Your favorite era, and station that influenced you...

[Kent Dorsey]

Just a good question for you...
What time in your life, with a particular station you were listening to, shaped your musical tastes and is looked upon in your life as one of the best times in your life. Not necessarily talking about your personal on the air time, just sometime special...
I'll start...
1982-1984, living in Fayetteville I was deeply touched by the daytime programming of album oriented rock outlet WQDR Raleigh. Songs like "From The Beginning" by Emerson, Lake & Palmer, "Hypnotized" by Fleetwood Mac, "Ramble On" by Led Zeppelin, and "Long Time Gone" by Crosby, Stills & Nash were great to go to school by, for a youngster who mostly only had exposure to Top 40. I still loved Top 40 radio, but the album oriented rock in the delivery it was done by Gongaware, Guild, Walton and others was really neat.
I drove to Raleigh in mid 1984 for my state board exams and tuned in to hear someone say, "You're in QDR country!" and I almost wrecked...
For my radio time, early 1980 when WXIK in Shelby was "on it's way up" was great...
Ramble on:

[surfdude]

WBT in the 70s was the benchmark for great stations serving their community.
Solid personalities and the right music for what the station was doing.
When you listened you felt "plugged in" to Charlotte.  Bob Lacy and Dick Durante
were my favorites.

[gymbeaux120]

The 70's and WGOE in Richmond, VA. Progressive Radio at its best: "free-form" format (where the talent picked the music, not some record company A&R geek), very "personal" delivery (you felt the jock was talking directly to you, not at you), and some avant garde programming elements (jazz music under the "news"). Just good stuff. That's the way I wanted to do radio.

Honorable mentions: WRVA in Richmond and WBT, back when both were presenting "the information you need and the music you want." And WCGC in Belmont, NC during the Gurney Thomas days.

[hballard_HB]

The stations that influenced me, part one:
My earliest memories of radio are riding in the car at night with my dad, in the front seat, before the law said a 5 or 6 year old kid had to be strapped in the back seat. I would feel so important when he would tell me to find 1510 WLAC Nashville on that old tube radio. I knew I had found the right station when I would hear "Hey John R, say what you gonna do? Come on John R. and play me some of that rhythm and blues!" It was John R, way down south in dixie, layin' down those crazy sounds, sponsored by Ernie's Record Mart, Royal Crown Hair Dressing, Silky Straight Pommade, and Hoyt Sullivan's Hair and Scalp Conditioner. Occasionally there would be commercials for mail order chickens. too. What John Richbourg played on the radio then laid the foundation for what we know now as soul, funk and that good old Carolina Beach Music.

1965-1982: 61 Charlotte, Big WAYS. When Stan and Sis Kaplan came to Charlotte and bought a radio station from Harold Thoms that had been called "New WAYS", running an automated format called "Downbeat", they blew all that up and brought big time Top 40 radio to town like nobody had never heard. We didn't want to leave for school in the morning because we were afraid we'd miss what Jack Gale was going to do next. People were digging up total stranger's yards thinking that's where Mr. Treasure hid the $1000 prize from the on air clues. Long John Silver and his Super Wonder Dog Blue owned the night, and a fast talking overnight guy named John Larsh would later go on to national fame as Jack Armstrong. There would be the later eras with Jay Thomas, Robert Murphy, Chuck "Boo" Baron, and Larry Sprinkle. Today, there's a vacant piece of land at 400 Radio Road, in the Oakdale community of northwest Charlotte, where memories still live between the transmitter towers.

1968: 95.1, WRNA. "This is Calvin." That says it all.

[kruxman]

WLS and WCFL Chicago, from mid 60's to mid 70's.  Growing up in Indiana, they were the only stations my friends and I ever listened to.  Great personalities, and great music.

[mp3RadioGuy]

Being a Cleveland, Ohio Yankee boy, the truly great Top 40 AM stations I remember from the 60’s were WHK, WIXY, WKYC & the Big 8 CKLW.  From the 70’s it would have to be WGAR-AM & WMMS-FM. 
When I moved down south there were some great AM top 40’s such as WAPE, WAYS, WKIX, WTOB & WCOG just to mane a few.
Many I actually had a chance to work for.

[Mike Sheridan]

Early '60's WKBW 1520 Buffalo.  Like a morning show 24 hours a day!

[audiomusiclover]

Great Topic:
In the early 1970's when I started listening to music, my favorites were
WAIR - 1340 and WTOB - 1380.  Both were top 40 AM formats from Winston Salem. 

In the late 70's and 80's
107.5 (can't recall the call letters before WKZL) from Winston Salem.  FM Album was great at that time. 
98.7 WRQK (K-99) - from Greensboro was fun - recal Gary Cannon
WROQ 95.1 from Charlotte kicked butt in those days too
from Raleigh WQDR 96.1 Rock was good until it changed.  From there, WDCG 105.1 had great energy getting us ready for the Fri & Sat night Dog parties.  I can recall John Van Pelt & the energy that station had.

In the early 90's 
WZZU in Boston was fun when living there. (they had a good afternoon drivetime... ) 
Unfortunatly the late 90's is where most new music faded for me as we approached 2000.... 
Now I tend to not have any favorite stations, just some that I tolorate.  How Sad!!

[tothedj]

When i moved to North Carolina as a child in 1968, my favorite stations then were WCEC 810, WEED 1390, and
WRMT 1490 in Rocky Mount...

As the 1970's came along, thing changed some as music moved to FM, one of my favorites back then was WXYY
at 106.1 in Wilson, and then a station came along call "Rock 93"(WITN-FM) out of Washington.

Then in the 1980's, when i began in radio, even though i worked on AM for about three years, FM stations were
growing in popularity, i listened outside my workplace to WYYD 96.1 and WRAL 101.5 in Raleigh, and WCEC 810
in Rocky Mount, which sadly signed off in 1986 after i moved to Wilmington, when i relocated, i listened to WGNI
102.7, occasionally WHSL 97.3 and WAAV 980, and in North Myrtle Beach, WNMB 105.5, and WYAV 104.1 in
Myrtle Beach.

As the 1990's arrived, my musical tastes began to change as i grew older, i still tuned into WGNI 102.7, WKOO 98.7 in Jacksonville, and WMNX 97.3 when it was AC, but i started to enjoy talk radio as WAAV evolved into this format more, even though stations signed on in Wilmington, nothing else appealed to me.

In the first ten years between 2000 and 2010, even though i was working for a music station until 2009, outside the building i listened to talk stations like WAAV 980, and "The Big Talker FM", which today occupies 93.7 and
106.3, mainly when i ride in my car or occasionally online, and thanks to the internet, i've heard snippets of
stations i've wanted to hear for years, especially in the bigger markets.

[Kent Dorsey]

thanks everyone, this is great...