Radio History: Dec 18

➦In 1890...Edwin Howard Armstrong was born in New York City. He was an early radio pioneer and also the inventor of FM, Frequency Modulation. A motorcycle visit to the Armstrong Tower in Alpine, NJ, the world's first FM radio tower.

Rather than varying ("modulating") the amplitude of a radio wave to encode an audio signal, the new method varied the frequency FM enabled the transmission and reception of a wider range of audio frequencies, as well as audio free of "static", a common problem in AM radio. (Armstrong received a patent on wide-band FM on December 26, 1933.

Edwin H Armstrong

In 1934 Armstrong began working for RCA at the request of the president of RCA, David Sarnoff. Sarnoff and Armstrong first met at a boxing match involving Jack Dempsey in 1920. At the time Sarnoff was a young executive with an interest in new technologies, including radio broadcasting. In the early 1920s Armstrong drove off with Sarnoff's secretary, Marion MacInnes, in a French sports car. Armstrong and MacInnes were married in 1923. While Sarnoff was understandably impressed with Armstrong's FM system, he also understood that it was not compatible with his own AM empire. Sarnoff came to regard FM as a threat and refused to support it any further.

From May 1934 until October 1935, Armstrong conducted the first large scale field tests of his FM radio technology from a laboratory constructed by RCA on the 85th floor of the Empire State Building. An antenna attached to the spire of the building fired radio waves at receivers about 80 miles away.  However RCA had its eye on television broadcasting, and chose not to buy the patents for the FM technology.  A June 17, 1936, presentation at FCC headquarters made headlines nationwide. He played a jazz record over conventional AM radio, then switched to an FM broadcast. "[I]f the audience of 50 engineers had shut their eyes they would have believed the jazz band was in the same room. There were no extraneous sounds," noted one reporter. He added that several engineers described the invention "as one of the most important radio developments since the first earphone crystal sets were introduced."

In 1937, Armstrong financed construction of the first FM radio station, W2XMN, a 40 kilowatt broadcaster in Alpine, New Jersey. The signal (at 42.8 MHz) could be heard clearly 100 miles away, despite the use of less power than an AM radio station.

➦In 1920...broadcaster Willis Conover was born in Buffalo. He was known as the man who “fought the Cold War with cool music.”  For 40 years he presented American jazz heard round the world on The Voice of America.  He died May 17 1996 at age 75.

➦In 1956...Former shortstop Phil Rizzuto signed-on to be a New York Yankee radio-TV play-by-play announcer, a job he held for 40 years.

➦In 1967...Radio Personality Scott Muni started at WNEW 102.7 FM NYC.

Born Donald Allen Muñoz in Wichita, Kansas, Muni grew up in New Orleans. He joined the United States Marine Corps and began broadcasting there in 1950, reading "Dear John" letters over Radio Guam. After leaving the Corps and having considered acting as a career, he began working as a disc jockey; in 1953 he began working at WSMB in New Orleans. In 1955 he began broadcasting at station WAKR in Akron, Ohio, and after that worked in Kankakee, Illinois.

Scott Muni

Muni then spent almost 50 years at stations in New York City. He became a Top 40 broadcaster at WMCA in the late 1950s, just before the start of their "Good Guys" era. In 1960, he moved to rival Top 40 station WABC. There, he did an early evening show called "Scotland's Yard" and was the first WABC DJ to capture the attention of the teenage audience the station would become famous for. He also participated in the competition to cover The Beatles on their first visits to the United States, and thus began a long association with them.

In 1965, Muni left WABC and ran the Rolling Stone Night Club while doing occasional fill-in work for WMCA. Muni had explored some opportunities beyond radio: he had recently co-hosted a local weekly television show on WABC-TV with Bruce "Cousin Brucie" Morrow.

In 1966, Muni joined WOR-FM, one of the earliest pioneers of freeform-based progressive rock radio. The notion did not last at that station, but in 1967 Muni moved to legendary rock station WNEW-FM, where the format really took hold. Muni stayed there for three decades as the afternoon DJ and sometimes program director. Muni was described by fellow WNEW-FM DJ Dennis Elsas as "the heart and soul of the place". Under assorted management changes during the 1990s WNEW-FM lost its way, and in 1998 Muni ended up as a one-hour noontime classic rock personality at WAXQ "Q104.3", where he worked until suffering a stroke in early 2004.

He died on September 28, 2004 at the age of 74 in New York City.  Muni was inducted into the Rock Radio Hall of Fame in the "Legends of Rock Radio-Programming" category for his work at WNEW in 2014. He was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2015.

➦In 1993...WNCN changed to active rock WAXQ in NYC

➦In 2010...Clay Cole died from a heart attack at age 72 (Born Albert Rucker Jr., January 1, 1938). He was a radio, TV personality host and disk jockey, best known for his eponymous television dance program, The Clay Cole Show, which aired in New York City on WNTA-TV and WPIX-TV from 1959 to 1968.

