'WABC' (770 kHz), known as '"NewsTalkRadio 77"', is a radio station in
New York City. Owned by the
Citadel Broadcasting Corporation, the station broadcasts on a
clear channel and is the
flagship station of the
ABC Radio Network. WABC shares studio facilities with sister station
WPLJ (95.5 FM) and former sister stations
WEPN (1050 AM), and
WQEW (1560 AM) in midtown
Manhattan, and its
transmitter is located in
Lodi, New Jersey.
Since
1982 WABC has programmed a
talk radio format, and has been one of the most successful talk stations locally and in the
United States. WABC is, or has been, the flagship station for nationally-known radio talkers
Rush Limbaugh,
Sean Hannity,
Laura Ingraham, and
John Batchelor, among others. Before 1982, WABC broadcast a
Top 40 music format, was the dominant music station in the New York City area, and served as a template for many other Top 40 stations in different cities. WABC can be heard in most of the Eastern and Central US at night.
WABC and WPLJ were included in the recent sale of several ABC radio stations and the ABC Radio Network by the
Walt Disney Company to Citadel, announced in
February 2006 and finalized on
June 12,
2007.
History
As WJZ
What is now WABC made its first broadcast on
October 1,
1921 as 'WJZ', owned by the
Westinghouse Electric Corporation and was based in
Newark, New Jersey. The call letters themselves stood for their original home state, New 'J'er('Z') sey. It was originally housed in a shack on the roof of the Westinghouse meter factory on Orange and Plane streets in Newark, which was accessible only by ladder. The station later expanded into the one available space downstairs.
WJZ started off on 360 meters (833 AM) and as one of the first stations to broadcast in the New York City area, was reluctant to share the frequency with other stations. WJZ later recommended that other frequencies be made available for broadcasting, and by 1923, WJZ had moved over to 660 AM. In that same year, WJZ shifted ownership from Westinghouse to
RCA and changed its city of license from Newark to New York. New studios were in the 6th floor of the
Aeolian Building.
WJZ's first major program occurred on
October 5,
1921 when it broadcast the 1921
World Series, but there was no play-by-play direct from the field. Announcer Tommy Cowan in Newark simply relayed the description phoned from the ballpark by a newspaper reporter. On
March 15,
1922, WJZ broadcast a studio performance of
Mozart's Impresario, probably radio's first full-length opera. In October 1922, WJZ aired its second World Series, this time feeding it to
WGY in
Schenectady, New York.
Program logs from
May 15 to
December 31 1923 reveal that WJZ aired 3426 programs, including 723 talks, 67 church services, 205 bedtime stories and 21 sports events. Most of the broadcasts were musical and ranged from
Carnegie Hall and Aeolian Hall recitals to harmonica and banjo solos.
At the end of 1925, WJZ opened its new 50,000 watt transmitter from
Bound Brook, New Jersey. However, it overwhelmed everything else on the air and engineers visited homes in central New Jersey to deal with the complaints. As a result, WJZ didn't operate regularly at 50,000 watts until 1935.
NBC Blue flagship years
In July 1926,
WEAF also became an
RCA station and on November 15, 1926, both WJZ and WEAF were under the umbrella of the newly formed
National Broadcasting Company.
On
January 1,
1927, the NBC
Blue Network debuted, with WJZ as the originating station. In October 1927, WJZ moved into NBC studios still under construction at 711 Fifth Avenue. A month later, WEAF joined WJZ - and both were together under one roof. On
March 24 1932, WABC became the first radio station to broadcast a program from aboard a moving
train; the station aired a variety show produced aboard a
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad passenger train travelling through
Maryland.
[1] In November 1933, WJZ, WEAF and all of the NBC and RCA corporate headquarters moved to
30 Rockefeller Plaza.
Over the years, WJZ and the Blue Network presented many of America's most popular programs, such as ''
Lowell Thomas and the News'', ''
Amos 'n' Andy'', ''
Little Orphan Annie'', ''
America's Town Meeting of the Air'', and ''
Death Valley Days''. Each midday ''
The National Farm and Home Hour'' brought news and entertainment to rural listeners. Ted Malone read poetry and Milton Cross conveyed children "Coast To Coast On A Bus," as well as bringing opera lovers the Saturday matinees from the Met.
