WNEW FM - New York 1982 (1)
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- Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
- HOW TO KILL A RADIO STATION
The Death of WNEW-FM - a cautionary tale.
Monday, March 3, 2003
NEW YORK (AP) -- For 32 years, it was the place where rock lived.
WNEW-FM once ruled as the nation's premier rock station, boasting an influence that extended far beyond its Manhattan-based signal.
'NEW was rock 'n' roll: John Lennon stopped by to spin records, the Grateful Dead played cards in the studio, and new music from the Rolling Stones to the Ramones to the Replacements was championed.
The venerable station has gone from free-form to free fall, barely registering an Arbitron rating and dumping its most recent format -- talk -- last month. That decision followed a scandal that threatened the station's license: two shock jocks broadcast a pair of listeners allegedly having sex inside St. Patrick's Cathedral.
The station plans to reincarnate itself, with a new format debuting this spring, said Dana McClintock, spokesman for station owner Infinity Broadcasting Corp. (a part of the media conglomerate Viacom, which also owns CBS, MTV, VH1, UPN, Paramount, Simon & Schuster and other properties).
Shock jocks airing lurid stunts? When WNEW switched to album-oriented rock in 1967, such things didn't exist.
"It's a different station now," says Richard Neer, a disc jockey who spent 28 years at WNEW. "The unfortunate thing is that it still bears the same call letters. It's like a disreputable pretender using your identity."
Man, what a time to be alive if you loved rock/pop music back in the 70's and 80's! Growing up in Bergen County, NJ, I was weaned on Musicradio WABC-77, then switched over to FM as a young teen, getting my fill of rock on WNEW, WAPP, WPLJ, then WLIR (which became WDRE)! The NYC area was a veritable overflowing oasis of fantastic radio stations back then! Couple that with 'the glory days of HiFi', as that period was called. The stereo receivers and systems of that era were works of art, and often had as many knobs, and 'bells and whistles' as an airplane cockpit! And as if that wasn't enough to nerd out on, there was the CB radio boom (original 'social media'), and Amateur Radio (Ham Radio) popularity! Bottom line: if you were a music and radio electronics nerd like me, that era was HEAVEN!
I grew up in 1950's/60's Brooklyn and lived in Bay Ridge from 1974 till moving outta town in 1988. WNEW FM had some great, some funky DJ's then. Lotsa great music and interviews too. I was always taping off the air and scored interviews with; Tom Paxton, Billy Joel, John Lennon, Roach sisters, Aynsley Dunbar, South Side, Zappa and more. A bunch of live performances too. I taped broadcasts with the intention of editing out the talk and keeping the songs. Thank goodness I left most of them intact. Now I can listen to WNEW FM vintage broadcasts with music, commercials, news and weather. Concert updates for CBGB's, Max's Kansas City, Bottom Line, The Other End, Fillmore East, shit, even the Electric Circus. Always liked the montages and the old-new-borrowed and blue segment. Immortalized in a slice of time. Got my first FM radio in 1968 and soon found WNEW. Who says ya can't go back, fuhgeddaboudit!
well, iT would be GREaT 4 the ReST oF U.S.A. 2 hear those ( again / or for the FuRST TiMe )
is there ANY-WaY to corn-vince U to U/L ( upload ) 'em? - have U digitized 'em @ ALL??
i'd be V. innarrested - iF u need help /w/ converting to any format
= search me Rockin' Rex! ( ToNy ) ynkrs / w plns
@@biancaxmp3872, I'm an old guy nearly seventy. What freakin' language are you writing??? Holy shit, I had a devil of a time deciphering your comment. If you're complimenting me for having these rare live radio tapes from the 1970's/80's well, thanks. How I would transfer them to a youtube video for others to hear is waaaaaay beyond my neanderthal computer skills. That goes for digitizing them too. How the hell do I digitize a cassette tape???? Fuhgeddabout storing it. I know a lotta shit about audio, unfortunately, nuttin' about computers.
Marty Jewell Crazy writing aside from the other person, someone out there would love to hear those tapes. I’m 26 and love to see/hear old vintage media like this. “Everything old becomes new” or something along those lines.
On the digitizing cassettes front, it is a lot easier to do that now. There are services that will do it for you with a simple Google search. On the other hand, you can physically buy a cassette (or vinyl or w/e, as well) digitizer and digitize them yourself (and maybe others you have), then upload them to YT or Internet Archive.
Either way, I implore you to back those up. Might have a rare broadcast or something, who knows?
