For the blog's latest update, we focus on Cleveland's WGCL/98.5. In this aircheck from 1974, Truckin' Lenny and Skip O'Brien are heard presenting some of the day's hits. Based on the Cleveland Indians promotional announcement heard early on, the editor believes this broadcast occurred in late June.
For several years, WGCL was the market's chief competitor to rocker WMMS/100.7. WMMS ultimately won the ratings game for good in the 1980's, while WGCL switched to a retooled rock format and became WNCX in 1986.
Special thanks to TestChannelnumber1 for providing this aircheck.
Thanks to Tim Lones at Cleveland Classic Media, we now know that the WTAM aircheck is that of NBC's "Kraft Music Hall" hosted by Bing Crosby. Our own detective work determined that the broadcast was heard May 8, 1941, and featured Bob Burns, Connee Boswell, Alec Templeton, William Frawley and Walter Pidgeon.
The editor has also learned that the WFMJ-FM aircheck was recorded on the evening of December 16, 1947. The date seems to be at odds with the Wikipedia history of the frequency, but we'll take the disc's original owner at their word.
The original posting is below.
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Over the course of this blog's existence, the editor has come across many home recording discs featuring airchecks of radio stations. One of those was a recording of NBC Radio's coverage of the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor in 1941, which the blog spotlighted last month. At the same time, much thought has been given to how we should present a group of miscellaneous recordings that have been collected over the past year and a half. The editor decided it would be best to provide some brief selections and leave it at that.
First up is a segment from what appears to be an NBC Red Network program heard on WTAM/1100 in Cleveland. The date of the broadcast is unknown at this time, but an educated guess would place it somewhere between 1943 and 1949. Stick around for the NBC chimes and local identification. Aside from jazz singer Connee Boswell, the other performers heard here are unknown. As always, any assistance in identifying the program is appreciated.
The second selection is a portion of "Melody Roundup", a popular afternoon music program heard on WHKK/640 (now WHLO) in Akron during the late 1940's and well into the 1950's. The program was hosted by Cliff Rodgers, who also hosted a morning show on WHKK during this time period. It's not clear if it's his voice heard during the closing. Based on the music, this broadcast is from roughly 1950.
The final segment is long on music and short on spoken word content, but interesting for one reason: It's an aircheck of an early FM broadcast, as heard over Youngstown's WFMJ/105.1. Dating from about 1950, it's the earliest FM aircheck in the blog's collection. This is undoubtedly a rare recording, since WFMJ-FM's license was cancelled a few years later. A brief history of the frequency in Youngstown can be found here.
