WJR One of a Kind (1966)
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- Опубликовано: 9 окт 2020
- The Great Voice of the Great Lakes
Story of radio station WJR, Detroit. Many shots with local radio personalities in studio and people listening to the radio at home, in the ballpark at work and outdoors.
Courtesy Prelinger Archives
#WJR #Detroit 
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Back when Detroit was an economic and cultural powerhouse.
One year after this film was made (1967), Detroit's image took a big hit that it still hasn't recovered from, thanks to several days of rioting.
"Get both sides" of the story
What a concept in journalism, huh? That's the city I grew up in; it's so different now. Thank you for the irreplaceable sweet memories.
and, remember the BIGGEST riot. >490 blocks on fire at the same time! @@altfactor
What a refreshing memory from the past. All corrupt now
What an interesting city it was indeed... hopefully it will relive and thrive again. Greetings from Europe.
Yeah, no corruption in 1966. Ever heard of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Karen gunia? Richard Nixon's illegal interference in the Paris Peace Talks? Do you wonder why this film says Detroit has no rail transit? GM sabotaged it with a dummy corporation. There was more corruption then than there is now.
@@brianarbenz7206 It’s hard to see it through rose tinted glasses. My generation does the same thing with the 80s and 90s.
The voice of the Great Lakes. WJR Detroit 🇺🇸🇨🇦💯
The great voice of the great lakes!
America was such a civilised nation back then with such cultured and decent people. What happened now? One thing I know for sure is that Detroit today is nothing like it was in the 50s.
You can say that again!
Lmfao, right. Blacks and minorities really had a good deal in America
Thank you so much for your amazing Channel! This is REAL ComfortFood for us nostalgic BabyBoomers! Many thanks!
ok boomer
@@garywilliams6124 ok zoomer
WJR still exists, still in the Fisher Building. (a talk radio format now.) When I was a kid/teen in the 60's and '70s I used to tune up and down the AM dial for out of town stations, WJR was a fairly easy "get" in Pittsburgh ,PA! It's one of the oldest radio stations in the US, Only a couple of years "newer" than our own KDKA.
what a great piece of history
This is so nice!
Thank you so much for putting this up. 🙏🏻🎙📻
Just before the very beginning of the end of Detroit. Nice to see the old town in it's glory days.
Yes, it’s such a sewer now. A friend of mine manages real estate in Detroit, and the rental properties are stripped of copper, appliances and hardware before they can rent them out. Calling the cops is a joke. He found a dead body in one of the buildings and 12 hours later no one had responded to the call.
"But, the water from the right hand faucet ran out clockwise! What do you make of that?" 😆😆 Frankly, I don't know what to make of it!
I grew up with the Tower lights of WJR in my front window at night and it was THE awesome AM broadcast voice of Detroit broadcasting. It is STILL an awesome station in my world after 60 years of listing. It's not the same....... but I love Radio broadcasting.......
Radio is for Everybody ~!!
SBF
a different world....
..... A Better World.
@@nyccatholic2765 minus the outright racism and discrimination. I do agree with both of you though
@@50centgotshot9timesEver-sadly, "racism and discrimination" are, only, 2 of the countless evil-components of GODlessness; ergo, as long as there are people who remain in their rebellion and denial of the inexhaustible LOVE & MERCY of Jesus Christ GOD, there will, always, be this kind of hatred of which you speak. When I said it was a "Better World", I was referring to the beautiful "LOST Nostalgia" of our American Space Age Era.... NOT to the religious or political choices of "small Humans".
It certainly was! 😁
@@nyccatholic2765 ok boomer
1966: "get both sides"
2021: "you're wrong, if you don't agree with me"
So true!
Hard to believe today, but Detroit had the best of everything back in the day. One classy big city. FYI, Jam Handy you see many films from (including this) was about 5 blocks to the left of the Fisher Bldg. WJR had a very strong signal - heard from Mackinaw City to Columbus, OH, to Buffalo and beyond Toronto.
