FM

by Richard Neer

  The Federal Communications Commission was coincidentally passing the duopoly rule, by a 5–2 margin, that would radically change the face of broadcasting. Although rejected by many as a bureaucratic proposal that would never take root, a few forward-thinking proprietors of commercial FMs weighed their options. Chief among them was RKO, a conglomerate encompassing the famed motion picture company, General Tire and Rubber, and a string of radio and television stations, among them WOR and WOR-FM in New York, where free-form radio was born on commercial airwaves.

  WOR-FM began the day on July 30, 1966, with the Troggs’ raucous anthem “Wild Thing,” not with the dulcet tones of longtime WOR morning host John Gambling. The station was automated temporarily until new jocks could be signed under a revised AFTRA (American Federation of Radio and Television Artists) contract. “Temporarily” turned out to be almost three months.

  Finding disc jockey talent wasn’t a problem. Scott Muni, after trying his hand for a year at running a hip music nightclub, was a star player and a radio free agent. Murray the K had been dislodged from his Swinging Soiree as WINS decided to go all news. And there was an interesting chap named Bill Mercer, aka Rosko, who’d knocked around several stations on both coasts. By October of 1966, the labor issues were settled and Scott Muni was doing afternoons with Murray the K ruling the early evening hours on WOR-FM.

  Some dispute that WOR-FM was free form at all, citing restrictions that the jocks were under and the preponderance of Top Forty music played. But in 1966, musicians had yet to break free of the yoke of three-minute singles. Albums were just becoming the dominant form of record sales, but they were still mainly a collection of potential singles with B-sides that were not considered “commercial” enough to hit the AM airwaves. At the very beginning, no one could just play whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. The payola scandals were not so distant a memory as to allow that kind of freedom for DJs. But there were listening sessions where a programmer would sit in with the jocks and approve a stack of records that had been brought in. As the days went by, management began to trust the jocks, convinced that their reasons for airing the songs were altruistic, not because they were being paid to do so. Within weeks, the station was totally free form.

  When WOR-FM started playing “Society’s Child” by Janis Ian, many musicians and record executives took notice. AM radio wouldn’t touch the record for a number of reasons, chief among them that the subject matter was about a teenage interracial love affair. At over five minutes, it was longer than conventional singles, and who was Janis Ian anyway? She didn’t even record for a major label. The song garnered so much reaction that Ian was invited to the studio for a lengthy interview, another no-no on AM radio.

  More and more, WOR-FM looked to differentiate itself from Top Forty. They still had jingles, although their production was much more subtle and understated than the exciting PAMS packages that WABC was still using. They merely acted as a buffer between songs that didn’t sound compatible, or as a gentle reminder of the call letters. Since commercial announcements were few and far between, jocks weren’t compelled to speak between every record: They could program lengthy sets of music. This led to another dilemma. If each song wasn’t a separate entity but more a component of a greater whole, there needed to be some tangible reason for linking them together. Thus came about the art of the segue.

  The simplest reason to group songs came from Scottso. He called them “miniconcerts” or “Muni-concerts.” He would select three or more recordings from the same artist, often from the same album, and bunch them together. Muni could go fifteen to twenty minutes before announcing what he’d played. This created an added, perhaps unintentional benefit. Since listeners at the time were used to having songs identified immediately before or after they were played, they were now forced to listen longer to discover what they’d just heard. Since ratings are based on not only the number of individuals tuned in at a given time but how long they listen, WOR-FM might garner higher ratings as a result.

  Obviously, the miniconcert had its limitations. If one disliked the Rolling Stones and knew that Muni would be playing not just one song but five, the temptation to turn the dial would be great. You also needed bands that had a wide selection of good songs. If you anticipated that every time Scottso played a set of Beatles, the same five songs would be aired, audiences would soon tire of the repetition. Other reasons to segue were needed.

