"PAMS Radio Jingles" "WCAO 600 AM" "PAMS Series 39, 40, 41"
"I'm noticing it's very difficult sometimes to find any kind of information on these radio stations and even harder to find station logos/graphics for certain years and eras. Since these jingles are from the early 70s, I wanted to find a WCAO logo from that time. There are quite a few radio surveys and ads for WCAO from the 60s, and then, it just seems to stop cold as soon as the 60's turned into the 70s. The ONLY thing I found was by sheer chance, on Ebay. It was actually a bumper sticker from the 70's. The picture though wasn't a scan, but a photo of the bumper sticker on a table, so it was shown in a twisted sort of perspective. It's really, REALLY an amazing age we live in though. There is a photo editing program I use and I was able to manipulate the skew and perspective until you could hardly tell the original photo was one showing the sticker at an odd angle.
Information on WCAO, the station, is also pretty scant but I did find an article that explains what happened to WCAO, and it's pretty much the same thing that silenced a lot of classic Top 40 radio stations: FM. FM in its early days was something rare. All cars were not equipped to receive FM on their radios in the 60's and if you could get it, chances are you'd be hearing radio's version of cable tv's local access stations; a lot of experimental stuff or whatever, just to fill air. Some FM stations played a steady diet of showtunes and soundtracks. Some broadcast a simulcast of what was being placed on the station's AM dial guy, but again, nobody could get it. Then, in the late 60's college campuses discovered that FM was an ideal place for the music of the Underground. Since nobody knew what to do with FM, the college kids were able to use the band to play THIER music, without having to adhere to playlists or worry about corporate interference. For a brief time in the late 60s into the early 70s, FM was a pretty exciting, freewheeling place.
And then, Corporate America found out about FM's superior sound. Finish the story for yourself. Once FM became available in all new cars, AM's days were numbered."
To read the story of WCAO's last day, read it here in a story from the Boston Sun:
www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-...
#wcaoradiobalrimore #wcao #pamsjingles #baltimore