Chuck Wagner, 96.5 WTIC-FM Hartford | 1981

Mike West is gonna be back from vacation… He’s been doing his exercises, speaking with a rubber band attached to his chin

Curator’s Notes:

Sometimes there are interesting coincidences in this world of radio history. Here’s a couple. Chuck Wagner, heard here, is Charlie Wagner from 1240 WWCO Waterbury. Click “WWCO” in the description above. The voice is exactly the same. 96-TIC-FM, by the time of this aircheck, had stopped using the “Hot Hits ™” monniker. I believe Hot Hits was trademarked and the contract ran out. But TIC-FM was still a CHR station, the jocks were still using pretty much the same approach to the music, however, as the year wore on, 96.5 took on a noticeably softer direction, musically. It’s entirely possible that the softer hits were due to the fact that so much soft rock was listed on the Top 40 charts that it simply seemed as if the station made a format tweak. At any given moment, both on TIC-FM and crosstown WDRC-FM, one could hear Air Supply, Christopher Cross, Boz Scaggs, and any number of soft hits that were mainstream around that time. Both stations still played harder edged rock, as well as a generous dose of R&B and even a bit of old Disco. And it seemed as if both stations were heavily dayparted, with the harder edged and more upbeat music at night, which was common programming practice through the 1990s.

In all, this is a great, high-quality recording from the master reel (recorded off the air) from our contributor, Paul DiMarco.