Retro Radio - Classic radio air checks from the 70s and 80s

Welcome to "The Wake Up Service." This brief morning show sample features a promo for The Prize Machine.You may notice some production similarities to The Last Contest. Well... "similarities" as in the phasing of the VO and contestant montage. Our prizes were a bit less awe inspiring. The news sounder from American Contemporary News (ABC) and Howard Cosell are also part of this memory.

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As Blair Broadcasting kept bouncing me between WFLA AM and FM this day I'm doing afternoon drive on WFLA AM. Complete with lightning static it features traffic with Gary McHenry. There was a collapse at the Sunshine Skyway new bridge construction.

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This has some various bits on different days that April, and then several breaks from around income tax day.

At 22:15 you are treated to The Highway 19 Blues, a parody song I wrote and "sang". (well.. I tried) Highway 19 was the biggest traffic nightmare daily so it was appropriate for this afternoon drive shift.

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Mid-day show. It's sort of refreshing because not much was happening in news. There are clips of 1981 commercials and jingles. (Remember those?) The contest giveaways were tickets to the Gulf Coast Air Show at St. Pete Clearwater International airport.

Fun fact: Back before the airline deregulation there used to be flights from St. Pete to Tampa!

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A rare full show (6:00 - 10:00) morning aircheck featuring, Lee Hall with news, Tedd Webb spots and Gary McHenry traffic. The big news is of Geraldine Ferraro being nominated for VP. Sports has talk of MLB possibly coming to Tampa after selling back a large share of the Minnesota Twins. Tilapia (which we don't know how to pronounce) is introduced as an invasive fish in Florida. Classic 1984 commercials include 5 cent oysters at one restaurant and loud car spots.

On air listener contests for Adventure Island tickets include "Yesterday's Horoscope, Stump The Staff and What's Your Line?"

The Tampa Bay area was in a severe drought. Listeners calling in for the "Mystery Personality" contest contributed their unusual methods of conserving water. This day also includes the CBS top of the hour time tone. I took great pride in timing everything to exactly meet that every hour. Back-timing records to have a "cold" ending to hit the time tone is a lost art... as is radio network news.

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This was my first afternoon at K99 - WQYK. It was also the first (and only) country format station I ever worked for. I don't like country music, so I'd turn the monitors off when the music was playing. Then I just did my usual stuff at the breaks. Ironically I was #1 in the Tampa market and after two years I had elevated to being one of the highest rated country DJs in the country. (I still got fired... mor on that later. )

This old malfunctioning cassette doesn't have a lot of content. I was just settling in to an unfamiliar format. The circus is at the old Bayfront Arena in St. Petersburg, Rita Ciccarillo does news and I try to give away the "Cash Call" jackpot. You will hear the cassette die at the end. It's sort of prophetic. The GM argued with me about the spelling of the Howard FranklanD bridge and thought I was a smart ass, so a week later he fired me, Super Bowl weekend of 1984. (the first Tampa Super Bowl)

Friday morning and it's foggy. J. Paul Emerson has news, Brian Brewer is doing traffic for Gary McHenry and the area is under sever drought conditions. (Sounds familiar.) This demonstrates station branding at the excess. Blair Broadcasting programmer insisted on the station ID starting every break. And that meant the whole brand "93FM/WFLA FM". Telescoped like this it gets repetitive, but if you had the full song sets in place it makes sense.

I announced the winner of a Circus World VIP package. (remember that theme park?) But the call to the winner doesn't go as planned. (If a strange man answers, hang up.)

As we get ready for the start of the 2026 Winter Olympics, let's go back to the day after the 1984 Summer Olympics. This air check features Gary McHenry (who is almost co-hosting with me) Tedd Webb discusses the '84 Olympics and Major League Baseball deciding on expansion (not), plus evening talk host Paul Gonzalez teases the legal discussion coming up that night.

Since this is a real recording of the air signal it includes static from afternoon lightning strikes!

What do you remember about the 70's? That's the question on the talk show segment "People Radio" that I originated weekday evenings from 9:00 to Midnight. One thing to remember is that talk radio was much more difficult in those early days. Callers didn't have cell phones, so they literally had to pull over to a phone booth or call from home. Plus the notoriously cheap WLW didn't have an 800 number so the callers from the 38 state audience had to pay for the call! (I also had no phone "screener", and no engineer, so I ran everything in addition to being the host. When my contract ran out they replaced me with a host who had all of that!)

Sorry for the poor audio quality at the end of this recording. The 1979 cassette was going bad.

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