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New Kid In Town

On Valentine's Day, 1977 the FM band in Columbus was rocked with the New Kid in Town.

WTVN-FM and it's beautiful music faded away and legally became WLVQ-FM with the playing of the Eagles hit "The New Kid in Town." For listeners and fans, it would just be called Q-FM-96.

I've not often written of the FM band or WLVQ. Growing up, in my world AM was the king of radio. Actually it still was in my opinion, despite the obvious slump in ratings and revenues for the past 30 years, until probably the first of this year.

The story of how the transition began is actually quite interesting. I found the below on consultant Lee Abrams blog. I've always enjoyed being a fly on the wall type of person and this is almost as good as being there. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing it.

Miami reminded me of a key career break. In 1972 I was consulting WQDR in Raleigh. We went to #1. It caught the attention of a guy named Gordon Hastings from Katz, then the leading ad rep firm. Gordon was a big believer in the commercial viability of FM which was still in the financial closet. I met Gordon and I guess I impressed him. He then talked to Carl Wagner who ran the powerful Taft Broadcasting Group. Carl was a bad ass former pro catcher. Mean--but fair and smart. Gordon set up a meeting at about midnight at the New Orleans Hilton at a convention. Taft owned 7 major FM's, most of them with big signals, Taft muscle, but kinda sitting there. Carl and I hit it off. I think he was impressed by my knowledge of baseball as much as my ideas on developing FM stations. We shook hands and he told me to wait for a call.

A week later, Carl calls and invites me to the Taft Managers Conference at the Sonesta Beach Hotel in Key Biscayne (Miami). Taft managers were an old boys club. I got the feeling that their bonuses were based more on their Golf scores than on performance. I dressed up as best I could but must have looked like an alien to these guys. At the opening cocktail party I think they thought I was brought in as an entertainer. One exec asked me if I was with the band. I told him I was in Led Zeppelin. The response was "Really? My daughter has one of your albums".

The next morning I did "the pitch". In a suite overlooking Biscayne Bay. On orders from Carl, the Managers of every Taft station were sternly told to listen to me. The pitch went fantastic, but I was still an outsider. But then after the morning meetings, there was a Tennis tournament. I loved Tennis, so I asked if they needed another entry. They put me with Ed McLaughlin who was the other non-Taft person at the meetings. Ed ran ABC RADIO and later managed Russ Limbaugh to fame. I'd known Ed for awhile since I worked for ABC at WRIF in Detroit. He and I absolutely kicked ass and WON the tournament. It was all over. Even if I looked like a drug addict to them, I proved myself on the court--the next best thing to beating them in Golf. They even invited me to appear in the Taft Company picture, though they probably airbrushed out my beard.

Within three weeks I signed WDVE Pittsburgh, WLVQ Columbus, KYYS Kansas City and WGRQ Buffalo. All four stations had huge increases and we were off to the races.

Now--I had a problem. A good one, but a problem. I had six clients. It was a business. But I had no experience in running a business of this nature. I needed capital, connections, an infrastructure, and guidance on how to maximize this thing. I'd known this guy Kent Burkhart. Most people in the business did. He was one of the FIRST Top 40 Program Directors ever...oddly enough at WQAM (my all time favorite Top 40 station) in Miami, and then went on to run the powerful Pacific and Southern group. He was a legend. He had left Pacific and Southern and started a consultancy. Every week I'd read in the trades where Burkhart signs another station. So I send Kent a proposal. Basically, I do the FM's while you do the AM's...and run the business aspects. He suggested a meeting in Minneapolis. We met at his client KSTP. We put a deal together in 30 minutes. I moved to Atlanta a week later and Burkahart/Abrams was born. Kent also turned over WYSP in Philly and WKLS Atlanta to me as they were FM's. We formally introduced the "Superstars" format. That name is kinda hokey and we NEVER used it on the air, but to station heads that were still suspicious about this underground FM thing, it was a comforting and relatable term that translated into "mass appeal".

The basics of the concept were pretty simple. To change the familiarity factor from song title to artist so instead of hearing the same songs, you’d hear the same artists, but the whole library of songs instead of just the hit single so it was familiar by ARTIST, yet interesting because you’d hear ALL of that artist. It was aimed at the vulnerable Top 40 listener. The person who listened to Top 40 but liked every 4th song. Stones and Cream--cool. Bread and Osmond’s...not cool. Eliminate the Bread and Osmond’s and focus on the artists that were defining the new "Album" movement. Then between the big names, introduce the coo new stuff so the sound was anchored in familiarity, had depth and selectively introduced new artists so they'd get enough exposure to actually get noticed. We accepted the Underground stations as a fact of life and were ore concerned about getting people to FM who found Underground radio too out there. In the process we took out a lot of the Underground Free Form stations who were simply too elite. The good ones that were focused remained important factors.

