June 3 Radio History

➦In 1940...WPG-AM, Atlantic City, New Jersey, consolidated with WBIL-AM and WOV-AM to become the "New" WOV-AM.

WPG, "The Voice Of The World's Play Ground", originally signed on January 3, 1925. Owned by the municipality of Atlantic City, they had no trouble finding public property to house the station.

WPG cost the city $13,000, but since it promised millions of dollars in publicity, the management felt comfortable exaggerating the figure to $50,000.

During the summer of 1927, WPG hired popular announcer Norman Brokenshire, who quickly became a local celebrity tooling around the "World's Play Ground" in a blue-and-orange Packard.

He broadcast from the glass-enclosed "Marine Studio" at the Steel Pier and once lowered a mike from the booth to allow the world to hear the ocean waves.

Almost every club and hotel provided a venue for WPG's broadcasts, and in 1929, the station was granted permission to sell commercial time.

In May 1929, the facilities were moved to the newly opened Convention Hall, with the "Neptune" and "Marine" studios, and a listening room, open to the public.

In 1931, under economic difficulties associated with the Depression, WPG joined the Columbia Network. The network leased the station, assumed the operating costs and shared the profits with Atlantic City. The affiliation lasted until 1935 and yielded no profit.

Starting in 1928, WPG shared time with WLWL (later WBIL) from Kearney on 1100 (see below). However, by 1935, WLWL was seeking full-time hours on the frequency.

The Federal Radio Commission (FRC) cited both stations on a failure to reach an agreement on their time-sharing and granted only a temporary license renewal to both of them.

By July 1938, WPG had become a burden to the city government, with the station adding $10,000 to its annual debt.

Despite protests from the Atlantic City business community, the station was sold for $275,000, and 1100 AM was taken over by WBIL.   

Programming on WBIL consisted mainly of Italian language shows.

On January 3, 1940, WBIL was dissolved into WOV.  WOV would eventually become WADO 1280 AM.

Today, Talk WPGG 1450 AM brands itself as WPG.

➦In 1946...Mutual Radio debuted “The Casebook of Gregory Hood” starring Gale Gordon, as a summer replacement series for Sherlock Holmes. ‘Hood’ was popular enough to win its own time slot in the fall, and continued for three years.  A variety of other radio veterans played musical chairs with the title role, including George Petrie, Elliott Lewis, Jackson Beck and Martin Gabel.

➦In 1949...singer/songwriter Hank Williams made his last appearance on Shreveport’s “Louisiana Hayride” radio show before moving to Nashville.

➦In 1949...the last episode of “The Admiral Broadway Revue” aired. The first comedy variety program on television ran only 7 episodes, and starred Sid Caesar & Imogene Coca. The program had aired Friday nights simultaneously on NBC TV & Dumont.

➦In 1949…Dragnet (with Jack Webb as Sgt. Joe Friday) first KFI in Los Angeles.  It went national on NBC Radio a month later and continued through 1957; it began on TV in December 1951.

Dragnet enacted the cases of a dedicated Los Angeles police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, and his partners. The show takes its name from the police term "dragnet", meaning a system of coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects.

Dragnet is perhaps the most famous and influential police procedural drama in media history. The series gave audience members a feel for the boredom and drudgery, as well as the danger and heroism, of police work. Dragnet earned praise for improving the public opinion of police officers.

Actor and producer Jack Webb's aims in Dragnet were for realism and unpretentious acting. He achieved both goals, and Dragnet remains a key influence on subsequent police dramas in many media.

➦In 1975...Radio, TV personality and producer Ozzie Nelson lost his battle with liver cancer at age 69. After leading his own dance band & being musical director for radio’s Red Skelton Show, he got his own radio sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet in 1944, which he transferred successfully to TV in 1952.

➦In 1993...NYC Personality Bob Fitzsimmons died at 53.  He was the morning man on WNEW-AM from 1989 until the station's demise in late 1992.  He began his broadcasting career in 1962 as an assistant to Ted Brown and William B. Williams at WNEW.

He appeared as the character Trevor Traffic with the team of Gene Klavin and Bob Finch.  Bob later appeared on WRKL in Rockland County, NY, WFMJ in Youngstown, Ohio, and WPEN in Philadelphia.  From 1970-73 he was a talk show host for WHN in New  York before returning to WNEW.  Before returing to WNEW in 1989 he was a talk show host and announcer for WABC.

➦In 2005...Infinity Broadcasting changed formats of two of the country's most notable Oldies-formatted stations: WCBS 101.1 FM in New York and WJMK 104.3 FM in Chicago. 

Both stations adopted the "Jack" format while the former Oldies FM stations were moved to online versions. In New York WCBS-FM was renamed "101.1 Jack FM" and in Chicago, WJMK-FM became "104.3 Jack FM.

The "Jack" format experiment at WCBS-FM is widely regarded, inside and outside the industry, as one of the greatest failures in modern New York radio history, as the station fell to the very bottom of the ratings of full-market-coverage FM stations in the New York market.

CBS Radio dropped the Jack Format on HD1 on July 9, 2007 and resumed ‘oldies’ under a Classic Hits umbrella.

On March 9, 2011, CBS announced that on March 14, beginning at 1:04 p.m., WJMK would switch to a classic hits format known as "K-Hits", dropping the Jack FM format and brand. The change marked the station's return to an updated version of the oldies format it dropped in 2005.

➦In 2016…Former WBCN disc jockey Mark Parenteau, who was a force on the Boston airwaves for more than 20 years but saw his career and life go off the rails after he was arrested for having sex with a 14-year-old boy, died after a long illness. He was 66.

Parenteau had one of the most successful radio careers in Boston history, with a 20-year run, first on the former WCOZ then spending 19 years as the afternoon-drive talent on WBCN. But his 2004 arrest for having sex with a minor marked the end of his days on the air.

A Worcester native, Parenteau began his career at 15 on WORC-AM in his hometown. He worked at WLLH in Lowell and WKNR and WABX in Detroit before returning home to Massachusetts, first landing at WCOZ before finally getting his dream job at WBCN.

During his 19-year reign, Parenteau was instrumental in breaking musical acts like Bob Seger and the J. Geils Band. He pioneered live remote broadcasting techniques and became “The Honorary Dean of Boston Comedy,” spotlighting dozens of up-and-coming comedians on his show.