  Thematic sets provided one answer. These were songs that dealt with the same subject and/or shared common words in the title—the overused “rain” sets born of that era, simply stringing together a brace of tunes about the weather. One could play the same songs by different artists, like Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” segued with Bob Dylan’s original. Another set might consist of Dylan material performed by others. Later in the decade, musical family trees could be examined, like the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, the Hollies, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

  Broadcasters with good ears found musical cues: songs in the same key, or with similar chord structures. There are also songs that mesh well together—the closing drumbeats of one song flow seamlessly into the opening percussion of another. These became the most prevalent segues because the opportunities were so extensive.

  In the summer of 1967, the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, giving birth to the concept album. On many a night, the Fifth Beatle, Murray the K, would play an entire side of the masterwork. Uninterrupted album sides became popular programming, especially as more artists began to link their songs together in the manner of FM DJs.

  It became incumbent upon the jock to have vast knowledge of music, something that Top Forty DJs didn’t need or didn’t have. It was like homework for the schoolchild—every day, a jock would take new releases home to sample and select songs for upcoming shows. In 1966, this was a large but not Herculean task, since the number of albums by rock artists was still at a manageable level. The success of FM changed that, as more record companies sought performers who could turn out quality album tracks that might not qualify as singles.

  Unlike AM radio, where morning drive was where the money was, evenings were the place to be on FM. Baby boomers were now reaching college age, and dorm rooms in early 1967 acted as huge amplifiers echoing Murray’s show. His taste was almost unerring on undiscovered performers, and students looked forward to the introduction of fresh new talent. Rating services gave Murray the K audience shares ranging between 3 and 4 percent during his stint at WOR, which was unheard of for FM, and competitive with most AM stations.

  But all was not quiet on the management front. RKO was still uneasy with disc jockeys holding so much power. They also pointed to uneven ratings and felt that although the programming could be uplifting at times, it bogged down at others. As the station began to gain revenue, the star jocks wanted their piece of the action: The low pay scale AFTRA had negotiated was already beginning to chafe. Even though FM was making money for the first time, it still was dwarfed by what its AM sisters were pulling in. And RKO General was having even more success with its West Coast FM outlets doing BOSS (a hip expression of the time, the equivalent of “fab” or “gear,” meaning the greatest or coolest) radio, and eventually decided to allow the man responsible for that format to control the programming at WOR.

  His name was Bill Drake. Drake was born Philip T. Yarborough and like most programmers began as a disc jockey. He worked at several stations around the country before becoming program director of KYA in San Francisco. He dreamed of running a chain of radio stations, and to this end partnered with Gene Chenault. They acquired several California stations as clients, but it was the success of KGB in San Diego that captured RKO’s attention.

  Drake-Chenault were able to convince RKO to put them in charge of KHJ (which originally stood for kindness, happiness, and joy) in Los Angeles. Today, the idea that a station in such a major market could be experimental is absurd, but Drake perfected his BOSS radio formula there, worki
ng with Ron Jacobs, the hands-on program director. With legendary jocks Robert W. Morgan and the “Real” Don Steele leading the way, KHJ was an instant success.

  Drake’s talent was not so much in inventing a format, but in taking the best of what others had done before and distilling it into his own formula, insisting on precise execution. Drake saw himself as a master architect who hired other top craftsmen to execute his plans. Chenault also helped him foster an image that was to serve him well, that of a powerful, reclusive figure shrouded in mystery. Many of the programmers who worked with him never met him in person, and carried on few telephone conversations with him. He insisted on absolute control of any property he consulted, although he used his dictatorial powers sparingly.

  He lived in posh Bel Air in a luxurious Spanish-style mansion reputed to have twenty-four telephone lines. He rarely granted interviews or appeared in public. Much like Howard Hughes, he traded on the image of the all powerful Oz, one who could make or break careers on his slightest whim. He arranged to be able to monitor any of his stations from his villa, and had a direct line to the control room of each. Disc jockeys lived in fear of a “hotline” call from the mysterious Drake. One could picture him—tall and lanky, relaxing by his pool, surrounded by tanned California beauties, arbitrarily dialing up a station in Boston or New York and exorcising something or someone he didn’t like. This was largely an image he took advantage of, not the reality. By all accounts, Drake is a soft-spoken, modest Southerner by nature.