Occasionally, a show would premiere on NBC Blue, which had a weaker lineup of stations nationwide, and be shifted to the Red Network if it grew in popularity. ''
Fibber McGee and Molly'' is one example.
Birth of ABC
In 1942, the FCC ruled that no broadcaster could own more than one station in a market. So, on
October 12 1943, WJZ and the NBC Blue Network were sold to
Edward J. Noble, then the owner of
WMCA. Technically, this spun-off network was simply called "The Blue Network" for little over a year.
On
June 15 1945, "The Blue Network" was officially rechristened the
American Broadcasting Company, when negotiations were completed with
George B. Storer, who had owned the defunct American Broadcasting System and still owned the name.
In November 1948, WJZ and the ABC network finally got a home of their own when studios were moved to a renovated building at 7 West 66th Street. On
March 1,
1953, WJZ changed its call letters to 'WABC', after the FCC approved
ABC's merger with
United Paramount Theatres,
Paramount Pictures' movie theatre chain, which was divested under government order.
The WABC calls were once used previously on
CBS Radio's
New York City outlet, before adopting their current
WCBS identity in 1946. Westinghouse, however, didn't let the WJZ call go forgotten. After acquiring WAAM-TV in
Baltimore, Maryland in 1957, Westinghouse applied to change the calls to
WJZ-TV in honor of its pioneer radio station. The FCC granted the unusual request (perhaps because Westinghouse was highly regarded as a licensee by both the industry and the FCC at that time), and the Baltimore TV station retains the call letters to this day.
WABC's first era (1953 to 1960)
Although WABC continued to air ABC programming during this time, WABC began using deejays playing recorded music. Some programs featured "middle of the road" mainstream pop and showtunes, while other portions of the schedule included long-form newscasts and dramatic programs, similar to the other network-owned stations in New York like WCBS and WNBC. This would continue until 1960, as the Musicradio 77 era began. A hint of what was to come came in 1958-59, when for a time legendary rock and blues disk jockey
Alan Freed hosted a daily evening show on WABC which was formatically (sic) and musically like the early rock shows he had gained fame with on WINS. Freed's time at WABC ended when he was caught up in the investigation of the "
payola" scandals of the era.
The Musicradio 77 era (1960 to 1982)
Early years
WABC committed to a virtually full-time schedule of top-40 songs played by upbeat personalities during the first week of December, 1960. WABC's early days as a
Top 40 station were humble ones. Top 40
WINS was the #1 music station and WMCA 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 well in certain 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 - a huge chunk of the suburban population - and this is where the station began to draw ratings.
Sam Holman was the first WABC program director of this era. Under Holman, WABC achieved #1 ratings in late 1962, when WINS and WMCA experimented with "softer" music. During 1963, both WINS and WMCA went back to pop Top 40 and WABC slipped a bit. By the summer of 1963, WMCA led the pack, with WABC at #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, although WMCA had the benefit of a lower frequency than WABC.
Dominant years
A decision was made to make
Rick Sklar the program director. He would go on to become a member of the
Radio Hall of Fame and be credited as one of the pioneering architects of the Top 40 format.
Under Sklar, the station went to the shortest playlist of any contemporary music station in history; the number one song was heard almost every hour. In his book ''Rockin' America'', Sklar said he was sensitive to
payola concerns and advanced airplay.
Through the years, WABC was known by various slogans, "Channel 77 WABC", then "77 WABC", and later "Musicradio WABC".
