocom, that you are referring to? As Tim Skubick, he's still on WWJ and Michigan PBS affiliate show "Off The Record". The unscoped Jim Taylor Hampton interview of Stevie Wonder from December, 1965 has the WAMM signoff cart with Panax Corporation of East Lansing, Michigan as the owner of WAMM. Bob Liggett bought Panax/Mid States' WSWM around 1970 and changed it to WFMK, after he left Metrocom. Mid States' WQDC was donated to Saginaw Valley State College as WSVC, and was then sold to Family Life Radio and became WUGN. Not sure of the ownership timeline of WABX, but Bob Liggett owned that for a while also in the 1980s as WCLS "Class FM", now CBS WYCD.

Just to connect the dots, in 1969-1970, Jesse Champion was my High School English teacher in Flint. Before being run out of Birmingham by none other than Bull Connor circa 1963, Jesse taught school in Birmingham and worked at WJLD Bessemer/Homewood, AL. He returned to Birmingham in 1970, when Bull Connor was in declining health and no longer able to enforce Jesse Champion's exile from Birmingham, to work at WBRC/WERC/WKXX, where he soon worked with none other than our #1 poster here, David Eduardo! Jesse Champion was a true Renaissance Man, a teacher, a Jazz Vocalist inducted into the Alabama State Jazz Hall of Fame, Civil Rights Activist, Funeral Home director, and other activities too numerous to mention. He passed away a few years ago. We used to talk about radio before English Class, and one day I brought my copy of The World Radio and Television Handbook, and were talking about Taft Broadcasting which owned WBRC at the time. I was telling him how I could get both Taft's WGR 550 Buffalo and WKRC 550 Cincinnati on a Sony TRF radio in the daytime by just turning the radio! I was probably one of the first to know he was leaving for WBRC 960, and he showed me his letter from WBRC when he was hired!

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

BTW, all of my teachers were not as enthusiastic about Radio as Mr. Jesse Champion. I began DXing around 1961, and one day I talked about DXing for Show and Tell. Keep in mind that I wasn't that sophisticated of a DXer as I am today. My idea of DX in 1961 was WOAP 1080 Owosso, just 25 miles away. It would be another couple of years before I started listening to WGN and WLS on AM, and WJIM-FM, WKAR-FM, WXYZ-FM, WBCM-FM, WSWM, and even WQDC on our Magavox Stereo Theater with a Turnstile FM antenna. Actually WJIM-FM and WKAR-FM were some of the strongest signals from outside Flint, which only had limited schedule instructional programs on WFBE, and of course WGMZ, at the time. Anyway, after my Show and Tell presentation, the teacher said something diminutive like, "well, that's nice, IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN THAT KIND OF THING!"

 

[DavidEduardo]

Just to connect the dots, in 1969-1970, Jesse Champion was my High School English teacher in Flint. Before being run out of Birmingham by none other than Bull Connor circa 1963, Jesse taught school in Birmingham and worked at WJLD Bessemer/Homewood, AL. He returned to Birmingham in 1970, when Bull Connor was in declining health and no longer able to enforce Jesse Champion's exile from Birmingham, to work at WBRC/WERC/WKXX, where he soon worked with none other than our #1 poster here, David Eduardo!

Jesse was one of those people who loved radio and chose to work in it, despite being overqualified in both experience and education. As a newsman, he could do so much more than just read wire copy, which helped make our morning show so incredibly good.

 

[FredLeonard]

SC: Wow! WOAP is one of those stations that seems to hold a particular fascination for people on radio boards (the Buzzboard, especially), completely disproportionate to audience or influence on the industry.
I started DXing about that time. I was in the Detroit area. One Sunday night I picked up NBC Monitor just to the left of WWJ. There were all these local commercials talking about "Yankee Stadium stores" and I figured I was getting a station in New York. After about a half hour, I realized I'd gotten Flint.

No, definitely not Skubick. And this was channel fo-ur (always pronounced as though "four" had two syllables), the Detroit News station.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Here's a video of Jesse Champion discussing leaving Birmingham to teach in Flint, and returning to WBRC in 1970. I SAW THE LETTER HE DISCUSSED when he got the job at WBRC, although he didn't pull it completely out of the drawer, probably because he didn't want anyone to see it, because at that point I don't think he had informed the Flint Public Schools that he was leaving. He kept referring to the letter, and finally I got out of my seat to see what he was looking at, and it was on the Taft Broadcasting letterhead, listing all of the stations that they owned. We had discussed the fact that I could get WGR and WKRC on 550 in the daytime just by turning the radio and nulling out the other station. As I recall, we also discussed that he had worked at WJLD, and when he first said it, I thought he had said WJLB, and musing that both stations were on 1400 and both had an R & B Format. He remained somewhat in touch with radio people in Michigan. I don't know if he worked in radio anywhere in Michigan, although he did discuss knowing the guy who did everything at WLEW Bad Axe, so he could have applied there or filled in occasionally on weekends or something like that. But he didn't say specifically that he worked there, perhaps because he didn't want the Flint Public Schools or the United Teachers of Flint to know he was moonlighting in another field, although a few years later, Russ Gibb did that very openly. Except for educational radio stations, teachers and administrators were and are often very high and mighty, looking down on commercial radio. Years later, I knew a guy who worked in commercial radio briefly, and hid the fact from his new employers at WDET. He literally didn't want to talk about it with me.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m6X-d28lz6M