This week, I’m sharing three stories from my radio broadcasting career. I posted the first one Wednesday, the second on Thursday, and here’s the third…
In the early eighties, I spent four years at WHCN/Hartford, an album rock station which not only sounded great, but pulled off amazing promotions on a regular basis. It also did some cool little things.
One of them was a Sunday morning show called “Back To Mono,” which played rock oldies from the 1950s and 1960s for an hour or two. The show was fun to listen to, enhanced by a recorded intro which invited listeners to watch their radios as the station literally returned to mono, at which point the disc jockey in the studio pushed a button that connected to the transmitter and turned off the stereo light on radio receivers.
In that era, the stereo beacon was a big deal, in that it separated us from the AM stations (which all broadcast in mono) and also helped anyone turning the radio dial — at home or in the car — know when they were best tuned into a station’s signal.
When the “Back To Mono” show was over, another recorded message announced that the station was resuming stereo broadcasting as the button was pushed again and the stereo light popped back on.
It wasn’t a big deal, just another minute piece of what made WHCN such a great rock station.