Way back in the spring of 1981,
years before there was such a music style on the radio that we all fondly know today as "classic rock"...I invented, programmed and implemented the FIRST such radio format on WYSP in Philly.
I never submitted this story to a public forum because I thought, "One day a reporter will take my career chronologically and that part about originating a new FM radio format will just flow out naturally, without it appearing as if I wanted to call attention to myself."
Well, guess what? Other than former "Newsday" columnist and current writer for the "N.Y. Daily News", Paul Colford, who in 1995 interviewed me for his St. Martin's Press book "King of All Media--The Unauthorized Biography of Howard Stern" (out-of-print, but still on Amazon.com and other sites), no reporter ever delved into my 36-year career. .....So enough already. Time to correct this one slice of American radio's historical record. O.K. with you? Kids doing Google searches for info about this endearing and enduring radio format finally will read the eye-witness account.
The actual name "classic rock" was thought of during a strategy session one day. Rock radio pioneer Lee Abrams and I were sitting in my office trying to think up a cool name for this entirely-old-tracks approach to album rock. Why? Because we still were in a national recession (you older readers remember Jimmy Carter-era "stagflation" with 18% interest rates, oil shortages and the bleak Iranian hostage crisis) and trying to compete for scarce advertising revenue along with two very well-programmed Philadelphia FM stations...WMMR and WIOQ. They played the typical music ratio in vogue for about the last ten years on American album rockers---let's say 65% older
hits or big album cuts...and 35% brand-new material. Problem is, many stations were too cozy with the record promo guys...playing so much poor-quality new stuff (much of it termed "new wave" and coming tsunami-style from England) that once-loyal FM listeners were starting to feel fatigued. MTV was not a factor quite yet, but getting organized. We saw a window of opportunity, and I thought that the quickest route to a true WYSP ratings resurrection would be NOT to try and beat WMMR and WIOQ (with their stronger air personalities and larger promotional budgets, as well), at their own game of 65/35. So the question for Lee Abrams and me was: how do we quickly establish a distinctive, refreshing new identity on the Philly FM radio dial...carve out our own new niche at YSP? By
playing ONLY the greatest, most-requested and biggest-selling rock to be released since the first Beatles album in 1964! That gave me hundreds and hundreds of rock "bullets" (17 years' worth, baby) with which to fight those 1981 Arbitron ratings wars and thereby grab ad revenue. But to add even more urgency to this scenario, Mel Karmazin and his Boston-based business partners Jerry Karas and Mike Weiner had just negotiated their very first acquisition for fledgling Infinity Broadcasting (flagship radio station being their legendary Boston progressive outlet, WBCN-FM) and it was us! They would take over at 94 YSP right after final FCC approval. So I had to goose ratings and profit pronto. There was a definite personal incentive--when Infinity took over, they might let me keep my job. (So I started schmoozing just a bit...took the Amtrak up to Boston and visited the WBCN crew in their Prudential Insurance building offices, etc.). But back to the story. What do we call this?
Various names like "vintage rock" and "timeless rock" were tossed into the ring by yours truly. Then Lee hit on the phrase "classic rock". Perfect! Like a classic car that always will be sought-after.
These days, the word "classic" is over-used almost to the point of becoming a bit trite and cliched.
However, back in 1981, the world hadn't even seen "Classic Coke". There were no "classic fit" Levis. Almost nobody used that term as a means of expressing that which forever will be popular, solid, genuine, durable, non-trendy, authentic, and so forth.
So now we had the perfect name for this new approach. But it fell upon me next as the 94 WYSP department head in charge of actually programming the station to structure things...to choose the songs and divide them up into groups for airplay. This fresh new FM format's original appearance anywhere is not just somebody's revisionist-history pipedream but, rather, a historical broadcasting fact supported by folks who then worked at WYSP (most of whom are still in radio), not to mention archived records at several outdoor advertising companies, etc. We had billboards and bus cards all throughout Philadelphia proudly reading..."Classic Rock, 94 YSP". And it's for this reason that many years later (after having reverted to a traditional mix of older and newer rock tracks and finally deciding they had gotten it right the first time!) WYSP started a campaign using the slogan...."It took 94 YSP to bring classic rock BACK to Philadelphia!"...(their intended implication being..."We gave it to you the first time back in '81").