Early 1960s
disc jockeys included
Herb Oscar Anderson,
Charlie Greer,
Scott Muni,
Chuck Dunaway, and
Bob Lewis, but the best known WABC DJs are the ones that followed them in the mid-1960s and beyond:
Harry Harrison,
Ron Lundy,
Jim Nettleton,
Jim Perry,
Dan Ingram,
Radio Hall of Fame member "Cousin Brucie"
Bruce Morrow,
Chuck Leonard,
Bob Cruz,
Frank Kingston Smith,
Roby Yonge,
George Michael, and
Johnny Donovan. Also heard on WABC was sportscaster
Howard Cosell, he of "Speaking of Sports" fame.
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 over 100 miles away -- as far as the Catskill Mountains, Pocono Mountains and outlying areas of Philadelphia. Bruce Morrow later spoke about how he felt an almost psychic bond to his young listeners.
In 1962, WABC became the original radio flagship of the
New York Mets, with
Lindsey Nelson,
Bob Murphy and
Ralph Kiner calling the games with Cosell and his sidekick "Big Numba Thirteen"
Ralph Branca handling the pre- and post-game shows, no words minced.
A famous tape, or
aircheck, of WABC from 1964 features some of the DJs speaking from a window of the Beatles' hotel room during the Fab Four's visit to New York City, while Dan Ingram, back in the studio, played WABC jingles to thousands of teenagers in the streets below, who enthusiastically sang along with them. Ingram later noted that this was actually illegal under FCC rules, but said that they didn't know it at the time. In the wake of the success of "W-A-Beatle-C" (as it was briefly called around the time of the Beatles' U.S. visit), competitor WINS finally dropped out of the Top 40 battle in 1965, adopting an all-news format. As a tribute to WABC, the television network also called itself "A-Beatles-C" whenever it promoted airings of Beatles-related films.
Just before the famous New York City power outage in 1965, Dan Ingram noted that the power was fluctuating and began having fun with the slowed-down music. After playing "Everyone's Gone To The Moon" by Johnathan King, he quipped it was played "in the key of R." After the 6 PM newscast, WABC left the air as the outage settled in for real.
[1]
In the 1970s, WABC was either #1 or #2 consistently, often trading places with WOR. Once in a while, a station attracting an older audience (like
WOR or
WPAT) would move into the top spot, but these stations were not truly WABC's competitors. Chief competitor
WMCA stopped playing top 40 music in 1970,
WWDJ lasted from 1971 to 1974, and
WOR-FM, later
99X, came and went from 1968 to 1978. Other FM competitors like oldies
WCBS-FM, black-urban
WBLS, and
album-oriented rock stations like
WPLJ and
WNEW-FM all did well in the ratings, but none rivalled WABC's success. AM competitor
WNBC also never came close to WABC's audience during this period. Even though WNBC tried sounding younger, older, and somewhere in-between, WABC remained dominant.
WABC's ratings strength came from its cumulative audience, what the radio industry calls "cume". Most listeners didn't stay with WABC for long periods of time, as the station had some of the shortest "time spent listening" (or TSL) spans in the history of music radio -- an average listener spent about 10 minutes listening to WABC. It was the price paid for a short playlist and a lot of commercials between songs (the large amount of commercials being due to WABC's large audience), but what WABC lacked in TSL it more than made up for with its sheer number of listeners.
Fed up with the short playlist, Cousin Brucie left in 1974 for rival WNBC. Rick Sklar left in 1976 to become VP of programming for
ABC Radio, and assistant PD Glenn Morgan became WABC's program director.
The station's influence could be found in odd places:
Philip Glass' 1976
opera, ''
Einstein on the Beach'', has as part of the background a recitation of WABC's DJ schedule in the 1960s.
Disco and the end of "Musicradio" WABC
The end of the 1970s found FM radio beginning to overtake AM music stations in most markets. In July of 1978,
WKTU abruptly dropped its adult contemporary format in favor of a disco-based top 40 format known as "Disco 92". By December of that year, WABC was unseated, as WKTU became the #1 station in New York City. The first "disco" ratings saw WKTU with 11 percent of the listening audience -- a huge number anywhere, let alone in a market the size of New York City -- and WABC dropping from 4.1 million listeners to 3 million, losing 25 percent of its audience practically overnight.