  Chenault, however, fueled his legend. Many employees left the company frustrated at how Drake had received credit for their hard work and innovation. Indeed, within Drake’s framework, individual program directors had wide authority over music and promotions, as long as they stuck to the basic formula. It wasn’t hard to identify a Drake-formatted station. The sound was uniform and clean, with smooth DJs who could have been from Anywhere, U.S.A. The jingle packages were spare, merely the frequency, call letters, and occasionally the jock’s name. When Drake approached a major jingle company about fashioning such simple fare, they refused, telling him it would never be effective. So Drake contacted the Johnny Mann Singers, brought them into a studio, and produced jingles for KHJ himself.

  Fresh from his L.A. triumph, the mystery man was brought in to consult at all the RKO stations, including WOR-FM. Its days as a free-form station were numbered. Drake probably thought he could work with such a distinguished air staff, but the freedom Muni, Rosko, and Murray had tasted was a powerful elixir, and one by one they resigned or were forced out under Drake’s constraints. The free-form experiment was completely over at WOR-FM by October of 1967. WBAI, the Pacifica public station in New York, gave the displaced jocks an hour forum to vent their complaints about how the consultant had ruined their station. Critics in the print media, both public and trade journals, joined in. Most gave RKO no chance after dismantling such a work of art. They predicted disaster for Drake and his “West Coast” sound.

  Within months, Drake-Chenault had the next laugh. In the Pulse surveys, WOR-FM’s share of the New York audience quadrupled to a 16, second only to WABC, which had vaulted to 26 shares under Sklar. It may not have been innovative or exciting radio, but it was consistent and, as Newsweek put it, “a smoothly modulated mixture of pop favorites.”

  The great progressive experiment seemed dead in New York, and critics ate their words, noting the enormous ratings success of BOSS radio. Drake’s consultancy grew far beyond the RKO stations, and he picked his spots well, rarely venturing into a situation where the odds were against him. His few failures occurred when hubris caused him to disregard his own formula, or when citizen groups protested his intent to rob them of a beloved format, as they did in Washington, D.C., when he announced the takeover of a popular classical station. Drake-Chenault enjoyed a decade-long reign as kings of the FM radio world.

  But despite the devastating dispossession in New York, the hardy seeds of free form had been sown. They already were growing on the West Coast, and the survivors of WOR-FM were merely wounded, and their spirit remained strong.

  Growin’ Up

  In late 1967, I was oblivious to what was happening at the big stations in Manhattan mere miles across the East River from Garden City. I was busy trying to save my fledgling career. I had only a few days to prepare for my professional debut, and since I’d never listened to WLIR, I figured I’d better get acquainted with it in a hurry. It was rough sledding for an eighteen-year-old. I tuned in the night I was hired and heard a man with an incredibly deep voice, extolling the virtues of a quaint expensive restaurant called the Wee Tappee Inn in Old Westbury, Long Island, old-money territory. The announcer sounded so worldly, so knowledgeable—as if he dined there several nights a week. It was intimidating as hell. This guy was probably in his late forties and would regard me as some snot-nosed kid who didn’t belong on his sophisticated radio station. The music he played was the very stuff I’d had so many arguments with my parents about—vanilla, syrupy, soporific instrumentals. For all my suffering, I was paid the rich sum of a dollar ten an hour. I’d made more the previous summer washing dishes at a New Jersey diner and tending the greens at the Saddle River Country Club.

  I was scheduled to go on the air Saturday morning from eight until one. Ted Webb had asked me to come in Friday afternoon so he could show me the ropes. I personally doubted that a couple of hours’ training would be sufficient but he had confidence that I could handle it and I didn’t want to create uncertainty in his mind by sharing my own reservations. After classes Friday, I journeyed through the catacombs of the Garden City Hotel until I reached the station. For the first few weeks, I don’t think I took the same route twice; that’s how confusing the underground maze was.

