Category Archives: History

We Make You Feel Brand New

Contributing Editor, Andy Fisher

New York Transit Museum. Photo Credit: Bernie Wagenblast

Your Metromedia Station in New York

Bernie Wagenblast, a veteran New York radio traffic and transit reporter, sent me this picture taken at the New York Transit Museum, located in the abandoned Court Street subway station in downtown Brooklyn. The museum displays many restored New York subway cars, complete with period advertisements. Bernie thoughtfully spotted this one and sent it to me. 

NY Transit Museum

-MCP-

Postedit: In response to your comment, Mike Moss, here is a Julius La Rosa special, You make me Feel so Young

International Women’s Day

The year was 1857, the day-March 8, when women textile workers in New York City, marched in protest of unfair working conditions and unequal rights.

The Women’s Trade Union founded in 1903 © Kheel Center, Cornell University.

Fifty-one years later on March 8, 1908, women workers fought for their rights again, by marching through New York City’s Lower East Side to protest child labor and sweatshop working conditions.

 

Imagine the delight and pride of those courageous women, when in 1935, Bernice Judis signed on as General Manager of WNEW. And, in 2022, she received a Legends induction into the Radio Hall of Fame.

WNEW Station Mgr. Bernice Judis.
Photo: NYC Radio-Arcadia

 

ca. 1940s, New York, New York, USA-Alice Marble. © Underwood & Underwood/CORBIS

 

 

Or, in 1940, when top ranking woman tennis player, Alice Marble, signed a contract with WNEW for a series of weekend football forecasts.

 

 

 

Marlene Sanders August 27, 1963

Followed by a host of courageous and strong women, epitomized by Marlene Sanders who in 1962 joined WNEW Radio as Assistant News Director.

 

 

And, of course, Peggy Stockton, veteran radio reporter who spent 12 years with WNEW covering New York’s City Hall.

Peggy Stockton, WNEW, with NYC Mayor Edward Kotch
Peggy Stockton, Mayor Ed Koch

 

Honorable mention for some WNEW-FM women, who for a short time in 1966, held an all women DJ line up. Alison Steele, Nell Bassett, Arlene Kieta, Ann Clements, Margaret Draper, Peggy Cass, Rita Sands, Pam McKissick.

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WNEW – And, so it began

Early style jingle. Tommy Dorsey esque late 1930s

..In 1933, Milton Biow, and Arde Bulova, manufacturer of watches, had recently acquired two small radio stations from the Amalgamated Broadcasting System. The ABS, formed by comedian Ed Wynn to challenge the three major radio networks, had failed, and Biow and Bulova took over five floors of studios at 501 Madison Avenue.
Ed Wynn’s initials are often said to be the source of NEW’s call letters. But retired engineer John Sarpaylic offers this first-hand account: “One Sunday morning I had to drive Mr. Biow and Richard O’Dea (owner of station WODA) to the new location in Carlstadt where they were building the transmitter. And the discussion was, what are we going to call this? Milton Biow said, ‘We haven’t had a station built in this area since 1928. I think the best call letters we could have are WNEW, which says new.  NEW in the metropolitan area. The NEWest thing in radio.'”

 

©Where the Melody Lingers 1984

The preceding is an excerpt from the book “Where the Melody Lingers On WNEW 1934-1984,” Nightingale Gordon, NEW YORK.

©”A Radio Station & It’s Mistress”  Marlin R. Taylor

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There’s Only One

….and most assuredly, there will never be another!  The reference is to WNEW 11-3-0 in New York which was the radio home to some supremely talented air personalities, aided and abetted by a stellar news operation!
Those voices that appeared between the records belonged to a fraternity of personalities who had one tradition: To offer amusing chatter and incisive comments about the records they played.
At the same time, those news broadcasters (some of whom still write for this website), did their level-best through sharp editing and impeccable writing to keep the New York metropolitan area informed up to the minute!
Sadly, that all came to an abrupt end thirty-two years ago on December 11, 1992 and was only amplified by the Nor’easter walloping New York, New Jersey and Connecticut at the time.
 As I have said before and meant sincerely, the heavens were weeping for what we will always recall as the Big W!

Article contributed by Bob Gibson

WNEW-AM on-air roster (partial) originally posted 12/10/2012
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December 11, 1992 Listener Memory

December 11, 1992 – A sad day in the NY tri-state area, as WNEW last crossed the airwaves. WNEW was an extraordinary station and the memory resonates deeply with its listeners. For this reason, we are able to flip the sad to glad as I share with you a listener memory, sent in by Mr. Kevin Haynes.

 

My Mom had the kitchen radio tuned to WNEW morning, noon and night for my entire childhood, from toddlerhood in Brooklyn to getting ready for school on Long Island in the mid-1960s and beyond. 

