Paul Bausch looks at your radio dial

It's rare that I post art here, but this is all about radio.
Paul Bausch takes a look at some dials in his dad's antique radio collection.

pics here: http://www.onfocus.com/cam/2003/dials/
and here: http://www.onfocus.com/cam/2004/radio-dials/

"My Dad has a collection of small table radios from the 30's through the 50's. The radios are great examples of early industrial design, and the new medium of plastic made far-out shapes possible. The designers of these things really had fun within the fairly simple constraints of: a speaker, a way to tune, and some tubes. It's fun studying his collection, and one night while I was visiting over the holidays I took a bunch of pictures of the dials. The dials don't show the wacky body designs, but they do show the varied display approaches to basically the same information. Once into the 50's (through today), design was pretty much standardized across brands, cutting-edge designers moved on to other objects, and you didn't get the variety that you had in radio's early days. "

Please spend a little time browsing the rest of his work while you're there.

Chop, chop, Snip, snip

Radio station edit songs. Sometimes this is tasteful and graceful; sometimes not. It's a practice most laypeople are blissfully oblivious to, but most radio people are aware is commonplace. But it really didn't move into common practice until the mid 1970s.

If you're from the biz and over the age of 30 the above block and razor pic probably looks somewhat familiar. The block is made of hardened aircraft strength aluminum. It's precision machined, and will hold down the tape while cutting and taping. The cut slots are standard at 45 and a 90 degree angles. It was used with splicing tape, which came (at least in my day) more popularly in pre-cut sticky tabs. I've used this bastard. It works. But digital is better. Anyone else ever sped the time to edit out every "um" from a bad interview?

Top-forty radio, back in those pre-niche days, relied on having a variety of music on its playlists.If you don't like [whatever is playing now], don't worry because [whatever the next song is] will be something completely different. But of course that worked much better when "the next song" was only two or three minutes away. The eight-minute album cuts from 1970s AOR got in the way of that angle. Various radio stations handled the situation in different ways.

At WRKO there was "the RKO edict" No song over 3 minutes got on air. It was then PD Paul Drew's solution in 1974. Reputedly it was broken twice within its first three weeks when much-longer-than-three-minute songs by John Denver and Elton John were added to his stations playlists.

Elsewhere these decisions were usually made on a song-by-song basis. Unusually in the format, 99.5 WEFM in Chicago prided themselves on playing the full length versions. But then, WEFM was a unsuccessful Top 40 radio station. They eventually dropped the format in 1980 after only 4 years of watching it succeed almost everywhere else. Some Chicago radio history here.

Particularly problematic was the single "Stairway To Heaven" which came out in in 1975. Stations like WLS did cut out all the instrumental bridges, leaving only the vocal segments trying desperately to make it down to the 3 minute goal line. Incidentally, it sounds like crap when you hack out that much of a song. Massive awkward edits like that are blatant to the listener and have a negative impact.

Today record labels, in an effort to avoid hatchet-jobs like this, issue studio-made radio edits of various lengths. ...and it benefits us all. The radio station plays the song they want, the artist gets to record the song they want, and you get to purchase the version you want. And thankfully no one has to listen to bad versions that no one wants.

Bogarting the beatles

It was not immediately obvious that The Beatles were going to be such a success. it seems ridiculous now, but in radio that's how things are.

When the WABC disc jockeys first heard Fab Four records in 1963, they were hardly impressed. They were not alone in that assessment. There were many in both the music and the radio industry who felt the same way. ...But as beatlemania set in, their opinions changed quickly.

WABC set upon a way to own beatlemania.
1. they would get new Beatles music before anyone else
2. they would debut it on Fridays to keep it out of the hands of other stations for as long as possible

Of course, WABC was not the only New York radio station trying to jump on The Beatles bandwagon. So were WINS and WMCA. Competition was intense for everything The Beatles did from releasing new records to their visits to New York. At WINS, Murray "the K" Kaufman dubbed himself the "Fifth Beatle" and WMCA battled WABC for every exclusive. This created one of the great radio station battles of all time. The prize for the station that could ultimately outdo the others and attract that huge "Beatlemania" audience was going to be the ratings winner. And, they all knew it.

