Courtesy of our good friends over at AircheckDownloads.com, Susan Platt holds down the overnight shift, back when there were live, warm bodies in the studio at Midnight.
Here’s one you shouldn’t miss! WLS-FM was the logical continuation of the “Big 89”, and at this point in time, 890 AM was still playing the hits – although that wouldn’t last very long, nor would Larry Lujack’s morning show which was simulcast on AM and FM. Susan Platt makes reference to Lujack’s show in a live promo about 2/3rds of the way through.
Don’t judge this aircheck by 1979 WLS (AM) standards. This is solidly classic 1980s CHR – and really, the best it sounded the whole decade. As for WLS-FM, the station seemed to have ratings trouble and as the decade wore on, would eventually morph into WYTZ, and then even later, would drop CHR altogether as it tried different formats including Talk Radio in the 90s.
Today, 94.7 is once again WLS-FM, doing a reprise of it’s former CHR format featuring mainly music of the 1970s & 80s. Even John “Records” Landecker has returned. You can listen to today’s incarnation of WLS-FM HERE.
This is probably from the very best era at 94-7.
What is she saying over the first record? The music is burying her.
Why does the logo read “FM 95” while on the air it’s 94.7?
Tony
The volume level of Susan Platt over the first song on this aircheck was too low even for me to make out. That’s on the source recording. Can’t do anything about that. The logo reads FM 95 because, 1. When ABC decided to bring back the WLS-FM call letters from what was WRCK (Ex-WDAI), they called the station WLS-FM 95 for almost 3 years before mentioning the digital 94.7 frequency. Unfortunately, that’s the only logo I have, and it’s from about 1982. They did change the logo to “AM 89 FM 94.7” sometime around 1984.
The 1984 logo can be see on this WLS Survey: //las-solanas.com/surveys/WLS/WLS_1984-11-03_1.jpg
By the late ’80’s, Susan moved onto Z-100 in NYC and became known as “Susan Leigh Taylor” (some of her Z-100 airchecks can be found on YouTube). In the ’90’s she moved onto San Francisco—met her at the Gavin Convention around ’91 or ’92 and enjoyed talking to her for a few minutes about her days at WLS. Eventually she transitioned to All-News KCBS in 1997. She continues to hold down the AM Drive co-anchor spot on the CBS O&O in San Francisco to this day.
going by the information about cathy smith, i would say that the date of this aircheck was probably January 22, 1985…
thank you for sharing!