I fondly remember Klavin & Finch, William B. Williams, Ted Brown (my favorite!) and sportscaster Chip Cipolla, who once told a hilarious story about getting a piece of fan mail addressed to Gypsy Polo. 

To this day, I still recall a couple of the station promos as well as the jingles for Chicken Delight and Robert Hall (“School bells ringing/children singing/It’s back to Robert Hall again…”) 

I recorded WNEW’s final two hours to preserve the memories, bid adieu to a New York institution and share the fond farewell with Mom.

–End–

Mr. Haynes, Kevin, donated a digitized version of his long held cassette of the last two-hours of programming, saying,

“…I’m delighted to give it a new, loving home.”

Thank you Mr. Haynes, for your contribution.

 

This website cannot accommodate the size of those files, so, here are a few cuts from each of the 1 hour recordings.

If you are interested in hearing them in their entirety send your request to editor@wnew1130.com.

Cassette 1.  Dec 12, 1992  Mark Simone and guests
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

Lena Horne

Jim Lowe

Sinatra

Cassette 2. Dec 12, 1992  Mark Simone and guests
7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Ted Brown

Tony Monte & John Pizzarelli, Jr sign off / Jingles

Jim Harlan

Final on-air words and song, including some jingles

–MCP–

WNEW Fading Into Radio History

The Newsday story posted below,  published on Dec. 2, 1992 was made available to WNEW1130.com by former CNN Anchor, Dave Michaels.

WNEW Fading Into Radio History

By Paul D. Colford

NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER

   New York, Dec. 2 —WNEW-AM / 1130 the 58-year old outlet for the music of Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne, Mel Torme and America’s greatest songwriters, died today after a long illness marked by financial losses, anemic rating, schizophrenic programming and the dismissal of practically every personality who made it special.

  The end for the long-deposed monarch of New York stations came at 10 a.m. when singer Tony Bennett was to help The New York Times Co. convert WQEW, at 1560 AM, into a new haven for pop standards.

   TO BE FAIR, the ghost of WNEW will limp along for another week or so with music-by-day and Larry-King-by-night before a new owner completes its purchase of the station and launches a 24-hour business format on 1130 AM.  But the death watch that continued through management twists and ownership turns in recent years effectively ended this morning with the sign-on of its successor.

    The startup of WQEW is a happy ending for those New York listeners who would have lacked an outlet for Gershwin and Bennett.  At the same time, the demise of WNEW-AM has prompted wistful recollections of a once-great station.

    “There’s been a great deal of gnashing of teeth in recent years because WNEW really occupied a special place in people’s psyche,” said WOR general manager Bob Bruno, who was WNEW’s program director in the mid-1970’s. “This wasn’t just another radio station.  It represented culture, sophistication, and people felt like they were with the stars when they listened to the personalities who played the music. As a listener, you got to be on the inside.”

    Generations of listeners got their first taste of the great composers, bands and vocalists from WNEW-AM.  Indeed, they were hooked on the station’s sounds even after television became the dominant entertainment medium.

    Bloomberg Communications Inc., the buyer that will install the business format, is paying nearly $13.6 million for what was worth an estimated $25 million in 1962.  In that year, the station raked in more than $7.1 million in advertising, tops in the nation, and took the unprecedented step of dropping its national ad representative.  Instead, the story goes, the station’s own sales people would come in, hang up their coats and simply start taking sponsors’ calls at 9:00 am.

    WNEW hatched the idea of a disc jockey when staff announcer Martin Block started to play records during breaks in the station’s 1935 coverage of the Lindberg-kidnapping trial of Bruno Hauptman.  Soon afterward, he presented records in an afternoon  theater of the mind that was called “The Make-Believe Ballroom.”   This writer’s mother recalls coming home from high school with her girlfriends, pushing the dining-room table against the well and dancing to the tunes of Glenn Miller and Sammy Kaye that Block had on his turntables.  His style at the microphone was so warm and intimate that my grandfather, a hard-to-impress Irish railroad man, would say, “Open  up the door because that fella’s coming right in.”

    From 1946 to 1963, Dee Finch and Gene Rayburn enlivened mornings with “Anything Goes,” poking fun at their commercials from time to time.  Gene Klavan, a master of voices and inspired anarchy, then worked alongside Finch before going it alone in 1969.  The popular William B. Williams, who sounded so  casual that he might have been hosting “The Make Believe Ballroom” stretched out in bed, was champion and pal of the singer he called “Francis” and “Chairman of the board.”  Ted Brown, he of the cornball jokes and insatiable girl hunger, stood in amusing contrast to the intellectual Jonathan Schwartz, a former rock jock, who brought a freewheeling FM sensibility to the AM station, when he started doing weekend shows in 1971 — shows that he will now host on WQEW.