In those days, there certainly were oldies radio stations with Motown, pop and indeed rock hits by such bands as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. But to play 100% album-based, already time-tested rock hits and ONLY that vintage rock...24 hours a day, 7 days a week...and then to blend in also the not-hit material (the most popular, older "album tracks") alongside them simply was untried and frankly unheard-of. All other album-based radio stations in America played a mix of older tracks and (here's the crucial distinction) also BRAND NEW rock artist releases. That format had a name already----"album-oriented rock" (AOR).
I had been steeped in AOR since listening to the original Lee Abrams "Superstars" FM station, WQDR in Raleigh, N.C. from its very first day on the air...while I was attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1970-74 and doing noon-4 pm daily on WCHL-AM in Chapel Hill under their fantastic program manager (now the editor of two influential industry newsletters
"Inside Radio" and "The M-Street Daily")...Tom Taylor. Now here I was taking what I had learned by listening to the very experimental and pioneering WQDR-FM, every single day from its 1973 inception until I left Raleigh-Durham in late '76...and next applying it while on 10-2 pm and programming Village Broadcasting's WKQQ-FM in Lexington, Kentucky from (8/76-7/78)...and after that at WMMR-FM in Philadelphia (8/78-12/79) and WWWW-FM in Detroit (1980). That's where that other interesting story about how I personally-hired Howard Stern from WCCC-AM in Hartford, Connecticut in January of 1980 for just $30,000 a year for W-4 mornings took place...but we'll save that wooly tale for another time and space. The point is...I had run or helped run three FM's since 1976. And now, through a very serendipidous combination
of good luck, correct timing and the NEED for a fresh formatic approach, "classic rock radio" would be born and nurtured.
My mentors and influential co-workers all had been right there...from the pioneering FM guru Lee Abrams to the brilliant Jeff Pollack, a former consultant for Drake-Chenault Broadcasting and later my boss at WMMR...and someone who also in 1981 would found a very important, global radio/television/motion picture
consulting business continuing
to thrive today (Pollack Media Group) to Doug Podell, a very dedicated and hard-working "street fighter" DJ also completely wired-to the Detroit scene at W-4.
From Mark Goodman, evenings on WMMR (he would be the very first MTV personality hired after I told him one Friday afternoon in my office...1981...that "Robert
Pittman is beginning auditions
right NOW in New York for this cool new job as a cable-television 'video jock' and you have not only the good looks but also the rock knowledge...you should RUN and apply!")...to Terry Meiners, whom I gave his first job as our morning man on "Double Q", the 100,000-watt flamethrower AOR outlet in central Kentucky, and who went on to become, today, a veritable household word in Louisville as afternoon-drive lunatic on Clear Channel's hot WHAS-AM 840.
Terry could run for Mayor of Louisville and probably win.
There are so many more, like my music director at WWWW, Mark McKuen, who of course went on to be the weather man on the "CBS Early Show" network morning feed forever, after first doing AM-drive on WNEW-FM.
Rick Dees...who started in radio with me at WCOG in Greensboro,
North Carolina while we both still were in high school. Rick made it to KIIS-FM in Los Angeles for mornings and over the years has hosted the "Rick Dees Weekly Top-40 Countdown" syndicated show. We both graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and stayed in touch since then, 1974. He is another very funny and overall-talented radio professional. Also worth noting is that Rick lives next door to actor George Hamilton in Topanga Canyon, CA. while my wife Nancy and I live in Chester, Virginia next door to...uh...Kohl's.
O.K. You're about to vomit! So now that most of the friends and mentors have been stroked to death (definitely healthier than being "choked" to death), let's explain the logistics of actually running this cool new format.
Since there weren't yet any personal computers (!), all music and other programming had to be done manually. I used 3x5 color-coded index cards in long metal file boxes and each jock "rotated" by hand every card (separated according to release-date or
the perceived song "strengths"
into different assortments) to the back of that file category. "Hard" research into local, regional and national tastes regarding the rock "classics" was extremely limited. Therefore I personally picked the universe of established artist catalogue tracks based upon a combination of plain gut feeling (experience playing rock's hits and album cuts since 1974 and across-the-street at station WMMR-FM in Philadelphia from August of 1978 until January of 1980), on-air studio telephone requests, local record store artist catalogue sales figures, etc.
