American Top 40 in the Boston market

[Dave Doherty]

WOKO was the first radio job I ever had. And, yes, it was 1460 in Albany, down the street from where I lived as a teenager in the late 1960s. 

I worked at WOKO off and on for a couple of years through two owners, and it was an eye-opening experience in many ways.

The WOKO call sign went away in 1983 when the owner changed format to all-news WWCN. Since then, it went back to WOKO a year, then WGNA for about four years while it simulcast the FM of the same call, then Disney for over a decade as WDDY, and since 2014, it's been WOPG .

The Burlington FM picked up the WOKO call in 1990.

It was also used by an FM in Paxton, IL for about a year 1983-1984.

-d





-----Original Message-----
From: Boston-Radio-Interest [mailto:boston-radio-interest-bounces@lists.BostonRadio.org] On Behalf Of A Joseph Ross
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2021 8:51 PM
To: boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org
Subject: Re: American Top 40 in the Boston market

WOKO?  I remember when that call was in Albany.  When did that change?


On 3/2/2021 4:49 PM, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> <<On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 14:06:14 -0500, "James Duffy" <jimduffy75@gmail.com> said:
>
>> took over Countdown America.  This initiated several affiliate 
>> changes that did not all occur at once.  When Dick Clark moved to 
>> Countdown America in November of '85, WROR picked it up from top40 WHTT.
> Did (CBS-owned) WHTT ever carry (CBS-syndicated) Top 40 Satellite 
> [sic] Survey with Dan Ingram in this timeframe?
>
> 		    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
>
> Ingram's is the countdown show I remember most from growing up; it 
> aired on WQCR 98.9 in Burlington (now WOKO) -- and it was distributed 
> on a pair of long-playing discs, not satellite.  WQCR ran an illegal 
> contest when they were airing Ingram, call in Monday evening and name 
> the Nth song on Sunday's countdown and they would give you "all the 
> songs" on that week's chart -- by which they actually meant they would 
> give you the "destroy after air" syndication discs, complete with 
> Ingram's patter, commercials, prerecorded promos, and everything.[1]
>
> (I just got out my 1989 M Street Directory to see if Q-99 had switched 
> to WOKO by then, but they were still WQCR.  A quick rundown of the 
> Spring '88 Arbitron 12+ AQH ratings for the Burlington-Plattsburgh
> market: WXXX 95.3, 19.8; WIZN 106.7, 16.9; WEZF 92.9, 14.1; WQCR 98.9, 
> 9.6; WJOY 1230, 9.0; WVMT 620, 7.3; WDOT 1390, 5.1; WLFE 102.3, 3.4.
> Who gets ratings like that any more?  None of the Plattsburgh stations 
> made it into the Arbitron book, not even class-C WGFB 99.9.  WNCS was 
> still on 96.7 in Montpelier, an unrated market, and -- I did not know 
> this -- was apparently competing with WORK for the 104.7 allocation.
> M Street also gives Birch ratings, which included non-commercial 
> stations, and Vermont Public Radio's WVPS got an 8.1 in the Spring '88 
> Birch book.[2])
>
> -GAWollman
>
> [1] The set that I received was, I think, lost in a flood in 1991.  I 
> can remember two bits of Ingram patter, one talking up Peter Gabriel's 
> "In Your Eyes" 'in your ears', and one talking up Sting's "Russians"
> 'yes, the Russians _are_ coming'.  Unfortunately, these songs charted 
> about a year apart so I have no idea whether either one was on the 
> discs that I "won".
>
> [2] I'd love to see the intab for either of these surveys just to 
> assuage my curiosity about how much listenership CFQR, CJFM, and CHOM 
> were getting south of the 45th parallel, before all the drop-ins came 
> on the air and made those frequencies uncopyable.

--
A. Joseph Ross, J.D. · 1340 Centre Street, Suite 103 · Newton, MA 02459
617.367.0468 · http://www.attorneyross.com