Recently, somebody posted on Facebook a composite of the launch of The All New WIBG from 1976, which brought back a ton of memories. (You can hear what I heard by clicking on the link at the bottom of this tale.)
It all started back at CKY in Winnipeg in 1963, when I was a board op, and my boss, Jimmy Darin (Hilliard), was the program director.
Shortly after leaving Winnipeg, Jim became the PD of WFIL in Philadelphia, where he completely demolished WIBG, which the legendary Paul Drew was programming.
Okay, fast forward ten years to when Jim is the CEO of Fairbanks Broadcasting, and I’m his National PD.
Now, what I’ve always known about Jim is that even though he loves radio, he’s always been a businessman first.
So, with that in mind, and even though Fairbanks was mostly an FM company, when Jim was offered WIBG for pennies on the dollar, he couldn’t resist.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t gonna be a walk in the park, which I blame on Hilliard because back in the day, he’d scorched Wibbage so badly that they barely made the rating book anymore.
Unlike in Dallas, where we slowly built KVIL into a powerhouse, we decided to go full-throttle in Philadelphia.
Figuring that the call letters may still have some value, we freshened them up a little by adding “All-New” to them.”.
The first thing we did was get Hugh Heller in LA to create a bunch of new jingles and then in Indy, we produced some great promos using one of the best voices in America, Chuck Riley.
Next, we gathered together some of the talent from the Fairbanks stable: Bill Gardner and Larry Dixon from KVIL in Dallas, The Magic Christian from F105 in Boston, Chuck Riley from WIBC in Indianapolis, and old pal, Chuck Knapp from KSTP in Minneapolis.
Lord knows what went on in that huge suite that we stuffed them in, but whatever it was, I wish I could have bottled it because, for the next five days, they pounded Philly unmercifully with some great radio.
Oh, and did I mention how hilarious the dinners were every night at the Hungry Pilgrim?
When the dust finally settled, and most of the guys headed home, Bill Gardner and Chuck Knapp stayed behind as Co-Program Directors.
We also hung on to Don Cannon, featured in the first Rocky movie and hired a couple of talented folks that Bill and Chuck knew to round out the air staff.
Speaking of talent, we had Ken Matz, Richard Hunt, Mary Margarite Myers, and Don Henderson doing news you could dance to.
And speaking of news, the good news was, with some help from the Phillies, our first book came in at a 6.9.,
Unfortunately, the bad news was we were living in an FM world. Oh, what I wouldn’t have given to have “All New” on an FM signal; it would have melted Philadelphia.
However, today, I’m very proud to say that it was some of the finest radio I’ve ever heard or been associated with.
(Click the link below to hear how great those guys sounded even though the engineers were still crawling around wiring stuff.)
Audio: https://app.box.com/s/ikh34k9p9hfmlsz0mr6ufk8it45hdzsc
COMMENTS
Steve Eberhart: “If you can see it, you can be it.” I paused when reading that this morning. When I was at my first radio station at the age of 16, a co-worker and I visited KVIL in Dallas. It was thee station I aspired to work for. They let us see the control room, and we stood there and admired the guys on the air. It was almost noon, so we saw Bill Gardner do his last break, and Jack Schell do his first break of the day. Behind us in an office, Ron Chapman walked out and said hello. He couldn’t have been nicer and said, “Well, you’re welcome to stay as long as you like; just stay out of the way.” I stood there mesmerized. It was a funky old control room with a huge Gates board, and they even still played records on turntables. I watched and could figure out what knob controlled what and envisioned myself there being on the air. A few years later, I was hired at KVIL, and my first night stood there, where I watched Bill and Jack. I felt perfectly comfortable operating that board my first night because, in my mind, I had already done it over and over. I could see it, and I did it. (To Play or Not to Play)
Geo: You understood visualization early on, Steve, and it’s probably why you own a radio station today.
Hi George! All New WIBG sounded great, at least on the strength of this tape. A shame that 1976 was just a little too late for AM. Changing the name to Wizzard 100 didn’t help either, apparently.
But I want to ask you about another AM station, the original WRMF in Titusville, Florida. Why did Mr. Fairbanks have a station there? Because of the space program? I can’t imagine someone like him making THAT part of Florida his winter home or anything like that. Or was it a farm system for WIBC?
Mr. Fairbanks put Robin (“Bob”) Bright from WIBC-AM to be in charge of 1060 / WRMF-AM, Titusville because Mr. F. had a winter compound in Florida (Key Largo), so with business interest in a state with no income tax he could write-off his travel and other expenses as business expenses. WRMF-AM was sold in 1976-1977, after George installed Larry Knight (Larry Stein) as P.D. to replace Craig R. “Hudson” Hodgeson. Then, to replace the 1060 kHz AM that was sold, Mr. F. and Jim Hilliard bought WJNO-AM / FM, West Palm Beach from Jim Walters to go news-talk on WJNO-AM and WRMF-FM with George’s proven adult-contemporary format.
The tragedy of WIBG is that Jim Hilliard tried to find an FM to pair with WIBG-AM, be once the word got out that Fairbanks was on the lookout for an FM in Philly, the prices soared to a point where Jim and Mr. F. refused to be held up and over-pay. The next project was getting the A.B.A. Pacers into the N.B.A. with the Nets, the Spurs and the Nuggets, as Jim and Mr. F. both owned a piece of the Pacers. Unfortunately, WIBG’s general manager, Burt Sherwood and his chosen P.D., Bill Hennes, destroyed everything George, Jim had installed with Chuck Knapp in short order. WIBG-AM became WZZD-AM (“Wizzard 100” with Kevin Metheny).