We're back! It's been a somewhat longer-than-planned New Year's break, in part because one of our editors is recovering from a serious hard-drive crash (best of luck, Bill!) - and because I was traveling just before New Year's.

Tonight's update takes us up and down the highway between Rochester and Fort Wayne, with new sounds from Erie PA (Family Life's WCGM 102.7 and Dan Geary's new oldies format at WWOW 1360), Columbus OH (Catholic radio on WVSG 820 and oldies on WODC 93.3), Indianapolis ("My 107.9" WNTR) and Fort Wayne itself ("ClickHop Radio" on WHPP 106.3 and religion on WFCV-FM 100.1). We'd have had another new 100.1 ID, too, but newly-flipped FM talker WMAN-FM in Mansfield, Ohio didn't have the legal ID machine working right on New Year's Eve day as we drove through.

And there's a bonus cut: our first ID of 2012, a New Hampshire Public Radio eight-station ID from last night's primary coverage.

This week we feature some more vintage clips, even more vintage than last week. The oldest ones are from 1928! This is now the new record for the oldest recording on Toppy.

Here is a list of what we present.

WAAM 1120 Newark, NJ (New York Market) 1928 (three)
WEEI 590 Boston, MA 1930
WTMJ 620 Milwaukee, WI 1931
WJZ 760 New York, NY 1932
WEAF 660 New York, NY 1933

The WAAM clips were from the Edison Studios in Newark, and according to at least one source were pre-recorded transcriptions for later broadcast on the station. Regardless of how it was recorded, it is neat that it survived from this era in radio.

All of these recordings are readily available on the Internet. I just trimmed them down to fit here in Toppy. In a strict sense, they don't exactly fit the standards we have established for more recent recordings, but what the heck, we are just happy to have them.

Hope you enjoy!

This is an extra! For something a little different, I present a legal ID clip from another part of the world, Seoul, South Korea as a featured sound. The station is TBS or the Traffic Broadcast Station, the call letters are HLST, and the frequency is 95.1 MHz. They broadcast, music, news, and features regarding driving in Korea as well as traffic reports throughout the day. The schedule includes daily programs for foreigners. The Seoul Metropolitan Police operates the station.

The clip is here.

You will hear the following on the clip: (Translated into English)

- Music
- Announcement by woman - "Clear sound, open world, 95.1 MHz, this is the traffic broadcast system. HLST."
- Jingle - "Proper information, clear broadcast TBS Traffic Broadcast."
- Announcement by woman - "It will be 10 o'clock."
- Time Pips - Three short and one long
- Music and then announcement by man - "TBS Annual campaign"

Enjoy
Bill

As some of you may know, I am a radio station historian, and in the process of doing my research some folks kindly provided some interesting historical audio clips of stations in Spokane. This time, I would like to present a clip provided by Paul Quam (look down almost halfway down the page for his blurb), someone who has been around the radio scene in Spokane since the 1950's. Paul has done a lot of work restoring a numerous recordings associated with the history of Spokane. The clip is from radio station KNEW 790 in Spokane from 1952. It might be a production cut, but Paul assures me that it was played on the station.

[audio:http://www.tophour.com/featsnd/am0790_1952-00_knew_pquam-via-bill-harms.mp3]

Enjoy!

Bill

Kinda says it all, really, doesn't it? That fine little college town with the funny name is part of what we here at Toppy will consider to be the Tri-Cities WA market, even if 40 miles or so do separate it from the "real" Tri-Cities of Richland, Pasco and Kennewick. However you care to define it, it's a new market to Toppy - and to Tower Site of the Week, where you can go gawk at all the towers and studios there.

We've also unearthed the one Pendleton OR ID that missed our update last week, so "K-Wheat" is now available for your listening enjoyment, too. (Which is sort of appropriate, since KWHT serves Walla Walla as well as Pendleton.)

Coming Friday on Site of the Week and next Wednesday on Toppy: the first of two Spokane installments. Be there...aloha!

If there's one thing you can safely call a guy who creates a website about legal IDs, it's "anal." (And if you don't believe me, ask Scott, Lou or Blaine about the "handbook.")

