1971-1972 New York radio

Dan Ingram, argueably New York's most popular radio DJ in the late 1960s and early 1970s at his post at WABC Radio in the autumn of 1971.

I started listening to New York City radio stations since the very first day I arrived in the USA on 2 October 1971. Looking back it feels like I had been given the key to the city's radio even before I arrived. I turned on the transistor radio I had brought along from Brazil on the very first night and listened to whatever was being broadcast while I fell asleep.

I think the first sound I noticed or was made conscious of was the mandolin playing at the end of Rod Stewart's 'Maggie Mae'. That sound would soar into the air and make itself the king! Slowly I realized it was the end of a song... a long song that told the story of a young man that was going back to school because it was late-September... exactly the time of year we were on.

From 'Maggie Mae' I started picking up songs that caught my fancy. I usually like the sound of jangling guitars that American bands like The Byrds used to produce. I loved Jonathan Edward's 'Sunshine' the first time I heard it. Besides, J.E. has a pleasantly nasal voice. Lee Michael's 'Do you know what I mean?' is a very powerful song! It's got a lot of rhythm and a mean organ that counterpoints Lee's clear voice. Gee, in the US one had a magnificent radio industry that churned hits after hits.

'Superstar' with the Carpenters was the most beautiful song I had heard for a while. I had never heard of Karen Carpenter or that they were brothers. 'Superstar' was heavenly and it was #2, kept from #1 only by the strength of 'Maggie Mae'. North-American radio was a fairy-land to me. I liked everything I heard even if I didn't understand the lyrics. The sound was good. Even the commercials were amazing. I fell in love with a Chrysler's Plymouth ad which I first thought was a regular song. Then I realized it was shorter than a 'common' song and soon I picked up the lyrics: Chrysler Plymouth coming through!!! To be in the United States was so good. Such a dream come true!

I lived in the Ironbound, a Portuguese-Puerto Rican ghetto in Newark, N.J. and I soon realized that WABC was the most popular radio stations among New Yorkers and Brazilians. As I also had an FM band I noticed that FM-stations were more 'stylish' than their AM counterparts. I kept going back & forth. I even remember tuning to a New Jersey AM station: WWDJ of Hackensack, N.J. It was similar, on the same lines as WABC but its signal was weaker.

The FM stations I listened through 1971, 1972 & 1973 were: WCBS, WPLJ, WNEW, WOR-FM. I could listen to album-tracks of The Who, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and other bands I already knew since I lived in Brazil.

In the USA I was introduced to Carpenters, James Taylor, Carole King and many others. I remember the 1st time I listened the name Elton John being pronounced. I thought, at first, it was Tom Jones, the Welsh singer, but then I learned better. 

I was really impressed by the beautiful vocal harmony of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and became an instant fan. Then in 1972, Neil Young individually became my idol. Talking about music idols I already had one in the shape of 'American pie's Don McLean... but Neil Young was more dramatic, strident and exuberant.

Chicago Transit Authority was a band that impressed me a lot too. They obviously reminded me of Blood, Sweat & Tears but they went beyond and they were very prolific musically... much more in the line The Beatles had opened. Their 2nd album was so amazingly good... the one which starts with 'Wake up sunshine', goes through 'Make me smile' and ends up with a rock rhapsodic fantasy and 'Colour my world'. Such an amazing album side. They played the whole side on WNEW.

Melanie's 'Brand new key' couldn't be a better song to end 1971. 'American pie' would play constantly in the jukebox. It was divided in two parts... but in the FM stations they played the whole 8 minutes and 23 seconds. Think that Sly in the Family's 'A family affair' had been #1 in the country for 2 weeks - 4 December 1971 and 11 December 1971 - and the amazing Isaac Hayes had been #1 too the previous 2 weeks with The theme from 'Shaft' (John Shaft).... what a glorious period it was 1971's Autumn.

Frank Kingston Smith was at WABC from 1971 to 1974. He worked weekends and was the primary fill in DJ over those years. He had a long radio career at many great stations like WFIL in Philadelphia and WRKO in Boston (as "Bobby Mitchell").

Over the years people have forgotten the important place that news held at Musicradio WABC.

While it's true that music programming was the primary emphasis, no radio station could keep its license without "serving the public good".

Unlike today's music stations, WABC had a real news department that had a job to do... and did it well. Ironically, the news department at Musicradio WABC in 1975 was better staffed than its counterpart is today at "News-Talk Radio" WABC!

Rear: Paul Ehrlich (News Director-tending to teletype machine), Bob Capers, Bob Hardt; Foreground: a secretary, John Meagher, Gus Engelman.

This advertisement appeared in "Broadcasting Magazine" on 27 October 1975.

