What radio stations did you listen to growing up?

One thing about being old, it meant as a kid I enjoyed the Golden Age of Top 40 AM radio. WABC and its 50,000 watts made Dan Ingram and Cousin Brucie a must. Philly had about five great stations, and even little old Wilmington, Del. had one, whose call letters I forget. Then came the dawn of FM rock. It was a good time to be alive and have a car radio.
In 2011, I listen to my radio for traffic reports and when I think there might be some particularly juicy idiocy on local sports talk -- like this week after the Pats' loss.

 

I really miss WBCN in Boston. For a commercial station, they had a great commitment to local music, and in the Eighties the Rock'n'Roll Rumble was a must for local bands.
Then there's WBRU (commerical, but based at Brown) in Providence, which 'til the end of the Eighties was free-form radio. Just about any Providence show I wanted to see back then, I could win tickets on BRU.

 

Not too much in terms of quality radio stations when I was a teen. Mostly top-40 and country. I did like listening to the local college station at night because they would play the latest hip-hop and rap tunes. This was late 80s, early 90s, so it was always cool to hear Ice Cube and Tribe Called Quest coming out of my radio.

I also listened to some talk radio. The local stuff, sure, but also I was able to pull in some goofy southern radio signals...one crazy talk show guy, I want to say his name was Dave Paul or something like that. Don't know whatever happened to him though.

 

same one I still listen to ... WQUT. They were the most relevant rock station in the region when I was in school, and then switched to Classic Rock format, meaning I've listened to the same songs/artists uninterrupted.

You gotta love the Tennessee Midnight Rambler.

I prefer terrestrial radio. I used to have XM but ditched it. Listening to sports on it was good, but the music was about a B- at best. I like local stations to hear the commercials and other spots. That's how you know what's going on.

 

WKBW, Buffalo! 1520 AM. Joey Reynolds, Rod Roddy, Sandy Beach, Jefferson Kaye, Stan Roberts, Danny Nevereath, and Shane, Brother Shane, among others.

WBEN and Van Miller for Bills games.

WGR and Ted Darling for Sabres hockey.

WEBR and Stan Barron for Canisius basketball.

In college I listened to WGOE, an excellent album-rock sunup-to-sundown station in Richmond.

 

When I was little I listnened to a bunch of crappy pop stations, like 93Q in Syracuse and 97.9 in Rochester. As I got older, I started listening 96.5 WCMF, which was a great classic rock station in Rochester, and the alternative station, 90.5.

I was that girl with headphones on all day that had the best mixtapes and always had the latest music -- even though we didn't have MTV in the country. I listened to as much music as I could, I guess that's how I spent three years working in a used CD store. Nowadays, I'm so busy that I'm lucky if I stumble across three or four new bands a year that I stick with.

Funny (lame) story. A bunch of my alternative, rebel-against-the-estblishment friends in high school were so pissed off in high school that on of the local classic rock stations switched to "modern alternative" we started a petition to change it back and sent them a copy of The Smiths' Panic. We were sooooo bad-ass.

 

PS: I just remembered! Top 40 radio station in Wilmington was WAMS. Also, Sunday nights as a kid were spent listening to WDEL broadcasts of Wilmington Blue Bomber games. Eastern League basketball, baby! Any game with a final score not in the 130s for both teams and without at least one fight was considered a gyp by the customers.

 

Didn't listen to them on radio - aside from Miller the odd time for the Bills - but saw a lot of those guys on Buffalo TV back in the day.

 

The glory days of AM radio in New York had competition between WABC and WMGM 1050 (Murray the K et al), with WMCA also making a brief foray into rock 'n' roll.

The big change came in the late 60s when WNEW-FM came into being, breaking the Top 40 format and playing album cuts etc.

Now, I still listen to "classic" rock on Q104.3 or a more eclectic mix of new and old on WRXP-101.9.

 

I'm right there with spnted. I listened to first pop music on WABC from say 67-69 then made a switch to WNEW-FM that lasted until adulthood.

 

chalk up another for the geezers. in the '60s, it was wmca 'good guys' and/or wabc, cuz brucie, etc. by '70 or so, wnew-fm was the only place to be for the truly 'cool kids' past their Top 40 days and well into album-oriented rock spun by radio voices who could spin a yarn as well as discs, like jonathan schwartz and vin scelsa....

 

not to mention Dave Herman and Pete Fornatale and, coming over from WABC, Scott Muni