***CLICK THE AUDIO PLAYER ABOVE TO HEAR THIS AIRCHECK***

Going back to the Big Apple Airchecks “ron o’brien”” files collected after O’Brien’s passing, This is an excellent quality audio recording featuring one of America’s all-time best Top 40 radio personalities. Those familiar with Big Ron’s shows will be thrilled with this nearly half-hour scope recorded over the April-June timeframe. Actually, this is presented out of chronological order, with the June aircheck first. I did this because the June aircheck, which is just over 14 minutes in length, is by far the best quality, and easiest on listener’s ears. Big Ron is so good, that even the second half of this, even though it originated from a cassette tape that sounds as if the oxide coating was wearing off, he just sound AMAZING!

I’ve been archiving classic audio for 23 years as of this posting, and I’m still blown away by just how great it was listening to Big Ron, and even others of seemingly ‘lesser’ talent. You all really need to understand, most of the radio personalities – those voices between the music you hear on radio stations today, the vast majority these days pre-record their shows, something known in the radio industry as “voice tracking”, for you who aren’t familiar with how radio is presented – back in 1978, Big Ron O’Brien as heard here, did his show as everyone ELSE heard on the radio did, 100% LIVE. Meaning, everything you hear him say on this aircheck was said on the spur of the moment, and his humor right off the top of his head! What set Ron, and others of his caliber, apart from most other air talent from ANY era, is he was incredibly smart and quick on his feet. To Ron, radio was simply his playground, and the rest of us listeners simply his live studio audience treated to four hours of laughs every day!

Wish to hear MORE from WRKO?  Former PD & Air Personality Harry Nelson is the subject of the following from our Official “Airchexx Classic Radio” YouTube Channel

(January 2, 1950 – June 4, 2021)

**Stand by.   A VIDEO VERSION of this aircheck is in development and shall post on this page and at our YouTube Channel shortly.   Come back often!**

Curator’s Editorial Notes:

For you young people… this audio was typical programming done on an AM station! NOT FM! In 1978, there was no conservative talk radio, or much else resembling the dull & drab spoken word formats that pepper the AM band today… Few all-news stations, very few foreign language stations and even the religious formats that occupy probably one third of the AM signals that remain on the air today in 2025 – pontificating their bloviated mega-church message begging the poorest of America’s poor to send in their donations as they struggle to feed themselves – No, back in June 1978, we had stations like WRKO in Boston, who through the brilliance of corporate PDs (a WAY different corporate radio culture which came out of the economics of FCC rules limiting broadcasters to only being allowed to own 7 AM, 7 FM and 7 TV stations in TOTAL across the United States…. and only ONE of each within the market reach of those stations. The competition that ensued because of these ownership limitations was fierce! Corporations such as RKO General – the radio division of General Tire and Rubber Corporation – was simply one of the BEST in terms of talent in each of the markets that RKO owned radio & TV stations, and in this founder’s opinion, while many historians regard RKO’s 93/KHJ Los Angeles as the ‘gold standard’ by which all fledgeling 60s and 70s hit music stations are judged, I disagree. I hold WRKO at 680 on Boston’s AM radio dial as THE greatest Top 40 Radio station in terms of level of talent, intensity of the format, the lightning fast presentation of the music and format elements, and – and this matters to me – the CLEANEST RF signal on the air within the RF footprint of WRKO.

Of course, MY opinion regarding WRKO, it’s overall programming, the top notch radio signal (meaning, the RF emanating from the WRKO transmitter plant tuned to 680 kHz, directional to the EAST as it was) combined with MY love for the type of people heard screaming (sometimes) from the WRKO microphones influences how I judge this Boston RKO General radio station. Even after listening to various airchecks posted right here at Airchexx.com of OTHER RKO stations, such as the two biggies – 93/KHJ Los Angeles, and my SECOND favorite, 610 KFRC San Francisco, I still believe in my heart that 68 WRKO was simply the best overall in the entire RKO General chain. It also helped RKO’s reputation in Boston, that they also owned 98.5 FM, and had begun the Top 40, hit music format on the FM signal BEFORE launching the format on AM 680 – which prior to 1967 was a Middle-Of-The-Road wallflower suffering from mediocre ratings as WNAC. We have RKO General’s then national PD/Consultant Bill Drake and his business partner Gene Chenault to thank for giving us New England listeners the GIFT of personality oriented 68 WRKO, a station that played the most popular songs and personalities who had more to say in between those songs than ANYTHING Boston had ever heard up until it launched. Thanks, Bill Drake! Of course, WRKO, while a great station (IMHO) throughout it’s lifespan as a music station from March 3, 1967 to September 27, 1981, the station, like so many others, had it’s ups and downs. The period beginning with it’s launch in 1967 through the early 1970s was probably it’s most successful, and it was the period where the hilariously entertaining, if not a bit quirky Dale Dorman held down the Morning Drive slot. After a period where the ratings dipped a bit, thanks to Fairbanks Communications’ 105.7 WVBF on the FM DIAL, which was nationally, one of the first FM band stations to make serious inroads, cutting into the ratings of the biggest AM stations in Boston (such as WBZ, which was once a Top 40 station until WRKO launched – WBZ gave up the format and moved into what was known as “Middle of the Road” and “Full Service” – a format which literally was everything from soup to nuts, from a deep commitment to News, to music which ranged from old 1940s & 50s Standards from artists like Frank Sinatra and Perry Como, to light songs from The Beatles, to night time LOCAL talk shows… WBZ was a pioneer in talk radio long before “Talk Radio” became an established format which, ironically, WRKO flipped to in 1981, being the FIRST Boston area radio station to take on a 24/7 talk format.