And because of my tendency to be anal aggressively detailed, we have some pretty specific guidelines about what makes the site and what doesn't, and that's why we always ask people to read the "How To Contribute" page. Sometimes, though, we get stuff that doesn't fit the guidelines, and it's not the contributor's fault -- maybe the skimmer deck cut off too early, or they aren't exactly sure when the tape was made, or whatever -- and most of the time, we simply don't use the clip.

I've always struggled with this, because I don't want to dilute the quality of the site but I hate losing good stuff. And the four IDs that I received from Rob Sobczak not long ago meet that criteria -- I enjoyed them and we don't have a great deal of '70s and '80s material -- but for various reasons, they wouldn't really qualify for the site. So what to do? Glad you asked.

Featured Sound: Four '70s and '80s IDs
[audio:http://www.tophour.com/featsnd/4_70sand80s_ids_rsobczak.mp3]

The clips are from KID/Idaho Falls (c. 1983), two from WBUZ/Fredonia, NY (c. 1979) and KADE/Boulder (c. 1983).

I suppose that's not technically accurate, since you wouldn't be here if you weren't a radio geek, so the whole freakin' site qualifies. But...this one's special.

See, when you get a whole group of radio geeks together for a li'l get-together, and you fire up a fully legal Part 15 station to spread your radio geekosity to the masses (or at least those within range of a Best Western parking lot), there's one thing that can make it complete...

Featured Sound: WNRC/Akron, OH: The National Radio Club Convention station
[audio:http://www.tophour.com/featsnd/fm1015_2006-09_wnrc_sfybush.mp3]

Scott captured this one at the 2006 convention. And given that they didn't really have to ID in the first place, we can overlook the fact that it should have been "WNRC/Akron, WNRC-FM/Akron."

It's now easier than ever to go to school online from the comfort of your home.

A very cool Featured Sound this time around: it's a montage of IDs from the '70s and '80s from a bunch of different midwest stations, including: KSLQ/St. Louis (7/72), WCFL/Chicago (1/75), WDHF/Chicago (12/76), WMET/Chicago (7/77), WEMP/Milwaukee (5/70), WNUW/Milwaukee (12/75), WOKY/Milwaukee (6/70), WRKR/Racine-Milwaukee (1/77, 5/75, 9/83, 10/86), WZUU/Milwaukee (7/74), WROK/Rockford (12/04), WZOK/Rockford (6/86), WWJY/South Bend (12/76), WHFD/Archbold OH (12/76) and WQTC/Two Rivers WI (7/75).

Old School ID Montage
[audio:http://www.tophour.com/featsnd/johnson_ids.mp3]

Thanks to Rick Johnson for this very cool contribution!

Genius. Corporate intrigue. Suicide. A sea change for an entire industry. No, scratch that: a sea change for an entire culture.

Sounds like the elements of a good book, but they're just a few of the real-life elements in the discovery of FM radio. The 75th anniversary of Col. Armstrong firing up the first experimental FM station from the famous Alpine tower in New Jersey was last Saturday. The tower, which still stands today (and was pressed into emergency service in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks), once again lit up Armstrong's original band with a commemorative broadcast at 42.8 FM, with a simulcast on Fairleigh-Dickinson University's more traditional 89.1 WFDU. Scott Fybush was at Alpine for the broadcast, and has sent along an ID from the show -- perhaps the coolest ID we've ever had here.

June 11, 2005: 42.8 WA2XMN/Alpine, NJ (and 89.1 WFDU/Teaneck, NJ)
[audio:http://www.tophour.com/featsnd/fm0428wa2xmn_2005-06_sfybush.mp3]

Scott has also written a nice review of the day's events, and we thank him for sharing!

More featured sounds, this time from Chris Cuomo:

KDKA-FM? Oh, my yes. Dig it from June 1972.
[audio:http://www.tophour.com/featsnd/fm0929kdka-fm_1972-06_ccuomo.mp3]

Could the dude in this KMOX clip from 1976 be any more laid back? I think not.
[audio:http://www.tophour.com/featsnd/am1120kmox_1976-04_ccuomo.mp3]