A fun trivia question

[Dan Strassberg]

Mac Richmond didn't invent the phrase "color radio" by a longshot. I went to
college in New York's Capital District from September 1952 to May 1956.
Around 1954, WTRY Troy was sold to a group from Providence RI that already
owned WEAN there. WTRY promptly dropped the enormously popular and
profitable CBS Radio affiliation for Albany-Schenectady-Troy and became an
independent station. Even before then, they staged a BIG promotion "WTRY is
now broadcasting in Color Radio." I think the only new equipment the station
bought were some new cartridges for the turntables. (I guess they also had
to buy kits to add the 45-RPM speed to the 33-1/3-78 RPM tables because the
Color Eadio promotion more-or-less coincided with the record industry shift
to 45 RPM.) As at WMEX some four years later, the Color Radio promotion was
PURE unadulterated hype, but it was just as successful in the Capital
District as it was here. Everybody was talking about it and the phones at
the station rang off the hook with listeners calling to tell them how much
they appreciated the station's great "new" sound. I also doubt whether WTRY
was the first station to promote Color Radio. Randy English, the PD at WTRY,
and Mac Richmond both read the trade publications assiduously and they knew
a winning promotion when they heard about it. I wonder how many US and
Canadian stations promoted Color Radio. I'd guess hundreds--maybe thousands.

--
Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@att.net
eFax 707-215-6367

----- Original Message -----
From: <SonnyDaye1@aol.com>
To: <boston-radio-interest@rolinin.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2007 12:50 PM
Subject: Re: A fun trivia question


> Doug Drown wrote:
> > What was the first time you ever
> > saw a color telecast?
> ---------------------------------
> The first time I ever HEARD a color broadcast was:
> 1957/58, "WMEX 1510, Color Radio".
> Remember that?
> Mac Richmond was always on top of the latest fad in popularity and took
> advantage of it and promoted it to the hilt. Why NOT color RADIO?!!
> -Sonny Daye
>
> .
>
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