Airchexx.com

We know very little about the Calgary market, and can only go by what the source tape says. Dated simply 8/22, we’re going to guess the year as 1996, assuming Cheryl Crow’s “Every Day Is A Winding Road” is a current song in rotation.

A few notables on this 10+ minute scope: Lisa Flairhe(sp) (pronounced Flair-hay) is heard towards the beginning, in just one break. She talks after the music stops, like an old AOR approach. After a commercial break, Rhino steps in with a live Top Hour Legal ID over a music bed, and is heard often, talking over the music in a more CHR approach. I’m not sure if this was typical of the format or a fluke. The imaging voice is a guy by the name of Zak. Don’t remember his last name but he voiced a lot of Alternative and Modern AC stations in the 90s.

The logo below is from the same general time period. Not sure if it was before or after this aircheck but I’m thinking before.

Our Canadian visitors are invited to comment especially if they are familiar with CKIK and the Calgary market.

…Sue, hello Sue – that was terrible!

Jack Miller did a weekly talent show on WDRC where listeners could call in and perform just about anything. It was, of course, all for entertainment, and some of the callers were truly awful. But, Jack Miller is the star of the show, and he DOES entertain. Shown here in this 14 minute original recording, Miller is a great host, who is much more than a disc jockey. His quick wit and ability to control this ‘talent’ show while playing along with the contestants, serves as a lesson to today’s radio people, that there’s far more to being a jock than playing non-stop music and talking like the kids in high school.

Courtesy of Steve from Cape Cod.

WIOQ was undoubtedly the outlet to turn to for the hits in Philly by the end of the 80s. Listening to this 12 minutes of CHR pleasure, Q102 leans Rhythmic, and features Chris Jagger.

Knowing almost nothing about the Columbus market, we present to you this just over five minute scope of Baltazar on WXGT. The station calls itself the NEW 92X, so it may have undergone a recent format change as of this recording.

More 80s CHR courtesy of Robyn Watts.

Seven years into a CHR war that WPLJ was losing to ratings giant WHTZ, the station leans Rhythmic and Wendy Williams is one of the stars that make up a talented airstaff. That’s what you hear on this four minute restored scope courtesy of Robyn Watts.

Power 95 is voiced here by Charlie Van Dyke, and they play some decent, if not un-remarkable jingles. In your webmasters opinion, WPLJ never really found its niche after dumping AOR at the TOP of its game in 1983. Still, this short glimpse into it’s CHR format near the end of it’s run is typical of many stations of it’s kind as the 80s drew to a close. And while this may be somewhat unremarkable, what you hear here is, in our opinion, far better than most radio post-Telcom ’96, and in particular, radio at the twilight of the first decade of the 21st century.

Z100 is celebrating its 6th year as New York’s Number One Hit Music Station, and all sorts of people are congratulating the station including (then) New York Governor Mario Cuomo. We love it when politicians and other celebrities personally voice station liners!

This is Z100 in all of it’s glory, playing ALL the hits with an airstaff that reads like a who’s who of blockbuster jocks. Jo Jo Morales sounds great here, but this is no different than any other day on this station.

Lightly processed and restored to near perfect condition, here’s a three-plus minute scoped listen to one of America’s finest FM CHR stations ever!

 JoJo Morales Z100 1989 [3:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Cue the bloggers! Hollywood Hamilton is one of those truly great CHR jocks who found himself heard on Satellite Radio, so there are plenty of searches for him. Well, link to this. Here’s Hamilton on another famous outlet for hit music, KIIS-FM, which here is an AM/FM simulcast (with KIIS-AM 1150 AM Stereo).

Listen for Rick Dees and a recorded spot for Neutra-System about 5 minutes in. Dees was always known for his endorsements and here’s one of those longtime products that helped pad Dees’ wallet.

In the history of Boston radio, perhaps no other Program Director was as successful or famous as “Sunny” Joe White. Hired by Ritchie Balsbaugh to launch Disco “Kiss 108″ in 1978 from the ashes of Beautiful Music WWEL-FM 107.9, White took Boston’s first Disco station straight to number 1. By late 1979, as the Disco fad faded into oblivion, White took Kiss in a new direction, and by mid-1980, Kiss was straight-ahead Top 40, where it remains as of this writing.

Sunny Joe White’s success with Kiss 108 really is unparallelled, at least from a longevity standpoint. While the decade of the 70s saw WRKO as the mainstream Top 40 outlet, RKO never achieved the ratings or fame that Kiss did. At one point in the 1983, Kiss OWNED the CHR format in a four station race that included WHTT, WZOU, Kiss, and even for a time, WROR 98.5, which tried the format for a while in ’83 before returning to AC.

But this ‘check is from 1989. While personnel changes and a loss of CHR competition would mark the 90s, Kiss is still going strong, in a mainstream battle between itself and crosstown WZOU Z-94. White, in addition to PD was also the night jock, in a position that he would hold a little while longer before a dispute with Balsbaugh would force him out in the 90s, only for him to wind up at Fairbanks’ WVBF.

Kiss really cooks here. White is returning from vacation and is having a lot of fun. The music rotation leans a bit more rhythmic, but the Rolling Stones make an appearance, as does Starship and a few other Rock dinosaurs.

Runs 7:09, scoped. Courtesy of Robyn Watts and “East Coast Airchecks”

From the enormous Robyn Watts collection, we present J.J Walker on Y-100! This is included on a tape put out by a then-popular aircheck service called East Coast Airchecks. This is from tape #11.

A pretty funny and exciting late-80s CHR, Y-100 had a great lineup in those days. Walker does a feature called “Bed Check”, where callers throw in their comments and Walker just has a good time with it. Not much in the way of formatics or music, what scoped things we’d allow anyway. But one gets a feel for the J.J. Walker show presented here in a restored recording, lightly processed and noise reduced as the source tape was a bit worn.

From Contributor Daniel Coloumbe comes this four and a half minute, tightly scoped promotional demo of the new “Hit Oldies” format.

Programmers, if you’re looking for a cost-effective means to program your Classic Hits or Oldies station, listen to this fresh approach to Oldies, as demonstrated here programmed on CJMQ 88.9 FM Sherbrooke, Quebec. Then, click here to send an email for more information.