In a "back-door" type of way, Bob was responsible for me getting into radio. In 1974, I was growing up in the Chicagoland area, and one of my favorite stations was WMAQ-AM. It was an Adult Contemporary station featuring air personalities from the WLS and WCFL era.
In October of that year, WMAQ announced they were going to switch formats to country in January, 1975.(Hard to believe in those days you could announce a format change that was coming up in a couple of months...unlike to today, where it's simply "flipped"!)
Anyway, I was ticked that the ac format was going away, but I was intrigued by the fact that a station could be ac one day, and country the next. Bob Pittman was the pd and overseeing the change with GM Charlie Warner. He did some weekend work on WMAQ during the final weeks as an ac station...calling himself "Bob". He later did weekends with the country format and temporarily held afternoon drive after the initial jock, Corky Mayberry left.
I called Bob a couple of times on the request line before and after the format change as a curious listener and he was very nice in explaining the situation. I was very interested in because I was totally transfixed on this format change. The final days that WMAQ was an ac station, they saluted the top five radio stations in Chicago...stating that WMAQ would soon "be one of them". The following year, WCFL switched to beautiful music, and I was determined to get into this crazy biz. Bob, of course, made Chicago headlines the following year when he developed WKQX as an album rock station...going commerical free for the first month as the bait, which worked as well.
He was rewarded with a transfer to New York and his soaring career was underway. Thanks, Bob...for giving me the insentive to get into radio!
John "Patrick" Bowler
