30 YEARS OF WINS' 22-MINUTE WORLD
By David Hinckley /
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, April 18, 1995, 12:00 AM
THIRTY YEARS ago tomorrow, WINS (1010 AM) rolled the dice. With a final spin of the Shangri-Las' "Out in the Street," it ended its run as one of America's formative rock 'n' roll stations and plunged boldly where no station had gone before: all-news, 24-7. Looking back, of course, the roll paid off. Today, while WCBS-AM is a perfectly viable rival in the all-news biz, the first reaction of many New Yorkers when they need news (or weather reports) fast is Ten-Ten-WINS. Whether "Give us 22 minutes and we'll give you the world" suggests fast news for fast times or McNews for short attention spans, no radio slogan is better known. "Our format grew out of Top 40," says Vice President/General Manager Scott Herman. "Only our 'hits' are stories.
" When WINS made the switch, recalls long-time morning and now afternoon anchor Paul Smith, "The big worry was that we wouldn't have enough news to fill the day. That turned out never to be a problem.
" Stan Brooks, who like Smith has been there from the start, was the first news director. The first story, Herman says, was on the Vietnam War. "And if you want to measure our success," says Herman, "how many other stations today have the same format they did in 1965? WQXR? WOR?
" Still, to a lot of forty and fiftysomething New Yorkers, WINS will always be their teenage rock station, the place that hired Alan Freed, Murray the K, Cousin Brucie, Paul Sherman, Johnny Holiday, Jack Lacey and Mad Daddy (Pete Myers), to name a tiny handful. Harry Soupios was a young law student then. His brother Bill was WINS controller, and Harry took a night job as a producer. "Those were great days," says Soupios, who is now retired. "They were also the days of payola. I remember Murray the K gave me a trumpet some company had sent him. I still have it hanging on my wall. My grandchildren take it down and play with it.
" Even the late-night shift could get exciting, Soupios says, especially after the Beatles arrived. "There'd be these knocks on the door at 3 a.m. and teenage girls would be standing there, asking how they could meet the Beatles.
" By the final days, WINS was already backing out of the rock business, leaving that turf to rich and powerful WABC and scrappy WMCA. WINS, instead, was doing news specials Soupios remembers Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X in the studio and the Beatles were sharing musical air time with the likes of Mantovani. "The music was much softer on Sundays, in particular," says Soupios. "At the end, we played a lot of Sinatra.
" But once the change was made, it was steady-as-she-goes. Stan Brooks is doing a series of reports today and tomorrow on 30 years of WINS stories, and the news tone is remarkably consistent. Tomorrow the station will run air checks from April 19, 1965 a good reminder that however much Ten-Ten-WINS feels like part of the landscape today, there was a time when it was just a vision on the horizon.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/entertainment/30-years-wins-22-minute-world-article-1.691232#ixzz2HDccg37o
By David Hinckley /
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, April 18, 1995, 12:00 AM
THIRTY YEARS ago tomorrow, WINS (1010 AM) rolled the dice. With a final spin of the Shangri-Las' "Out in the Street," it ended its run as one of America's formative rock 'n' roll stations and plunged boldly where no station had gone before: all-news, 24-7. Looking back, of course, the roll paid off. Today, while WCBS-AM is a perfectly viable rival in the all-news biz, the first reaction of many New Yorkers when they need news (or weather reports) fast is Ten-Ten-WINS. Whether "Give us 22 minutes and we'll give you the world" suggests fast news for fast times or McNews for short attention spans, no radio slogan is better known. "Our format grew out of Top 40," says Vice President/General Manager Scott Herman. "Only our 'hits' are stories.
" When WINS made the switch, recalls long-time morning and now afternoon anchor Paul Smith, "The big worry was that we wouldn't have enough news to fill the day. That turned out never to be a problem.
" Stan Brooks, who like Smith has been there from the start, was the first news director. The first story, Herman says, was on the Vietnam War. "And if you want to measure our success," says Herman, "how many other stations today have the same format they did in 1965? WQXR? WOR?
" Still, to a lot of forty and fiftysomething New Yorkers, WINS will always be their teenage rock station, the place that hired Alan Freed, Murray the K, Cousin Brucie, Paul Sherman, Johnny Holiday, Jack Lacey and Mad Daddy (Pete Myers), to name a tiny handful. Harry Soupios was a young law student then. His brother Bill was WINS controller, and Harry took a night job as a producer. "Those were great days," says Soupios, who is now retired. "They were also the days of payola. I remember Murray the K gave me a trumpet some company had sent him. I still have it hanging on my wall. My grandchildren take it down and play with it.
" Even the late-night shift could get exciting, Soupios says, especially after the Beatles arrived. "There'd be these knocks on the door at 3 a.m. and teenage girls would be standing there, asking how they could meet the Beatles.