During the 1960s "British Invasion", musical acts arriving from the UK often appeared on Cole's television shows before doing network shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show. The Rolling Stones and The Who were among those who first appeared on Cole's television show.

➦In 2012…Global audience-measurement giant Nielsen, the dominant source of TV ratings, agreed to buy Arbitron for about $1.26 billion as they expanded into radio measurement.

➦In 2013...longtime Chicago ‘superjock’ Larry Lujack, who early in his career had a stint at KJR Seattle, succumbed to esophageal cancer at age 73. Lujack initially came to Chicago to work for WCFL-AM. He spent a few months there before being hired at WLS. While at WCFL, Lujack drew the air studio curtains during public visiting hours.

Larry Lujack

"Animal Stories" came about because WLS was still receiving farm magazines long after they went into Rock and Roll in 1960.

Lujack started reading some of them and began airing stories from them.

A perfectionist about his work, Lujack would review every word he said on the air after each broadcast by listening to a "skimmer" cassette tape.

First at WCFL-AM and later at WLS-AM, a clear-channel station that could be heard far beyond Chicago, Lujack — known on the air as Uncle Lar’ or Superjock — spent 20 years spinning records and spouting opinions.

He became famous for regular features including “Klunk Letter of the Day” and “Cheap and Trashy Showbiz Report.” His best-known feature, done in collaboration with his longtime on-air partner Tommy Edwards (“Li’l Snot-Nose Tommy,” Mr. Lujack fondly called him), was “Animal Stories.”

Growing directly from the farm reports Mr. Lujack had to give early in his career, the feature involved his reading comic news reports about animals — among them the tale of a chicken who lived on despite having parted company with his head days before — to an astonished Edwards.

Lujack’s style, which also included strategic pauses, audible paper-shuffling and grandiloquent references to himself in the third person, demonstrably shaped that of Rush Limbaugh, who in 1990 told The New York Times Magazine that Lujack was “the only person I ever copied.”

According to The NY Times, Larry Lee Blankenburg was born in 1940 in Quasqueton, Iowa, and reared in Caldwell, Idaho. At 18 he joined KCID-AM in Caldwell, adopting the surname of his idol, the Chicago Bears quarterback Johnny Lujack.

After working at stations in Idaho and Washington State, Lujack joined WCFL in 1967 and moved to WLS four months later. Except for a four-year stint back at WCFL, he remained with WLS for the next two decades.

In 1984 WLS gave Lujack a 12-year, $6 million contract, making him one of the country’s highest-paid radio personalities. (“I am not the least bit excited,” he was reported to have said.) But in 1987, amid declining ratings, the station’s corporate parent, Capital Cities-ABC, bought out his contract.

His honors include membership in the Illinois Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame (“It’s not Mount Rushmore,” he said on learning of his induction) and the National Radio Hall of Fame.

➦In 2017...ESPN announced the surprise resignation of network President John Skipper over substance-abuse issues.

Keith Richards is 81

🎂HAPPY BIRTHDAYS:

• Guitarist Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones is 81. 
• Director Steven Spielberg is 78. 
• Movie critic Leonard Maltin is 74. 
• Guitarist Elliot Easton of The Cars is 71. 
• Comedian Ron White is 68. 
• Singer Angie Stone is 63. 
• Actor Brad Pitt is 61. 
• Wrestler-actor Stone Cold Steve Austin (“Chain of Command”) is 60. 
• Actor Shawn Christian (“Summerland,” “Days of Our Lives”) is 59. 
• Actor Rachel Griffiths (“Brothers and Sisters,” ″Six Feet Under”) is 56. 
• Singer Alejandro Sanz is 56. 
• Actor Casper Van Dien (“Starship Troopers”) is 52. 
• Country singer Cowboy Troy is 54. 
• DJ Lethal of Limp Bizkit is 52. 
• Singer Sia (SEE’-ah) is 49. 
• Country singer Randy Houser is 48. 
• Actor Josh Dallas (“Manifest,” “Once Upon A Time”) is 46. 
• Actor Katie Holmes is 46. 
• Singer Christina Aguilera is 44. 
• Actor Ashley Benson (“Pretty Little Liars”) is 35. 
• Actor Bridgit Mendler (“Wizards of Waverly Place”) is 32. 
• Singer Billie Eilish is 23. 
• Actor Isabella Crovetti (“Vampirina”) is 20.

✞REMEMBRANCES:

• In 1977..Cyril Ritchard, Australian actor (Peter Pan; Hans Brinker), dies at 80
• In 1997..Chris Farley, American actor and comedian (SNL, Wayne's World, Coneheads), dies of a drug overdose at 33
• In 2016..Zsa Zsa Gabor, Hungarian-born American actress (Queen of Outer Space), dies at 99