My birthday present Zenith AM FM Tabletop Radio

[DavePEI]

Dave, you can still listen to Cousin Brucie on satellite radio.  He's on the 60's station....I think it's channel 6.

I also listened to WABC in New York.  They used to say "WABC in New York, New York---a town so nice they named it twice."

We do have a clear channel station here in Detroit.  WJR, AM 760.  I do pick up AM 740 on my old Zenith at night.

Another clear channel station I remember listening to back then was XERF-AM at Ciudad Acuña in Mexico. It was the home then of Wolfman Jack, another famous DJ. I didn't listen to it as much as WABC, because its signal wasn't as reliable in Canada, but if one was willing to listen to its fading in and out.....

Yes, I knew Cousin Brucie was now on Sirius Channel 6. Only problem is, I don't have Satellite Radio. I don't know it it would be the same now listening to him - it may have been the time, and the great music back then which I enjoyed the most!

<G> I had a lot of fun with that crystal radio!

[Wallphone]

Here is the Wiki on Clear Channel Radio with a list of stations at the bottom.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear-channel_station <
When I was growing up in the Detroit area I would see what radio stations I could get at night.
I would get baseball games from New York, Pittsburgh, Cinci and St. Louis loud & clear.
It was nice when the Detroit Tigers were on WJR (clear channel).
I still have my QSL card from WBAP in Fort Worth, Texas.
I tuned in KSL from SLC, Utah on two different occasions but they would never send me a card for verification.
They still owe me a either a QSL card or my two quarters back that I gave them for postage.
This is what a QSL card is > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QSL <
Doug Pav

[AE_Collector]

It probably was unusual for a 15 year old kid to listen to talk shows.  I think at the time, about 1970-71 there weren't as many as nowadays. 

And I thought I was the only kid who searched out radio talk shows to listen to. Didn't matter too much what the show subject was, there was just something about listening to people phoning in and talking about whatever on the radio. I even recall listening to a "fishing" show on Sunday nights and to this day I have absolutely no interest in fishing.

Terry

[GG]

Dennis & Terry: what was talk radio like back in the day?  Nowadays it's mostly cynical spew of one kind or another, with a hefty dose of barely-concealed racism, and some overt stochastic terrorism (stirring up "lone wolves").  Then there's the "shout/overtalk" format, whereby people do their best to talk/shout over each other and not let each other finish their sentences.  Seems to me that thoughtful discourse and dialogue have given way to drama and emotionalism for their own sake, with a mean streak.  We can do better than that...

Agreed, Clear Channel has killed off a lot of local flavor & personality.  It's almost like listening to some kind of propaganda:  "Coast to coast, we tell you what to like and what to think!"  Then there's the low end of the FM dial, which used to be high school & college stations, but has lately become All Hellfire All The Time.  I'd rather have the highschool & college kids on there, often playing obscure music I'd never heard of before.

Meanwhile, in the San Francisco Bay Area, our local classical music station was recently transformed into or replaced by a "classic rock" station that appears to be some kind of national satellite feed that plays the same songs over and over (no thanks). 

With the proliferation of communications technologies, you would think we'd have ended up with a far more diverse and colorful broadcast spectrum.  Instead it's become either bland and formulaic on one hand, or violent spew on the other. 

I still have a 1970s Panasonic 9" black & white TV; the little dot in the center of the picture is quicker but it's still there.  But there ain't much interesting to watch these days.  I remember fondly the National Anthem playing at the beginning and end of the broadcast day. 

The end was usually midnight in the New York metro area, and each time, there was a still picture of the flag flying against the background of the sky.  But it might have been 10PM for some stations, because I don't recall staying up to midnight much when I was a kid, unless there was some special movie on that we all stayed up to watch. 

Saturday mornings at 6AM there were educational programs about "modern" farming methods such as production-line milking machines on dairies, and so on.  And it seemed that broadcasters took the public interest seriously back then. 

And who else here remembers the ominous announcer's voice intoning, "It's 10 PM: do you know where your children are?"

[WesternElectricBen]

Thats a really nice looking radio!
Ben