    In news coverage, too, WNEW set the standard.  In 1942, WNEW was believed to be the first station to break for hourly newscasts as prepared by the broadcast desk of the Daily News. In 1958, the station ended its association with the tabloid and spent lavishly to staff a homegrown news department with 13 reporters and rewrite men — a number that would more than double in time and seem all the more remarkable when viewed in today’s news-stingy radio times.  WNEW’s own reporters went to Africa to interview Albert Schweitzer, they roamed the South to size up the civil rights movement, they broadcast from Vatican Square and Cape Canaveral.  Reid Collins, Ike Pappas, Edward Brown and Jim Gordon were among those who told their stories on the hour and half-hour.

    As late as the mid-1980’s, a listener could still sample the sophistication that was WNEW’s trademark.  Ratings had declined from the glory years, as they had for all AM music stations, but WNEW averaged a respectable 3 share (percent) of the New York audience by remaining true to the American songbook.  At no cost, a listener could relax in the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel at midday and watch Williams do live broadcasts alongside Keely Smith and other great singers who weren’t born yesterday.  If it was Matinee Day, a visit to Charley  O’s at Shubert Alley would find “Mr. Broadway,” afternoon disc jockey Jim Lowe, chatting it up with Cleo Laine and other performers, or persuading the great Sylvia Syms to get up and hush the house with her songs.  Schwartz and resident pianist Tony Money would bring Julie Wilson, Helen Merrill, Maureen McGovern and other cabaret stars into the studio for still more conversation and live vocals.

    But the mid-80’s also was the beginning of the end.  In 1986, billionaire John W. Kluge sold WNEW and eight other radio stations owned by his Metromedia Inc. for $285 million.  Almost immediately afterward, the buyers, burdened with debt, slashed all but the morning newscasts, canceled the live shows and broke up the music late at night with a syndicated talk program featuring psychologist Toni Grant. An evening sports program seemed even more glaringly out of place, and Steve Allen was paid a pile to do a talkative daytime broadcast that evolved into an inside joke among him and his friends.

    Lowe, who was dismissed in 1987 after a total of two decades with WNEW, said from his home in the Hamptons that the new management was unwilling to enhance and protect the station’s 3 share and created the hodgepodge in a bid for revenues that alienated the core audience. “If you’re going to play Chinese bells on the air, that’s fine, but you’ve got to do it for twenty four hours,” he said.

    Ratings weakened and WNEW was acquired in 1988 by investor Robert F. X. Sillerman, who then sold half to Westwood One Inc., based in Culver City, Calif.  With an aging audience and meager ad revenues outside of the station’s New York Giants broadcasts, Westwood management became little more than a caretaker.  It fired supervisors, disc jockeys and, finally, Mike Eisgrau, the last newsman, in what seemed an obvious effort to stem losses and make the payroll lean enough to attract a buyer.  The spring rating ranked WNEW a dismal 20th with a 2 share, so that the August announcement of Bloomberg’s purchase signaled an end to the patient’s misery. Sillerman conceded that WNEW was not making money.  He added, “It was acquired when there was a little more optimism about its future.”

    In the end, The New York Times Co., which owns WQEW, wanted nothing from the “estate” of WNEW. No records, no call letters, no jingles.  Only Schwartz.  “It really is an American radio tragedy, because it’s symptomatic of what has happened to the industry over the last two decades,” Bruno, of WOR, said: “The owner-operators have gotten out of the business and a lot of the product is slowly being eaten alive…Now, this thing is being buried.”

——

Editor’s Note:  Here is Wikipedia’s account of how the end came.

WNEW was put up for sale in `99`, and Bloomberg L.P. purchased station for $13.5 million shortly after.  In the period before the format change, the airstaff was given an opportunity to say goodbye, culminating on December 10 and December 11, 1992, when the station had one big farewell show. During this farewell show, the airstaff reflected and talked very deeply about the loss of WNEW. The show would end at about a quarter after 8 p.m. on the 11th, as Mark Simone signed off for the last time with the entire current and many living former airstaffers at his side. WNEW joined NBC Talknet in progress followed by Larry King as usual.

