October 7 in Radio History

In 1939…The drama series "Kate Hopkins, Angel of Mercy," starring Helen Lewis, Peggy Allenby, Constance Collier, and Clayton "Bud" Collyer began a 2½-year run on CBS Radio.


In 1940…"Portia Faces Life," starring Lucille Wall, debuted on the CBS Radio Network after starting in syndication seven months earlier. The soap opera bounced back and forth between CBS and NBC until 1953.


In 1952...The Philadelphia dance show Bandstand , hosted by Bob Horn and, later, by Dick Clark as American Bandstand , debuts on WFIL-TV.

In 1966...WOR 98.7 FM New York, which has been broadcasting top-40 music without deejays since late July, begins broadcasting with personalities. The DJs are Murray (the K) Kaufman, Scott Muni, Johnny Michaels and Bill (Rosko) Mercer. Robert S. Smith, vice president of the WOR, said the station was negotiating with the union, which wanted the new FM deejays to be paid on the same scale as WOR-AM announcers. The station wanted a lower scale for the FM people, because the operation is beginning from scratch. The minimum weekly salary for performers on WOR-FM will be $175 per week, a little less than half the scale applying to WOR-AM. Murray The K was formerly the teen DJ for WINS, New York before it went all-news last year. Scott Muni was with WABC radio until he was fired in January of ‘65.


In 1970...Intel introduces computer memory chip.


In 1988....WNBC 660 AM's final transmission took place and WFAN moved from 1050 AM to 660 AM. Concurrently, WUKQ began on 1050 AM.

In November 1987, General Electric, which now owned NBC through its purchase of RCA two years earlier, announced that it would sell off the NBC Radio division. In February of that year GE made a multi-station deal with Emmis Communications and, in New York, the WNBC license for 660 was included in the sale. Emmis announced it would move WFAN to the 660 frequency. At the time, WFAN was located at 1050 AM, and had a somewhat marginal signal in portions of the New York area. As the deal only included the license for WNBC and not the station's intellectual property, GE would proceed to shut down the station for good.



On October 7, 1988 at 5:30 pm, the WFAN call letters, studios, programming and staff moved to WNBC's old frequency at 660 AM, which has a much better signal.




Earlier in the day, the station aired a 90-minute retrospective titled "WNBC-The First 66 Years," hosted by Dale Parsons. The program was written and produced by Parsons and his wife, Ginny, who spent nearly six months researching the station's history.



The last voice heard on WNBC was that of Alan Colmes, who said "I'm Alan Colmes. Thank you, God bless you, and for the last time, this is 66 WNBC New York. Let's do the countdown." and counted down the seconds to WNBC's demise with the legendary NBC chimes (the notes G-E-C) playing in the background.



Earlier in the day, regular music programming ended at 6 am; Jay Sorenson played "Imagine" by John Lennon followed by the NBC chimes and a 5-second pause.  Although the FCC regards the 660 frequency as the same license dating back to WEAF, and merely changed its calls from WNBC to WFAN on that day, WFAN does not claim WNBC's history. It did, however, sign up Imus to take Greg Gumbel's place in the morning. Imus would remain on the morning drive-time slot for 19 years, until his firing in 2007 for comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. He moved to WABC near the end of that year.

In the complicated switch that saw WFAN move to the 660 frequency, the 1050 frequency that was formerly the home of WFAN became that of Spanish-language WUKQ, owned by Spanish Broadcasting System. However, SBS already owned an AM station in the market, Newark-based WSKQ at 620 kHz, and at the time, FCC rules stipulated that companies could own only one AM station per market. As a result, SBS received a temporary waiver to run 1050 while exploring the sale of either AM frequency. SBS chose to keep 620 (it is now WSNR), and 1050 was traded to Forward Communications, which owned WEVD, then at 97.9 FM. After that deal was approved, WEVD's call letters and programming moved to 1050 AM, and SBS took over 97.9 as WSKQ-FM. The October NBC-Emmis switch also saw Emmis's WQHT (then at 103.5 MHz) move to 97.1 MHz, which had been the home of NBC's WYNY. Emmis sold the 103.5 frequency to Westwood One, who also acquired the WYNY call letters and its country music format.

In all this, WFAN retired two of the oldest radio call letters from the dawn of commercial radio: WHN and WNBC.


In 1989...Radio talk show host Larry King married Julie Alexander

In 1989...The Hot 100..After peaking at #4 on March 25 and then dropping out of the Top 10, Paula Abdul completed an amazing run to the top with her album Forever Your Girl, in its 64th week of release.  Girl You Know It's True by Milli Vanilli was toppled and Steel Wheels, the best Rolling Stones album in well over a decade, was #3.  New Kids On the Block were Hangin' Tough at #4 and Motley Crue had #5 with Dr. Feelgood.

The rest of the Top 10:  Full Moon Fever from Tom Petty, the self-titled Skid Row, Repeat Offender, the great album by Richard Marx, was #8, Aerosmith moved from 23 to 9 with Pump and Fine Young Cannibals were down with The Raw & the Cooked.


In 2005...Tracey Miller of brain cancer at age 51. Miller and Terri-Rae Elmer co-hosted KFI's TNT in the Morning, the first morning-drive show in a major market to feature two women in the lead roles. One reason KFI "took the risk" of putting a female team on in the morning was because it "was something different," the station's management said at the time.