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Aired July 14, 2015 | The credits roll. Right in the middle! |
Updated December 15, 2019 -- All WCBS-FM Update
- WCBS-FM from 1992-1996, 1998-2001, and 2010-2011
The wants:
If you have any vintage WABC, WNBC, WLS, anything from Cleveland from
before 1980 (particularly WWWM, otherwise known as "M-105,"), anything
from Rochester, New York before 1980, and anything of WGR, Buffalo
before 1980 (especially Stan Roberts), I want to hear from you right
now! I list my aircheck collection on this site for the benefit of those
who might have something to trade with me and would like something in
return.
If you're interested in a possible trade, send me e-mail at
info@radiowasbetter.com. If you wish to inquire about the cost to
acquire a particular set of airchecks, please do so, and I'd be glad to
quote a price for you. I charge only for my direct expenses: CD,
packaging, postage, etc.,—I do not claim to own the copyright on any of
this material. DecalcoMania, "the club for fans of radio," is the
perfect place to meet other collectors, and information about joining is
on the links page.
Please note that I am now sending out only digital media (audio CDs or
mp3 CDs and DVDs, or internet delivery) in trade or for purchase. I'm still glad to accept
material in cassette format (and
pretty much any other format as well), but given the low cost and ubiquity of CDs now and the fact
that I now use several large hard drives for archival storage of material,
all of my collection is in mp3 format, and it is just easier, faster, and
cheaper to make digital copies than to make cassettes. I also trade extensively
via the internet using file sending services like adrive.com, sendspace,
myairbridge, and about a dozen others.
In addition to cassettes, other older media formats I can work with are LPs
and reel-to-reel tape. If you have
tapes or cassettes and would like what's on them
transferred to CD, mp3, etc., I'd be glad to work with you. I've heard from
people with reels of airchecks they've had since the 1960s but now have no
way of playing them. I've borrowed these, done the transfer, and returned
both the reels and new, CD versions, to the owners. I've done the same with
LPs. Please contact me if you're in such a situation.
Some definitions, because I get asked this often. On the far right side of most of the lists of airchecks on the pages that follow is a column labeled "Scoping." "Scoped" (which is short for "telescoped") is aircheck/radio lingo for a recording of a radio station in which some aspect of the broadcast has been edited out. A fully scoped aircheck might have everything edited out (commercials, songs, newscasts) except for the DJ patter. It wasn't uncommon back in the day (and probably still true today) for disk jockeys to create audio resumes of their work to send to radio stations when seeking employment, and the best thing they could send would be a recording of their actual work. The program director at the new station didn't need to hear the full songs, commericals, etc, but rather only how the DJ sounded, and hence the editing. Many of those recordings survive to this day.
Some airchecks are "partly" scoped. Often this means that only the newscasts or only the commercials have been edited out. "None" thus means what you think it would mean, and that is that nothing has been edited out, and listening to the aircheck is indistinguishable from listening to the actual radio broadcast at the time. I greatly prefer unscoped airchecks, and you'll see that that's what I have the most of. I generally don't trade for scoped airchecks unless it's an unusual or rare recording or DJ or something like that.
As a general rule of my own, if an aircheck has only the newscasts edited out, I still call that an unscoped aircheck. Otherwise, I'll list what's actually missing (commercials only or songs only) for a partly scoped aircheck.
One other comment about how things are organized of the pages that follow. Whenever new airchecks are added to any page, those airchecks are shown in bold type. That way you can find quickly what's been added since the last time that page was updated. Keep in mind that the date of the last update of any page is not necessarily the date shown at the top of this page as not all pages are updated every time the site itself is updated. Rather, the airchecks in bold are those added as of the update date shown next to that page's link in the lists below. This system does not apply to the lists of countdown shows as I don't keep separate dates for the updating of each year of shows. The listing at the top of this page indicates the years of which countdown shows were updated as part of the current update.
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Listed below are the states, in alphabetical order, for which I have at least one aircheck. The date following the state name is the last time that page was updated with new airchecks. Within each state or category listing, the most recently added airchecks are shown in bold.