I was born in Detroit the year this film was made... Grew up listening to WJR. JP McCarthy in the mornings before school, Ernie Harwell all summer. Thanks!
Fun fact, Even though MOST people would assume radio was at a peak in 1966 (or well before- Since EVERYONE in 1950 KNEW that TV was going to "kill" radio...) There are TODAY nearly THREE TIMES as many AM/FM broadcasting stations than there were when this film was made! (and that's not counting "HD" radio, satellite radio or streaming).
The AM market has nearly disappeared. AM had 75 percent of the radio listenership in 1972, but just 22 percent in 1992, and 15 percent in 2011. (Source: The Station Resource Group). FM radio has skyrocketed; NPR had 5 million listeners per week in 1980, and 34 million per week in 2011.
@@brianarbenz7206 True about AM. AMs big problem over the past few decades is the exponential level of RFI generally. My accounting of radio stations includes both AM and FM stations.I didn't break out how many AM vs FM, My whole point is that Broadcast radio and TV are far from dead (at least in the US).
So cool to see this - I was only 11 then!
How great America used to be.Thank you for this video.
The Vietnam War, riots, assassinations -- yeah, the 1960s were soooo great. Thanks for your hilarious nostalgia nonsense, Kevin. Very entertaining.
Yep, the 1960s were pretty great now that you mention it. Many interesting and entertaining stuff happened during that time. The 1950s and even the 1980s was the best time to be alive in America (excluding 1776).
How great Detroit used to be!
❤️Ernie
Thanks for posting this! I grew up in suburban Detroit and my mom had WJR on all day long. Great nostalgia hearing those familiar voices.
Thanks for upload
I enjoyed this so much, thank you for sharing it with us!
I pick it up at night. During the day I have to find out. In Chicago
Wow a young ernie Harwell 👍
What a beautiful home
And WJR is still going strong in the Fisher Building..
I sang with Don Large's Make Way for Youth. We rehearsed and recorded on top of the Fisher building from where WJR broadcasted.
This video is all talk I almost fell to sleep. I was traumatized.
20:09 - sounded like Milton Cross, longtime announcer for the Metropolitan Opera Saturday radio broadcasts.
Where do you get access to all these old tapes?
they list sources in the description
760 AM, you are correct!
Detroit - the twelfth largest city in the world? That's a long time ago. It must have been a wonderful place according to the pictures strewed in the film. Perhaps still is?
I wasn't born in Detroit until 1967
4 out of 5 cars has a radio, lol today
Put yo handz up 4 Detroit!
I use to listen to Night Flight and they had a skit that was about the zodiac, and it was funny. Does anyone remember who did that?
16:14 impressive piano skills. 17:05 is sad given how many homeowners lost their homes :(
I listened to Karl Hass' classical shows in the '90s and early 2000s, re-broadcast years after he had died.
Dumb question. WHY were those people pulling up the FM "whip/rod" antennas in several scenes? Didn't anyone tell the Jam Handy folks that WJR is an AM station?
I'm a year late to this, but those are AM antennas. All the cars that had AM radios when I was a kid in the fifties and right up to the early seventies had them. If that antenna was pushed all way down or snapped off you were lucky to get any reception at all. I replaced a few AM radios in my teens, and they all had the antenna connection.
It's a little confusing because the main AM antenna was a ferrite rod coil in the radio, like other AM radios.
From people with a much better understanding of radio electronics than I, I've been told the shielding in the radios to prevent interference from the car's electric system required that extra boost in the signal, and I do remember there was always an antenna tuning screw in the radios that often needed to be adjusted when moving the radio from one car to another.
Around the early to mid sixties they standardized on a length that was best for FM signals (which was becoming more popular), if I remember right, that was around 32 inches.
@@ptournas Yes extendable AM "whip" antennas were used on cars. I was referring to the portables. The only time a whip antenna is used on a portable radio for AM reception is on the Shortwave bands, Not the AM broadcast band. Since 99.999% of pocket radios then or now had no SW bands, I can safely assume they are FM antennas.
