Quote:
Originally Posted by Sandy G
God, how I miss WSAI ! They came booming in here w/little or no fade...And the music was top-notch, too, the "2nd, 3rd, & 4th" level of hits that the FM hotshots won't touch w/a 10-foot pole...
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I like oldies as well, Sandy, and would often listen to WSAI in Cincinnati after dark when it played those great old hits (its 50kW signal boomed in at my former home 15 miles east of Cleveland and still does where I live now, 15 miles further east). The station switched to a talk format some time ago, however, and dropped the oldies without a backward glance. Cincy's other music station, WCKY 1530, did the same thing and became an ESPN sports station (1530 Homer, The Sports Animal!), so now, that city's AM dial is like that of almost every other city in the country these days--all or mostly non-music programming.
There is one FM station some 35 miles east of me that plays darn nearly
all the hits from the 1950s through the 1970s, even some rare songs that didn't get much air play even when they were new (and would have eventually faded darn nearly into oblivion, if not for unique oldies stations like this); I like it and listen to it often. Using the call sign WZOO, this station is at 102.5 and puts in a very good signal along the Lake Erie shoreline from Erie, Pennsylvania back into the far suburban Cleveland area. The city of Cleveland itself has an excellent oldies station on 105.7 as well. This one is known as WMJI, and has been playing what were at the time America's best '60s, 70s (and now '80s) classic hits since 1981. I listen to this station often as well, especially on my old Zenith MJ-1035. Maybe it's just me, but I think those great old classic gold hits sound better when listened to on a vintage radio with a high fidelity audio stage. What amazes me as far as WZOO is concerned is that a lot, and I mean quite a few, of their oldies are broadcast in stereo. I'm at a loss to explain this, as I'm sure a large number of those oldies were not originally recorded in stereo--especially in the fifties when stereo records were new and there was no such thing as stereo FM yet (the FCC did not authorize U.S. FM stations to transmit under the multiplex system used today until 1961), although there were some experiments done in the late '50s with a system known as "AM-FM stereo" in which the right channel program information was carried over a city's AM station and the left channel would be broadcast over the same city's FM station, or vice-versa. From what I understand of it, the system, which was a Rube Goldberg lashup at best, worked after a fashion but had problems; for example, if the listener were out of range of either the AM or FM station, he/she would not hear fully one half of the program. When the new multiplex standards were approved in 1961 the situation brightened, however, and the old AM-FM stereo system was relegated to the annals of history; by the end of the '60s there were more stations jumping on the stereo bandwagon than one could shake a stick at (the seventies saw a continuation of this trend as well), as the new multiplex system became
the standard for stereo FM in this country. Today, almost all commercial (and even college/NPR) FM stations transmit in stereo; only very small low-budget stations in small towns still broadcast in monaural. I remember one FM station in Cleveland in the early '70s, originally set up for full stereo multiplex, that was forced to transmit monophonically for a short time when a fire at a telephone company relay station knocked out one of the station's stereo channels (this was some 35 years before STLs [studio-transmitter links], rather than physical wire telephone lines, were being used to link radio station studios and transmitters). What a mess. The station eventually got back on the air in stereo, but I'm sure any engineer who was working at that station at that time will never forget "the day half the music died" (with apologies to Don McLean and his '70s hit
American Pie) at station WGCL (now classic rock 98.5 WNCX) in Cleveland.