FM Yields to Rock ‘n Roll

Spending Generation Topples Beethoven

By Alexander Auerbach, Financial Reporter
(c) 1967, The Boston Globe
(with special thanks to Chris Campbell, Hopkinton, MA)

SHY BUT FRIENDLY-Arko, the robot, who runs WRKO-FM on a steady diet of taped
rock and roll, is fed a another tape cartridge by Aline Maloney. (Paul Connell photo)

Roll over, Beethoven; man’s inhumanity to man, is taking over FM radio.

Since Edwin H. Armstrong made the first FM (frequency modulation) broadcast in 1933, FM has been devoted almost exclusively to classical music and serious commentary. The short transmission range and relatively expensive receivers didn’t lend the medium to commercial exploitation.

But the scene’s changing, baby. The big beat is moving in, coast to coast. Advertisers, attracted by the young, spending audience, are making FM rock profitable.

A FEDERAL Communications Commission (FCC) ruling that jointly-owned AM and FM stations must provide separate programming for most of the day has encouraged this. And inexpensive FM transistor portable radios have broken the price barrier, opening up the teenage market.

The switch to rock programming is purely commercial. Almost half of the population is now under 25 years old, and most of them dig the sound.

Here in Boston, the harbinger of change is WRKO-FM, 98.5 on the dial, formerly WNAC-FM. Perry S. Ury, vice president and general manager, explains: “Last Spring we decided to go FM rock. We surveyed the dial and found 15 signals, all with the same programming - two or three classical, 12 light Montovani stuff. So we decided to try the Top-40"

ALTHOUGH NO other Boston FM station is planning to follow Ury into hard rock programming, some are moving to lighter music. WXHR-FM (96.9) soon will be carrying what one station executive calls “consistently adult popular stereo music”.

This means, he said “Tijuana Brass, Streisand, Brubeck and Broadway,” but not the Rolling Stones.

A quick telephone check of other stations revealed the same type of move. All credited the FCC with their planned changes, not WRKO.

Ury, a dynamic, friendly, cigar-waving type, couldn’t care less. He has the Top 40 and “Arko, the shy but friendly robot,” as the station’s 12-foot long broadcasting machine is called.

The $30,000 gadget is entirely automated, and plays tape cartridges rather than records. The highly-promoted name is of course drawn from the station’s call-letters.

URY DENIES that Arko is an economy move, but admits that a fleet of “entertainers” (the phase “disc jockey” is out) could run a pop music station $100,000 a year or more in salaries. When WNAC (680) becomes WRKO-AM, it will have D-J’s playing the tapes.

The FM station is “by no means into the black,” Ury says, but he admits, he’s surprised at how well it is doing. It is more than halfway toward the breakeven point, which he expects to pass in a year.

There is a scattering of advertisers interrupting the music, along with a few promotions (”Only Arko plays seven in a row”) and public service announcements, but absolutely no news.

Everything-music, ads, announcements, promotions- is on tapes, all selected, played and changed automatically. Even the log required by the FCC is kept automatically. “It’s the radio station of the 1980's”, Ury says.

But it’s a 1967 market, and Arko goes after it carefully, spending a good deal of cash checking local and national record sales and telephone requests to keep up with rapidly shifting preferences.

“Boston is the fastest moving Top 40 market in the country,” Ury says.

And they’re not all screaming 15-year-olds with radios clamped to their ears. More than half the station’s mail is from area colleges.

ALTHOUGH the station reaches 160,000 listeners, Ury estimates. Stores report the FM market is booming. Lechmere Sales now devotes most of its’ radio display space to FM, and unhesitatingly credits Arko with a jump in sales.

The shy-but-friendly robot is a hip marketer, too. Farewell, Eroica, hail rock.


NOW, here's some MORE information about the machine who made WRKO-FM tick, "ARKO-matic" from a man who should know and was "there" during those halcyon days of FM rock, Dale Tucker.....

"I was the 'official' voice and Production Director of R-KO. Hired by Bob Henabery (came in from programming WABB, Mobile)and one of my first chores was to track down some guys at Bell Labs in NJ about building us an honest-to-gosh robot that we would use for promotions.

Progress was being made but then RKO General contracted Bill Drake's team to program all the properties and Bob resigned. He chose to be the 'captain of his own rowboat rather than First Mate on the Queen Mary.' He went on to awesome success in program consulting.

I have almost ALL the answers, just ask (if I don't know the answer, I can probably find the guy who does). For example, the automation was by Gates Radio, Quincy, IL. The later were acquired by Harris Intertype and are now simply 'Harris Broadcast.'

The system used an SC-48 telephone dial (rotary, of course) programmer to place commands on an audio cart as to which source should be armed and played next. The spots, promos, PSAs, etc., were loaded sequentially into a pair of Gates 55s. These were nightmares -- a large diameter threaded pole mounted vertically in a rack which would slowly go from the bottom to the top, pulling our and playing fifty-five carts. If you needed to run a spot twice an hour from 6P to Midnight, you needed to dub six carts and place them in the proper slots! God help you if the machine jammed. Two of them, side-by-side plus some 10-1/2 inch open reel machines for the music -- currents, oldies, recurrents, etc."

Many thanks to Dale Tucker in providing a birds-eye view on WRKO-FM. Dale is still in the business, working for the publishers of Radio World magazine.


EDITOR: WRKO-FM (98.5) became Boston's FIRST FM Rocker, on October 12, 1966 at 12 midnight. It was the prototype for RKO General's master plan to eventually put the Drake ("Boss Radio") format on the 50,000 watt AM sister station, WNAC/680 (later WRKO). As you can see here, it WAS noticed! However, when WRKO/680 debuted in March, 1967, WRKO-FM simulcasted WRKO/680 from 6:00 AM until 6:00 PM, and only ran the ARKO format during the overnights beginning at 6:00 PM.

By the Spring of 1968, the unique ARKO-matic promotion on the FM side slowly faded away, only to be replaced with continuous Top-40/oldies music with very little interruption. Dale Tucker was the "voice" of WRKO-FM until July, 1968. WRKO-FM continued with the 50/50 simulcast with WRKO/680 for the remainder of the Summer and early fall. However, things were about to change. The new WROR call-letters were assigned in October, 1968 in preparation for the total separation of both the AM and FM signals. WROR was already putting a Stereo pilot signal on the air, but still with mono audio. Finally, in November, 1968 WROR went to full-Stereo with a new format, Bill Drake's automated "Hit Parade '68", an adult format with Top-40 music with plenty of oldies. The local announcements were voiced by "Ernest Andrews" (better known today as Ernie Anastos, a popular news anchor for WNYW-TV, Channel 5 in New York). Ernie stayed with WROR until the winter of 1973.

WROR switched to Bill Drake's "Solid Gold Rock and Roll" format on November 1, 1970, a 50/50 mix of currents and oldies. Eventually, WROR switched to its' famous ALL OLDIES format in the Spring of 1973, first with Drake/Chenault and then their own "homebrew" oldies format under new PD John Long in December of '73.


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