December 14 Radio History

➦In 1877...Ernst Werner von Siemens received a patent for improving the performance of Thomas A Edison's loudspeaker.  He was a German electrical engineer, inventor and industrialist. Siemens's name has been adopted as the SI unit of electrical conductance, the siemens. He was also founded of the electrical and telecommunications company Siemens.

➦In 1908...Actor/comedian Morey Amsterdam was born in Chicago.  While he was featured on NBC Radio’s weekend Monitor programming in the 50’s & 60’s, and had his own show in the earliest days of the TV era, he will always be best remembered as Buddy Sorrell on The Dick Van Dyke Show.  He died after a heart attack Oct 27, 1996 at age 87.

➦In 1942...Onetime New York City personality, Dave Herman, was born. Most notably heard on WNEW-FM and WXRK-FM.

Dave Herman

Herman began his career at WHTG in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and then moved on to become WMMR's first rock DJ. His show, dubbed The Marconi Experiment, debuted on April 29, 1968. The first song played on the show was "Flying" by The Beatles. He then moved to WABC-FM, which would later become WPLJ.

Most notably, he later became the morning drive host on WNEW FM, where he was the morning host from 1972 to 1982, 1986 to 1991 and then again from 1996 until the station dissolved in 1998. He was one of the station’s best-known voices.  He was included on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of notable disc jockeys.

In 2013, Herman was arrested at the airport in Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, after going there from his vacation home in the area. The criminal complaint stated he expected to meet a woman and her six-year-old daughter, who he allegedly believed was being brought for a sexual encounter with him. He was charged with transportation with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.

Herman died of an aneurysm on May 28, 2014, in Essex County Jail in Newark, NJ, while awaiting trial. He was 78.

➦In 1953...WWRL 105.1 FM in NYC signed on. Station is now iHeartMedia's WWPR.

The station was co-owned with WWRL 1600 AM by radio enthusiast William Reuman.  The call sign was changed to WRFM in October 1957, breaking away from the AM simulcast with a diversified and classical music format.

According to Wikiwand, Bonneville International, the broadcast arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, purchased WRFM in 1967. The following year, WRFM, billing itself as "Stereo 105," adopted a beautiful music format.  Ratings for the station were good, and for a couple of times, WRFM was the top-rated FM station in New York.  The station's ratings continued to be strong, but by 1985, the easy listening audience was starting to age and was not as attractive to advertisers. On April 17, 1986, the station switched to a gold-based adult contemporary format with the call letters WNSR, for New York's Soft Rock.  WNSR focused on songs from the 1960s and 1970s, with some 1980s titles and a moderate amount of current adult contemporary songs as well. Initially, the station's ratings were modest. However, once AC competitor 103.5 WYNY went to a country music format, WNSR's ratings went up.

By 1990, the station became known as "Mix 105", and shifted to more of a hot adult contemporary format, focusing on 1970s, 1980s and current hits, with only a few 1960s titles. By April 1992, when the station changed its call letters to WMXV, the 1960s hits were gone, and more recent music was added.  On November 13, 1996, the Hot AC format at WMXV abruptly ended, the station switched formats to an adult-friendly Modern AC format as WDBZ ("The Buzz").

On August 5, 1997, with ratings on the decline, the call sign changed back to WNSR. The original plan was for the station to drop the "Buzz" format in favor of an oldies-based AC format, playing songs from 1964 to current hits. Bonneville sold the station to Chancellor Media, which also owned WHTZ, WLTW, WKTU, and WAXQ.

Gradually, from September through November 1997, the station returned to HotAC, and then Mainstream AC. For the next few months, the station would simply be known on-air as "FM 105.1", and only used the WNSR call sign for the legal IDs.

On January 21, 1998, at 6:30 p.m., the station relaunched as "Big 105," with the call letters WBIX.

Initially, Big 105 was musically very close to WLTW, but evolved to a HotAC format by that May, similar to what WPLJ was playing at the time. WBIX also added Danny Bonaduce of The Partridge Family TV show fame as its morning show host.