This is Musicradio

Yes, the newsroom at America's most listened to radio station WABC we don't think we got to be Number One by doing just a few things right, so we weren't too surprised by the results of this year's New York State AP Broadcasters News Competition where New York stations - including the all-news ones - were judged in six categories.

WABC's afternoon drive newscast with Bob Hardt was named Best Regularly Scheduled Local News Program. Hardt's report has earned this accolade six of the last seven years. Nobody's ever done that before.

Newsman John Meagher received the AP Award for General Excelence of Individual Reporting. Meagher won that one for his investigation of boon-doggling in resort area land sales.

And WABC's Public Affair program, 'Perspective New York', earned Honourable Mention in the Documentary Category.

Not bad for musicradio.

WABC MUSICRADIO 77

an ABC owned AM radio station

Ron Lundy.

Les Marshak at WABC in 1969; then he moved to WPIX (Pix 102).

Les Marshak with Lesley Gore at WRUL in 1965.

Stan Brooks, a familiar voice on 1010 WINS, dies at 86

By Paul Vitello for The New York Times.

23 December 2013

Stan Brooks, a reporter whose long tenure and prolific output on New York’s first all-news radio station, 1010 WINS, made him one of the most recognized and consistent voices on the radio for more than 40 years, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 86, and had worked until a month before his death, delivering his last report from City Hall on Nov. 20. The cause was lung cancer, his son Bennett said.

Mr. Brooks joined WINS, 1010 on the AM dial, as news director in 1962, when it was still one of the dominant pop music stations in the country, with a lineup of popular disc jockeys including Murray Kaufman, known as Murray the K.

When Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the station’s owners, decided to make WINS an all-news operation soon after Mr. Brooks’s arrival, he helped assemble the staff and lay the groundwork for one of the first all-news radio stations in the country — and the first in the city.

The switch took place on 19 April 1965. The blackout on 9 November 1965, which plunged most of the Northeast into darkness, put Mr. Brooks’s news team on the aural map.

By tapping into a transmission line based in New Jersey, WINS was one of the few radio outlets that managed to stay on the air. From a 19th-floor studio in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Brooks and his reporters broadcast news and information throughout the night.

“Reporters had to go down 19 flights to get the story and then walk up 19 flights to go on the air,” all by candlelight, he told an interviewer.

After several years as an executive and then a national correspondent for the Westinghouse Broadcasting radio station system, Mr. Brooks became a local reporter at WINS in 1970. His voice has been on the city’s airwaves almost every day since.

In understated dispatches between 30 seconds and one minute long, he reported on plane crashes, race riots, municipal near-bankruptcies, the tall ships, the Son of Sam, the Attica prison uprising and every mayoral administration from John V. Lindsay to Michael R. Bloomberg. He conducted interviews under a light rain of ash and debris on Sept. 11, 2001. Before ducking under his desk, he delivered a live report from the scene after a gunman killed Councilman James Davis at City Hall in 2003.

He liked the precision of short-form journalism. “When you’ve got 35 seconds, you’ve got to tell people what they need right away,” he said in an interview last year. “You want to get to the spine of the story.”

In a 2005 interview, Mr. Brooks said he was often asked when he was retiring. “I don’t want to live in Florida,” he said. “I like living in New York, and as long as I’m living in New York I want to be active, and I think the most active and the most fun thing I could do is this.”

Stanley Bertram Brooks was born in the Bronx in 24 January 1927, to Herman and Mildred Brooks. His father worked for a paper company, selling paper to printers. He attended City College for two years, before serving in the Army. He later transferred to, and graduated from, Syracuse University. After working for newspapers in Westchester County, he became a reporter and editor at Newsday on Long Island, where he worked for 10 years before moving to WINS.

Besides his son Bennett, he is survived by two other sons, George and Rick; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. His wife, the former Lynn Schwarz, died in May.

On August 22, 1972, John Wojtowicz, along with Salvatore Naturale and Robert Westenberg, attempted to rob a branch of the Chase Manhattan bank on the corner of East 3rd Street and Avenue P in Gravesend, Brooklyn. Wojtowicz and Naturale held 7 bank employees hostages for 14 hours. Wojtowicz, a former bank teller, had some knowledge of bank operations. However, he apparently based his plan on scenes from the movie The Godfather, which he had seen earlier that day. The robbers became media celebrities. Wojtowicz was arrested and Naturale was killed by the FBY during the final moments of the incident. Wojtowicz answered the phone and gave Stan Brooks an interview. The robbery was turned into the Oscar winning film Dog day afternoon. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzUkykfCMUQ - listen to a 1971 radio ad by Chrysler.

WABC 770 Am NEW YORK - Dan Ingram started at WABC in July 1963 

21st December 2020, text by Radiomania.