@@jamesslick4790 I had to watch again, I did see the radio with an antenna that a kid was holding at a baseball game. And I saw the guy in the park extending the antenna. I would guess either they didn't know that they didn't need to extend the antenna for AM, or, more likely, they weren't even listening to WJR, but to an FM station.
They were pretty common by then, I got my first AM/FM transistor radio in 1964 and and almost everyone had them by 1965. The shortwave bands were available, but in the beginning they were pretty expensive and not available in the pocket size. Between about '64 and '67 the prices of all dropped dramatically and the price difference between the AM/FM models and the ones with additional shortwave, weather, marine and aeronautical bands became so small that they got extremely popular.
Good catch by you. Pretty funny too! I wonder if anyone at the radio station caught that and if they stopped using whoever produced this promo :)
@@ptournas The producers of this was "Jam Handy" (one-time Olympic medalist,turned industrial filmmaker). He produced almost all General Motors promotional films from the 1930s thru the 1960s, So a very solid Detroit connection. P.S. I'm sure that a lot of stock footage was involved, and surely those were AM/FM radios. I just thought it was funny to see on a promotional film for an AM station. Also I miss typed. I meant to say that 99.99 percent of pocket radios then or now had NO shortwave bands. Fun fact: WJR Still exists and it's still in the Fisher Building!
@@jamesslick4790 Interesting. I knew his name from some other promotional and government videos but didn't know anything else about. Had no idea how big he was in the filmmaking world. Thanks for the info. Made me curious enough to learn a little more about him.
Oh yeah and I thought maybe you mistyped the date on shortwave thing and were referring to the few years that the multi band portables were popular. it was a year or two after the pocket radios became affordable and popular. You saw them most often in the larger portables and pretty much every manufacturer had a line of them. When you went to the beach or campground it seemed like they were everywhere, though they were probably really about 20 or 30% of the large portables. Of course it was a novelty thing. You never heard anyone actually listening to those bands and the fad only lasted for a year or two before they mostly disappeared. That was somewhere around '64 to '66.
Hey, can you tell from where you got that profile?
People were just smarter back then. What happened?
His pocket square looks like an envelope in his pocket 🤣
I can make a hat, or a brooch, a Pterodactyl…”
What is AM radio?
Seems like there was a lot more sports entertainment in the 60's....
Local radio is ALWAYS "heavy" on sports. Back then there weren't dedicated "sport stations" like now, so "general service" radio stations would be "heavy" on sports. But even today in places like Pittsburgh, Sports is a prominent "thing" even on the "music" stations! The Steelers and Penguins games are broadcast on ROCK stations, Only the Pirates are on an actual SPORTS station!
@@jamesslick4790 WJR was tops for sports and for weather bulletins back then.
@@mikezylstra7514So much so, that one of their former slogans was “WJR Stands for Sports.”
Sad. All those buildings are empty.
When the Lions were not so bad
It is always interesting to see these slices of a particular time and place. But many on this thread are making the terrible mistake of comparing today's real world with 1966's promotional message. Detroit has not died _since_ then. It's crises were well underway in 1966. The greed and arrogance of GM and other corporations was killing Detroit then as well as now.
Detroit looked alive and thriving.in what year did Detroit "die" so to speak???
Riots in 1967. Police brutality caused it. Whites and buisnesses fled the city after that.
1967
5:51
@Journey: it's definitely clockwise, but a few seconds before it's counterclockwise ... And on the southern hemisphere it's just the other way around. It must have something to do with gravitation.
Oh bring back chivalry
🧚🏻♂️☯️💒🌏🕵🏻🌌
Now a station that shills for the right. What a shame, a station I grew up listening to is far from being "The great voice of the great lakes."
Yeah,Mitch Albom and Guy Gordon are big right wingers.
@@danieldecker2526lol. Leftists don't understand sarcasm. Winger thought you were serious.