Posted on 03/27/2016 2:24:49 PM PDT by Nextrush
"....Purpose....Founded in 1996, this online aircheck museum is operated by REELRADIO, Inc., a non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization. The primary function of REELRADIO is archival and educational. Our focus is Top 40 radio from 1955 to 1989. Our aircheck exhibits are recordings of one-time radio broadcasts, both full-length and "Scoped". Scoped airchecks are shorter in length and do not include musical performances....."
(You can subscribe to this website for six months at a cost of 10 dollars and have access to thousands of excerpts of old radio shows focused on disc jockey and popular music, with some examples of older newscasts mixed into the 'aircheck' recordings)
(Excerpt) Read more at reelradio.com ...
Excerpts of the old newscasts have figured in some of my posts on FR over the years and I consider the website a good source of historical research as well as entertainment.
I began collecting airchecks back in the 1980’s, and Reel Radio is a goldmine.
I have been lurking on ReelRadio since they started in ‘96. Back then it was free to listen to anything. Very entertaining website.
I especially like the mid 1970s top 40 airchecks. That was when I came of age and it's great to hear that music as it was first introduced to the world. If I could go back to say 1962, I would be a radio DJ and I'd have a wonderful 30 year career in front of me.
Do they have stuff from WKRP in Cincinnati?
I enjoyed it immensely in the past (had to let my subscription lapse for financial reasons). It sounds like the owner is having a hard time keeping it afloat...I hope he can.
They’ve got some material that would make ‘KRP look tame. Examples include the late Chuck McKay’s essentially going nuts one night on Detroit/Windsor’s CKLW in 1975, and Howard Hoffman’s wild New Years Eve blow-out on New York’s WABC in 1979.
I was hanging out one day with a friend who worked in a gas station listening to the U.S. vs. U.S.S.R Olympic hockey game on the radio. It was electrifying. Something I will never forget.
WKRP was a mythical station.
If you do searches by call letters or year or even disc jockey which you can do on the home page, you will find stuff.
I used to hear WCFL in Chicago a lot after dark in my part of Pennsylvania. There a quite a few CFL airchecks in the collection.
Still love your handle!
-GeoWashingtonResurrected
Ahh! Chuck “Hot Ticket” McKay - would love to hear that again!
The stronger AM stations could carry very far at night, under the right weather conditions. Van Morrison said he was influenced by rock and roll music listening to WABC, WBZ(Boston) and other east coast stations in his native Ireland when their signals would carry across the pond at night. This phenomenon was a factor in influencing the “British invasion”.
But there was a WKRC in Cincinnati.
I used to hear WCFL in Chicago a lot after dark in my part of Pennsylvania...
W-Chicago-Federation-of-Labor. In Oklahoma, we got WLS...
In the early 1980s it became a talk radio power house and I cut my teeth on conservative talk radio from that era...Jerry Williams, Gene Burns, Rush Limbaugh, Howie Carr, among others.
WLS and WCFL were both clear-channel stations...but ‘LS is an omnidirectional station heard across North America, while the Voice of Labor was a directional station to the north, northeast and east. Their signal could be picked up in Canada...but not in downstate Illinois.
WLS was audible in York, PA, but our local station WSBA 910 seemed to bleed in on their signal on most radios.
I got a better radio for distance listening latter in the 1970’s.
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