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| Bob Ufer behind the WJR microphone |
This
is not about the demise of AM radio really but rather me no longer
listening to it. In the past few weeks, I realized that the last AM
radio station that I listened to advertised an FM version of the same.
Since the 1980s, about the only AM radio station I have listened to is
CBS News Radio; weather and traffic every ten minutes on the 8s, sports
every half hour on the 15s, and news updates at the top and bottom of
the hour. The only time I listen to News Radio is when I am in the car.
I began listening in Detroit. I continued to do so when I moved to
New York. When I moved to Chicago in 2006, the first preset I
programmed in my car was 780 AM CBS New Radio Chicago. I learned last
week that the same station
From
the days of my crystal radio, I listened to AM radio. It was natural,
it only received AM stations. When I got my transistor radio, it also
was only AM. So, I listened to AM radio. As I entered my teen years, I
began listening to pop music. There were two stations in Detroit that
catered to teens. One was not actually in Detroit. In fact, it was not
even in the state of Michigan or even in the United States. CKLW was
based in Windsor, Ontario across the Detroit River. It was 800 on the
dial. The other, more popular, station was WKNR commonly referred to as
Keener 13. It was 1310 on the AM dial.
We
all listened to Keener. We listened to the countdown every night. We
would discuss which song was #1 and what we thought might be or should
be #1 instead. It was the heyday of the Beatles, Motown, and the
Monkees. They even published a little handbill of the that we all
seemed to have copies There was lots of excitement and lots for us
young teenagers to talk about. I remember when Louie Louie from the
Kingsman hit the charts. It skyrocketed to #1 and stayed there awhile.
It was a great three chord song and the, oh boy, all that controversy
about the lyrics. It was one of those stations where the DJs were all
high energy talking the "hot new single" and "the hits keep coming."
There is a website dedicated to the memory of this station
www.keener13.com. I just found it when I was looking up the frequency
of the station. They even have the weekly top hit charts on this
website. Here I am longing for the old days of AM radio, but I have to
admit that the internet is awesome.
There
were other cool things about AM radio back in those days. During the
day, all one ever got was the local stations. At night, for reasons I
do not fully understand, you could dial in radio stations from other
cities. It was kind of exciting back then to be able to tune in to a
station in Chicago, Cleveland, Nashville, and at times New York, Boston,
and Philadelphia. The reception was often staticky and the game was to
figure out what city the station was based in. My father's side of the
family were mostly from Boston. We used to visit there for a few weeks
every summer. It was a cool and wondorous place in my view. It was a
place I thought I wanted to go to college. So, it was really special
when I could pull in a Boston station.
It sounds totally lame these days of internet and satellite radio,
youtube, skype, and everything else available to us in this information
age. Today, as a ten or twelve year old, I would have probably been
playing video games instead of trolling for AM stations from other
cities. I probably should have gotten into short wave radio to easily
pickup and listen to radio stations from all over the world. What can I
say, I never thought that was worth the money to do so. I guess I was
just an AM radio guy.
Even
today, I occasionally try to get stations from far away. If I am
driving from Chicago to Detroit late at night. I will go to the AM
dial, punch scan on my car radio, and see what I can pick-up. Most of
AM radio is syndicated. There are a lot of talk shows, Spanish
stations, and religious stations. The local content is almost
non-existent. It is not the same.
When
I was until I got a little older, into my teens, my taste in music
became more serious and changed from pop to more hard rock or
alternative rock. Around the 1967-1968, we got an AM/FM portable radio.
Just about at that time, WABX started broadcasting heavier rock with
less commercials very low key DJs and the better sound that FM brought
to the airwaves. It quickly and quietly grabbed the attention of the
teens and college aged young people in Detroit. It was way cooler than
Keener. No more popular music on AM radio. That was the beginning of
the end.
There
was still sports. I remember listening to the Detroit Tigers, Lions and
Red Wings on the radio. TV was, of course, great but there was
something special about radio. The announcers for the Red Wings and the
Tigers made the game magically come to life. on the radio. WJR, the
Great Vocie of the Great Lakes, broadcast these games. I remember in
1967, my father and I were painting a rental property we owned It was
early September the weather was pure glorious late summer weather in
Detroit. The Tigers was playing the Boston Red Sox. The winners of the
series would win the American League Pennant. They were great games in
great weather painting a house listening to George Kell and Ernie
Harwell make the game live for father and son. What a magnificent
memory. We listened on the portable radio. The Tigers lost to the Red
Sox. The outcome hardly mattered. The experience and memory of it was
and still is special.
In
1968, I became a Michigan Football fan. I listened to their games on
AM radio when they were not on TV. In those days, every game was not on
TV like they are today. Radio, AM Radio, was a huge part of my
Michigan experience. It became even crazier where a little known
broadcaster on a small Ann Arbor radio station became all the rage for
his unbridled flagrantly biased passion for Michigan and fiery quirky
broadcasts. Bob Ufer became unbelievably popular in the mid 1970s. WJR
picked him up. This ex-Michigan track star who owned his own insurance
agency was so admired, many Michigan fans would turn up the radio and
turn down the sound on their televisions. Bob Ufer was that good and
that love by Michigan fans. Here is a youtube of Bob Ufer
calling what is called one of the greatest plays in the history of
Michigan Football and with argument Bob Ufer’s greatest call. It is
vintage and classic Bob Ufer:
It
was October 27th, 1979, the homecoming game against Indiana. And with
six seconds left and the score tied at 21-21, the greatest play in the
history of Michigan football was about to take place. It has been 30
years since that play, and 30 years since what is often considered Bob
Ufer's greatest moment in the booth at Michigan Stadium.
There
are other sound clips and youtubes of Bob Ufer. He passed away in
1981. With him went some of the magic of AM radio for me. Bob Ufer was
not a TV guy. He was made for radio and he used that medium to the
fullest just simply by being him. You lived the games with Bob. His
broadcasts were giddy and intoxicating when we won and a funeral dirge
when we lost. Now the best broadcasters go to television. That is only
natural. That is where the big audiences and big money are. Not for
Ufer. He was a radio man all the way... an AM radio man.
Change
is part of this world. The accelerating pace of change with regard to
electronics is at the leading edge of change. A short hundred years ago
there was no radio, just telegraph. Look at how far we have come and
how small the world has become simply due to the ability to broadcast
instantaneously around the world on television and internet. We take it
for granted.
It
is funny how nostalgic some of us can become for something that was
barely a blip in the span of human history. We long for the days when
radio was the only on-air broadcast media. We long for the early days
of black and white television shows that were aired live. It is a
longing for the days of some of our best memories. That is all I am
doing.
I am going to youtube to listen to more of Ufer’s broadcasts...
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