I think I've mentioned before that as a kid growing up in Seattle, I really enjoyed listening to Drake-Chenault's Hit Parade 69 (70, 71...) and/or Solid Gold automatied formats on KIRO-FM and then later KFKF-FM in Bellevue. And I know some of you have mentioned Oregon stations that carried those. One of my pastimes in recent years has been looking on the Web for airchecks of those formats, and I have found several.

Around the same time in my boyhood, there was another automated music format that I also really enjoyed when I picked it up in Seattle off of KISM-FM in Bellingham. It was "Olde Golde," an oldies format produced by Draper-Blore. I have looked and looked and looked for airchecks of that from any station that might have carried it. I even reached Chuck Blore by e-mail and he said he has no old tapes of Olde Golde left. Pity.

But FINALLY last week I found one on the web! Ahhh, the memories. For those of you who might like to listen, it is at http://airchexx.com/other/assorted-airchecks/old-gold-2-upper-midwest-sampler-19 71

I am curious... did any Oregon stations carry Olde Golde?

Hmmmm....apparently not!

I don't recall "programming db" (for Draper-Blore) material being heard in Portland. I think there may have been some consulting going on for 1330 KPOJ for a short time in the 68 thru 73 era, but I'm not sure. Perhaps elsewhere in Oregon and Washington...

Anybody know where the 50s format for 1410 KLSC came from? I remember being totally jazzed over that back in '73. It just reminds me how huge the 1970s wave of '50s nostalgia was. I mean "Rock Around The Clock" even hit the Top Forty again...

I believe it was Drake-Chenault's "Solid Gold"...

I'm not aware of "Olde Golde" anywhere in Oregon, unless I missed something in the Pendleton/Baker/La Grande region.

Greenway: The reason "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets re-hit the Billboard & Cash Box charts was because it was being used at the time as the main theme to the abc TV series "Happy Days" which debuted on January 15, 1974.

The song on Cash Box hit the chart on March 30, 1974 reaching as high as #36 and debuting on Billboard on March 16, 1974 but only making it to #39. In "Happy Days" third season "Rock Around The Clock" was replaced by the series closing theme called "Happy Days".

I remember well the Hit parade formats on KFKF Bellevue and Stereo 92 in Bellingham. But, not the oldy golde format -- except at AM 770 KXA Seattle in the early 1980's (as Old Gold '77).

The Drake/Chenault hit parade format was tight and bright. Great sounding for automation. It flowed well. Where are some airchecks of "Hit Parade"? It'd be cool to hear again.

Dan, you brought back a memory with "Old Gold 77". Can you imagine anyone using the word "old" in their positioning today? It has become an EVIL word!

Dan, here is what I have found thus far.

www.bossradioforever.com/hitparade68.mp3

www.radiotapes.com/user/KEEY%20Hit%20Parade%2071.mp3

www.reelradio.com/gifts/dcdemos.html

The latter requires a ReelRadio membership.

There also is a tribute site at www,drakechenault.org.

Enjoy! It certainly brings back fond memories for me of a tremendous format in radio.

By the way, I indeed remember KJR legend Pat O'Day doing the Old Gold '77 format when he bought KXA and changed it from the classical music programming it had for many decades. But his "Old Gold" was not the same as the Draper-Blore "Olde Golde."

Portland's 1410 used Drake-Chenault's "Classic Gold". Hence the call at the time: KLSC. A sample of that very radio station programming should be available by next week somewhere on the net. I'm unable to upload it from my 26.4 dialup connection. Craig, Dylan, others interested get in touch with me.
Tom Cauthers.

Cheers, Tom!

And thanks for the correction...glad I didn't bet a day's pay on it!

It was a cool format...and it was fun to listen to Pat Pattee live on Saturday afternoons!

KLSC Classic 1410 was fun to listen to, despite being automated most of the time. I didn't listen as much as I might because there were 5 other stations that took up my AM pushbuttons and I was still a little young for much nostalgia. Let me see: It was 2 Top 40s and 3 ACs - KGW, KISN, KOIN, KEX & KYXI. Who would have thought then that only 1 would still remain?