For its part in the rivalry, WABC was up to the challenge. Specific Beatles jingles were commissioned from PAMS centered around the theme "W A Beatle C". These jingles were attached to every Beatles record played. There were Beatles look a like contests, poster contests, and name your favorite Beatle contests. WABC even gave away a giant photo of The Beatles that was used as a backdrop for the ABC TV show "Shindig".

But it was long John Wade at WDRC that was the real winner. He was the only American Dj allowed to tour with the band. In 1964 he was one of two Americans allowed to actually fly with them, an unprecedented level of access. Even Murray "the K" Kaufman, the so-called 5th Beatle wasn't allowed that close.

the Green Book

We are all familiar with the red book and the blue book. That's the arbs. But the Green Book?

So the DJ tells a story, then plays a song relating to that story. happens all the time, right? While some Djs certainly do have an encyclopedia knowledge of music, many are dunderheads desperately in need of attention, who obliviously play whatever drek Selector tells them to. Both of these DJs can use thsi book. But only one needs it.

The Green Book classifies over 35,000 popular songs and album tracks of all genres and eras. You get nearly 1,800 subject categories and concepts cross referenced half a dozen ways.

it works like this:

President Bush tries to eliminate the Paris-Hilton-Tax.
The DJ makes a crass joke about her home movies and quickly refers to the Green book and finds 14 songs about taxes including one great one by Johnny Cash "After Taxes" which he then plays.

On a lark he looks up Paris Hilton, and then sees the band The Penfifteen Club actually wrote a song about her called "Hey, Ms. Hilton" More bad music and jokes ensue.

Then the next day, after Bush actually fires the IRS staffers who enforce the estate tax thus sending the US $55 Billion further into Debt and making the law moot. The DJ now plays predicable clips of Donald Trump saying "You’re Fired!" and quickly refers to the Green book again. He sees the Boston band "The Gravy" wrote a song about getting fired called "essential" but that songs not funny, so he plays "George Bush Don’t Like Black People" By the Black Lantern and makes fun of his poorly received NAACP speech.

Now that, is a useful book!

The First radio of Alabama

In 1922 WSY brought radio to Alabama. It provided a variety of programs, including live music played by employees. (that's exactly as hokey as you think it is) Normally these early licensed stations are founded by newspapers, hotels and retail stores as advertising outlets. In this case it was uniquely founded by the Alabama Power Company, a public utility provider.

Only a year later WSY moved to new digs that year in the Radio Department of Loveman's Department Store. The broadcasting room was touted to have the finest acoustics in the world. But the power company wasn't so good at managing a radio staiton. In 1925 they conceeded that WSY was a financial failure and donated all hardware to the Alabama Polytechnic Institute [now Auburn University].

Auburn U. used it to start their own radio station WMAV, who is still on the air today under the calls WAPI. The studio was located in Broun Hall, and the antenna was located on an old 100 foot tower donated by Miller Reese Hutchinson, who had been associated for many years with Thomas A. Edison. Great pics here:
http://www.lib.auburn.edu/archive/find-aid/071p/radiowapi/

WAPI prospered without major upheval until 1929 when George Denny, President of the University of Alabama approached the FRC seeking a license for a radio station in Tuscaloosa. This was a conflict with WAPI. A decision was reached to split the ownership of WAPI between the three institutions. . .
39% for Alabama Polytechnic Institute
39% for the University of Alabama
22% for Alabama College for Women
In 1931 the City of Birmingham withdrew its financial support from the WAPI operations. The gravy train was over. They coudn't meet payroll. technical improvements came to a halt and permits expired, unused. The tightening of the belt forced them to lease WAPI to private individuals. The first agreement was made with a local realtor, W.O. Pape. in 1933 Mr. Pape pulled some slick crap, and sold his interest to Bascomb H. Hopson who in turn made the staiton into a time-share with KVOO. The time share lasted into the 1952, as did the 3-way ownership. This trifecta ended in 1961 when the Newhouse Broadcasting Corporation coughed up the necessasary $340,000 and bought out all parties.

Check out http://www.birminghamrewound.com/radio-tv.htm
for Alabama radio history