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Hmm. I never knew of Sally being on the radio, though growing up in the 80s and 90s I remember her well from daytime syndicated television. She along with Messrs. Donohue, Downey Jr. and Springer kind of helped pave the way for the whole "trash TV" pseudo-genre.
I wish I could find a version that has the old intro, "I am the Tooth Fairy, and I doth come!"
It was the juxtaposition of an almost Shakespearean entrance for a nutjob pretending to be the Tooth Fairy. I think TF supposedly wore purple tights and fairy wings as he made his appointed rounds.
[b]There are many more discussion threads about this subject on the Entertainment section of City-Data forum.
Most of the stations discussed here, are maximum-power 50,000 watt Clear Channel stations with all-night service. The FCC allows only one or two highest-powered stations on each AM dial frequency, so their signal won't interfere with others at night. Sometimes one station in the East, and one in the West. Station owners could circumvent that restriction by locating immediately south of the Mexican border.
Some of the personalities I remember, - each of these has Wikipedia articles on them - include
Paul Harvey - whose network show was syndicated to many stations.
Don McNeil's "breakfast club" - ditto
. Barry Farber (WBZ), a highly intelligent guy.
Cousin Brucie Morrow (WABC),
Bruce Williams, and his predecessor Bernard Meltzer (sp?), who both offered general personal advice in a soothing, comforting way - advice on personal finance, business, marriage, life choices, etc. - on WOR New York, but syndicated to other stations.
Sally Jessy Raphael, similar to today's Delilah, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer the sex-therapist/ holocaust survivor.
Dr. Gabe Mirkin, a sport-medicine and dermatology physician, who answered questions from listeners about nutrition, exercise, and health in general, in a very friendly, welcoming voice. He would have assistants screen each caller shortly beforehand, and quickly look up information for him, which made it seem like the Doctor had amazing encyclopedic memory.
AM was king of everything until 1968.
No one listened to FM.
The BIG radio stations played Top-40 until you could not stand listening to a certain song one more time. The DJs were taking payola (if they could). Most stations only played "white" music. There were no songs longer than 2-1/2 minutes.
Then, in 1968, FM completely took over music.
Freeform DJs with no program directors.
Stereo !!
Songs that could go on "forever". Entire albums played without commercial interruption.
What I remember is that there really wasn't an FM market to speak of until the early '70s, and what there was was classical or album oriented rock. I graduated high school in 1976 and everybody still pretty much listened to their music on AM. By 1978 NOBODY listened to music on AM. FM stations popped up like weeds from 1975 to 1980. By 1980 AM music radio was pretty much gone except for country.
And people of brought up KOMA in Oklahoma City. The funny thing about it was that you could go clear to California and one of the first things anybody ever said to you when they found out you were from Oklahoma is that they could get KOMA.
Conversely, if you went east from OKC you couldn't go 100 miles without losing the signal. So if you went to Missouri or Arkansas nobody knew anything about KOMA.
WDGY (Minneapolis/St Paul) listener here.
Took me through early rock and roll, folk, British invasion, and into disco.
Then, sometime during the 70s it turned into country western and it broke my heart.
Then FM stereo took over and I guess there was no turning back.
I miss the diversity AM pop radio provided. You could listen to Sinatra, Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix on the same station. After that, a radio station would pattern their playlist to conform to what they perceived their audience was.
No argument that AM radio had its limitations. But I look back on that period with fondness.
I remember when WWWE in Cleveland used to advertise that they reached 38 states and half of Canada.
Never heard of WWWE. The only clear-channel 50,000 watt Cleveland station I know of in the 1960s was WGAR.
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Who remembers when AM radio was king?