Young people reading this – and I certainly hope Airchexx reaches a young audience – our Classic Radio Aircheck posts serve as an online audio museum that sheds light on how people listened to their favorite music, how it was presented, when it all began and how music formats evolved. And, as you explore this North American Broadcasting museum, you’ll gain insight on how it is that RADIO – America’s FIRST mass-medium, the one where American’s learned about the 1929 Stock Market Crash, the Hindenburg Disaster in 1937, President Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” and then were entertained by daily Soap Operas, Network News operations bringing in-depth coverage of our American troops ordeals fighting the most evil regime the world had ever known in Nazi Germany… all of that, which by the early 1950s moved to the almost exclusive domain of TELEVISION. Beginning in the early 1950s as TV took over as America’s most popular medium, radio turned to recorded music on (at first, acetate) vynl. It began as simply a method of filling time that used to be occupied by programming that left for TV. Early ‘disc jockeys’ did a LOT of talking in the early 50s… reading live commercials, public service bullitens and so on. However, the year 1955 saw the very first recording by Elvis Presley receive airplay on, ironically, another station which RKO General would purchase and would contribute names who would be nationally known mega-personalities…. Guys like future game show host Wink Martindale and his Program Director, Jack Parnell (his son is Chris Parnell… you know, of Saturday Night Live fame), and a guy who was incredibly talented, who recorded a disco record in 1976 and who would have his own syndicated morning show out of Los Angeles – Rick Dees. Between the popularity of what was known (before Elvis) as “race music”, and the environment which emerging “Rock & Roll” created, literally out of necessity, early mega-personalities became household names… at least, in certain parts of the country. In Chicago, Dick Biondi was one of the earliest mega-star personalities, with his singing in between records (“On Top Of A Pizza…) at 890 WLS as early as 1961. Murray “The K” was on 1010 WINS New York, making headlines LONG before owner Westinghouse turned it into an All-News machine. In Philadelphia, Hy Lit was a name who people still remember, nearly a decade after his passing… sadly and oddly enough, his son SAM LIT had a much smaller radio career, but Sam had an enormous, politically charged (right wing) social media presence, mainly on Facebook… which brought Sam Lit possibly MORE fame than his Broadcasting Legend Father had. Sam passed away some five years ago.

CONCLUSION

** NOTE ** The part of this WRKO Aircheck post is currently STILL under construction, as I continue updating relevant links to elsewhere.   Please be patient and come back often for updates!

If American History is important, and I certainly think it’s not only important, but essential (just the FACTS, Ma’am), then the fabulously storied and colored history of the Radio broadcasting industry holds great importance, and it SHOULD be taught as part of the curriculum of Middle and High School (formerly JUNIOR HIGH and High School… that darn change…) because part of understanding how Americans, Canadians, and to a large degree, citizens of western civilization managed to survive the Cold War, our society finally managing to navigate the turbulent 60s peacefully, while luckily being able to enact legislation that largely helped pull this country out of its unfair Jim Crow laws, extract our young soldiers out of the unnecessary and needles CURSE which was the pointless Vietnam War, fought ostensibly to “fight Communism”, yet (and we know this NOW, all these decades later) fought MORE, as we have discovered, because LBJ was ‘in bed’ with the so called “Military Industrial Complex”, of which President (former General) Dwight D. Eisenhower WARNED us about before leaving office.

RADIO broadcasting quite literally made Americans during the time of ALL these events, totally aware, if they simply had time to LISTEN. But, see, radio did much more than that. When Top 40 music ‘arrived’ to radio, developing into a bona-fide format around 1953 at Todd Storz’ KWOH… Yes, THAT long ago. But, it was Gordon McLendon at KLIF in Dallas who truly perfected and developed what we think of today as the “TOP 40” pop music format. From there, TOP 40 evolved in stages and each step forward was monumental, and highly visible – at least from an historical point of view. The “American Broadcasting Network” (ABC) was an offshoot of the “National Broadcasting Company” (NBC) in the early 1950s. ABC, not having access to the massive archives of broadcast-ready programs that NBC had, was forced to innovate to come up with SOMETHING to compete with the other THREE competing national networks (NBC, CBS and Mutual). To that end, ABC president Hal Neal hired a radio guy named Rick Sklar to program New York station WABC (formerly WJZ) at 770 on the AM dial. When people remember WABC, they have memories of Dan Ingram, Cousin Brucie and so on, and lots of BEATLES records! All of that did come, but in 1960 when WABC finally was able to program a mostly music format, the station was a long way from the top. It didn’t take long though, and as THIS AIRCHECK demonstrates, WABC started right off adding in the format elements for which it would become famous for. Dan Ingram, himself a literal FIXTURE in afternoons on WABC, was brought in in the Summer of 1961. Prior to WABC, Ingram had been a pioneering Top 40 disc jockey, having been at WIL (AM) in St. Louis just before moving to NYC, Dallas before WIL, and WICC Bridgeport CT in 1959… Which really only goes to show, Top 40 radio as a format, quite literally was born, matured and eventually (in my opinion), died at the hands of those on air personalities who began the format during their first days on the air at the very beginning of the Rock & Roll era.