@@defaultusername123 thanks man. I do appreciate the sound (no pun) advice. I do have some great broadcasts on both open reel and cassette. All nine Beethoven Symphonies were "simulcast" on FM and on NYC PBS channel 13 in 1982. I could watch stereo TV! Bernstein conducting. I have all nine on open reel tape. Also have a rare WNEW interview with John Lennon and Dennis Elsas where John acts as DJ and plays 45's that influenced Beatles music. John did concert announcements and weather reports. It's a freakin' hoot. Yoko was NOT present. That was in 1976. I don't intent to appear stupid but I still don't really get this digitizing thing. And that other guy, what freakin' language is he using???
I dropped acid once (well more than once) while on the NYC subway. Tripping my balls off, as it were. A transit cop entered the car and I wanted to look inconspicuous, I picked up a newspaper from the floor and tried to read it. It was a Chinese newspaper and I couldn't read a thing. I broke out in wild laughter and the cop looked at me, then left the car. This Bianca's language is about the same. Oh, what is w/e???
@@martyjewell5683You can use your phone to record your interview of John Lennon and then you can upload it to RUclips. Very easy to do it, I have done it myself to put videos and audio recordings on RUclips. It’s really simple to do. Maybe get a young person to help you do that. Good luck 👍🏻
Spent so many years listening to 102.7 WNEW FM. New York. 1983-2007.
Now it's just a distant loving memory.
kind of horrifying if like me you listened in the late 60s early 70s when radio could actually change our minds and hearts. The music on WNEW at that time was a lifesaver
from 1970 unitl the day they fired scott muni , NEW was the ONLY station i listened to . best radio station EVER , no playlists you had to trust the choices of the djs and they never failed to please . its funny i never liked dave herman even before his legal troubles . the musicians stopping by to just chat , play their favorite music or premier their new albums was absolutely incredible . i can almost smell the vinyl and album covers. god how i miss them . side note .... one year my sister who was a professional photographer took a picture of one of my guitars and NEW used it as the cover photo for their calendar that year . I STILL HAVE THAT CALENDAR . rip SCOTTSO , PETE , ALLISON and WNEW-FM , THE PLACE WHERE ROCK LIVED. i STILL listen to DENNIS ELASAS on WFUV
You express my sentiments exactly!
Time capsule...awesome! To be young in the late 70s in NYC. Remember Simon and Garfunkle in Central Park in the early 80s? Great time, thanks for posting!
Often envy all the people around back then (born in ‘94). Great sports, great music, great media.
Yeah, I was in my late twenties in later 1970's. I ran in the NYC Marathon in 1978. Was at the S/G concert. Also went to Woodstock in 69'. All the great concerts at Wollman Rink, the Pier (84??) and venues throughout NYC and surrounding area. Started listening to WNEW in 1970 on my two year old FM radio. In my 1960's pre-teen days there was only AM radio, WABC and WMCA were the AM rock stations of choice. Imagine? No computers, cell phones, digitized anything, Facebook, texting, tweeting, hand calculators (did math on a slide rule), FM, stereo or color TV. Ya know what?? We never felt outta the loop. Computers still scare me, I don't trust them.
Fantastic book about WNEW-FM by Richard Neer. "The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio"
I was in those studios. I participated in a contest in 1989 for tickets to see The Who perform Tommy at Radio City Music Hall by listening to Barry Manilow records for 24 straight hours. It’s quite a place and when they said they had the world’s largest record collection they meant it. They were very nice people as well. Miss them,it’s a station that’s impossible to replace.
Back when radio actually mattered! RIP to all the greats who are no longer with us.
Exactly. Amazing to see when radio was still competing with tv
Not from America but grew up with the movies, esp New York sets. This brings me back to watching them as a kid and pretending I lived there. Thanks
0:06 - Life seemed so "normal" back then. Thanks for sharing!
BECAUSE IT WAS FORGET NOW 2020 HORRIBLE
I found that video very entertaining, listened to that station so much in the 70s,nothing like it,I love Scott Muni's office,all those gorgeous secretaries again great video
This was the station that inspired to a career in radio, a field I worked in for more than a.decade. I was living in NY at the time and I may likely have been listening to them on this very day.
I remember the origins of WNEW-FM in 1967.........
WOR-FM had just gone "More Music" with Bill Drake, as consultant.
Original NEW-FM personalities were Scott Muni, Rosko, Allison Steele and others.
don't forget Jonathan Schwartz...
