The Noise is gone…
About this aircheck: This was apparently recorded within the first few days of a major format change at WMET. For many years, 95.5 was owned by Metromedia – a company known for it’s Rock stations – such as 102.7 WNEW-FM New York and 94.7 KMET Los Angeles. Metromedia also owned and operated the former WNEW Eleven-Three-Oh in NYC, a station which popularized American Standards from the 1940s & early 1950s. Metromedia was considered a class act, a broadcast company at the time paralleled perhaps only by Knight Quality with regard to its on-air high standards of excellence (I won’t even try to quantify the backroom politics of these companies… just the reputation of their on-air staffs).
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WMET had started out as WDHF and moved into the Top 40 format in the early 1970s. On December 1, 1976, WDHF became WMET. The Top 40 format would continue for another two years until 1978 when Metromedia flipped WMET to an AOR (Album Rock) format. With ratings in decline, and WMET in the hands of new owners Doubleday Broadcasting, a format change to Adult Contemporary happened in January of 1985… bringing us up to the point of this recording of WMET. The slogan, “The noise is gone”, refers to the preceeding AOR format that went away with the format change.
95.5 has been New Age/Smooth Jazz, Spanish, Regional Mexican and has had a number of different call letters since this aircheck was recorded. Today, the station is Country WEBG “Big 95.5”.
Cat Simon is also heard on this website on 103.7 KVIL Dallas, October 19, 1979
Courtesy of Big Apple Airchecks!
Cat Simon did a little less than a year at KHJ, Los Angeles in 1972-1973. Great jock.
Part of their marketing is to knock the previous format?
Why bother?
That’s just dumb.
Tony
This IS NOT Cat Simon (Johnny Williams) Bill Todd from RKO OR KHJ !!
I believe Bill Todd was on the air as Johnny WIlliams at KHJ. He was also Johnny Williams at WRKO/Boston, prior, and, earlier, at WIBG/Philadelphia (1969).
Bill became PD at WKRQ/”Cincinnati’s Best Rock” in 1973. He used the name Cat Simon on the air at this AOR station.
Bill hired me as Music Director and for an air shift in 1973.
After Bill left 102/WKRQ, he went to WDAI/Chicago. This was in/around 1976. He was PD there and did an air shift, using his real name.
I knew Bill long before WKRQ, back to some of his earliest years in radio.
Steve Bleecker is correct in saying this is not the late Bill Todd.
Todd used the airname Johnny Williams at WRKO in Boston. However, a different person using “Johnny Williams” had been doing all night at KHJ when Todd arrived in L.A.
Bill Todd became Cat Simon at KHJ.
As often happens, the Cat Simon moniker was used by other jocks.
I think the voice of Cat Simon on this WMET aircheck is Cloyd Moll. He used the name at KNUS in Dallas before 1985, I think.
I worked with Cloyd at WGOW in Chattanooga for a brief period in the early to mid 1970s. He was Simon Love in Chattanooga. Cloyd was a very talented personality in his own right.
This is the same Cat Simon who was at KVIL in 1979 and WHTZ in 1983. He is not the Cat Simon who was at KYST Houston in 1982; that Cat Simon had been Michael O’Brien at KQIO Canton in 1977. Who knows who else he was and who he “really” was.
This is definitely not the Johnny Williams of KHJ, WTAE and 440 Satisfaction. He is also not the Johnny Williams of CKLW, who was not the same person, but he may have been Johnny Williams somewhere else.
Of such mysteries is the unraveling of radio history made.