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August 21, 2007

A History of WCBS-FM

John Catlett, a highly respected international radio consultant and who, as general manager, originated the oldies format at WCBS-FM, remembers:

"I enjoyed your thread on radio and on WCBS-FM in particular. It reminded me of how the oldies station got its start.

When Herb McCord was allowed to abandon the automated Young Sound in New York, he created what became my personal favorite New York radio station. Long Hugh Heller jingles and Bobby "Wizard" Wayne, the Magic Christian--I can't remember the names of all jocks. And there were great posters designed by Dale Pon promoting the station in the subways.

I was at Time-Life Broadcast, where I was one of the first New York staff members to get canned when they announced the sale of all their stations to McGraw-Hill. One of the kinder old-timers at Time-Life introduced me to Bob Cole, head of the CBS FM stations, and soon I found myself in Chicago building CBS-FM Sales for Bob and for the head of sales, Jack Baker. Then, in about six months, the manager of WBBM-FM, Tom Cosgrove, took an offer from Viacom (just spun off from CBS) that would allow him to return to California, and I found myself managing WBBM-FM. Even though the company had relocated the creators of The Young Sound to Chicago, I argued for trying a mass-appeal rock format with live jocks, and Bob Cole allowed it. We hit big in our first book.

Then, Bob Cole called to tell me that Herb McCord was moving over to TV sales and he wanted me to come to New York. Having only enjoyed a couple of weeks basking in promising ratings in Chicago, I asked to think it over...and Cole gave me 24 hours to decide.

Herb went to the CBS Television network as a salesman to make a lot more money, so I went to NY and WCBS-FM.

Doing oldies as a full-time format was under consideration--WOR-FM was doing it a couple of hours a day, as I recall, and WCAU-FM was trying it and gradually expanding oldies to cover more and more of their day--but nobody on our staff at WCBS-FM was really very enthusiastic. Not even the sales staff was interested in going after this untried niche, and all the radio futurists were saying that it would be suicide to give up on FM's only advantage in its war against AM--its ability to broadcast in stereo--to play those old mono records. Yet I had the assignment of making changes that would reposition the station, set it apart from eight other rock stations, and set fire to the sales. We had little to lose except the enthusiasm of the programming staff, and they were already disheartened by Herb's departure, whom they loved. I decided to go ahead on Friday, June 30, and we had a meeting with all the announcers that afternoon. The following Wednesday I was in Dallas "helping" PAMS produce our jingle package, and Thursday morning I had the final mixes with me when I flew back to New York. On Friday at 6:00 a.m. we introduced the oldies format. The Program Director was even less enthusiastic than the air staff, so I took a chance and replaced him with a kid just out of college who was enjoying helping WCAU-FM do oldies in Philly--John Gehron. We didn't have any budget for advertising or promotion. I think the only paid advertising we did was run the call letters and frequency behind a plane flying along the Jersey beaches one or two weekends.

Six months later we had ratings proof that the move had been a good one. Sam Digges, president of the CBS Radio Division, approved money from his own budget to run full page ads for us in The New York Times and Billboard Magazine with this headline:

'WCBS/FM has the largest audience of any FM station in America. In fact, only six AM stations in the country have larger average audiences.'

Those were fun times!"

Posted by Charles Warner at August 21, 2007 09:08 PM

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