Loved every minute they were on. The greatest lineup of all time.🎶
The man doing the news here is Earle Bailey who began his radio career on my college radio station WPKN in Bridgeport, CT as a jock and a great one. He was probably the 1st radio guy nationwide to pull together pieces of audio (talk and music) to create a themed weekly show called "Short Cuts." Many might remember him for his time spent on WLIR-FM and still, others might recall his name from shows he did on the Sirius/XM platform.
I'm 35 from NY and that is some OLD SCHOOL footage, good upload
I listened in the 70s and even have a calendar featuring the station. Alison Steele, Jonathan Schwartz, Pete Fornatale, and others.
I miss Radio like this !!!
This was the best rock station in the tri state area if not the whole country
I gasped at 09:21 when the great Scott Muni appeared. Successful AM Top 40 DJ on several NYC stations, but most remembered as the early evening lead-in to Cousin Brucie on WABC 770.
Scottso got fed up with Top 40 and was hired by WOR FM to host a then-revolutionary “progressive free-form” show on 98.7. When the owners tightened up that format after less than a year, Muni jumped to WNEW FM 102.7 where Metromedia swiped WOR FM’s lunch by building a creatively, and soon commercially-successful progressive rock NYC mainstay for well over a decade. As a former Marine and radio pro with musically-progressive tastes, Scott Muni commanded respect from his WNEW FM staff, and in turn “protected” them from the corporate commercial inclinations of Metromedia management. WNEW FM 102.7 was an amazing beacon of entertainment and musical freedom during the golden years of the rock era!
How To Kill A Radio Station - brought to you by Mel Karmazin, the AM commercial airtime salesman promoted to GM of the biggest free form progressive rock station in the country. A format he knew absolutely nothing about so he decided to kill it and turn it into Classic Rock, which is progressive rock for people with the memory of a goldfish.
He helped put the Kabosh on a great radio station. After that, many stations
That’s the nature of the radio biz tho, well before Karmazin too (he did kill tons of stations, don’t get me wrong). Bosses make decisions about what they THINK people want to hear (they don’t), while the jocks fight them over what they KNOW people want to hear.
The same thing is happening in baseball nowadays. You got people running it who have no idea how important the purity of the game is, so they are destroying it by tampering with it.
Love all the behind the scenes stuff i know radio isn't much of a career especially these days but i still would have loved to do it.
It’s a shame what happened to Scott Muni..” come on Dave Herman play us some rock ‘n’ roll”
Music, like mathematics, is a critical component to GOD's language. WNEW recognized this extreme spiritual significance of music, whether consciously aware of it or not. With respect to mainstream American culture (of which WNEW at this time was a part), GONE are the days of celebrating music for its own sake.
I agree man. Music is very powerful and too much of modern music has little regard for the inherent power of music. That was part of why David Crosby took on Kanye West about how West's type of rap was/is not only idiotic but a desecration and complete misunderstanding of the energy of music.
@@rft2001 "desecration" is a perfect descriptor.
MY RADIO STATION WILL LIVE ON FOR EVER IN MY MIND
Even worse CBS Radio doesn't care about which call letters have belonged to cities for years, WNEW is now a Washington/Baltimore all news station, WHFS which was a progressive rock station in the DC area, represents an all sports station in Florida.
Earl Bailey...sounds exactly the same today on XM Radio...Summer of 2018...same voice 36 years prior.
The ONE thing Sirius/XM has done right is hiring a fair amount of the old guys of radio. Cant stand old hacky radio, can’t stand Sirius. But glad some of the older fellas made it over to satellite
The guy who sounds like Richard Neer was his brother Dan (Dano) Neer
Wow!! Excellent video. Great to see radio operating in the good old days.
who could forget finally Friday shows.
I just discovered Earle a couple of years ago when I got SiriusXM. He is amazing. What a legend.
Earl Bailey in NYC doing news.........Also on WMMR in Philly. Great jock!!!!!
Earl was indeed terrific on several progressive rock stations. Didn’t know he also did news.
Back when the stations in new York were awesome. Today they are great but not like the old days
we still love you Scott. guess it couldn't last forever .RIP............
I'm too young to remember him on WNEW. I used to listen on Q 104 whenever I was visiting relatives in the city. Caught his Beatles lunchtime show every now and again.
I was part of the listening audience back then, but frankly, this is much more banal than interesting.
June 9th, 1982, Jackie Wilson's Bday (as commented by Scott Muni during this clip)
think i'll see my radio now that you're not there, it was the greatest rock and roll station there ever was, i've been searching around the dial !!!!
