. . . What a show wrecker! There's Ronnie Becker . . .

This Exhibit 'SCOPED (21:10)

[Description by Uncle Ricky for contributor Rob Frankel]

Contributor Rob Frankel writes that this is one of his favorite restorations. Me too! This is one of my favorite restorations by Rob. It's got mostly cool tunes, a couple of surprises and no Beatles!

Jack Armstrong and The Gorilla are exceptional, but WKYC demands our attention repeatedly, with a potpourri of events. The Teenage Fair just wrapped up, and there's something happening (commercially or otherwise) on "Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday" of this week. The ongoing station and sponsored events at this radio station are so commonplace that they don't need to give dates - just the day of the week. Armstrong creates an instant promotion from a current record, and note the WKYC Music Count at the end of the hour. Very hot.

Anyway, Jack says his car was attacked by a farmer, and what about those custom Hullabalooin' and Teenage Fair jingles? There are PAMS (Series 33 "Fun") jingles, and this is an excellent example of prime 1967 Top 40 that wasn't either WABC or KHJ. Unfortunately, NBC had a foggy idea what they had, or no understanding of how inappropriate the network news was in this format.

One of the hard lessons of the history of Top 40 is that a radio station with an exceptional DJ, with creative license, busting his butt doing personal appearances, on a big power station with big jingles, big promotions, and major community events and involvement - may not work. Even with most of the right ingredients, this station ultimately failed.

[MUSIC RESTORED by Rob Frankel. Note from Uncle Ricky: There are REELRADIO copymarks added to this copyrighted exhibit to provide identification as originating at REELRADIO.]

Jack Armstrong passed away March 22, 2008 at his home in North Carolina.