Airchexx.com

Here’s a first…. An exclusive interview with former CBS-FM jock Steve O’Brien! Steve’s been in New York Radio for a long time on such stations as WABC, WYNY and of course CBS-FM! He’s been heard on Sirius Satellite Radio and seen on the TV game show, the $25,000 Pyramid!

This is a real interview! Steve and I were in contact for awhile ever since he did our 3rd segment of Musicradio 77 Recreated for New Years Eve 2005, and he graciously donated a bit of his time to give all of us a bit of insight into his career and what it was like to be a jock at the Golden 101!

Did you know SOB was at CBS-FM for 15 years! It might not be as long as Don K. Reed but 15 years is a long time for a dj to be at any station anywhere. And, as Steve says, the longevity of the personalities on CBS-FM was a big factor in the station’s success.

So… listen now as we chat with one true radio great – Steve O’Brien from 101 CBS-FM!

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Perhaps this was the first incarnation anywhere of the modern “Classic Hits” format which most American Oldies stations have morphed into. This particular tape illustrates two Infinity (CBS) stations: 93.1 KCBS-FM Los Angeles (Arrow 93) and 107.9 KXOA (FM) (Arrow 108). Based on the tape label, and the fact that KXOA ran the format from the Spring of 1994 until the station was sold in 1996 from Brown Broadcasting to Entercom, we can assume that the label is correct. Just not accurate enough to nail down the actual date.

Your webmaster had written that he thought the format sounded bland upon hearing it on Washington DC’s WARW “Arrow 94″ (which was when I was serving active duty in the U.S. Navy, stationed at Ft. McHenry Baltimore training Reservists and writing their active duty orders – yeah, I was THAT RM1…). Listening to most stations today, I have to re-think that assessment. True, the Arrow format was heavy on liners and the jock emphasis on “All Rock and ROLL Oldies”, but at least they could stray from the liners somewhat, and the format was LIVE. In 1995, very few stations had anything resembling a software automation system, almost everywhere, stations were playing CD carts, old tape carts and in some cases, Mini Discs. Thus, in ’95, radio was in transition from what was 50s & 60s based Oldies, to 60s & 70s (and later, 80s) Classic Hits. Studios were transitioning from manual analog to CD digital, then later, PC based automation systems.

But I digress.

Let this very short, two minute sampler of a couple of breaks of KCBS-FM and KXOA stand by itself and examples of formats in transition. And comment appropriately.

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In October, 2005, your webmaster was frantically recording as much of West Tennessee radio as possible before moving out of the area permanently. I’m not sure where I recorded this clip from, but it was either from the 3rd floor of 1070 Union Avenue in the WMC-FM studios or at my apartment in East Memphis.

All this is is a one minute concert promo, followed by a legal ID going into a Beatles song. Probably the shortest aircheck on this site to date.

An FCC records check indicates that 103.1 is still WMXX (as of this writing), and one would guess the station is probably either still Oldies or (more than likely) Classic Hits. It was mostly an automated station in 2005. We’ve no logo for this station either. So, there ya go. If you’re familiar with this station, this may be of interest to you.

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Each week in November, we’re featuring radio’s coverage of Hurricane Sandy. Here in Part 3, we’re listening to the Vinny Penn Project, the morning show on WELI New Haven.

I actually made two recordings of WELI, this one, using my Sony HD receiver which was picking up WELI in HD (thus, the grainy sounding 96kb digital signal) as is the norm here, about 15 miles from the WELI transmitter. The other recording was ‘in progress’ from the simulcast of WELI on the main FM carrier of CHR WKCI-FM “KC-101″ when the power went out and I lost the entire recording at about 3:30 pm as Hurricane Sandy’s full fury began to be felt in our region.

WELI is mostly in-format here, in a recording that was made sometime around 10:30 AM. Penn stayed on the air on WELI through much of the storm. Other stations at this time were either in full emergency mode with continuous coverage, or voice tracked music stations without a body in the building. Thankfully, Clear Channel made the right decision in simulcasting WELI on KC-101 and dropping CHR during the duration of the storm. Elsewhere, WICC 600 Bridgeport and WTIC 1080 Hartford were doing local wall to wall storm coverage, WAVZ 1300, normally ESPN Sports, had opted for Television coverage (I believe WTNH 8). WDRC AM and stations in it’s talk network were in coverage mode, as were out of local market WGY 810 Albany, WBZ 1030 Boston, WCBS 880 New York, WINS 1010 New York. Those are what I actually could HEAR from my recording location in Connecticut. Philly, Baltimore and Washington DC all had stations covering full time although I could not hear them once the power to my internet connection went out.

WICC would eventually go off the air when their transmitter on Long Island Sound was swamped, as did WINS 1010. Unlike WINS, which moved it’s operations to 102.7 WWFS for the duration of its outage, WICC was not moved to its logical FM, 107.9 WEBE.

