Radio Memories Vol. 11

One of the hallmarks of medium and small market radio in the early 60s was small block programming elements.  Typically these consisted of News, Weather, Sports, Lost Pets, Police Reports, and a “Swap and Shop” block. By the time I started at WCOS, the Police Reports, normally a list of arrests in the previous day had been dropped and lost pets had transitioned from a scheduled programming block to announcements by the DJ on the air as they were needed. 

AT WCOS, News and weather were broadcast twice an hour; for half an hour and at 5 minutes before the hour. The thinking was that by doing the news 5 minutes before the hour, we would be starting the next music block at the same time our competition was just starting the news, giving us an edge in holding off the button pushers who were looking for music. To enhance that effect, we would always come out of the news with a “kicker,” a high-energy song from the Top 10 of the current week’s survey. 

Another programming block was Sports, a quick 60-second report of the sports headlines at 10 minutes (and 40 minutes) after the hour. It had a produced jingle opening and music bed over which the announcer read the sports headlines. When the bed faded out, it was time to move on to the next record. These reports were always a challenge for me because I did not have time to pre-read the report that I ripped off the AP teletype. Tennis was my bugaboo because of all the foreign names. I also came across another word, actually a well-known sports name, that I had trouble with, Arnold Palmer.  It had something to do with the fact that “Arnold” requires you to move your tongue to the back of your mouth and “Palmer” requires you to move it forward. Sorry Arnie! As for the names of the international tennis players, forget it. 

At 15 minutes after and 15 minutes before the hour, we did the weather report which was always followed by a “Solid Gold” record. Oldies weren’t a thing then but records that had been on the chart and fallen off the chart in the previous years were played at that time. What was solid gold 5 years ago then is still solid gold over 50 years ago now.

On Monday through Friday at 7 PM WCOS aired a telephone talk block, one of the first in town. It was hosted by a young attorney, David Fedor, who was just establishing his law practice. He would take calls from the public and discuss whatever was on their minds. This was the only show on WCOS that had a delay in deleting any of “George Carlen’s 7 words you can’t say on the radio.” We strung a tape through two of the Maggie tape recorders in the studio, recording David from the FM studio on the top one and playing back from the bottom one. This gave us a 7-second delay that we rarely had to use. David’s law practice grew rapidly and he had to give up the show. We replaced it with the “Joe Pyne” syndicated talk show. Joe’s show was interesting in that if he disagreed with a guest, he would not hesitate to ridicule said guest.  

Speaking of “George Carlen’s 7 words you can’t say on the radio,” imagine my surprise when I sat down in 2010 to do my first regular WUSC-FM Alumni DJ show to see them taped to the window behind the audio console in the Master Control Room with the warning that you may not say these words on the air. My first thought was “Rut-Roh, what a terrible thing to do to an old-school DJ who tends to read aloud anything in front of him or her when caught with nothing to say.“  So far, I’ve dodged that bullet. But you never can tell. 

There was one more block element that was played at certain times of the day; Monday through Saturday from 2 AM until 5 AM and from 9 AM until Noon, Swap and Shop! During those hours, the 1 and a half to two-minute Swap and Shop segments aired at 12 and 20 minutes after the hour and 42 and 50 minutes before the hour.  Swap and Shop was voiced by Dottie Lloyd who would come into the station, along with her producer/engineer Chris Craft, several times a week. 

They recorded 12 episodes onto a reel-to-reel tape that we played off of one of the four Magnecord (Maggie) PT6-A tape decks in Master Control.  Anyone who has ever worked with one of these machines will tell you that you really had to be careful when you put a Maggie in rewind. It felt like the reels approached supersonic speeds, and because there was no auto-stop feature on the machine, it could chew up a foot of tape as it came off the reel, if you didn’t slow it down as it approached the end of the tape. There were always pieces of audio tape lying around any studio that used Maggies. 

Even today, people fondly remember Dottie. I often get asked what she was like. She was a sweet mature lady unfortunately burdened with a voice that sounded much older than her years. But that was perfect for a Swap and Shop show. She always started off her segment with the words “I have a(n)” and then announced her first item for sale along with the price and the phone number of the seller. In the case of a “swap” deal, she would also announce the item that the, in this case, swapper wanted to trade for. At the end of the segment, she would ask the audience if they had anything they wanted to sell or trade to send a postcard to Dottie Lloyd, care of WCOS, and our address in the Cornell Arms Apartment Building. Our receptionist, who sorted our mail, would leave those postcards in Dottie’s cubby hole in the DJ room. 

I would be remiss if I didn’t share one unfortunate “Swap and Shop” incident. One of her segments started with Dottie saying “I have an old chest” in her best matronly voice. When I heard that, I thought; “Oh no! She Didn’t!” Immediately all three studio telephone lines lit up despite the fact that it was 3 in the morning. It didn’t settle down for 15 minutes. I left a note for the mid-day announcer warning him. In all the years she was on the air that was the only time she made a mistake. I wish I could say the same.  

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Photo Credits: 
The "Maggie": https://www.wrti.com/wrtifrien...