Subject: Voice-over Flubs

[Donna Halper]

At 12:06 PM 2/23/2008, kvahey@comcast.net wrote:

>Back around 1969 a friend of mine lived in the transmitter shack of
>WROL 950 in Saugus. It may have still been WRYT then. For about 2
>months he ran a music-talk show from Midnight to 5 AM that attracted
>quite the following.

When I was a kid, I used to love to do dx'ing and 
Sunday nights were the best time to do it because 
so many stations signed off for transmitter 
maintenance.  I heard stations from as far away 
as the Dutch Antilles, Iowa, Florida... for a kid 
from Dorchester whose folks never travelled, this 
was like a mini-vacation for me.  I think today's 
kids have no idea how exciting it was to pull in 
distant stations.  I remember the WMEX sign-off 
("I'll See You in My Dreams" was the song, if I 
recall correctly) and then other stations would 
start faintly being heard... I vaguely recall 
something in French from Québec, and I think I 
heard Nashville TN once... it was pretty amazing!

I also recall hearing some overnight hosts late 
at night when doing an all-night show still 
wasn't that common.  Do any of you recall when it 
became widely accepted to do an overnight 
show?  A lot of stations did still sign off at 
midnight or 1 AM when I was growing up -- WBZ 
didn't start doing all night programming till 
1952, which I was waaaay too young to realize, 
but when I was a little older, I still recall 
stations signing off at midnight or 1 AM even during the week.