  Ted knew that I had learned to engineer my own program at WALI, a practice called “combo-ing.” Most major stations employ engineers to run the board, or audio console, for the jocks, but small-time radio is able to reduce expenses by having one man perform the tasks of announcing and engineering. It’s akin to carrying on an in-depth conversation while driving a stick-shift car in heavy traffic. After a while it becomes second nature but if you’re new at it, both skills suffer. Learning to run the board was the least of my worries, I thought. Pronouncing those big foreign names of the composers—now that made me nervous.

  Little did I know that the symbiosis between announcing and engineering would almost end my employment at WLIR as soon as it began. My first mistake was an understandable one. I had assumed that since WALI was a minor college AM station, its equipment would be as outdated and ineffective as any imaginable. Adelphi wasn’t exactly known for its broadcasting curriculum, like Syracuse or Northwestern. Therefore, the equipment had to be whatever they could muster from some commercial station’s discards, held together only by the ingenuity of John Schmidt. WLIR’s facility had to be light-years ahead. Wrong!

  As Webb explained how things worked, I was lost in a daze of horror—I couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. The audio console must have predated WALI’s by at least ten years. It looked like something Edwin Armstrong had jury-rigged before the war. The Civil War. There were seven huge unlabeled black knobs across the front, topped by little dark switches that resembled telegraph keys. Two VU meters were clipping away above the keys. Everything was channeled through the two large knobs in the center. It actually looked much simpler than WALI’s multichanneled console.

  “Where are the cart decks, Ted?” I asked innocently. “Cart,” or cartridge, decks, are units that resemble old eight-track tape players. All radio stations play their commercials on these. Generally, there are four or more, rack mounted and run by remote control. The operator simply slides the tape into a slot, punches a button, and boom! instant commercial. The cartridges could also play songs or short programs. Cart decks were commonly used on Top Forty stations for music, since vinyl 45s or albums tended to scratch and deteriorate upon repeated spins, whereas tape could be replayed hundreds of times with no noticeable d
egradation. Most studios also have them linked together, so that if several spots in a row are scheduled, you merely had to start the first one and upon completion it would trigger the second and so on until the set of commercials was over.

  “We don’t have any,” he replied tersely.

  “How do you play commercials, then?” I wondered aloud.

  “With this . . . the spot tape machine.” He pointed at a ramshackle gray box labeled “Spotmaster,” with one pointer and a hundred or so markings: A1, 2, 3, 4; B1, 2, 3, 4, etc. He slid the top lid open to reveal a large flap of celluloid with narrow grooves. It was held on a metal spool by cellophane tape. I was tempted for a moment to think it was some new technology that I was unaware of, but from its appearance, it had to be older than the audio console. Webb explained, “You just dial up the commercial, let’s say J3, hit this button, and—”

  I heard a muffled voice, followed by rumbles and then a flapping sound.

  “Damn, it’s come loose again,” he swore. The celluloid had separated from the spool and was flapping around the innards of the machine until Webb turned it off. “It’s very important to turn the unit off immediately if you hear the flapping sound. Otherwise the tape will shred and we’ll lose all our commercials.”

  I tried to hide my dismay. The cellophane tape obviously had dried up under the heat of the machine’s internal works. It wasn’t hard to imagine this happening on a regular basis. Plus, there were other problems I could anticipate right away. First, there was no remote control and the unit was three feet behind the broadcast position. Meaning that when you went to commercial, you had to close your microphone, slide back on your roller chair, and locate the start button. That had to take at least a second. Then, the sliding dial had minuscule markings and didn’t click firmly into position. So you might think you were playing J3 when in reality you were playing J2. You could jiggle the dial over to the proper spot, but if it wasn’t aligned precisely, you got muffled sound at half-volume. But these were things Webb had to deal with daily so he must have been aware of them.