Then after Larry King, beginning at 2 a.m. Saturday morning and throughout that day WNEW would simulcast WYNY, and would continue for the next three days. The station broke away for Giants’ Football, Talknet, and Larry King. On December 15, the sale of WNEW to Bloomberg became final, and the station continued simulcasting WYNY until 4 p.m. Then, after airing the Perry Como Christmas Special, shows from Talk Net, and the first hour of Larry King (cutting it off a few minutes before midnight), the station would sign off forever at 11:59 p.m. As the station signed off, they abruptly ended Larry King and the pre-recorded voice of Director of Engineering Alan Kirschner went on and stated “At this time 1130 WNEW New York will leave the air forever…Thanks for your support over the years…This is WNEW, New York”. At the transmitter site, engineer Rene Tetro then turned off the transmitter for two minutes, changing the program feed during that period to the new feed from the Bloomberg offices. The station signed back on the air at 12:01 a.m. with the callsign WBBR. The station would then simulcast WQEW, which was a standards station that had just signed on some two weeks earlier. The simulcast would continue until January 4, 1993, when WBBR’s business news format debuted.

 

 

 

 

November 22, 1963: The Day That Changed America Forever!

Kennedy Motorcade ©Lot #19 RR Auction

 

As sure as most Americans are wondering what lies ahead for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and the next four years under President-elect Trump, they’re also facing a grim anniversary! Yes, you know this one, dateline Dallas, gunfire erupts at the Texas School Book Depository and America’s 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is dead.

As it was 61 years ago in 1963, the day that changed America forever, is again a Friday. America mourns, America is angry and yet while it all seems impossible at the time, we are all aware that life must go on. And with that, the nation learns that Dallas police collar a loner, 24-year old Lee Harvey Oswald. We were told he was charged with multiple crimes including firing a high-powered rifle at President Kennedy and killing the Commander-In-Chief while wounding Texas Governor John Connelly who was riding in the same top-down limousine through downtown Dallas.

Breaking the unthinkable news first on network radio was ABC’s Don Gardiner.  While over on ABC-TV, a daytime re-run of “Father Knows Best” was interrupted by the voice of ABC News Correspondent Ed Silverman. Both remained on the air for several hours inter-acting with fellow reporters in the field, in an effort to assemble as much information as possible on this story that shocked the world!

As if what happened were not enough of an emotional jolt, a day after the gunfire in Dallas, suspect Oswald was being escorted from the City to the County lock-up by deputies when he was approached by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby who opened fire, mortally wounding Oswald. Among the numerous reporters standing in the hall witnessing this shocking scene first-hand was WNEW’s Ike Pappas who promptly remarked, “Holy mackerel!” This was also something seen by millions watching the transfer on television, and assured that the American people would never get to hear Oswald tell his story. There would be a trial for Ruby, proceedings covered by Ed Silverman in Dallas, where he grew up. Ruby was convicted and sentenced to death for the Oswald murder. But the verdict and sentence were overturned on appeal and before he would stand trial a second time Ruby died in prison of cancer in January, 1967. Mr. Kennedy was succeeded in office by Vice President Lyndon Johnson as Secret Service security was substantially beefed-up.

So much had happened in such a short period of time and one thing was obvious, America’s age of innocence was history!

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 Article contributed by Bob Gibson

Ike Pappas

JFK Presidential Library & Museum
https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/november-22-1963-death-of-the-president

Postedit: A note from the now late Carolyn Tanton Giatras to Bill Diehl, in 2018.
JFK 1963 Remembrance by Carolyn Tanton Giatras
Carolyn Tanton at the Editor’s Desk
https://www.wnew1130.com/news/staff/q-r-s-t/carolyn-tanton/

Recalling “Larry from the Corner!”

©businesstoday.co.ke

Larry King at home on his CNN Set

Yes, it’s the 19th of November and my head flashes back to the fact that during the course of the forties and fifties, thousands of New York City kids hung out on the sidewalks near their homes around the corner!
©1915 NY Tribune
One man used to mention that, often and frequently, on his coast-to-coast, late-night talk show. One of those kids was Larry Zeiger of Brooklyn, who came to be known to many Americans as Larry King of radio and television talk show fame!
Like Larry, I too had a favorite or two hang out spots on my native turf of Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It was right near 93rd and Lexington and if the then-pavement picked up the regular footprints of long ago, mine would be there.
NYC 1940s Kids ©Shutterstock
Larry and I never met, never even had an unexpected telephone conversation. The common thread for us was the broadcast industry and like many others, I became a fan of Larry’s after his work resulted in his leaving his 21-year home of Miami in favor of Washington, DC, where he was recruited by Mutual Radio for an overnight talk show.
Roughly seven years later in 1985, Ted Turner wanted to have him on CNN in prime-time with famous guests five nights a week. It made for long nights, alright, but Larry did it starting at 9 in the evening Eastern time on television, and finishing up at 5 in the AM following SIX hours of network talk radio! By my count, he did that for about 9 years until 1994.
But, as for “Larry King LIVE” on CNN, that turned out to be one for the cable history books, 25 years with the same host on the same network and in the same time slot!
I mention all of this now because nearly four years after his death, this would have been Larry King’s 91st birthday!!
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Article contributed by Bob Gibson