KLSC was FULLY automated, except for Pattee on Saturday afternoon. I installed the IGM automation system. It was controlled by a DEC PDP8, 8-bit computer. I was the only employee working for Wally Rossman that was assigned exclusively to 1410, but still maintained the FM: KPAM. Had a terrible time on the weekends when I couldn't get the FM jocks upstairs to take five minutes from their busy schedules to change the tapes on KLSC. Wally and the FM PD, Mike O'Brien refused to have the people in the building, signed on duty even restart the automation when it went down or ran out of tapes. That was the only time in my 40 some years in radio that I quit partly because of fellow employees. Do I sound bitter?

So is that what did in KLSC? Oldtom left and nobody was changing the tapes?

I actually thought you were still at KISN at that time; I guess not!

Speaking as an "automation watcher" at a station 1/2-owned by Drake-Chenault from '71 to '73, and an employee of Drake-Chenault Enterprises from '73 to '76: great care went into making Classic Gold, Solid Gold, Hitparade, Great American Country, XT40, SuperSoul, etc. "tight and bright. Great sounding for automation. It flowed well."

Some of that had to do with the 1-second pre-roll. A pain to get into and out of breaks, but great for the flow.

I still have Classic Gold reel 2-2 from 1973.

Oldtom: I have a bunch of D-C demos on vinyl from that period...just need to get them to CD. Guess I need to bring home a CD burner or move the PC into the basement!

Note: most of the demos were done in a D-C production room.

Kent:
Whatever efforts you are able to make to get those D-C demos available to us here on the Web will be much appreciated!

I read somewhere that a couple of years ago Bill Drake was working on a comeback of sorts with a new format based on the entirety of the pop music era. Have you heard anything about that?

I have a CD of the 1975 KLSC Classic Gold aircheck from Oldtom. Where's the best place to upload it, and what flavor of MP3 should it be?

OK, thanks to Dylan for the suggestion: it's at http://www.divshare.com/download/1760397-bb7
About 48 minutes, 128 kbps mono, less than 2 MB.

I took the file back off. I saved it in a hurry and it had two major problems: only 2 minutes of 48, and I saved the 44.1-sampled file as a 32 without converting it, so it ran fast!

I'll fix it on Tuesday.

Sorry about that.

OK, take 2. 44.1-sampled, 48 minutes, 45 MB.
http://www.divshare.com/download/1770166-2ef

1410 KLSC Portland, 1975, Drake-Chenault Classic Gold. Mono material, recorded onto cassette from program output of automation by Oldtom. Cassette recorded fast and/or played slow.

I was amazed to see that 10 people had already downloaded the faulty file by last night!

Thanks, Kent, for making that available. That's the first time that I ever heard the D-C Classic Gold format (they didn't have it in the Seattle market when I was a kid).

Not a criticism, but from my perspective the jingles, etc. for Classic Gold didn't have quite the same flair as for Hit Parade or Solid Gold. But then, I suppose they needed to stick closely to the basic 1950s doo-wop sound....

Thanks to Tom & Kent, I was back, as a delivery truck driver with good old KLSC on my radio again! Listened to the entire tape and heard jingles I haven't heard in 30 years! I've documented all of them below:

[Sho-op Sho-op Jingle]
"All the oldies, all the time. KLSC, Classic 1410. Total gold radio."

[Guitar Jingle]
"Classic gold rock & roll, all the time. KLSC, classic 1410. Total gold radio."

[Voice Over]
"For Portland & Vancouver, the greatest hits of all time from 1410 KLSC. Remember?"

[Buddy Holly Jingle Sound]
"Classic gold radio, 1950's rock & roll. KLSC, classic 1410."

[Soft Jingle]
"Classic rock & roll, total gold radio, oh ya! KLSC, classic 1410 for Portland & Vancouver. All oldies, all the time."

