Tuesday, September 28, 2010

The Sounds of '72

As promised, NEO Airchecks presents the first in what will hopefully be a series of airchecks of great stations from across the region. Featured is a recording of Ron Leader on WFMJ 1390 (now WNIO). This aircheck is from the evening of January 3, 1972. According to what this blog's editor has been told, WFMJ had only recently switched to Top 40 at the time of this recording. The move was an apparent bid to unseat WHOT from its perch as the market's most popular music station.
Ron Leader's time at WFMJ was short. Within a matter of months, he left 1390 and took over mornings at WNIO (then located at it original dial position of 1540). Leader had previously worked at WNIO prior to his time at 1390. He initially came to Youngstown after several years of on-air gigs in Toledo, Detroit and Ohio. Outside of a brief stop in West Virginia during the mid 70's, Leader spent the majority of his career in Youngstown. He's probably best known for his long stint at Warren's WRRO/1440 (now WHKZ) during its oldies format of the 1980's.


Saturday, September 25, 2010

An Introduction

Greetings, and welcome to Northeast Ohio Airchecks. NEO Airchecks, as it will be informally known, is a blog dedicated to preserving the broadcast history of northeast Ohio. This will be accomplished primarily through the contribution and posting of recordings of radio stations from Youngstown, Warren, Akron, Canton and surrounding areas.
This repository won't be limited to a single format or period of interest; If it happened after Marconi and prior to today, we'd love to hear it! Background stories about the airchecks and personalities presented here will also be welcome. If you have an aircheck you'd like to contribute, feel free to shoot an e-mail our way and we'll place it here for the enjoyment of radio enthusiasts everywhere. We'll give you credit for your contribution, naturally. To get the ball rolling, our first featured aircheck will be posted in the near future.
Thanks for reading and check back with NEO Airchecks in the future for updates.