I was listening to Cousin Brucie last night.
The Cuz is now back on terrestrial radio (you know, the not-satellite kind) and he plays the oldies on an otherwise virtually all-talk station, 77 WABC. He was having some technical snafus but rolling with the punches…then he welcomed via phone line his special guest, Connie Francis (“Who’s Sorry Now?”, “Where The Boys Are”). Hold on a minute, I have to Google something.
Connie Francis is 83 years old. Last night with Cousin Brucie she sounded 127, bless her heart. She was pretty foggy. After a painfully awkward conversation came this exchange:
COUSIN BRUCIE: Connie honey, do you think they’ll ever come a day when you might get back out on the stage and sing all those songs for all those people who love you?
CONNIE FRANCIS: No, Brucie, I don’t think so.
I think most who heard the interview would imagine Connie answering “No, Brucie, I don’t think so” to a number of questions. Do you know where you are? Are you able to get out of your chair without assistance? Did you take your pills this morning?
(I can make fun of somebody forgetting to take their pills. I take enough of them to choke a goat. Not that I’ve tried that out or anything.)
Anyway, my point is, Connie Francis interview downer aside, it is great to hear Cousin Brucie spinning the oldies, with genuine old WABC jingles and “chime time” and all of the trappings of the good old days. How smart of WABC to carve out four hours in their otherwise “angry talking” program lineup for some good old fashioned music radio. And how great that WABC is still a thing!
There used to be a WNBC Radio. It is no longer a thing. Earlier this week I found myself listening to its last hours on the air. This is a sickness of mine, listening to radio stations die. I’ve heard 93 KHJ’s flip from rock to country (still angries up the blood) and various others. WABC made a huge format change in 1982 from top 40 music to all-talk. WABC is (and WNBC was) on the AM dial…music stations (and music radio listeners) were migrating to the higher sound quality of FM. So perhaps if WNBC had switched to news/talk it would still be around.
What 66 WNBC did was…well…unpredictable. But by the early 80’s they were doing pretty darn good. They had shock jocks (Imus in the morning and Howard Stern in afternoon drive) who played very little music, non-shock jocks who played more, sports programming, oldies marathons on the weekend…just a big old radio smorgasbord. Later on in the 80’s they added Soupy Sales because…well, what the hell? This is why my friend the late Doug Abbott used to call most AM radio station formats “AOR”. (AOR in radio usually stands for “album oriented rock” but in Doug’s case it stood for “all over the road”).
If you are a listener of Howard Stern, or have ever seen his film “Private Parts”, some of this may be starting to sound familiar. Here’s something else that will sound familiar if you’ve seen the movie:
This is a “demo” of a jingle package created especially for WNBC but later offered to stations across the country. (That’s still how things work today. KCOW’s current jingle package was originally created for WCBS-FM New York, one of the top “classic hits” stations in the nation. I like them an awful lot.)
Imus narrates in his usual style…and yes, you will hear the accented reading of the call letters. “W-Ennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn-B-C.” This was supposedly done to differentiate the station from WABC.
Eventually (as you’ll know if you’ve seen “Private Parts”) Stern was fired from WNBC. Things went downhill after that and as a variety of personality hosts were introduced and music adjustments were made, but the end was near. General Electric bought NBC and decided to sell the radio division. (Just a reminder of what a fun company GE must have been to work for):
On October 7, 1988 WNBC’s AM frequency was taken over by sports radio WFAN (Imus, the only genuine star WNBC had left, moved to The Fan).
Most of the stuff in this little essay was from memory. But I did consult the Wikipedia entry for 66 WNBC. It’s a dead sea scrolls of music changes, host changes, format adjustments. As Imus himself once said, “We change our format every time [the program director] does acid.”