When I was a teenager, I was an avid listener of AM radio station WABC in New York City. Day and night, it was loud and clear in The Brass City and my radio was tuned to 770 kc most of the time.
I recently purchased a DVD titled 1960′s WABC Radio Airchecks. In addition to airchecks, the DVD contains 75 hours of pure nostalgia from 77 WABC including “Actual Broadcasts By Big Dan Ingram, ‘Cousin Brucie’ Bruce Morrow, Ron Lundy, Scott Muni, Chuck Leonard & More,” like the Cousin Brucie theme song sung by The Four Seasons or the old Palisades Amusement Park commercial.
Seventy-five hours is a little much to listen to in one sitting, so I loaded the contents of the DVD into my iPod (by way of iTunes) and I hear random selections during my daily commute.
Yesterday, I heard a 16-minute segment from October 7, 1964, with Dan Ingram spinning the platters. It was very entertaining and enlightening.
Here are some items of note from the broadcast:
- Telephone numbers still used two-letter alphabetical prefices, for example, “PL 5-1516″ instead of “755-1516″ (in this example, the “PL” was short for “plaza”).
- Mailing addresses still used one or two-number postal zones instead of ZIP Codes, for example, “Waterbury 6, Connecticut” instead of “Waterbury, Connecticut 06706.”
- Firestone advertised snow tires: $24.24 for a pair.
- During the broadcast, Dan Ingram announced score updates from the World Series. On the air, he admitted rooting for St. Louis (against the hometown Yankees). Can you imagine an on-the-air personality rooting against the hometown team today? (I can’t.)
- This broadcast was during the height of Beatlemania and there were two commercials in a row: one for a contest to win a Beatles poster, followed by a commercial for the Beatles’ appearance on Shindig! Both commercials used snippets from the Beatles’ hit “She Loves You.” Following the commercials, Ingram says, “Well, I guess it was inevitable” and the next song you hear him play was “She Loves You.”
Fun, fun, fun!