On December 10, 1998, at 6 p.m., the station flipped to then-growing "Jammin' Oldies" format, and branded as "Jammin' 105." On March 1, 1999, WBIX changed call letters to WTJM, in order to match the "Jammin'" branding. The station played rhythmic and dance pop hits of the mid-1960s through the 1980s. TV comedian Jay Thomas was hired for morning drive time. WTJM did better in the ratings than the previous format, and its results initially challenged those of longtime oldies station WCBS-FM.

Chancellor merged with Capstar Broadcasting to form AMFM Inc. in 1999. Then, in 2000, Clear Channel Communications merged with AMFM Inc., giving WTJM and the other four stations a new owner. Under Clear Channel (now iHeartMedia), WTJM evolved into an urban oldies direction, and then to an urban adult contemporary format, while keeping the "Jammin' 105" moniker.

At 6:05 a.m. on March 14, 2002, the station abruptly changed, as it flipped to its current mainstream urban format as WWPR-FM "Power 105.1." A speculated reason for the format change is that while they could not beat competitor WQHT Hot 97, they could take enough ratings away from them to keep them from being number one, which would leave WWPR's sister station WLTW as the number one station in the market, after battling WQHT for top honors.

➦In 1959…Billboard magazine reported the record industry’s practice of payoffs to disc jockeys and radio station music directors was all but dead, after it was exposed in the government’s “payola” investigation.

➦In 1977..."Saturday Night Fever," premiered in New York City. It was a huge commercial success. The film significantly helped to popularize disco music around the world and made John Travolta, already well known from his role on TV's Welcome Back, Kotter, a household name.

The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, featuring disco songs by the Bee Gees, is one of the best-selling soundtracks of all time. The film showcased aspects of the music, the dancing, and the subculture surrounding the disco era: symphony-orchestrated melodies; haute couture styles of clothing; pre-AIDS sexual promiscuity; and graceful choreography.

➦In 1984...After 14 years in the booth, controversial sportscaster Howard Cosell retired from ABC-TV’s Monday Night Football.

Cosell was widely known for his blustery, cocksure personality. Cosell said of himself, "Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a showoff. There's no question that I'm all of those things." In its obituary for Cosell, The New York Times described Cosell's impact on American sports coverage: "He entered sports broadcasting in the mid-1950s, when the predominant style was unabashed adulation, [and] offered a brassy counterpoint that was first ridiculed, then copied until it became the dominant note of sports broadcasting."

On radio, Cosell did his show, Speaking of Sports on 77 WABC, as well as sports reports and updates for affiliated radio stations around the country; he continued his radio duties even after he became prominent on television. Cosell then became a sports anchor at WABC-TV in New York, where he served in that role from 1961 to 1974. He expanded his commentary beyond sports to a radio show entitled "Speaking of Everything".

Cosell rose to prominence covering boxer Muhammad Ali, starting when he still fought under his birth name, Cassius Clay. The two seemed to be friends despite their very different personalities, and complemented each other in broadcasts. Cosell was one of the first sportscasters to refer to the boxer as Muhammad Ali after he changed his name and supported him when he refused to be inducted into the military.

He was diagnosed with cancer in 1991 and had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in his chest. He also had several minor strokes, and was diagnosed with heart and kidney disease and Parkinson's. Cosell died in a New York City hospital on April 23, 1995, aged 77, of a cardiac embolism.

John Gruedel

➦In 2001…Radio and television producer John Guedel died at age 88.

He first brought Ozzie & Harriet to weekly radio comedy, and produced ‘You Bet Your Life’ for Groucho Marx and ‘People Are Funny’ for Art Linkletter. In 1956 TV Guide reported that he was producing as many as 25 half-hour radio and television shows a week.

His broadcasting achievements are said to include radio's first singing commercial in 1937, or at least the first one that went beyond a jingle like Jack Benny's famous ''J-E-L-L-O.'' He was also the first to present colorful characters as quiz show contestants, and the first who regularly involved the studio audience in game shows.

