Wow, you’re an encyclopedia of DC radio.
My humble comments then are merely that Chris Core was great, a truly “balanced” and fair man who actually seemed to enjoy talking with his callers. I hope he shows up somewhere else quickly.
A couple DC radio memories are:
WGTB (Georgetown Basement) which I must admit in my noodlebrained teen hippe-dippie days was an incredibly brazen station and played the best 60s/70s rock ‘n roll ever. They’d play an entire album side nonstop start to finish. Cutting edge stuff at the time. And they had that college “revolutionary” thing going full-steam, which I recall is why Georgetown finally shut them down.
There was another hippie-type AM (!!) rock n’ roll station I think out of Baltimore, can’t remember the call letters but it was a remarkable assault on AM radio of the time. I vaguely recall hearing Eric Burdon’s “Spill The Wine” on it for the first time, and Allman Bros. “Whipping Post”, and even Aerosmith’s first album. The station’s announcers sounded something less than completely sober after about 9PM.
About your Bangor story, here’s an opposite. When I lived in Boston I’d drive down to DC several times a year for various events. It was usually pretty easy to keep Boston’s WBZ and certainly NYC’s WABC tuned in clear as a bell all the way to Baltimore.
I wouldn’t call myself an ‘encyclopedia’ of DC radio, or any radio market for that matter, but having worked in the industry I probably paid more attention to the comings and goings of people, programmers, station managers, etc., than the average person.
I had forgotten about WBZ coming in pretty clear in D.C., and I actually picked up Wolfman Jack (not on an outlaw Mexican station) but on WNBC in New York, I used to sneak down to my Dad’s radio room when I was a kid (he was a ham operator at one time) in the wee hours and just scan the dial, that was one of many things that got the radio bug into my veins, I never made it to the real ‘big time’, just worked small to medium markets but when someone tells me I’m a ‘has-been’ (I’m retired from radio now), I tell them it’s quite alright, because I’d rather be a has-been, than a *never was*, lol
Your analysis of Chris Core is right on the mark, regardless of his own views, he genuinely enjoyed his callers and treated them with respect, which is the mark of a great broadcaster.
During one of my tenures at a small country station in North Florida (literally a single-wide mobile home in a cow pasture with a 3000 watt transmitter), I learned one of the ‘secrets’ of radio from the music director (and later, close friend) who told me “all you have to do when you’re talking on the microphone, is to forget about all the thousands of people that might be listening, and picture yourself broadcasting to just one special friend, and that one friend only, and simply have a conversation with them in between the records and EVERYONE listening will think you’re talking just to *them*”, he did that and I emulated his example and for a small market, we were as successful as we were able to be for a little ‘pig-whistle’ of a radio station. ;)
Say, we need a ping list for Metro-DC radio, is there one to your knowledge?
Enjoy your weekend!
Best,
MKJ