News and Reviews 2012

I've been blogging Arcane Radio Trivia since April of 2005. As of this date, that works out to more than  1,900 posts. It's a time-consuming hobby.  2012 has been a good year for this radio man. I was interviewed by a French audiophile magazine, Discuts. I've digitized dozens of acetates. Two of my cranky letters to Radio World were published. I read several dozen books. I learned a lot more HTML. A year has passed. So the time have come to reflect and review.  It's a good time to look at my previous top 10s, and "Best Of" lists.You can see previous years lists at the links below:

• 2011
• 2010
• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005

Best Posts: 
My favorites are never my readers favorites. I was recently got name-checked at the Society of Lathe Trolls (which is an honor and a privilege) for one of my weekly acetate rips. I really liked my post about Alan Freed and the artist genuinely known as Moondog. I also liked the post on WKDU vs. WPWT vs. WEXP, because it was a bit of Philly radio history. I also posted a much more detailed history of broadcasts from trains because I got called out on a technicality. I also had the pleasure and honor of blogging my own grandfather's radio history in two segments, here and here.

Most Popular Posts:
I had an unexpected bump from Reddit this year which had a bit of a long tail as other sites recycled their content including my link. It totally rearranged what posts were popular, and continues to feed me a river of web traffic. So that Reddit link and it's after effects produced over 100,000 hits, over half of which happened within about 24 hours beginning on June 27th. It was re-blogged by several sites including "Did You Know?" a Tumbler site, the Straight Dope message board, Josh Withers, and several others. It led to increased hits on related pages and a generally higher level since. This redefined "popular" for my blog. My average daily hits since then are up 5k. This all because of a post I wrote on peter Tripp in 2009.

Best Music Blogs
I still read Built on a Weak Spot, more often than I read the Newspaper.  I'd also like to note that  Aversion Online was a rock solid resource until writer Andrew went on hiatus. I hope for his triumphant return. I think every new CD/vinyl and download I bought in the last few years was because of these two blogs.

Best Radio Station:
This year I'm picking the College of Staten Island radio station 88.9 WSIA. Hurricane Sandy dealt a harsh  blow to the whole Metropolitan New York area. Worst hit were probably Hoboken and Staten Island. WSIA is the only radio station local to Staten Island, and they like most took some damage.  Their  transmitter site took severe damage in the storm, but their campus opened it's doors to the beleaguered residents of Staten Island. We all hope for their swift return. Also laudable is WCPR the Cable & webcast station at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. Other stations, including WFMU took a hit as well but they are in a much better position fiscally to recover.

Best Radio Show:
Tin Pan Alley on WDVR. What an odd little program this is. Host Barbara Zentner plays pop music from 1920s through the 1950s with an ear for oddities and a mind for themes and lost causes. She truly has made a format of all the record I always toss after buying a lot wholesale. Somehow she ties it all together like some kind of mad crate-digging anthropologist. More here.

Best Record Store:
Willimantic Records was so good that I bought their T-shirt. They have vinyl, classic punk, used CDs, a nice book section, xylophones, shirts, magazines, and of course... 78s. You can't beat that.

Best Zine
It's more of a weekly than a zine, but this year I have to give it to the New Miami Times for their high brow writing on voter suppression, mosquito borne diseases, Art & Vinyl and a feature on the zombie apocalypse. It sounds like fiction but you should have heard the AM band down there light up when that dude ate that other dude's face. It made great reading while trapped in a Pinecrest hotel room. they are a sister publication to the Village Voice and a fine read.

Top 10 Records of 2012
1. Pile - Dripping
2. Metz - Metz
3. Killing Joke - MMXII
4. Staer - Staer 
5. Teenanger - Frights
6. Future of the Left - The Plot Against Common Sense
7. Crocodiles - Endless Flowers
8. Gay Witch Abortion - Opportunistic Smoke Screen Behavior
9. Fast Citizens - Gather
10. Thy Art Is Murder - Hate

Honorable mentions: Tendril - Smear, Sky:lark - 2012 demos, Father John Misty – Fear Fun, Desaparecidos - Marikkkopa 7-inch, Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel, Deftones - Koi No Yokan, Anchor 3 - Whir, The Soupcans – Good Feelings,Various Artists - The Reverb Conspiracy,  The Algorithm - Polymorphic Code, Ruiner - Whores, Hawks - Rub, Noxious Foxes - Leggings, Converge: All We Love We Leave Behind, Old Man Gloom - No.

WKDU Vs. WPWT Vs. WEXP

History is better than fiction, because the punchline is always that it really happened.  The research for this post began here. Presently WKDU is a college radio station owned by Dexel University in Philadelphia, PA. As with all things, it had a beginning, and in the beginning there was no such thing as 91.7 WKDU. It began as a carrier current station with the informal callsign WMAX. Most sources date it's debut to 1958. In 1962 they switched to cable on 830AM as WXDT. It began broadcasting in 1970, but it's transition to FM came only from the fall of another station, and the defeat of another. There was a battle royale for the 91.7 frequency and WKDU was the last station standing. More here.

But there was a third station in this tale. WPWT was the radio station of Philadelphia Wireless Technical Institute (PWTI), hence the call letters. It was located at 1533 Pine St right in Philadelphia. PWTI had been operating since 1908 and is post-worthy on it's own.  It wasn't a large school, though it was accredited by the National Association of Trade and Technical Schools (NATTS). It was lost accreditation in 1998 and no longer exists. [More here] PWTI had signed on WPWT in December of 1949, (originally on 90.1.) The book Philadelphia Radio by Alan Boris reports this as 1950 but it's sign-on is even clearly described in the November 1949 issue of Billboard as "earlier this year." They were the second FM station in Philadelphia which is quite an achievement.

But by the 70s it had perhaps 60 students at any given time. With a small student body it can be hard to maintain a station. So in about 1972 they began a share time arrangement with WXDT to keep the lights on. To share time The Drexel kids needed a real callsign to share time so they became WKDU with just 10 watts. They split the week with the 180 watt WPWT operating from 2:00 PM to 10:00 PM daily, and by all reports, the format was Disco. In the early 1980s they segued to Top-40. In 1981 WKDU gets FCC thumbs up to jump from 10 watts to 110 watts, escaping the confines of their Class D license. Spontaneously WPWT developed much better taste in music and began broadcasting a metal-centric playlist similar to WSOU.

At almost the same time that the WPWT/WKDU share time began, WEXP began operations from it's home on the campus of La Salle University in 1950. They too were a closed cable 1972, operating on 1600 AM. But they made a tragic misstep. In 1980 they made an ill-fated attempt at pirate broadcasting. Rumor abound about the actual wattage, but reports of listenership in Albany are remotely possible, but Florida is just absurd. It's highly likely they managed to cover a large enough portion of Philadelphia to notice. This event was viewed poorly by the university administration and the FCC as you might imagine. The operations of WEXP were halted for a few years. and it's schedule was erratic. But the station united in 1988 in an attempt to purchase the now ailing WPWT. Ultimately this was rejected by the University Budget Committee.Full stop. This immediately follows the first year that WKDU won "Best of Philly" Radio Station from Philadelphia Magazine.  Ouch.

WEXP still exists today, but only online. Had they succeeded in buying the then 250 watt WPWT license, this story would have ended very differently.  Perhaps WEXP would be a share-time with WKDU, or perhaps they would have won out entirely with Drexel students drifting away from the then puny 110 watt WKDU. Instead, in 1988 WKDU went stereo and WPWT ceased operations with WKDU buying out their side of the license. In1996 WKDU got the nod from the FCC to increase power to 800 watts... as reigning champion.