Archives: Million Dollar Weekend on CKLW Windsor/Detroit | 1976 (40:06) Scoped
From the Summer of 2002 comes this gem of an aircheck - A CKLW “Million Dollar Weekend”. As the restoral of the original site archives continues, I thought this to be a good time to bring back The Big 8 in all it’s glory, after a few site-surfers left comments saying they miss CKLW.
In the true spirit of radio-that-was, here’s your request!
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I used to listen CKLW as it boomed across Lake Erie to Cleveland… I’d lay in bed with my little transistor radio jammed under my pillow
Probably the station that really introduced me to rock n roll in the early 70s.
Awesome stuff! I was born in 1980, which was well past the Big 8’s glory days - in fact, I remember CKLW-AM chiefly as a big band/standards outlet, which it was from 1984 to 1993 - but I’ve come to learn a lot about this station and understand what a legend it was. And I do remember sister station 93.9 FM (then CKLW-FM, now CIDR) trying an oldies format in the early ’90s that mimicked the classic “Big 8″ formula. That was where I first heard that famous Johnny Mann “See-Kay-Ell-Double-Yooooooooo” signature jingle. Detroit’s oldies station these days, WOMC, delivers little subtle winks and nods to classic CKLW (i.e. “The Motor Cityyyyyyyy” in their TOH jingle) but can’t even come close to what the Big 8 really was. Fortunately there is a very powerful AM from Chatham, Ontario (CFCO 630) which plays many of the Cancon classics that you couldn’t hear anywhere else but CKLW when they were brand new releases! Long live the Big 8!
This sounds like the Dazed & Confused soundtrack!
As a young college student in the late 60s/early 70s, CKLW personified party time on weekends and good listening throughout the week. I remember walking down the hallways in the dorms at Bowling Green University in Ohio and hearing radios in room-after-room tuned to 800 CKLW. The bass with which they broadcast made the sound and power seem even more commanding. I remeber the 20/20 news format and forever the “Million Dollar Weekends”. CKLW,is one of the great treasures missing from our modern landscape. Why can’t modern radio succeed with such a great format today ?