When Harold L. Neal, Jr. was named General Manager of WABC, he was charged with making WABC successful in terms of both audience and profits. Neal had been at WXYZ in Detroit. 

By 1960, WABC was committed to a nearly full-time schedule of top-40 songs played by upbeat personalities. Still, WABC played popular non-rock'n'roll songs as well, provided they scored well on the Top 40 charts. WABC's early days as a Top 40 station were humble ones.

WINS was the No. 1 hit music station and WMCA, which did a similar rock leaning top 40 format, was also a formidable competitor, while WABC barely ranked in the Top Ten. Fortunately for WABC, the other Top 40 outlets could not be heard as well in more distant New York and New Jersey suburbs, since WINS, WMGM, and WMCA were all directional stations. 

WABC, with its 50,000-watt non-directional signal, had the advantage of being heard in places west, south, and northwest of New York City, a huge chunk of the growing suburban population and this is where the station began to draw ratings.

 

Early in 1962, WMGM, owned by Loew's, which then owned MGM, was sold to Storer Broadcasting. Upon its sale, WMGM reverted to its original WHN call letters and switched to a middle-of-the-road music format playing mostly non-rock artists such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Andy Williams.

Sam Holman was the first WABC program director of this era. Under Holman, WABC achieved No. 1 ratings during much of 1962, after WMGM reverted to WHN. By the summer of 1963, WMCA led the pack among contemporary stations, with WABC at No. 2 and WINS slipping to third place. It has been said, but is difficult to verify, that WMCA dominated in the city proper, while WABC owned the suburbs. This would be consistent with WMCA's 5,000-watt directional signal.

Especially in the afternoons and evenings, WABC was the station that teenagers could be heard listening to on transistor radios all over the New York metropolitan area. 

Due to its strong signal, the station could be heard easily over 100 miles away, including the Catskill and Pocono Mountains, and through much of Connecticut and Rhode Island. 

After sunset, when AM radio waves travel farther, WABC's signal could be picked up around much of the Eastern U.S. and Canada. 

ALISON STEELE, the Night Bird

Alison Steele (born Ceil Loman on January 26, 1937; died September 27, 1995) was a pioneering American disc jockey in Manhattan at what would become the archetypal progressive rock radio station in the United States, WNEW-FM. She was commonly known as "The Nightbird".

I used to work the afternoon shift at the record factory and arrived home past mid-night. As I didn't have a TV set I used to turn on the radio and listen to Alison Steele on WNEW-FM. She was cool. I liked her smooth voice that was so different from those guys at WABC that shouted non-stop.

The Night Bird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXZOFiz9EpQ (WOR 25th September 1971)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzUkykfCMUQ  (WOR 17th January 1972) 

WABC was the New York area most popular radio station even though it was fast losing ground to the FM stations like WOR-FM, WPLJ-FM and WPIX-for the good of New York ... that played Top-40 at a better-quality sound.

Dan Ingram was the most popular DJ in New York in the 1960s and 1970s. He did the afternoon slot.

It is a candid that the WABC's Chief Engineer took of Ingram in the early Fall of 1971.

WABC was #1 in 1966. The disclaimer says: (The data used herein are estimates from the Pulse New York 18 County Area Reports based upon cumulative homes reached per week, available January through September 1966... and the average homes per quarter hour for the calendar years 1964 and 1965. Any figures quoted are estimates only and are not accurate to any precise mathematical degree.)  Represented nationally by Blair Radio. 

I used to listen to all Top-40 stations... so sometimes I tuned to 97 WWDJ an AM station in Hackensack, N.J.

WABC's Top 100 hit-list of 1975 - a flyer they sent their listener who wrote them requesting it.

DJ Pete Fornatale with a voice of gold...

Peter ("Pete") Fornatale was born 23 August 1945. Died 26 April 2012 in New York City. He had suffered a brain hemorrhage April 15, 2012 and had been in ICU.

He was the first DJ to host a rock music show on New York City's FM band, starting in 21 November 1964 on WFUV. By broadcasting progressive rock and long album tracks, he was noted for introducing a musical alternative to Top 40 AM radio in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s. 

He gave early exposure to country-rock bands like Buffalo Springfield and Poco, and did one of the first American interviews with Elton John.

Starting with WOR-FM in 1966, FM was demonstrating a large rift from AM broadcasting. 

Fornatale was a key figure in this trend with his weekly program, "Campus Caravan," which was heard on Fordham University's WFUV from 1964 to 1970. He began professionally in 1969 at WNEW-FM and also worked at WXRK.

He was a native of the Belmont section of the Bronx and attended Fordham Preparatory School and Fordham University, where he received a B.A. in Communication Arts in 1967. 

Pete Fornatale, James Taylor & JOP.