He then did a variety of radio work, including writing weekly dramas for a show sponsored by Forest Lawn Memorial Park, a cemetery.

Groucho Marx

In 1942 the show became ''People Are Funny,'' and Linkletter became master of ceremonies. It ran for 19 years on NBC, moving from radio to television in 1954.

In 1945 Guedel helped transform an afternoon variety show Mr. Linkletter had been doing in San Francisco into ''House Party,'' which ran for 25 years on CBS, moving to television in 1952.

On April 27, 1947, Guedel was producing a show sponsored by the Walgreen drugstore chain. Bob Hope and Groucho Marx were supposed to read a script, but Marx started ad-libbing, and Hope threw his script on the floor and joined in.

Guedel later asked Marx if he could be so spontaneously witty all the time. Marx responded that it would be almost impossible not to be. This resulted in ''You Bet Your Life,'' in which quiz questions were secondary to Marx's verbal jousting.

➦In 2005...Walter A. Schwartz - former GM at Musicradio 77WABC died.

Walter A Schwartz

He served as a Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps during World War II and again with the Air Force during the Korean War. Schwartz began his career in radio with WWJ in Detroit and then moved to New York where he became General Manager of WABC. In 1967, Wally was named President of the ABC Radio Network. During his administration, ABC adopted its unique four network programming plan which transformed the organization into the nation's largest and most profitable network.

In 1972 he was named President of ABC Television where he oversaw the ABC Television Network, ABC Sports and ABC Entertainment.  In 1975, he joined the John Blair Company as president of it's television stations and then became President and CEO of Blair Television from which he retired in 1986.

➦In 2006…Ahmet Ertegun died at age, he was co-founder of Atlantic Records. Ertegun helped shape the careers of John Coltrane, Ray Charles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and many others.

➦In 2017...the FCC rolled back the far-reaching net neutrality rules of the Obama administration, rules governing how internet-service providers treat traffic on their networks, a move that was likely to empower cable and wireless providers and transform consumers’ online experience.

Joyce Vincent-Wilson is 76

🎂HAPPY BIRTHDAYS:

• Singer-actor Abbe Lane is 91. 
• Actor Hal Williams (“227,” ″Sanford and Son”) is 88. 
• Actor-singer Jane Birkin (“Death on the Nile,” “Evil Under the Sun”) is 76. 
• Singer Joyce Vincent-Wilson of Tony Orlando and Dawn is 76. 
• Actor Dee Wallace (“E.T.”) is 74. 
• Bassist Cliff Williams of AC/DC is 73. 
• Actor T.K. Carter (“The Corner,” “Punky Brewster”) is 66. 
• Singer-guitarist Mike Scott of The Waterboys is 64. 
• Singer-whistle player Peter “Spider” Stacy of The Pogues is 64. 
• Actor Cynthia Gibb (TV’s “Fame”) is 59. 
• Actor Nancy Valen (“Baywatch”) is 57. 
• Actor Archie Kao (“Chicago P.D.”) is 53. 
• Actor Natascha McElhone (TV’s “Californication,” film’s “The Truman Show”) is 53. 
• Actor Michaela Watkins (“Trophy Wife,” ″The New Adventures of Old Christine”) is 51. 
• Actor Miranda Hart (“Call the Midwife”) is 50. 
• Singer Brian Dalyrimple of Soul for Real is 47. 
• Actor KaDee Strickland (“Private Practice”) is 47. 
• Actor Jackson Rathbone (“Twilight” movies) is 38
• Actor Vanessa Hudgens is 34. Singer Tori Kelly is 30.

✞DEATH ANNIVERSARIES

• Baseball Hall of Famer Roger Maris died on this day in 1985. He was 51.
• Lawrence of Arabia actor Peter O'Toole died on this day in 2013. He was 81.
• George Washington, the first U.S. president, died on this day in 1799. He was 67.