" By the final days, WINS was already backing out of the rock business, leaving that turf to rich and powerful WABC and scrappy WMCA. WINS, instead, was doing news specials Soupios remembers Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X in the studio and the Beatles were sharing musical air time with the likes of Mantovani. "The music was much softer on Sundays, in particular," says Soupios. "At the end, we played a lot of Sinatra.
" But once the change was made, it was steady-as-she-goes. Stan Brooks is doing a series of reports today and tomorrow on 30 years of WINS stories, and the news tone is remarkably consistent. Tomorrow the station will run air checks from April 19, 1965 a good reminder that however much Ten-Ten-WINS feels like part of the landscape today, there was a time when it was just a vision on the horizon.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/entertainment/30-years-wins-22-minute-world-article-1.691232#ixzz2HDccg37o
WINS History: The Early Years From The Airwaves of New York
November 4, 2008 3:52 PM
by Bill Jaker, Frank Sulek and Peter Kanze
Newspapers were among the earliest broadcast operators, but no major metropolitan daily entered the field in New York until William Randolph Hearst, owner of the New York American and the tabloid Daily Mirror, purchased the Gimbel’s Department Store station WGBS. (The American’s interest in broadcasting can be dated from 1916, when it supplied returns to Dr. Lee De Forest for his experimental election-night reports.) The new call letters, WINS, stood for Hearst’s International News Service, then one of the nation’s three major wire services. In July 1932, WINS moved out of the WGBS studios in the Hotel Lincoln to a Park Avenue locale at 110 E. Fifty-eighth Street, the Ritz Tower.
Such well-heeled patrimony should have won WINS the role of New York’s premier information source. The Hearst station was even experimenting with television, operating the Jenkins mechanical scanner through experimental transmitter W2XCR. However, in the early 1930s, radio was still struggling for status against restrictions imposed by newspaper interests, who tended to accept the new medium as a promotional tool rather than a full-service news source. Also, WINS was initially just a low-power daytime operation, hardly in keeping with the Hearst image.
On 29 March 1941, WINS became a beneficiary of the reallocations caused by the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA), and it switched to full-time operation at l000kc (“Easy to remember, easy to dial”) with its power authorized at 10,000 watts. This was the widest of some eighteen NARBA shifts on the New York dial, the result of good planning and early application by Hearst engineers. It opened up 1190 for later occupancy by WLIB. WINS also moved to new studios at 28 W. Forty-fourth Street and began to live up to its name. Popular music and low-budget quiz shows highlighted the broadcast day. There was also news reporting by “Mr. and Mrs. Reader,” a couple who read the papers to each other every morning.
At about the time of its frequency and power change, WINS had to shut down its transmitter at Carlstadt, N.J., due to interference with WHN, 50 kilocycles up the dial but just half a mile away in East Rutherford. WHN let WINS move to its old transmitter site in Astoria till it could occupy a permanent plant in Lyndhurst, N.J. But signal problems caused WINS to temporarily return to daytime operation till it became full-time at l0l0kc on Saturday, 30 October 1943. The FCC also authorized an increase to 50,000 watts, but wartime equipment shortages delayed this until 1947.
In 1946, Hearst sold “New York’s Home Station” for $2 million to another media powerhouse, the Crosley Broad-casting Corporation, owner of the giant WLW in Cincinnati. In October 1946 Crosley began feeding New York programs from “The Nation’s Station.” From “Top o’ the Morning” at 5:45 a.m. to the dulcet late-night “Moon River,” New Yorkers could now listen in to some of the Midwest’s best programs. The schedule even included concerts by the Cincinnati Symphony. Yet New Yorkers responded weakly to being plugged in to WLW, and the Crosley network was phased out.
WINS needed little help from Cincinnati. Since 1946 it had been the outlet for New York Yankee baseball, with Mel Allen as play-by-play announcer. This was the first time any station had carried all of a team’s games live, home and away.
In 1953, Crosley sold WINS to the Gotham Broadcasting Corp.-despite its name, a West Coast organization controlled by Seattle businessman J. Elroy McCaw. “Ten-Ten Wins” entered one of the most exciting and tempestuous periods in any station’s history.
Stan Shaw conducted “The Original Milkman’s Matinee” at night. Veteran NBC sports director Bill Stern presented a breakfast-time talk show. Disc jockey Alan Freed and his record collection came to WINS on 8 September 1954. Often cited as the man who coined the expression “rock’n’ roll,” Freed was certainly a pioneer; he had already garnered an audience in the New York area through his Cleveland program syndicated through WNJR. He stayed with WINS through 1958, at a time when the station had one of the strongest program lineups in the city.
Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding moved over from WNBC in 1954 to fill the morning slot, bringing newscaster Peter Roberts with them. Deejay Jack Lacy played records on “Lacy on the Loose” and , “Listen to Lacy” (“spinnin’ the discs with finesse / just set your dial to 1010 awhile / to WINS”), and Bob Garrity presented live late-night jazz from Birdland. In 1956 Herbert G. “Jock” Fearnhead became general manager, and under his leadership and the efforts of programmer Rick Sklar, the rock-and-roll revolution seized complete control of WINS.
WINS Schedule for Monday, 30 September 1957: 6:00 a.m. Wake Up to Music-Irv Smith 9:00 Listen to Lacy 12:00 Orbit Universe with Stan Z. Burns (“The High Noon to 3 Orbit to Be for Stan Z”) 3:00 Listen to Lacy 7:00 Alan Freed’s Rock and Roll Party 11:00 All Night Show-Stan Shaw
In August 1957 WINS moved its studios to 7 Central Park West, overlooking the park and Columbus Circle (dubbed Radio Circle by WINS). It was a roach-infested building topped by a Coca-Cola sign and had been constructed, coincidentally, for William Randolph Hearst.
News director Tom O’Brien, Lew Fisher, Brad Phillips, and Paul Sherman reported the news at twenty-five and fifty-five past the hour. Each newscast opened with the words Sounds make the news!” and some significant noises. Les Keiter covered pro, college, and even high school sports.
Deejay patter was heard through a “Soundarama” echo chamber, which WINS introduced after surreptitiously operating on reduced power for a couple of hours to make the new sound even more impressive. A Western Union wire brought in record requests and dedications and WINS won listeners through a constant stream of audience-participation gimmicks and contests, like a trumped-up treasure hunt for silver subway token that supposedly kept Murray Kaufman living underground for a week. On April Fool’s Day 1958-the same day that WMCA moved to a rock-music format-”Murray the K” took over the all-night shift.
Burned by the payola scandal that threatened renewal of the station’s license and a four-month announcers’ strike in 1958, and losing its rock-and-roll audience to WABC and WMCA, WINS briefly stepped back to a more middle-of- the-road format. Al “Jazzbeaux” Collins inherited the 6:00-10:00 a.m. program in the autumn of 1959, and Cousin Brucie Morrow was on from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. Late in 1960, WINS briefly replaced WOR as Mutual’s New York outlet.
Westinghouse purchased WINS for $10 million on 28 July 1962. The original owner of WJZ had returned to the New York market after an absence of nearly forty years. As one of the Group W stations, WINS beefed up its news and public-affairs programming. In addition to five-minute summaries every half hour there was Charles Scott King’s thirty-minute “Radio Newsday” each evening at 6:00. John Henry Faulk-behind the mike again after his successful Blacklisting lawsuit-hosted a weeknight call-in, “Contact:’ Sunday evenings were four hours of public-affairs and cultural programming, including the “WINS Press Conference” and special reports on transportation, race relations, and science. There were even comedy and quiz shows from the BBC. WINS took full advantage of the 1964 Beatle “British invasion” when Murray the K befriended the group and milked as much publicity as possible from the arrangement.
On Monday,19 April 1965, the station shut off the music-its last record was the Shangri-La’s “Out in the Streets” – and became “All News, All the Time:’ Westinghouse had commissioned a study to ascertain the best-possible format for their New York outlet. The survey indicated a “talking newspaper” would have a good chance. Hearst’s foray onto the New York dial had evolved into the nation’s third all-news station and the metropolitan area’s twenty-four-hour radio news source. It was a service that would keep WINS consistently at or near the top of the York ratings.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2008/11/04/wins-history-the-early-years-from-the-airwaves-of-new-york-2/
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2008/11/01/1010-wins-history-why-is-wins-going-all-news/
1010 WINS History: Why is WINS Going All News?
November 1, 2008 4:06 PM
QUESTION: Why is WINS going all news?
Mary Meahan, Kudner Agency
ANSWER: There were two primary reasons for our decision to go all news. In the first place we felt there was a real need in the New York market for an all-news radio station – a place on the dial where listeners could tune at any time of the day or night for the latest news at that very moment without having to wait for “straight up” or “straight down” or :55 or :25. We decided that WINS should fill that need. Secondly, we’re convinced that the station filling this need will enjoy substantial audience acceptance (in both size and quality) with obvious rewards to the station and its advertisers.
Joel Chaseman, General Manager
QUESTION: How much of your news will be local? How much national and international?
Al Behrens, Pearson Advertising
ANSWER: In covering the news, WINS will operate on the philosophy that the world is our beat, the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area our frame of reference. We will give a particular news story the treatment it requires in terms of its importance in the context of the total news picture, regardless of whether it is local, national or international.
Stan Brooks, News Director
QUESTION: Will you tape your newscasts and repeat them? Will you re-read the same copy at short intervals?