Here's a quick within-the-industry aside, just a personal tangent.
This statement will light a whole forest fire of different and very heated viewpoints, but here goes. Many times during my career (having witnessed up-close the relative advantages and then disadvantages of "testing" songs in each city by focus groups assembled in hotel conference rooms...versus just trusting one or two sharp and very musically-aware radio PD's and MD's to pick the universe of playable tracks for that individual station) I have felt that radio shot itself in the foot by getting too clinical, scientific and commodity-like. We're supposed to entertain the folks, right? As in "make real good art"? Radio let the average 52-week-price of a share of its stock BLIND IT to what business it is in...the business of FUN, which in turn leads to profit. We're not in the fertilizer or detergent biz.
Unless a station can afford to test all its songs once per quarter, the cost of which would generally prove prohibitive in all but the very largest markets, it is better off not relying too heavily on song tests. This fact is so elementary that a modern sixth-grader knows it intuitively. It is that self-evident! Because within 30 days after that pricey and capricious panel says
it really, really wants to hear "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon more...it is sorry as hell it told you so. Why? Now you play it ad nauseum! That is to say the first several HUNDRED TIMES you played it following that expensive test, those panelists (and the larger audience they supposedly represent) possibly did really get off on hearing the track. After that, it was overkill..a major tune-out! Duh. Thousands and thousands of bucks spent on THAT when it could have been deployed for bumper stickers or television spots. All right, soap box speech over. Back to our ancient tale...
From the very first day we hit the air on WYSP, this unique new kind of radio showed its appeal. My daily show was from 10 am until 2 pm. Sounding extremely familiar, comfortable and hip...this new radio format proved the logical alternative to other radio stations airing WAY too many terrible new songs, most headed NOT to "rock classic" status but to oblivion! The approach was an immediate success on WYSP but spread across America rather slowly, as most general managers and program managers adopted a careful wait-and-see posture (just as many are today with the new jockless "Jack", "Dave", etc. format that hit the largest U.S. cities in the past year). Within 9 months, KQRS in Minneapolis and just a handful of other brave stations successfully switched to the classic rock format. But those in markets such as San Francisco and Dallas and Lansing that for the last twenty-something years have insisted they were first to try this radio format are plain wrong.
They went to it either late in 1981 or sometime during 1982. This I know, because as format creator, I was paying careful attention to see which stations (and in which order) would follow our lead!
In 1983, the sharp Fred Jacobs took what he saw emerging as the hottest new FM format in years and "kicked it up a notch".
Fred streamlined things even
further and used new personal computer hardware/software (a quantum leap) to put into place better controls and systems plus special features/weekends/etc. Together with his brothers from their consulting office in Detroit, "Jacobs Media" has become
a world-recognized authority on the classic rock format. I have great, great respect for Fred and have worked with him since 1984, when he became consultant of WRXL ("XL-102"), Richmond, VA.
For 8 whole years...from the summer of 1997 until this past summer...Fred Jacobs and I worked together for the Cox Radio classic rocker in Richmond, 96.5 "The Planet" as I did 10-3.
The Planet became so dominant a classic rock factor with its intended target group of adults aged 25-54 that its primary competitor "XL-102" actually gave up trying to be both "fish" and "foul" (stopped playing a mix of classic and new rock) and just switched entirely to modern rock in the fall of 2002! For a long-standing, so-called "heritage rocker" of the former XL-102's status to make that white-flag move is a testiment to just how good a job Fred Jacobs did with 96.5 the Planet. Credit also must go to the Planet's former program director, the best man I ever worked for as an air personality, Bill Weston. Bill now (ironically) is programming my old station in Philadelphia, 93.3 WMMR-FM.
So here...24 years later and still in radio at age 52...I've "gone public" to correct some very widely- believed misconceptions regarding the great classic rock format's true beginnings and development. Stay tuned, as this website and my others get more fully-developed and I incorporate many wild and never-before-seen personal rock/FM radio/concert photos from the early 80's and even way before that. Meanwhile, thanks again for visiting this admittedly first-step starter page for "Dick Hungate, America's First Classic Rock DJ" (TM).