After this initial ratings tumble, WABC panicked and began airing extended disco mixes back-to-back. Some of the disco songs ran in excess of six, seven or eight minutes. What regular listeners heard was a major change in sound. The familiar format had disappeared - hit music, jingles, commercials - and as a result, WABC began to lose its identity. In the late spring of 1979, ''
Billboard'' magazine reported that Rick Sklar had demoted program director Glenn Morgan to "moving [music] carts" instead of making programming decisions. WABC's numbers dropped for four consecutive ratings periods.
On
August 2 1979, the
Donna Summer disco hit "
MacArthur Park" was playing during
Dan Ingram's afternoon drive program. During the song,
Howard Cosell interrupted to break the news to the world that
New York Yankees catcher and team captain
Thurman Munson had died in a plane crash.
In September of 1979,
Al Brady Law took over the station, and according to an account by DJ
George Michael,
Rick Sklar was removed from his oversight of WABC and was moved "upstairs." Law cut back the current songs slightly (though still playing the top song over a dozen times a day) and added more 1970s rock, some album cuts, and a few big 1960s hits. He also changed the presentation of the station. The goal was to increase the station's poor time-spent-listening, and for this, he desired a new direction.
Longtime DJs
Harry Harrison,
Chuck Leonard, and
George Michael were gone that November. Dan Ingram moved to mornings, Bob Cruz moved to afternoons, and
Sturgis Griffin joined for overnights while
Howard Hoffman did evenings. Hoffman was one of the first of the 1980s style of contemporary hit radio (CHR) DJs -- heavy on brief phone bits from listeners and a sarcastic sense of humor, sounding "hip", as the future
Z100 DJs would a few years later -- but his ratings were merely okay, and he didn't stay long.
The time-spent-listening did improve, but WABC was still losing audience and they were under extreme pressure to regain lost ground. The station started to become more information-oriented, adding morning traffic reports by
Shadow Traffic's Jack Packard (aka
Bernie Wagenblast) on
December 3 1979. Al Brady Law left the station in the summer of 1980 as WABC added the
New York Yankees baseball games that all-news
WINS was unable to air due to their coverage of the 1980 Democratic and Republican conventions. It was the first sign of the beginning of the end for the music format of WABC.
In the summer of 1980, Jay Clark took over WABC. By the fall, the station played current music that was more Adult Contemporary (AC) in sound, trying to appeal to a slightly older audience, as most younger listeners had moved to the FM dial. WABC still played rock and soul crossovers in moderation, but began to move away from album cuts and more toward 1960s and 1970s oldies. They also dropped the "Musicradio WABC" slogan and became "77 WABC, New York's Radio Station", the apparent implication being that the station was more than "just" music.
By early 1981, WABC's cumulative audience was down to 2.5 million -- rival WNBC, a perennial also-ran, was by this time beating them with 2.9 million. Fewer people were tuning in to WABC, listeners who had switched to FM were not coming back, and, while still moderately successful, the ship was sinking. Like Al Brady Law, Jay Clark tried to improve the time-spent-listening. Howard Hoffman and Bob Cruz departed, Dan Ingram went back to his familiar afternoon slot, and the team of
Ross Brittain and
Brian Wilson from
Atlanta moved into morning drive.
That spring, WABC became the full-time flagship radio outlet for New York Yankees baseball games, a distinction the station carried through the end of the 2001 season. This would be the longest continuous relationship the team would have with any flagship station (to date). Jay Clark reasoned that Yankee baseball would bring back some listeners to the station and that they would recycle back into the music format, but not even the "Bronx Bombers" could save music on WABC.
At the time the Yankees became a regular WABC feature, the station also began airing a weeknight sports-talk show with
Art Rust, Jr. WABC's ratings by this point were mediocre at best -- and they were still going down.