United States
- Alabama (2019/11/17)
- Alaska (2009/08/30)
- Arizona (2019/11/03)
- Arkansas (2019/09/08)
- California (Los Angeles area)
- KHJ-AM (2019/11/03)
- KRLA (2019/09/08)
- KRTH-FM (2019/11/17)
- All other Los Angeles and vicinity
- call letters KA to KK (2019/11/03)
- call letters KL to KZ (2019/11/17)
- California (other than Los Angeles)
- San Francisco - all except KYA-AM and KFRC-AM (2019/12/01)
- San Francisco - KFRC-AM only (2019/11/03)
- San Francisco - KYA-AM only (2019/09/08)
- San Diego (for neighboring Mexico, see the Mexico page) (2019/11/03)
- All other California (2019/08/18)
- Colorado (2018/10/21)
- Connecticut (2019/07/14)
- Delaware (2016/07/03)
- District of Columbia only. Stations licensed to cities in adjacent Maryland or Virginia are shown under that state. (2019/12/01)
- Florida (2019/12/01)
- Georgia (2019/08/11)
- Hawaii (2019/07/28)
- Idaho (2009/11/01)
- Illinois
- WCFL (2019/01/05)
- WLS through 1976 (2019/11/17)
- WLS 1977 to the present (2019/08/11)
- All other Chicago and vicinity
- call letters WA to WJ (2019/11/17)
- call letters WK to WZ (2019/09/08)
- All other Illinois (2019/01/05)
- Indiana (2019/12/03)
- Iowa (2018/09/23)
- Kansas (2018/06/17)
- Kentucky (2018/07/08)
- Louisiana (2017/12/10)
- Maine (2009/02/26)
- Maryland (2019/11/17)
- Massachusetts (2019/11/03)
- Michigan (for CKLW, see Canada below) (2019/01/05)
- Minnesota (2019/06/16)
- Mississippi (2019/01/05)
- Missouri (2019/11/17)
- Montana (2019/011/03)
- Nebraska (2018/12/16)
- Nevada (2018/09/23)
- New Hampshire (2019/05/05)
- New Jersey (2019/05/16)
- New Mexico (2019/11/03)
- New York State (other than New York City)
- Buffalo only (2017/09/10)
- Rochester only (2019/07/28)
- All cities excluding Buffalo, Rochester, and New York City (2019/07/28)
- New York City
- WABC-AM, through 1975 (2019/07/14)
- WABC-AM, 1976 to the end of the music era, May 10, 1982 (2019/11/03)
- WABC-AM, post-music era (2018/09/23)
- WCBS-FM (see individual year pages for date of last update)
- WNBC, through 1979 (2019/06/16)
- WNBC, 1980 through 1988 sign-off (2019/07/14)
- WNEW-FM (2019/11/17)
- All Other New York City stations
- call letters WA to WN(2019/11/17)
- call letters WO to WZ (2019/11/17)
- North Carolina (2019/05/05)
- North Dakota (2019/11/03)
- Ohio
- Oklahoma (2019/07/14)
- Oregon (2019/11/03)
- Pennsylvania (2019/11/17)
- Puerto Rico (2008/11/16)
- Rhode Island (2018/07/08)
- South Carolina (2019/11/17)
- South Dakota (2017/08/27)
- Tennessee (2019/11/17)
- Texas (2019/12/01)
- U.S Virgin Islands (2018/09/23)
- Utah (2018/05/27)
- Vermont (2009/03/09)
- Virginia (2019/07/28)
- Washington (2019/09/08)
- West Virginia (2014/10/19)
- Wisconsin (2019/11/03)
- Wyoming (1998/06/30)
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The Rest of the World
- Africa (2008/11/30)
- Asia (includes The Philippines) (2015/03/15)
- Australia (2019/07/28)
- The Bahamas (1999/08/09)
- Bermuda (2008/12/25)
- Canada (includes CKLW)
- CKLW (2019/12/01)
- Toronto - all but CHUM-AM (2019/09/08)
- Toronto - CHUM-AM only (2019/07/28)
- All other Canadian stations (2019/11/03)
- Europe/Middle East (includes pirate radio) (2019/06/16)
- Jamaica (2019/01/05)
- Mexico (includes border stations) (2019/06/30)
- New Zealand
- Pacific Islands
- South America
Other Radio-Related Material
These are not simple airchecks, but rather are collections of airchecks, special shows, countdown shows, and so forth. Click on the appropriate link.
- Aircheck Compilations. Collections of short airchecks from a variety of stations. (1999/05/07)
- Countdown Shows. American Top 40, Rick Dees Weekly Top 40, Dan Ingram Top 40 Satellite Survey, Leeza Gibbons Top 25, Casey's Top 40, American Country Countdown, various Dick Clark countdown shows, other Casey Kasem shows, and many more. (2018/10/21)
- Pre-1950. Several recordings of unique radio programs from the 1930s and 1940s including a significant amount of World War II radio coverage. (2011/01/23)
- Uncategorized Stuff. One-of-a-kind material that doesn't fit under any other category, including audio recordings of some old television network newscasts. Lots of interesting stuff here. (2019/05/05)
- Syndicated Programming. Dick Clark shows. Dick Bartley shows. Many others. Not countdowns, although some may play a "Top 10" or "Top 20" from a certain period in the past. (2019/06/16)