The great experiment to see if a Talk/AOR hybrid format would work on AM is fully on display here, at the former WCFL Chicago AM 1000 digs, at this point known as “The Loop AM 100 WLUP”. The Night Service is on the air, with Kevin Matthews and a lot of characters, phoners and *some* Rock & Roll.
The experiment wouldn’t last long, and soon enough, plenty of gospel would be heard coming from AM 1000. But this era of The Loop was highly written up in the trades.
Starts with the end of the afternoon show, a song, then Kevin Matthews. First bit is something with ‘Ronny Reagan’. Yeah, he was getting senile in 1987. There’s lots of dialogue with engineer “Rat Boy”. Ends halfway through something called an “Elvis Minute”.
Runs 31:50, partially scoped (music)
You’ve got the timeline on formats backwards — WCFL went to a religious based block format in 1983 after a last-gasp effort at full-service AC (which actually sounded pretty good in 1981 with Fred Winston in morning drive and Westwood One talker Jim Bohannon as morning news anchor. But the format didn’t stand out in an already crowded field). WLUP-FM bought the AM in 1986 and the AOR/Talk hybrid on AM-100 was introduced in April 1987. It would last until 1993 when the AM format was switched to all-sports, a format it continues to hold today as “ESPN 1000-WMVP”.