Pat Sajak on “Radio 65″ WSM Nashville | June 23, 1975
No Joke! “Wheel of Fortune” host Pat Sajak, as many television stars have, really did their time in radio and Sajak had his turn behind the mic.
Actually, aside from the fact that this is Pat Sajak like most of you have never heard before, this is also a side of WSM that MOST of our listeners have also never heard. Many of you probably know that there was a period of time that WSM had a split format, a Pop format during the day, and Country all night. If you’ve never heard that pop format, it was quite good, so good, in fact, you really won’t quite believe your ears.
Listen now, courtesy of one who recently left the WSM family. Thanks so much to our newest contributor, Jack Shell. Jack writes:
Sad thing is that station has gone from the Air Castle of the South to the Little House on the Prairie employing only seven full time staffers. I resigned a year ago as production director, but it was a nice time. The Sajak aircheck is a treasure.
Thanks, Jack. What your webmaster remembers most recently, was the fight to keep WSM Country and not take it Sports just a couple of years ago. It seemed so important at the time, but now perhaps that importance has faded along with the intelligibility of most of the AM signals these days… maybe due to the millions of computer devices flooding the AM band with digital noise… but I digress.
Y’all just listen to the aircheck now and enjoy, because its great and belongs to the ages!
(6 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
Loading ...
Loading ...
Wow! It is so great to hear this aircheck. I grew up in central New Jersey, and I clearly remember listening to the Grand Ole Opry with my parents as it crackled in over WSM. sure, 66 WNBC was interfering with it the whole time, but it was still clear enough to hear. We also used to listen to the Saturday Night Jamboree over WWVA out of Wheeling, West Virginia. I remember we took a long vacation in the Summer of 1976, and one of the places we visited was Nashville. I was so looking forward to being able to hear WSM during the day and was actually disappointed to learn that they played pop music during the day. Where I lived in New Jersey I could hear top 40 giants like WABC and WFIL whwenever I wanted, but hearing a good country station was a different story. WHN was buried by KYW out of Philadelphia where I lived so I was really looking forward to hearing some good country from WSM. it’s cool to hear now what WSM’s pop format sounded like back then, because I think I actually changed the station once I heard pop coming out of WSM back in 1976. What did I know..I was only seven years old at the time.