Radio . . . and Me - 31

The ‘bottom-line’ question, Dear Reader, is: How well did the 10-10 WINS Westinghouse Radio 1965 shift to all-news format pay off?
Answer:
1. It’s the longest-running all news station in the country’; and, as the remind us often,
2. ‘More people get their news from 10-10 WINS than from any other radio station in the nation.’
Not bad, considering they have strong competition from sister news station, WCBS 880 (which has now restored ‘all-news’ after starring as the flagship radio voice of the New York Yankees) and some all-sports and all-business stations.

The 10-10 WINS format has been copied (with only slight variations) in such large-market U-S markets as Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, and Boston (on WBZ 1030, which I listened to each day during my year-long stay), on News 1152 in London, England, and on Rogers, across Canada.

Radio . . . and Me - 30

I have been a ‘news junkie’ for as long as I can remember.
In the 1950s, when I started listening to radio, news on local radio was usually presented as a 5- to 10-minute summary, without commercials.
News on the American stations, at night, was a mixture of 5-minute summaries on ‘block’ programs, usually on rock ’n roll stations, along with a few well-respected holdovers from the World War II era, who presented 10- to 15-minute newscasts, complete with commentary, and a couple of commercial breaks.

It was a delightful surprise for me in April, 1965, to hear the following slogan every 20 minutes on what had been a favourite rock ’n roll station in New York:
“All news, all the time. This is 10-10 WINS: You give us 22 minutes, we’ll give YOU the world.”
That is the same slogan — as you can hear — that they still use today.