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.
The history of news in New York in the early to mid 1900s was in newspapers; SEVEN dailies — both broadsheet and tabloid — were published until the 1950s, when some of them merged or disappeared.
A strike among the printers union shook things up in the 1930s, and many dailies published only token editions. Even Mayor LaGuardia had to present daily newsreel coverage of the comic strips, which had been denied the young children of New York!
Another strike, again among the printers union, took place in the early 1960s. Suddenly, New York had no newspapers (except for token editions from the ‘Times ’ and the ‘Daily News’). This time, radio began to take up the slack.
I can remember the Loewes Theaters station, 1050 WMGM, doing an hour-long newscast, “Radio Newsreel Theater,” which gave the main local and world news, sports, and weather in a 15-minute loop.
An all-news station, WNUS, was quickly established on FM, and it provided another good source, but it disappeared as soon as the six-week strike was over.
Meanwhile, the folks at Westinghouse Broadcasting, who owned WINS, were taking a longer look at the concept of their station:
— AM radio was on its way out for music programming, because FM had much more clarity, especially for music in stereo.
— They also felt that New Yorkers needed a 24-hour news source on radio, and that the station could do well financially.
And so, they built a station that has presented news for more than 49 years. Their short tagline, ‘The news watch never stops,’ has been adopted by stations all over North America and Europe.
-- The story will continue.