TV/Radio Age was an industry publication whose prime target audience was the advertising community, especially those which purchased advertising on radio and TV. If you are not familiar with audience rating terminology, “weekly average-quarter-hour share” means that the station in question within the market/survey territory has a particular percentage of all listening to radio occurring during that span of time.
Looking at the ARB/Arbitron rating survey taken six years later in early 1978, the love affair with WEZO and its music had not diminished one iota … it continued to be the most-listened-to station in this major community in western New York State. In fact, twenty percent of all radio listening for the entire week among all ages in Greater Rochester was to WEZO, something that few stations anywhere have ever achieved, AM or FM, regardless of format.
Finally, this thought from a happy WEZO listener — it and the story above were shared in a 1972 issue of the monthly newsletter which we sent to our client stations, simply called the Taylor Report.
This Musings is likely to be of interest primarily to those who have an interest in radio trivia, and is the result of more digging through the archives — its focus is mostly on our Bonneville Broadcast Consultants client stations who were with us in the 1970s, our early years!
The below article, published in the music and radio industries publication, Billboard … notes that Malrite Broadcasting signed three of their FM’s on with us in early 1971, among our earliest client stations outside of WRFM’s own Bonneville sister FM’s. Previously, they had pretty much been duplicating their sister AM’s. (Remember the name Malrite, as it plays a significant role in my next Musings, which will appear here in two weeks.
I was not even aware of this article until quite recently when I was advised that a Marlin Taylor Wikipedia page had been created on my behalf and that the writer had dug it up when searching for reference data to confirm the various aspects of my life.
WALL-FM, located in Middletown, New York … which sits well northwest of the metropolitan New York market on the fringe of what’s considered the market’s boundaries, was one of our early Programme II stations. The content was much the same musically as our primary large-market package — it was simply a less-refined design and offered more flexibility, often needed in small-market situations.
Regarding the letter, I was certainly aware of it as it was addressed to me; however, I was not told about the ad until the Broadcasting magazine issue containing it arrived in June 1973.
When we relocated our operation from 485 Madison Avenue in Manhattan to the humble little community of Tenafly in northern New Jersey in July 1974, we secured the below broadcast automation system. We were expanding and our team had a number of genres of musical formats and variations they were considering — this was the best approach for testing over an extended period.
I’m posting this photo with the WALL-FM story, as there is a connection. Not much more than a year later, just before Christmas 1975, the multi-story building in which the WALL stations were located on the main street in Middletown caught fire and burned, destroying everything.
Middletown’s old National Guard Armory had already been purchased by the stations’ owners with plans as their new home, so temporary facilities were quickly set up there. Our contribution to getting the FM back on the air was sending our automation system up to Middletown on loan until a new system could be ordered, built, and delivered.
While Cleveland’s WQAL wasn’t one of our earliest stations … once our programming was in place, it took off like a rocket ship. As I write in my memoir, RADIO … My Love, My Passion, the group which had purchased WQAL was headquartered in New York City, as we still were at the time. Its president, Eddie Cossman, came over to sign our contract. Upon arrival, he immediately began probing as to what I had planned a special, as there was an already-successful heritage Easy Listening station in Cleveland. I had to tell him that I wasn’t prepared to share any plans … which was the truth. He finally relented, signed the contract, handed over his check, and departed.
Within a few days, once we confirmed the music tape library had arrived, our Executive VP Loring Fisher and I headed to Ohio. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure exactly what approach I’d put in place … I needed a few hours to listen to a couple of other stations, including our prime competition, WDOK.
My first confirmation was that, like most of the other heritage Easy Listening/Good Music stations, their music was pretty much stuck in a time-warp, with most of the tunes dating to pre-World War Two. Playing many of these songs is not bad … it’s just that time had relegated them to being just part of the mix, not the bulk of the tunes heard. So many great melodies had come along in the 25 years following WWII, and those are what the listeners in the postwar era best related to.
Identification-wise, they simply called themselves “102 FM.” WQAL was being promoted as the “Voice of Quality,” which it definitely wasn’t, and it was my sense that it made no positive impact on the typical listener. I don’t remember if or what we began using as identifier slogans … but the emphasis was to be on “Q-1-0-4” and very little else, with no mention of WQAL call letters except when necessary. As I remember, they had a live air staff to give title and artist info, which is positive when handled smoothly.
Today, a good three decades after my format was dropped and there have been at least a couple of management and ownership changes, “Q104” is still in use as their prime identifier.
Before I sign off, I’ll share a couple of pieces of print material from what were two of WRFM’s sister stations … first is Seattle’s KSEA, whose original call letters were KIRO-FM. The KIRO stations – AM, FM and TV were Bonneville’s first broadcast property acquisitions outside of Salt Lake City.
This is the station’s coverage map — if you look close, you’ll note four little pie-slice shaped inserts … these were four low-powered transmitters used to fill in areas within the station’s primary signal area, yet weren’t being reached due to terrain issues. On the map they are called “translator locations” — at this point, I do not remember if they were/are on-channel boosters or what today are called translators, which are on a different frequency on the FM band.
In the state of Utah, the greatest percentage of the population sits in the upper part of the state, between Provo and Ogden with Salt Lake City in the middle. Bonneville International’s KSL stations were early pioneers in using low-powered repeater/translator transmitters for both TV and FM to make their signals available in the smaller communities down through the state and even over in northern Nevada — each transmitter would pick up the signal from the previous one geographically and re-broadcast it. Of course, this was long before the days of DirecTV!
One of the last radio acquisitions in Bonneville’s build-up of its group was KOIT, taking its call letter name from the landmark Coit Tower, which sits on a hill in the midst of San Francisco. Arch Madsen, Bonneville’s founder, and first president, really wanted a station in San Francisco. We weren’t able to deliver as big a success as WQAL in Cleveland against a heritage Easy Listening/Good Music station — in this case, KABL — but KOIT made a good showing and carved out its own share of the audience.
As you may know from reading my memoir or learned otherwise, back in these early years of FM’s growth, many stations used the FM dial card to promote themselves and benefited FM in general. The popular postcard-style card design as seen here was conceived by Jerry Lee and first used by us at WDVR in Philadelphia beginning in 1963. Shown here is WDVR’s very first card.
I show this here because the folks at KOIT took a different approach … they offered this compact card in an envelope with instructions that the back paper of the card could be peeled off and there’d be adhesive for sticking it wherever you’d like to have it for quick reference.
Two weeks from now comes the next Musings which, more or less, is a continuation of what I’ve shared here, as it includes “movin’ up” stories as well as Malrite and yours truly! Enjoy your St. Patrick’s Day!