[Rock Jingle]
"Classic gold rock & roll, classic gold, all the oldies, all the time, oh ya! Total gold radio. KLSC classic 1410."

I don't remember anything about total gold radio, just KLSC Classic 1410 where it's yesterday once more.

I remember hearing the Buddy Holly sounding jingle, The Sho-op jingle and the Rock jingle.

I don't remember "total gold radio" either but it must have been part of the jingle lyrics I'm not remembering since I do remember the presentation.

I'm a bit surprised to learn PDP-8's were applied to radio automation in '71. While the cheapest real computer available then, they were still spendy, the simplest model being $10K (or around $40K in today's bucks). I'm guessing the whole system cost at least $30K, plus the programming. As many (most?) DJs were getting only $2/hour then, I can't figure it.

Now, if they were also keeping the station's books on the thing, it might begin to add up, but I'm not sure multitasking/timesharing was available yet for such a small computer. If the AM was still a daytimer (so DP could be run at night), then it starts to make sense.

PDP-8's were the big computer for automated tasks in the early 70's. I used to program them using the switches on the front panel.... let's see now... starting address was usually 0200 Octal. Used them to control industrial systems. The PDP-11's came on the scene in the mid '50's. Got off paper tape and onto 8" floppies. And "huge" washing machine sized 10MB hard drives.

They just don't make them like that anymore!!!

Yes, I'm aware of their rapid adoption in science and industry, and also belatedly realize it cost less than a color camera and far less than a VTR. But I was surprised a radio station could budget such stuff--until I remembered equipment leasing was becoming common then.

Our high school had a modest -8 in '70 or '71. Even though I'd been taught a bit of FORTRAN and been allowed to run my dozen-card programs on a college's IBM 1620 in a kind of pilot program in junior high (1967), I was a struggling Algebra-I student in high school so I didn't get to use theirs. It was pretty cool, roughly the capability of a 1620 but shrunk to large-suitcase size. (Smaller than the Ampex 7000's we were using for CCTV.) It wasn't 'till the end of my second hitch in '81 I got to touch a computer again; then early micros.

The automation that in 1971-73 I watched play D-C's Solid Gold and then Classic Gold was a Gates SP10 that was all relays using a cart with one to nine 8 kHz tones on it to load the next event.

The first microprocessor-controlled automation I had any repeated experience with was a Schaefer 900(?) as shown in this picture I took of the one I used at D-C to tweak radio convention presentations. http://www.drakechenault.org/images/big_pics/SHAFER%7E1.gif

Schafer was just up the road in Santa Barbara, and they would come pick up the automation and take it to the shows with theirs.

I remember being told that there was one command that could be programmed in that would erase the entire memory, so for shows they used to hide the controller in a rack.

Whoa, cool Web site. Short but sweet and well-written.

I wonder what the lights on the map represent? Stations with Schafer automation? If so, looks like Portland, Salem, Tacoma, Seattle, Bellingham, Spokane, Pullman, Boise, Idaho Falls, Lethbridge, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Eureka & San Francisco among others.

Well, if that 900 was fairly new, the map probably didn't represent stations with a Shaefer as KSKD and KSLM in Salem didn't get their Schaefer 903 E's till 82 or 83. Prior to that point they were using a hybrid Gates that various engineers had added "features" to over the years. I remember one night the brain fried on the 903 E and it spent a couple of hours playing time checks and bumpers simultaneously between about 5:30 and 7:30 am.

Lundun

The picture was taken in the D-C lobby in Canoga Park...probably 1975.

The lights on the map were markets running D-C formats.

Took a while for my brain to dig up 903 for the Schafer model #.

When I left D-C in 1976 the next model of automation I had to deal with was a Schafer 800 with a tube subaudible tone dectector, playing tapes I recorded in the station's production room.

Several years later it was a Cetec 7000 with Audio Fails, I mean Audio Files to choose carts, running Great American Country.