Those of you of a certain age remember the day when radio stations once ruled the planet. Teens and twenty-somethings would spend hours listening to their favorite DJs and call each other to discuss the selections. Where I grew up, in suburban New York City, the place on the dial was 102.7, home of WNEW-FM and Alison Steele, Pete Fornatale, Scott Muni, Jonathan Schwartz, Dennis Elsas, Richard Neer and Vince Schelsa. They all had terrific shows that drew from their own idiosyncrasies and tastes, hard to believe in today’s homogenized radio world. One of the best moments for me was actually meeting Pete in person when I lived in Port Washington, and he dropped by my office. It took me a moment to place him, but only after he started speaking.
Well, the DJs are scattered to the corners of the earth now, but at least the progressive rock format that worked so well is back online here and broadcasting in HD radio in the NYC area.
When I saw the title of this post, I thought, “He can’t be referring to WNEW, can he?” Wow — thanks for this.
i grew up in flushing, listening to WPLJ actually, and was absolutely crushed when they went down in flames in 1983 (or was it 82) dumping their tried and true formula for mainstream tripe dictated by whatever mega-radio-homoginization mega-corporation had bought them and forced them to drop their format.
I called and wrote and their line was ‘until we made this change, our average aired track was 11 years old’ and I said ‘so what?’ they had no answer, and went the way of the dinosaur from where I sit. I never cared about them again, but long still for the years when they hosted really creative, intelligent and well-informed DJs who had real interest in what they were airing. Pat St. John would be a name on that list; I think he was the creator of all their on-air classic rock montages which I still have in my head after 30 years.
No offense, but I turned to WNEW when WPLJ died as a classic rock station and WNEW stuck it out for a good long time, but in the end they were taken down to the level of the other McMusic stations, playing The Most Current Canned Spam because they were told to by the McConglomerates and then eventually they fell to talk radio; total waste of the call letters which meant so much for so long. But maybe that was just to me.
There’s no more classic rock on the NYC airwaves as far as I know, or if it is, it moves around. I definitely don’t want to hear Led Zeppelin introduced by Cousin Brucie or anything like that; I want to hear it the way it was meant to be; the way it was when I was a kid.
Not that I want the same old thing for the next 40 years, but why did they break it when it was already fixed?
…and of all the WNEW folks I have to say I miss Vince Schelsa the most. I miss Idiot’s Delight.
I felt like Scott Muni must have felt homeless when WNEW went away.
A part of New York City culture died when WNEW was killed.
T