Our "position" was to be as accessible as possible without losing the progressive identity.

Breakfast News Service

For a little over a year, from December 1971 to 1973, WBNS-AM instituted a morning news block called the Breakfast News Services. BNS. Get it? Among the people involved in the program were Dick Boyer, Chet Long, Ted Mullins, and Wayne Byers. In addition, News Director Don Smith, Bob Jeffrey, Ed Ross and Bill Hamilton were involved in the all news in the morning effort. The program ended in March of 1973 with the hiring of Bob Conners as morning host for the station. This was during the time the station was making the transition from standards, big band and CBS network programming to a more contemporary sound.

Update:  I received information from Ed Johnson, who worked gathering news stories and other production pieces for the show.  Ed told me Bob Jeffrey and Ed Ross weren't associated with the program.  Thanks Ed for assisting with setting the  record straight.  

March WBNS Line Up

WBNS AM listeners had a new line up at the top of the dial as of March 5, 1973.

Well, at least in the mornings. The host line up was already in place for the rest of the daily schedule.

Long time host, and holder of the morning show duties after the morning news block known as Breakfast News Service (get it BNS), Bill Hamilton, was severely missed by his fans.

Hamilton had worked for the station since the late 50's and had handled afternoon drive duties from November 1966 until Early Worm Irwin Johnson's retirement in 1969.

Hamilton then took over mornings until the Breakfast News Service program cut into his time and then was totally out the picture when Bob Conners was hired to do morning drive as depicted in the ad.

Coffee Club

Another piece of Spook Beckman information. As of January 1965, Spook took his talents back to the studios of WLW-C with a new show called Spook Beckman's Coffee Club.

Your Man Fritz

Before his wild popularity as Fritz the Nite Owl, Frederick Peerenboom was known to radio fans as Your Man Fritz. And Uncle Fritz before that.

Fritz joined WBNS radio in 1963 as a production and continuity director after a brief stint doing some part-time announcing at crosstown WMNI.

Fritz hosted shows on WELD, now WBNS FM and later moved to be evening host on the AM station. As shown in the advertisement, he for a while was afternoon drive host, replacing Bill Hamilton who had moved to mornings after the retirement of Irwin Johnson.

I first heard Fritz about 1973 when he was again hosting a late evening show from 10 pm to 2 am on WBNS AM.

The girl I was dating at the time and I attended the same high school and our high school band director's nick name was Fritz. I had her convinced that the band director was moonlighting on the radio as Your Man Fritz.

In 1974, Fritz moved to WBNS television to take a staff announcer positon. Actually, he had worked at the television station in the mid 50's doing some part-time work until the Army sent a notice that he was needed to serve his country. Upon discharge, Fritz returned to Channel 10 and took additional jobs with an advertising agency and WMNI.

The duties included doing some voice work for the late night movie, called "Nite Owl Theater". After making some witty comments and getting support from an appreciative audience, the nameless host became Fritz the Nite Owl, a position he would hold until 1991.

Fritz throughout dabbled in radio. For several years, he hosted a jazz program on WOSU, then later on CD101 and more recently on WJZA.

A man of many talents and many hats. Your Man Fritz on Radio 146.

Spooked Again

Spook Beckman left WTVN radio at the end of 1965 to begin a daily television show on WLW-C. Spook had worked for the station in the early 1950's prior to joining 610 radio.

Spook's show was called the Coffee Club. It began in January, 1966. Yet by the end of March, 1968, the show was ending. According to "Citizen-Journal" radio-tv columnist Jo Bradley Reed, Spook was leaving to explore other options including a return to radio.

Maybe he saw the April 14th notice in "Billboard Magazine" that WRFD radio was looking for an afternoon personality and to contract David Drew.

Whether it was that clip or his own reputation, by April 22 of 1968, fans of "The Spook" as one listener described him knew his intentions. Spook was joining WRFD radio to once again host Bumper to Bumper time in afternoon drive between the hours of 2 and 7 pm. But instead of being at 610 on the dial where he reigned the airwaves during most of the late 50's and early 60's, Spook would move the 880 on the dial.

Spook promised to return his popular "Spookisms" like the Ambassadors of the Asphalt and his Champagne and Beans club.

The "Ambassadors of the Asphalt" were the traveling sales resp who listened to his show prior to the move to television. According to Reed, the group became so large that meetings began to be held and it became a popular networking organization.

Networking was popular in the late 60's?