J I N G L E S 

I got this message from someone at YouTube concerning a jingle at Dan Ingram's daily afternoon show on WABC:

'When I was little, I thought they were singing 'all the dancing from shore' instead of
'on the Dan Ingram Show'.

"May You Always / Auld Lang Syne"

As the holiday bells ring out the old year, and sweethearts kiss,
And cold hands touch and warm each other against the year ahead,
May I wish you not the biggest and best of life,
But the small pleasures that make living worthwhile.

Sometime during the New Year, to keep your heart in practice,
May you do someone a secret good deed and not get caught at it.
May you find a little island of time to read that book and write that letter
And to visit that lonely friend on the other side of town.

May your next do-it-yourself project not look like you did it yourself.
May the poor relatives you helped support remember you when they win the lottery.
May your best card tricks win admiring gasps and your worst puns, admiring groans.
May all those who told you so, refrain from saying, “I told you so.”

May all the predictions you’ve made for your first-born’s future come true.
May just half of those optimistic predictions that your high school annual made for you come true.
In a time of sink or swim, may you find you can walk to shore before you call the lifeguard.
May you keep at least one ideal you can pass along to your kids.

For a change, some rainy day, when you’re a few minutes late,
May your train or bus be waiting for you.
May you accidentally overhear someone saying something nice about you.
If you run into an old school chum,
May you both remember each other’s names for introductions.
If you order your steak medium rare, may it be so.
And, if you’re on a diet,
May someone tell you, “You’ve lost a little weight”, without knowing you’re on a diet.

May that long and lonely night be brightened by the telephone call that you’ve been waiting for.
When you reach into the coin slot, may you find the coin that you lost on your last wrong number.
When you trip and fall, may there be no one watching to laugh at you or feel sorry for you.

And sometime soon, may you be waved to by a celebrity,
Wagged at by a puppy,
Run to by a happy child,
And counted on by someone you love.
More than this, no one can wish you.

Happy Holidays!

DJ Harry Harrison recorded 'May you always' while still working at WMCA. Then he moved to WABC and kept his tradition of reciting this paen written by  Larry Marks & Dick Charles.

Harry Harrison at WMCA.

R. Peter Straus at WMCA.

Ronald Peter Straus, who almost never used his first name, was born in Manhattan on Feb. 15, 1923, the son of Nathan Straus Jr. and Helen Sachs Straus. His father, who became director of the United States Housing Authority under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a New York State senator, bought WMCA in 1943. The company, Straus Communications, later owned many radio stations and newspapers in the Hudson Valley and New Jersey.

WMCA, 570 on the AM dial, was founded in 1925, broadcasting from the McAlpin Hotel, from which the call letters were derived. It was bought by Nathan Straus Jr. in 1943. Its programming included popular music, dramas, New York Giants baseball games and, in the postwar years, a remarkable run of music and talk featuring Barry Gray, sometimes called “the father of talk radio,” and disc jockeys like Scott Muni and Murray Kaufman, a k a Murray the K.

WMCA pioneered public service radio in New York. It was the first station in the country to run editorials on political and civic issues, with Mr. Straus himself reading opinions on the air, and the first to endorse a presidential candidate, backing John F. Kennedy in 1960.

In December 1963, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” wailed out over WMCA, and Beatlemania, with a big boost from the station, soon engulfed the region. 

It was hardly a surprise. WMCA had been playing rock ’n’ roll since the 1950s, and WMCA’s Top 40 format, along with that of its fierce rival WABC, dominated the New York airwaves through the 1960s. 

WMCA’s disc jockeys, known as the Good Guys, became almost as well known as the stars whose records they played.

Howard Cosell & Muhamad Ali at Radio WABC in 1966.

Chuck Leonard publicity in 1972

Chuck Leonard has been with WABC 77 Radio since Labor Day 1965. And he's built a bigger audience than any other radio personality from 10:30 PM to midnight, from Monday through Friday.

'I try to be good company', says Chuck.'I treat the mike like I treat my next door neighbour.'

'So I tell the truth. I wouldn't lie to a friend, and I don't lie to my audience.  If I'm reading a commercial and I throw in a little editorial comment like 'No kidding, this stuff is really terrific,' my listeners know it's really terrific stuff.'

'Listeners in the New York area are special. They can spot a phony a mile away. And they're fast. If you start a joke, it better be one they haven't heard or they'll turn you off. You have to stay ahead of the game.'

Chuck honestly likes his audience. 'They're night people, and that's my favourite kind. I relate to them better than day people - we just have more in common, that's all.'

They like him, too. Not just as an entertainer, but as a friend. 'I get a lot of letters. Almost all of them sound like they're from somebody I've known for years.' Chuck says.

It's that kind of loyalty that's made him the number one man in his time slot. And ABC the number one station all the time.