In the fall of 1981, WABC dropped the remaining heavy-rock cuts and non-crossover urban hits. They began playing more oldies, as well as songs from the adult contemporary chart, and added an "advice" talk show with
Doctor Judy Kuriansky. By this point, WABC was almost unrecognizable as a Top 40 station, the ratings were languishing, and rumors were rampant that the station would be changing format.
In February of 1982, WABC officially confirmed it would be going to an all-talk format that May. The airstaff began saying goodbye with a comment here and there from February into May. Finally, on
April 30, it was announced that the switch to all-talk would occur on
May 10 at noon. From
May 7 to
May 9, the station airstaff said their goodbyes one last time.
May 10 1982, the day WABC stopped playing music, is sometimes called "
The Day The Music Died". WABC ended its 22-year run as a music station with a 9 a.m.-noon farewell show hosted by longtime WABC disc jockeys
Dan Ingram and
Ron Lundy. The last song played on WABC before the format change was "
Imagine" by
John Lennon, followed by the familiar WABC "Chime Time" jingle, then a moment of silence before the debut of the new talk format.
The NewsTalkRadio 77 era (1982 to present)
Early years
Initially after the format change, the station ran a lot of satellite talk from corporate ABC's "Talk Radio" network. Ross and Wilson stayed on and continued to play 4 songs per hour (mostly '60s and '70s hits) throughout 1982. In 1983, they stopped playing music as well. Ross and Wilson split up in 1983 when Ross went over to
Z-100. While the station's final ratings as a music station were mediocre, their talk ratings initially were even lower.
Still, the station stuck with the new format. They added more issues-oriented talk shows, with an increasing number of conservative talk show hosts (a couple of liberals also hosted shows). The ratings grew and by the late 1980s, they were a very successful talk station. The program director behind this was
John Mainelli, and then
Phil Boyce.
From 1984 to 1996 WABC broadcast the popular and influential
Bob Grant, a controversial talk radio pioneer. After years of what many considered racist and inflammatory remarks, he was fired in 1996 for a controversial comment regarding the death of
United States Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown. Grant has since returned as a guest host as of July 2007.
WABC today
Currently, the WABC program day begins with the team of
Curtis Sliwa and
Ronald Kuby in morning drive. Sliwa, the conservative founder of the
Guardian Angels, and Kuby, a civil rights lawyer and liberal activist, host a ''
Crossfire''-style program where each offers his views on topics of the day from both sides of the spectrum. George Weber anchors the news, and veteran sportscaster
Warner Wolf also throws in his independent, centrist viewpoints from time to time. Three-generation former
WOR morning host
John R. Gambling hosts in late mornings, and is followed by
Rush Limbaugh from Noon to 3 p.m..
Sean Hannity is the afternoon drive host.
Mark Levin,
Bob Grant, and
Laura Ingraham take over in the evenings. Late-night hours are covered by
George Noory's ''
Coast to Coast AM'' program. WABC also carries
Paul Harvey's newscasts during the ''Curtis & Kuby'' program (''Paul Harvey News and Comment'') and in-between Gambling and Limbaugh (''
The Rest of the Story'').
Mark Simone hosts two Saturday shows -- a morning talk show from 6 to 10 a.m., and the music-intensive ''Saturday Night Oldies'' specialty show, from 6 to 10 p.m..
WABC has also sometimes featured out-of-town hosts carried in syndication.
Laura Schlessinger and
Michael Savage were once carried by WABC.
Flagship-wise, Limbaugh's show was produced at the WABC studios from 1988 until the early 2000s, when he started doing the program from
Premiere Radio Networks and a studio in his home in
South Florida. Hannity's show originates from WABC, while Levin's and Ingraham's are based in Washington D.C. All three aforementioned shows are syndicated to various affiliates of the
ABC Radio Network.
In December 2001, broadcast rights to the New York Yankees were lost after 20 years to
WCBS.
