Fred Winston 1st Day on AM 1000 WCFL Chicago | March 13, 1981
Going through the archives of donated materials, I seem to have forgotten about this one.
Who remembers this re-incarnation of WCFL as a contemporary music station? Apparently, according to “WCFL Chicago Radio Timeline”, WCFL returned from MUZAK land, first as an All-News station in 1978-79, then flipped to an Adult Contemporary format in 1980. Who knew? Well, by 1981, then owner Mutual Broadcasting decided to add some popular personalities… Winston being one, Gary Gears another… and voila! WCFL was back, although quite a bit more subdued than the previous Top 40 years.
This is kinda funny, Winston is still a wisecracker, and someone calls in to say they are recording this for posterity, Winston fires back, ‘what, are you crazy? Trying to blackmail me or something hahaha‘
We’re lucky this survived all these years. Its from a time when WCFL tried a last ditch effort as a music station before going religious, then the huge days as WLUP-AM. Now, be forewarned. This took a lot of processing and sounds kinda wierd, since it was apparently an AM Stereo recording - from one of the early attempts at it like Khan, Hazeltine or something, and while there’s stereo separation in parts of this 30-plus minute aircheck, the receiver used in recording made it sound a bit grainy and there wasn’t much bass. That’s fixed here but it ain’t perfect so if it sounds funny, its not your computer! It would have helped if the person who originally digitized this had used a higher bit rate, but we can only use what’s available.
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Thanks for posting this. Mutual put a lot of money into this AC/oldies format in a last-ditch effort to revive ‘CFL. Though it wasn’t a commercial success, it was awfully fun radio while it lasted. In addition to Fred, they brought over PD Dave Martin and jocks Dean Richards and Bob Kraft from WFYR. Jhani Kaye was at ‘CFL during this era, too.
It’s interesting to hear Jim Bohannan (a holdover from the old news/talk format) as Fred’s sidekick in this aircheck. Also, Fred is still getting comfortable with the format. At 6:00, he forgets to do the ID (”AM 1000, WCFL, Mutual Radio for Chicago.”) leading into the network news.