Here’s a very entertaining look at one of those stations that moved away from Beautiful music and into the AC world in the early 80s. 1980, to be precise, here at the FM sister to legendary WSB 750 AM. Yep, WSB-FM has a long colorful history (the first commercial FM in the Southeast, among other things).
We’re actually featuring the morning show from 1991 here, where “B98.5” is right in the middle of the format, musically. Listen for jingles which are a re-sing of JAM’s “The Best Show” package originally created for KIMN Denver…. and a great Legal ID TOH jingle resing, which is the original (IIRC) WABC Newstalk 77 TOH, also used in instrumental form at 700 WLW Cincinnati for a while.
View this from our official Airchexx Classic Radio YouTube Channel below.
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Heard on the morning show are:
Dale O’Brien
Bob Scott
Kari Dean / News
Jeff Zelle / Sports
Glenn Burns / Weather from channel 2
This is not a terribly long aircheck but its important to see where mainstream AC was in ’91. 5 years before Telcom 96 took its toll… the music is right on target, the WSB-FM has an exciting (and fully staffed) morning show, and overall sounds great.
Technical
The quality of this aircheck really is remarkable. The master recording resides with an aircheck service called “Hecht Enterprises”. Contributor Robyn Watts had a number of tapes from this service in her collection which found their way to airchexx. There is a *little* FM white noise on this recording, which could have been eliminated completely had the recording been made in FM mono vs stereo, but that would have had to be at the receiver end. The tape itself was in excellent condition.
Ed O’Brien? That’s the legendary Dale O’ Brien in the morning. This used to be my favorite station back in 2nd grade. Very tight, professional-sounding adult contemporary back in 1991, back when GA 400 was a mere toll road. Thanks a lot, Mr. Steve. This is bringing back fond memories.
Just a quick note from a jingle geek. There are actually a number of JAM jingle packages used on this aircheck. We’ve got a couple cuts from “The Best Show 2” from KIMN/Denver; one from “Nonstop Power” from WPLJ/NY, and the music bed Kari does traffic/weather over is from “On Target” from KSD-FM/St. Louis. That legal ID jingle is from TM’s “WABC Talkradio 89” which was done 7 years into WABC’s talk format.
Indeed that is DALE O’Brien. When I was in high school, he was the afternoon drive jock on then-CHR Z93. For a couple of years (’83-’84) I got to follow him on B98.5 when I did middays. I used to come in early just to sit in the studio and watch him work – he was hilarious off the air too. He used to do a great impression of Dick Hemby, the no-talent morning man who was then on WSB-AM.
This is “OBrien in the Morning.” Dale O’Brien is the host, Kari Dean is co-host/news anchor, Rob Scott produced the show. Joanne Clarke and Trooper Dave did the traffic.
What’s Kari Dean up to these days? 250? 260?
Weren’t Dale O Brien and Kari Dean reunited on Peach for a while? Then Kari worked with John Weatherbee.
I read where Kari Dean is now producing TV news at WAGA Fox 5. Not sure where Dale O Brien is these days.