Aircheck - 1976 New York Morning Radio

[jeff560]

Tuning around the AM dial on Aug. 9, 1976. Includes WABC, WCBS, WNBC, WOR, WINS.

Some of you may have this, as I posted it on a web site some years ago.

In my opinion, horrible audio processing on WNBC!

https://soundcloud.com/jeff560/new-york-morning-radio-aug-9-1976

 

[L Chanon Gade]

WNBC was a real mess by then. They began to really push their processing in fall 1974 during the height the loudness war going on between WABC,WPIX-f, WXLO and WNBC. NBC had long used a weird form of high frequency attack on their limiters. Even on TV certain shows had envelope inversion when the material had a lot of highs.

WABC went to multi-band processing in August 1975. WPIX scaled back their stacked audimaxes in late 1976. WXLO which had become truly fatiguing in early 1974, cooled off by late 1975 and that left WNBC as the lone screecher. They went to a somewhat duller, thumpy sound when Pittman took over and went with his "FM on AM" concept at the end of August 1977.

Your tape mentions Hurricane Bell. Here is a recording I made back then at our beach house in Montaulk Pt:
http://www.fileconvoy.com/dfl.php?id=gd64876a5ff69855499968742416510c2961a0088c

On the recording you'll hear the late Norm McDonald weatherman fumble as he tries to explain the unpredictability of storms. I think he wanted to mention that was why they all had (back then) female names...but wisely hesitated.

It was on the morning before the storm was due to hit. The last train for NYC left with some 2000 on board and many left their luggage at the station due to no room. We stayed and had to shelter in a large stone church. Our house was built be developer Carl Fisher and had withstood about 50 years of storms, but this one was due to hit right at us w/130mph winds at high tide. As it turned out, it struck further back on the island. We had some minor power outages and the ocean pounded the beach sand into a concrete hardness, but that was all. One good result was that most of the visitors were gone and we had the beach pretty much to ourselves.

LCg

 

[njtom]

WNBC sounded like crap, Imus' voice on this air check is almost unrecognizable. In 1976 WABC was losing listeners to FM, still their processing and reverb made them stand out on the AM band. They also stood out with all the format elements that they offered, hit music from a variety of genres, a solid news department, time checks, sports and plenty of personality. Definitely a mass appeal station, today Z100 & Lite sort of fit that description. WINS sounded great then and still does today, with both processing and professional presentation of the all news format. Seems to me WINS tweaked the processing recently and now has a very distinctive, clean sound. Also seems like the "teletype" sound affect has become more subtle which IMO makes WINS easier to listen too

 

[epaddon]

Your tape mentions Hurricane Bell. Here is a recording I made back then at our beach house in Montaulk Pt:
http://www.fileconvoy.com/dfl.php?id=gd64876a5ff69855499968742416510c2961a0088c

Any chance of reuploading this again? Thanks.

 

[DOB]

From my understanding, WABC remained #1 all the way up to the launch of disco 92. They had like a 8 or 9 share the book before ktu took them down.

Was WPLJ really that great of a biller back then? You would think that after a year of WABC not getting their numbers back and ktu remaining strong, they would see it is not a fluke, fm's music dominance has finally took over superseding any type of format adjustment they could make, and thus move WABC over to 955. 955 would end up going chr anyway, if they were all along as WABC-FM certainly WYNY wouldn't have had the success they had in the early 80s before z100 signed on, and you wonder if z100 would have ever come to be if a heritage chr was doing its thing on 955 in 1983.