Its the Summer of 1990, Chicagoland is gearing up for the 4th of July, and Z-95 is HOT! One would never know by listening to this aircheck that even with Brant Miller doing a killer job on the Z, the BEE crosstown was cleaning WYTZ’s clock in the ratings. So badly, in fact, that just over a year later, 94.7 would revert to the WLS-FM call letters, and flip to TALK RADIO, albeit separately from AM 89.
This really is a good, if not short, aircheck. It makes me wonder why ratings success seemed to elude 94.7 for a very long time, starting from the “Disco DAI” days – and maybe that’s it, listeners perhaps always equated 94.7 with the failed Disco format. An observation from the editor’s desk: Why didn’t ABC keep 94.7 as WLS-FM (FM-95) instead of breaking away from it’s WLS (890) tradition? Even when the AM side went talk, the FM could have helped the transition go more smoothly. It’s just conjecture on the part of your webmaster, and surely someone from the WLS building in the late 80s knows and would want to share. Please do.
This runs about 3 1/2 minutes, tightly scoped – would make a great Brant Miller demo, if he didn’t already have a gig at today’s WLS-FM. 🙂
Way, way back, when 94.7 went on the air it WAS WLS-FM. Later, it became WDAI, and the story behind that was that the WDAI calls were supposed to go to Detroit. It stood for W Detroit Auto Industry, and as I understand it WRIF (Detroit) was supposed to go to Chicago. WRIF was the sister station to WXYZ. All of the aforementioned stations were ABC-owned.
Great sounding CHR station. Although B96 was hot, I’ve always been surprised that WLS-FM/ Z95 struggled so badly against the competition.
I remember listening to Brant Miller on the AM side during the 80’s. He’s a true professional.
I Love Unscoped Is Better
Yes, well Christopher, I’ve addressed that with you so many times I’ve lost count. I can NOT post unscoped airchecks at the present time. Copyright law prohibits me from posting full length airchecks because, first off, I do not have a revenue stream on this website to pay royalties, and second, even if I was to pay royalty fees and try to be legit so I could post airchecks with the songs included, I have no mechanism to comply with the streaming rules as they stand today. In order to do so, each aircheck would have to be able to stream the Artist, Song Title, songwrighter, and then I would also have to have a link to each album that a song is from, and visitors would have to be provided with a link to a place where they could PURCHASE that song. I have neither the money to invest, the time to put into new technology, nor the inclination. You want unscoped airchecks? Go over to ReelRadio. Richard Irwin will restore his unscope archives at some point. I have no plans to do that, unfortunately.
So, for the benefit of others who may not have read my response to your ‘unscoped is better’ comments over the years, there you have it. There are no unscoped airchecks (except for news/sports recordings), and there are no plans in the works at the present time to ever post unscoped airchecks. Sorry for the inconvenience. The recording industry has made it too expensive to bother trying.
The late Paul Gardner voicing the production pieces. It was a fun time to listen.