Saturday Night Oldies on WABC

Something else I discovered on the big Zenith radio, besides coded messages to secret agents, the BBC, and spoken foreign languages, was New York City top-40 station WABC. And I know the exact date and approximate time: November 9, 1965 -- the night the power went off in New York and most of the Northeast -- between eight and nine in the evening.

It was a kick, at age twelve, to be in on something big via the radio. So much so that WABC became my night-time music station of choice.

If it appeared through the static before five in the evening, from 500 miles away, the rest of that night's listening was sure to be interference-free. I would wait for more "Ingram-isms" from afternoon deejay Dan Ingram ("I'm a Soul Man, said the shoemaker . . . ") listen through the Cousin Brucie and Chuck Leonard shows, and stay up if I could for Charlie Greer, to hear if there were any new commercials for Dennison's, the mysterious clothing store that stayed open until five in the morning, where money talked and no one walked, and where the till was always nil and in need of a fill.

Home was not always a nice safe place to be. Sometimes it was downright scary. But I had radio to get me through until I could leave.

In 1973, something got into the water. "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" by Bette Midler. A thirty year old song revived by a cartoon character. This was not a sign of good things to come. 1974 brought with it "The Night Chicago Died" and warnings of approaching disco. I was gone. After all, you couldn't listen to the same music, or the same radio station, all your life, could you?

WABC dropped music for talk on May 10, 1982. National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" aired a tribute. New York City oldies lovers went through a second "day the music died" on June 3, 2005, when WCBS-FM switched to the automated JACK adult hits format. The number one US radio market now had no oldies station.

The hi-JACKing of CBS-FM amounted to a declaration of war. The New York Radio Message Board's webmaster had to open a separate board to accommodate the anti-JACK postings.

Nature and radio dislike a vacuum, and on the last Wednesday in November 2005, word went out via the regular NYRMB that WABC would, beginning that Saturday, play oldies from 6 to 10 PM. On a trial basis, as an experiment, just to see what happens. Three days notice for the radio event of the year!

That was me posting two hours before air time, on the new Saturday Night Oldies board, for anyone who cared to know, that the off-air signal in Michigan was just fine and that everything was thumbs-up for six o'clock.

Radio historians have noted that the first song played on WABC's first music show in twenty three years was "Grazing In The Grass" by the Friends Of Distinction.

Tell an outsider all this, and you'll get the look that says "So? It's just a radio station."

Not this one.

WABC set the standard for top-40 radio. Stations throughout the world copied its sound. It got 25 percent rating shares. With over sixty choices, one of four radios in New York City at any given time was tuned to 770 on the AM dial.

For someone who grew up loving music, songs on the radio can serve as a timeline on which important events; graduations, anniversaries, vacations, can be placed. From July 1960 to May 1982 -- from Ike through Beatlemania through Vietnam to Watergate and Reaganomics; from Ricky Nelson to Rick Springfield -- WABC provided the songs.

"The soundtrack of your life" is a cliché, but such phrases become clichés because no other words work better.

The same New Yorkers to whom music again on WABC meant so much also went wild over the Mets in their inaugural 1962 season -- in which they were worse than awful -- so glad were they to have National League baseball back and someone besides the Yankees to root for.

On December 3 2007, the experiment celebrated its second anniversary. New York City radio veteran Mark Simone has been SNO's only host. He has filled in for Rush and Sean Hannity, and local talk host Mark Levin, and has his own talk show on Saturday mornings. Before WABC, he was a deejay on New York adult contemporary WPIX, and pop standards WNEW.

New technology compliments old. Listeners to a station in the obsolete AM broadcast band can post to a message board and hear what they've written read minutes later on the air. If I could have done this while Dan Ingram was on, I'd still be talking about it.

Since SNO has been on, WABC's audience share from 6 to 10 PM on Saturday nights has increased by an estimated 300 per cent.
The wedding of message board and live program prove it's possible to breathe life into a medium -- over-the-air AM radio -- that many say is dying.

On each Saturday closest to SNO's anniversary date, listeners who live in New York City meet over lunch. At the first such gathering in 2006, host Mark Simone and his producer Frank Morano were honored as Men Of The Year for bringing music back to WABC.

WABC's Saturday Night Oldies Show also has its own Yahoo group.

People who didn't previously know each other, who met on the message board, have become an informal extended family. SNO-Boarders have taken on their own identities. One was studying for a Latin exam when the lights went off in 1965. Another lives in Tokyo where it's Sunday morning when Saturday Night Oldies is on. Another loves horses. And there's Monsieur Tom who never passes up an opportunity to write in French.