6:51 the enigmatic Leon Redbone sings for Budweiser.
i wish the world was still like this. as much as I like hiphop and rap - those forms of music have ruined culture in the long run.
Pete Fornatale RIP
Earle Bailey-great DJ. He was also on WMMR in Philadelphia. Now he's on Classic Vinyl on Sirius XM.
I love Earle also. He is on the Deep Tracks channel also.
Sixers would become champions only a year later!
The young guy who was talking about including Graig Nettles in the sports report, sounded like a young Richard Neer, who now does sports for WFAN in NYC.
That was Richard Neer.
@@mickey8355 Dan Neer.
@@davepollison4333 Well I believe that Richard Neer is sitting right across from him at breakfast when he was speaking of Nettles. That`s why I thought that the original commenter was referring to him and not his brother. They really don`t sound alike.
11:10-11:14 "We've got problems here. Get a number, wait in line". Whatever happened to that logic?
I guess everyone has opinions about why the station was so vital for so long and why it died. I remember driving in my car and hearing Muni's "Things From England" show. He should of just called it, "I Can't Think of a Name for What I'm About to Do." He played little known new British songs that no one in NYC cared about and would soon be consigned to the dustbin of our cultural history. In fairness, though, Muni was trying to break out of the trap of playing the same aged songs over and over and over. Lose/lose situation. Time marches on.
right on point - 100%
@@bishlap He was all over those Slade singles in the early 70s. Too bad Quiet Riot ruined them in the 80s. Scott never embraced new wave and punk though, he was too old to get it.
I remember hearing Slade on WNEW. I wonder, did he play any Renaissance on that show, or any other British Progressives?
The date is June 9, 1982.
4:33 proof of that
i figured it was summer because they did a "tan report" and said it was an 8 out of 10 to get a suntan.
In the subway scene about the 3:00 mark you hear the DJ speaking in the background. Just a point of interest - that is awfully good radio reception for a subway station. :)
…and this was way before WiFi!
HA! I have that 1982 calendar. This was 3 years before my existence but I grew up listening to the original FM WNEW in Buffalo.
For whatever its worth there is only two things written
September 12th "Bills-KC W 14-9"
September 16th "Bills-Vikings W 23-22"
come to find out this was the year of the nfl strike
This station was as important to me through MS and HS as the air I breathed!
Just found a reel tape, maybe 1970s. Nice cool jazz from WNEW. They left the call letters in the tape but cut out everything else. Too bad no dates on tape or box. Will put it up on the Internet Archive when transcribed. Sounds nothing like this RUclips sample. I wish more people had recorded off the air. Almost nothing on the historic WWVA.
7:40 *I HAPPEN TO KNOW A CERTAIN PAUL HARGUS THAT KNOWS WHERE DAVE HERMAN WAS IN ‘77* 7:40
Metromedia stations seemed to be set up the same. The DJs at WMMR and WIP in Philadelphia also stood while on the air.
Your voice projects better standing up. Sitting crunches the lungs and diaphragm.
I have a poster for the anti-nuke rally June 12, 1982 they were discussing
With the suspension of the Non Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, they just might be back!
BUDWEISER BEER DRINK IT
As Jesus Christ would say: _This Blood's for you!_ |✝️|
My wife and I had a music radio show on WHPC at Nassau Community College and Pete Fornatele graced us with an interview when he was “pulled” for a week or so for some BS “violation,” I’m pretty sure it was too “political. RML.
by 1980 WNEW sucked - all commercial songs by famous artists. I went over to WLIR by mid 70's. At least there I'd hear a song/songs that were hardly ever played by commercially successful artists, ie., When the levee breaks by zep, NEW would play rock n roll and stairway ad nauseam, and the constant ass kissing of bruce - that dude killed classic rock radio.
For a suburban station with a less than booming signal, WLIR was a great alternative listen for years! Earl Bailey and Bob Bachman come to mind as hosts there.
I went to the rally for no nukes and got interviewed by Reubens Rosario a cub reporter for the NY daily News and there were over a million souls there he could of picked. Turns out I got 5 paragraphs printed the lowest anyone got to me was yoko Ono 3 paragraphs mayor Koch 2 .just shows that at 18 yo my words were as important as anyone's and ions read my voice .every vote counts and voice free .
WNEW R.I.P.
This makes you appreciate how Howard Stern maimed these self-important and hacky radio jocks and the (mostly) lame music they championed. This should be a nostalgic rush, but good riddance.
Garbage, commercial radio!