And with exactly 70 years having passed since the beginning of the Rock & Roll journey that took us all out of the Jazz & Big Band era, complete with public cultural standards of “modesty”, through the liberating civil rights era of the mid and late 1960s, past the disco dancing Star Wars trek through the late 70s, Madonna’s big hair and provocative lyrics that managed to anger even the Pope at the vatican… the 90s with Bill Clinton who didn’t inhale (but sure seemed to make weed fashionable!) right up to and maybe a little bit just past 9/11.

Because culturally, musically, morally, and in every way that mattered, our generation of American radio listeners were born into, grew up with and finally received our Social Security retirement checks while immersed in an audio world filled with live deejays, legendary news reporters known from both large national networks, to tiny local stations whose signals reached maybe 20 miles in all directions, but who employed PEOPLE whose talents and wit were noticed and remembered by millions. 9/11 was (IMHO) largely the end of the road for radio the way we remember it, and the way I’ve archived it here in this online audio museum. Why? Well, I think for more reasons than I can type out. The big ones, to me, are:

1. Radio in general, regardless of format, no longer connects in an intimate way with listeners as it once did.

One of the problems with radio since the turn of the Century is, between market pressures, far too much consolidation allowed by the FCC, “spot rates” (meaning,  the price of each commercial airing one time in any given daypart) being far too low, and inflation too high which is necessitating higher salaries for air staff personnel, and generally WAY too much competition from cell phone and tablet APPS dedicated to music audicences (which have huge advantages such as being “on demand” requests, a far better audio quality without the severe processing done to keep radio station RF signals within FCC tolerance levels), and a general unwillingness by corporate managers at seemingly ALL levels of the radio industry to spend any money INVESTING in the future of the industry, but rather, being mostly REACTIONARY in their managerial style, responding to lower ratings and decreasing sales revenue by firing programming personnel, eliminating benefits, downsizing to one engineer per GROUP (or worse, simply having an on-call temporary engineer in case of emergencies such as when the transmitter fails or power outages… or, increasingly in this ultra high tech internet culture, a full NETWORK outage)… you see where I’m going with this.   The whole CULTURE of how stations conduct business is at a disconnect with the literal intent of radio stations.  The intent being, to use the radio waves to CONNECT performers and news reporters, etc., with their LOCAL audience… and that means, the PEOPLE who live and work in the community of license that a particular radio station is supposed to SERVE!

I’ve spent a lifetime now, working inside, and documenting OUTSIDE the radio industry.  Every single part of it.  From the days where I arrived at my local AM station after school when I was 17, my first job being to put the records away for the deejays who were there and showing me the ropes as to how to do a show, to me being on every night from 7 to midnight at the highest powered FM station in America, 99.7 WMC-FM 100 Memphis at over 300,000 watts from the top of the WMC-TV building at 1960 Union Ave in downtown Memphis, working the phones (a totally lost art in 2025), enjoying the contests and living the total “RADIO” lifestyle”!  All that, plus moving into internet radio, taking over the once silent HitOldies.com and building it up into a syndication service, dabbling in the engineering side, getting to tweak the transmitter (I won’t say where… never broke anything but just in case hahaha), adjust the audio processing and EQ…. ladies and gentlemen, while I did spend 13 years of my life working fulltime as a member of America’s AWESOME Navy, I always stayed with one foot in the business… doing part time while on active duty, returning to FULL TIME broadcasting afterward.    7 years of my broadcasting career was spent in a cubicle anchoring NEWS for a national News Network (which is no longer in business due to issues caused by the network’s then owner…. you can read about it online right here ==> A Blog Post Detailing a Family Of Rich People Using “God” As A Front For A Pyramid Scheme.   Lets just say, I’m proud of the WORK I did there, but I’m ashamed to be associated with an organization whose intent REALLY was to separate people from their life savings, and using the fear of “biblical End Times” to motivate them to purchase commodities that they would never receive.

I’m pretty certain that there’s a special place in HELL where God turns up the heat to a really excruciating level for swindlers who use his Good name to cheat and steal from America’s most vulnerable elderly people.   If not, I sure hope He considers it!

If you’re still reading down to this point, thank you!  You honor me and my archival efforts, keeping this historic material online and for free, so that people just like YOU can research the history and enjoy the actual broadcasts of American, Canadian and even international radio stations who entertained millions via the AM and FM broadcast bands across North America and Europe.

Please, share a link to this website to your friends and anyone interested in radio broadcasting past or present!   Thank you, and as we say on the HAM bands, 73!

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