New Jersey Devils hockey broadcasts, which had been on WABC for 16 years, also switched to CBS's cluster, joining
WFAN and
WFNY for the 2005-2006 season. The loss of evening sports programming forced WABC to attempt to solidify its evening talkers, which previously had featured an eclectic bunch including
Lynn Samuels and
Richard Bey. WABC does still carry
New York Jets football along with then-sister station
WEPN, largely because it has a stronger signal than WEPN. WABC also airs various games that WEPN owns the rights to when there are conflicts.
In 2004, the station earned the distinction of being a news/talk radio station even longer than it had been a Top 40 station, by marking 22 years in its present format.
The 2005 lineup from 10 a.m. to midnight was Gambling, Limbaugh, Hannity,
Mark Levin, Ingraham, and
John Batchelor. However, the Limbaugh to Ingraham stretch consists of four hosts with very similar viewpoints. Director Boyce has stated that these programming decisions are ratings-driven, while critics of WABC state that the station's programming reflects a conscious
conservative political advocacy. The station's slogan is "News, Opinion, Passion".
In 2006, the John Batchelor Show was discontinued.
[2] He was subsequently replaced by Laura Ingraham's nationally syndicated radio program, which was moved to a later time slot. The slot previously occupied by Ingraham was filled with a two-hour program hosted by
Jerry Agar. On August 23 2007, Agar's 8-10 pm timeslot was replaced by long-time talkradio originator and WABC veteran
Bob Grant (radio), due in part to the station's new ownership by Citadel
[3] [4].
Although the station has good ratings, it underperforms in terms of total revenue. In 2005, WABC billed $24 million, not even close to industry giant
KFI in
Los Angeles at $60 million. In Winter 2006, KFI became the most listened-to talk station in the country.
On
February 6,
2006, the Walt Disney Company announced that it would sell WABC and other radio properties not affiliated with either
Radio Disney or
ESPN Radio, along with ABC Radio's News/Talk and FM networks, to
Citadel Broadcasting Corporation for $2.7 billion. The transaction became final on
June 12,
2007.
Musicradio 77 lives on
Even though Talkradio WABC has proven to be a success, the station has not forgotten its roots. An annual ''WABC
Rewound'' program consists of old broadcasts from the Musicradio era, usually as originally aired. This process often involves restoring the music to "telescoped"
airchecks, from which the music had been removed and only the disc jockey comments and other elements remain. The WABC "Rewound" tribute has been heard every
Memorial Day since 1998. Many of the old WABC airchecks can be heard at the Musicradio 77 tribute website [
[5], run professionally by
Tarrytown, New York dentist and former radio personality Allan Sniffen. The site also offers jingles, photos, and bios of former WABC deejays.
In December 2005, WABC debuted the ''
Saturday Night Oldies'' music show, also devoted to the MusicRadio era, airing from 6 to 10 p.m. and hosted by
Mark Simone. The program reportedly has listeners (via radio and a live Internet stream) in most if not all fifty states, and several foreign countries. The show includes vintage jingles and airchecks from the "Musicradio" era as well as interviews with some of the station's legendary personalities and the performers whose music was played on WABC.
Possible Hiring of Don Imus
During a June 29,2007 broadcast at WFAN, rumors surfaced that Don Imus would make an attempt to return to radio airwaves, possibly returning to WFAN itself. Although before any move could be made a settlement with Imus and CBS Radio has to be settled.
On August 14, 2007, the settlement with CBS Radio was settled, and it became clear that Imus was not returning to WFAN and negotiations are currently being made with WABC (AM)
References
1. Rivanna Chapter National Railway Historical Society, ''This Month in Railroad History: March''. Retrieved March 24 2006.
External links
★
WABC Fans
★
WABC's Website
★
Musicradio 77 WABC (1960 to 1982) tribute site
★
WABC News Historical Profile & Interviews (1978)
★
Saturday Night Oldies Message Board
★ http://www.marksimone.com
★
The 1960's Week-By-Week featuring in-depth news of the WMCA-WINS-WABC top-40 wars including ratings
★
Radio-History.com information on WJZ-AM.
★
★
★
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