Our coverage continues in Part 4, coming next Sunday.

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Running 33 minutes, here’s part two of our coverage of Hurricane Sandy recorded on Monday morning, 8-10 hours before landfall.

The reason for recording this, was to document radio’s coverage and response to a major emergency. The only editing of this recording done was to remove most of the commercials and music, where it was played.

Note the tone of each broadcaster, and content of each station this particular morning. Before the storm’s effects were fully felt, the Tri-State region was already in lockdown, Connecticut’s governor had already closed all roads in the state, and New York City was already beginning to see flooding in Lower Manhattan. And still, listening to this recording, note that aside from WTIC and WINS, other stations were mentioning Sandy, but basically it was ‘format as usual’ – and this was Morning Drive.

Watch, as more coverage is posted next week, and see just how many stations all but ignored the storm as the day progressed from morning to afternoon, and only News/Talk stations really had a handle on coverage. There are bright spots in the radio coverage, but we’ll talk about that next time.

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Produced by Steve West in August, 2002 for the one-year anniversary of the Al-Qaida attacks on the United States of America, at the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC, this is an Airchexx.com Special Presentation!

Now, listen to the events as heard on radio and a somber tribute to a day which nobody the world over will ever forget! As heard on America’s Trucking Network (formerly the Truckin’ Bozo Show) on 700 WLW & XM Satellite Radio, stations of the Information Radio Network (IRNUSA Radio) and hundreds of other stations nationwide.

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This is an odd aircheck, at least the master was. Lots of album cuts, all very heavy progressive rock from 1968. Forget everything you’ve ever heard about how the jocks sounded in this era, this is the real deal. They sound stoned, tuned out and tuned in, almost amateurish, at least on the KZAP part of this at the beginning.

The very beginnings of FM Rock Radio. Who knows how many listeners these stations had in 1968? In San Francisco, most of the city, from what we can tell, was tuned to 610 KFRC… except the college kids. Probably Sacramento also. But this? The music cuts are all things you’d hear on a Classic Rock station today. Of course, you won’t hear the music cuts because this is a scoped presentation. But you get a feel for the stations and their formats.

You’ll hear a live commercial in this and one recorded spot. Glad they weren’t in this for the money back then

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Here’s something interesting that came in on a tape labelled simply “DC Radio, ETC..” This is a very high quality recording of the old 1580 WPGC / 95.5 Simulcast from sometime in the mid-1960s. This is really too short to extract much out of. You won’t hear the jock name, but you will get a generous dose of old jingles and some vintage Washington-area commercials. Anyone remember Glen Echo Amusement Park? Also, this is so old that we hear a very short 10 second or so ad for Newport Menthol Cigarettes!

Perhaps someone can nail the exact date for us… at least the correct year, which we guess is 1964. Someone in our audience always knows. Listen. And discuss.

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Given the length of the average ACC countdown, one would think that the commercial load would be evenly split between all four hours. Not so with American Country Countdown. It, and it’s older cousin American Top 40, both used a formula that ‘back loaded’ the number of spot breaks to the final hour. While the first three hours were split into three breaks / segments per hour, the final hour had four breaks and more network commercials, probably taking advantage of the higher chart position and popularity of hit songs. To compensate, there were more local avails for individual radio stations in the earlier spot breaks, and less in the later to accomadate the more network spots. An interesting bit of information there.

Also available on the final of four CDs that the show was delivered on, were promos done by Bob Kingsley for the week’s upcoming countdown – so it was imperitave that the show be delivered fairly early on in the week prior to it’s airing so that member stations could tag the promos with their own ID and get it on the air. Lastly, when stations would contract to have ACC or even American Top 40, once things were finalized, the show host would cut local liners for each station so as to ‘localize’ it, tailoring the show to the individual station. Each member station had market exclusivity, meaning that once WXYZ signed the contract to air ACC, no other station within that market could air the program. It was a pretty good setup, although after the first few years of ACC, other countdowns would eventually emerge, like Jeff Foxworthy’s “Foxworthy Countdown” and the like. All of which created competition on other market Country stations, if there were any.

American Country Countdown was created in the 1980s by Casey Kasem after witnessing the unbelievable popularity of American Top 40. It would go on to become yet another success in the world of Country music, which it continues to be as of this writing. We at Froggy 94 were lucky to have the program.

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ACC usually ran approximately four hours, each hour running about 48 minutes of programming, with 12 minutes available for local commercials, promos and a legal ID. In order to stretch the countdown to fill the four hours, ACC would add ‘extras’ – short interviews and a few extra songs that were relevant to that particular week’s countdown. Listen closely to this hour. Can you name the ‘extras’ in hour #3?

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