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Tuesday, April 16, 03:25:09pm [ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, [4], 5, 6 ]

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Date Posted: Friday, June 09, 09:01:42pm
Author: Frank De Rosa
Subject: Forerunner of CBS-FM: The Drake-formatted WOR-FM

Most of us grew up listening to those two great stations, WMCA and WABC. By the late 60s, they were the pop bastions of the city. Loyalties ran deep in those halcyon days. In the 5 Boroughs, WMCA reigned supreme, while in the distant suburbs (where nobody lived then), WABC got strong numbers. On the beaches, radios playing the two stations would duel each other.

In late 1967, pop music on FM was in its infancy. Until this point, FM was where you found "elevator" music, typically heard in doctor's offices, jazz and classical music. Station operators that owned an AM and FM station in the same city now had to split the programming at least 50% of the time.

WOR-FM (98.7) began in July 1966 has New York's first free-form station. They had Scott Muni, Rosko and even Murray the "K". In the fall of '67, the decision was made to drop free-form and install the uptempo Drake format, which had been successful in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The closest Drake-formatted station to New York was CKLW, The Big 8 out of Detroit. I used to listen to that station at night.

Pop on FM was thought to be a major gamble, with two solidly entrenched AM stations in place. All that was about to change in a New York minute. The Drake approach for New York was to make the station appeal to the 18-34 age group who had grown up with rock 'n' roll. Every other song was an "oldie" from the mid-50s through the mid-60s, mixed in with current pop music, essentially making it New York's first oldies station. The DJs didn't have the high profile found on WMCA and WABC, they just played "MORE MUSIC....WOR-FM!"

It caught on, and I must say OR-FM was the first FM station to get my loyalty. It sounded better and the playlist was much wider than WMCA and WABC. The big loser in all this was WMCA, with only a 5,000 watt signal, a viable new competitor and a 50,000 watt WABC now free of long-standing network commitments. OR-FM beat WMCA on their own turf, the 5 Boroughs. Two WOR-FM DJs would later become part of everyone's future, Bill Brown and Joe McCoy.

In early 1972, with FM listenership growing rapidly, WOR-FM dropped all pre-1964 music. They would later become "99X". We all know what started on July 7, 1972. The "good songs" all moved to 101.1.

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