Phyllis Ross, W. B. Doner, Baltimore
ANSWER: Neither. Every newscast will be different and up-to-the-second. If a particular story is developing rapidly, the new developments will be presented direct from the scene where possible. We will cover every important story from many angles – the reactions of important officials and the man in the street; analyses by our staff commentators; beeper phone conversations with eye witnesses. The emphasis will be on complete, continuing coverage of all the important news, all the time.
Ken Reed, Director of Programs & Operations
QUESTION: Will one newscaster be on the air continuously? For how long?
Don Greene, Don Greene Advertising Administration
ANSWER: We’re planning on having “anchor” newsmen who will be on duty for no longer than half an hour. They will introduce and help coordinate the many elements comprising the complete news report-voices of the newsmakers, reaction pieces, eyewitness descriptions and the like. Their job will be to prepare and present their segment of the day’s news in an informative yet entertaining and exciting manner.
Stan Brooks, News Director
QUESTION: We might consider buying the new WINS on a trial basis. What will your rates be like?
J. Walter Reed, Foote, Cone & Belding
ANSWER: Our new rate card, which takes effect on April l9th, offers maximum cumulative reach at minimum cost. Rates vary from $20 a minute (1500X rate, 7:00 PM-12:00 Mid- night) to $34 a minute (Weekly ’50 Plan’ 6:00 AM-12:00 Midnight) to $55 a minute (Prime time, fixed position). 30 and 10 second spots as available, are priced correspondingly.
Lew Witz, Sales Manager
QUESTION: Can you tell me the names of the newsmen who will be on the air for you?
Jonne Murphy, B.B.D.O.
ANSWER: In addition to some of the men who helped WINS bring home the coveted Sigma Delta Chi bronze medal for outstanding radio reporting 2 years in a row – Charles Scott King, Lew Fisher, Tuck Stadler and Paul Parker-we’ve hired some of the nation’s out- standing broadcast newsmen: men like Jim Gordon, Herb Humphries, Brad Sherman, Phil Lenhart, Doug Edelson, Henry Marcotte, and others.
Stan Brooks, News Director
QUESTION: What about your Merchandising Plan? Will merchandising still be available?
B. A. O’Reilly, Schlitz Brewing Company
ANSWER: Absolutely. Furthermore, the higher adult audience “comp” and cumulative audience we expect to deliver should assure food advertisers and manufacturers of other food store distributed products an even greater number of potential customers than ever before.
Jim Beatty, Merchandising Director
QUESTION: Will your newsmen be doing their own commercials or will you have announcers handling them?
Herb Brauner, Global Advertising
ANSWER: A second voice will always be used for live commercials.
Lew Witz, Sales Manager
QUESTION: Will you have features like traffic, sports and financial reports?
Marie Coleman, William H. Schneider Agency
ANSWER: Of course. They are important news in New York and will get full coverage on WINS. Happenings in the theatre, music, art and publishing worlds are also news to New Yorkers. So are activities at the United Nations. WINS will cover all of these areas be- cause they are part of the total news picture.
Ken Reed, Director of Programs & Operations
QUESTION: How are you going to promote your new format? Will you still have on-air contests?
Tucker Halleran, Sullivan, Stauffer, Colwell & Bayles
ANSWER: Promotion is particularly important with a unique format like ours. We’ll take a cue from the nature of the programming it- self and develop exciting and unique ways to advertise and promote it. We’ll use many of the standard mass media and we’ll create some media of our own. Such promotion will include imaginative contests and on-air pro- motion consistent with the style and purpose of our new program product.
Michael Hauptman, Promotion Manager
QUESTION: Can I sponsor a complete news cast or news segment?
Harry Martin, Wm. Esty
ANSWER: No. But you can buy fixed position availabilities across the board if your objective is greater exposure at a particular time period or identification with a particular newsman. We’ve eliminated program sponsorship, as such, for two reasons. First, news as an advertising vehicle is in great demand and, until now, in relatively short supply. Participations make it possible for more advertisers to enjoy the benefits of news sponsorship. Second, the most efficient buying strategy for our new, all-news format will be frequent, consistent participations for maxi- mum circulation (number of different people, reached at least once during the course of a week) at minimum cost.
Lew Witz, Sales Manager
QUESTION: Won’t you run out of news?
Bob Torchia, Miller Advertising
ANSWER: Not a chance. About the only thing you can be sure of these days is that there’s plenty going on in the world. WINS will be plugged into everything that’s happening here and overseas. In addition to our expanded local news staff and facilities, Group W’s Washington Bureau will provide extensive coverage of the nation’s capital and will coordinate feeds of selected stories of interest to New Yorkers from Group W stations and correspondents around the country. And our Bureaus in London and Paris and special correspondents in other major capitals and trouble spots will complete our saturation coverage of the world’s news.
Jim Snyder, Group W National News Editor