Re: memories of 'RKO

[Dan Strassberg <dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net>]

At 06:40 AM 5/14/97 +0000, you wrote:
>
>A point of trivia-- somebody asked about when WBMS became WILD.  It was
>their owners, Bartell, which did it.  The call letters, interestingly
>enough, belonged to Bartell's station in New Orleans, which they changed to
>WYDE... this was in 1957.
>
The New Orleans stations was (and I think, still is) WYLD. I even once heard
a caller to a Boston talk show, many years ago, ask the host whether the FCC
could assign the same calls to two different stations. The caller said that
he had just returned from a visit to New Orleans and had heard a "WILD" down
there. The talk-show host corrected the caller and said that it might have
sounded like WILD but was actually WYLD. (Little did either of them know
what would happen 30 or so years hence; WYLD is an AM, I'm pretty sure. Even
now, there could not be a second WILD on AM.) WYDE was (and maybe still is)
an AM (on 850) in Birminham, AL.

Does anyone else remember the on-air promotions that Bartell did for WILD
before the top-40 format was inaugurated? They bought spots on a number of
other Boston AMs. I presume the spots were purchased by a third party or
under an assumed name, because I doubt that the other stations would have
accepted the advertising from a competitor in those days. The spots featured
a very sultry female voice saying "Everyone in _old_ Boston is going
wild,wild,wild,wild...." All of the "wild"s were concatenated so closely
that they must have had to edit the tape to remove the brief pauses between
the words. The "wild" part was also whispered. Very provocative! And no
mention whatsover about what everyone was supposedly going wild over. Had
there been a mentions, I don't think the stations that carried the spots
would have accepted them. The last of these spots aired on the other
stations the night before WBMS took to the air with the new WILD calls.
Bartell, apparently, had been able to keep WBMS's new calls a secret until
the moment the station started using them.

One of the DJs at WILD had previously worked in New Orleans. I can't recall
his air name. I think I read in the Globe that he had just received his
degree as a _dentist_ from Lyola U of the South in New Orleans and had
financed his years in dental school by working as a DJ down there. A mistake
that he made on the air a couple of times was to call the Boston weather the
Crescent City weather. I hope he was more careful when he pulled teeth!

A hallmark of WILD's sound under Bartell was the use of female voices, which
were almost never heard on the Top 40 radio of the day. One was most likely
the same voice that had recorded the "wild,wild,wild,wild...." spots. I
think the female announcers did news. I don't recall them doing record
shows, but I may be wrong.

- -------------------------------
Dan Strassberg (Note: Address is CASE SENSITIVE!)
ALL _LOWER_ CASE!!!--> dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net
(617) 558-4205; Fax (617) 928-4205

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