This is a portion of a full-page ad which WDVR Philadelphia ran in the Inquirer daily morning newspaper in May of 1964 … listing every song that the station would play that day between 9 AM and 11 PM.
WDVR was just celebrating its first anniversary, having begun broadcasting in May of 1963 … 55 years ago. It was the last FM station permit to be granted in the city of Philadelphia, and even then had its limitations … operating with an antenna very low in height and with low output power — which, as you may know, are both critical to an FM station’s coverage.
As you see from reading below, even though our signal strength was poor and coverage limited, we were obviously offering content and a product people longed to hear. Why else would we, after only a year on the air, have greater listenership than the several other FM stations who had larger staffs and greater resources?
As for many of those artists listed, you may not remember them … quite a few I barely remember — and I programmed them. However, there are several, such as Percy Faith, Roger Williams, Frank Chacksfield, the Living Strings and Chet Atkins, who are still being played today on SiriusXM’s Escape channel. And, this is 55 years later! Some things, some music can and does stand the test of time.
At the beginning of my memoir, RADIO … My Love, My Passion … detailing my career and love affair with radio broadcasting which spanned more than 60 years, I promised that I would regularly offer more stories and pictures + color versions of many of the photos appearing in the book. This is one more stop along the way of fulfilling that promise––so please stop back often.
Thank you for visiting.
