Wasn’t I having fun?
What you are about to read, if it looks familiar, that’s because it’s an encore of what appeared in this space on March 19, 2019.
If you’ve not read, nor don’t remember, please read on:
Pages from old newspapers saved because they contained a story related to your life or work, or simply something you found interesting and couldn’t resist keeping … that’s me, how about you?
As I was going through a file looking for information relative to a planned future Musings, I came across some newspaper pages from the early 1970’s. At the same time, it suddenly dawned on me that this coming week marks the 50th anniversary of my leaving Philadelphia and joining New York City’s WRFM as its new manager. (And, now in this encore presentation, 50 years from when my Letter to the Editor was published.) So, what better time to share them with you than now!
What these old newspaper pages, from the Bergen County, New Jersey, newspaper, The Record, contain are two pieces of writing — one by a Record staff writer and columnist named Robert Runde and the other a Letter to the Editor by yours truly, dated 16 months apart. Even though a little dis-jointed, they are connected by the common theme of WRFM, its musical genre and the article writer’s slight disdain for this style of music.
To Mr. Runde’s credit, the article published on April 11, 1971, under the headline above, describing all of the various formats which could be heard across the FM dial, was quite thorough, being long and detailed. Here’s the portion in which he discusses WRFM and our genre.
This photo of me was taken in the kitchen of our Bergen County home, where I am holding our unique FM Dial Card cup — this is before I committed to “slimming down,” which occurred later in 1971.
As a preface to my Letter to the Editor, which I erroneously had thought referenced this “Dial FM For Pleasure” article, let me tell you that Mr. Runde extolled the talents of WCBS-FM’s program director, Les Turpin, who had been on the job about a year at this point. Unfortunately, less than a year later, Les Turpin had been terminated and the station’s format changed from contemporary rock to an oldies sound … which Mr. Runde reports on in his July 16, 1972, Listening Post column.
He quotes Dick Bozzi, WCBS-FM’s new program director, as saying his ambition is for the station to “become the WRFM of Rock,” which I took no issue with; in fact, it made me feel good — any mention of my call letters is positive. My objection is that Mr. Runde had to go on and take another dig at WRFM’s format: “Like Muzak, WRFM is the kind of station that makes no demands on its listeners; it is good background music and as such is extremely popular. Just listen closely the next time you’re in your dentist’s office.” Of course, you never let an opportunity to extol the virtues of your station — or any business — be ignored … and I didn’t!
As you read, we publicly committed to putting the best interests of our listeners first … how many radio stations today truly commit to or live that philosophy, whether it’s publicly stated or not? That could be a big reason the radio industry is struggling as much as it finds itself doing nowadays!
In case you’ve never seen an FM dial card – which is referenced in the newspaper text – here’s how a typical WRFM card looked:
Image Credits: Photos & newspaper visuals (c) The Record/North Jersey Media Group
