Follow-up To NERW Piece On W221CH

[SteveOrdinetz]

  Peter Q. George wrote:

>Well, in fact they (the jocks) would say (after the TOH Drake jingle 
>"WRKO.....Boston!") the jock would say "AM and FM!".  (Pre-Drake, 
>before June 1967, WRKO had a PAMS sung Legal ID.... "WRKO and 
>WRKO-FM, Boston!.)  After 6:00 PM, you would hear, on the FM only, 
>"And now ladies and gentlemen...." (CLICK!) "And the hits just keep 
>on coming on 98.5 WRKO-FM Boston!", (jingle) "WRKO-FM, ALL 
>MUSIC!!!", ARKO had begun it's 12 hours of non-duplicated 
>programming.  Dale Tucker, the last Program Director of WRKO-FM 
>(before WROR) kind of moved away from the R-KO format and got the 
>station ready for the eventual switch to Stereo with Drake 
>Chenault's new "Hit Parade" format, just before Dale moved out of Boston.


When did "arko" go away?  I know it was gone by the late summer of 
'68 when I moved to Manchester, N.H.  98.5was just cold-segued top 40 
tunes when it wasn't simulcasting 680.  I don't recall hearing the 
WRKO jocks cutting in & doing live IDs at that point, but that 
doesn't mean they weren't.  I do remember during and briefly after 
the move to the Government Center studios the two stations were 
simulcast in the evening as well.  Even after the calls on the FM 
became WROR there was some period of simulcast...I recall the Johnny 
Mann legal (AM) ID, after which the jock would say "and WROR 
FM".  Not exactly a legal ID, but lots of stations were pretty loose 
in that regard in those days.  Were the rules different then?  I 
always was taught that a legal ID was calls followed by COL.
I'm pretty sure "Hit Parade" debuted around November of '68.