Atlanta 1980

[artsutton]

A buddy was cleaning out some old radio industry articles and sent me the Radio and Records ratings report for 1980.

In atlanta 12 plus persons

Both WSB(AM) and WLTA(FM) were listed as PA for Pop Adult and both WPCH and WSB-FM were beautiful music.

WSB had just over a 12 share

V103 had just under a 12 share

Z93 was midway between a 10 and 11 share

Next was WKLS just under a 9 share

WQXI-FM just over 8

WPCH just over 7

WPLO(AM) midway between 4 and 5 share

WLTA(FM) just over 4

WSB-FM just a tad over 4 share (if you combined the two beautiful music stations they would have been no. 3 in market)

WGST was just under a 4 share doing news

WAOK mid way between a 3 and 4 share 

so was WRNG

WBIE-FM doing country was a 3 share

QXI(AM) just over a 2 share

GKA(AM) doing classical mid way between 1 and 2 share

The rest were under a 1 share

in this order and all AMs except WCHK-FM showed up

WCOB

WYZE (country)

WCHK(AM)

WIGO

WCHK-FM

WFOX

WAEC

WKLS


Adults 25-54

WSB

WQXI-FM

WLTA

[jabba17]

Amazing that Fox and WCHK-FM both showed up considering neither of them had moved in yet...WNGC and WTSH have a much better signal than either of those stations did then but get about the same shares.

It's also telling that WPLO was beating WBIE with the same format...WPLO was the "heritage" country station, but I guess a lot of people were still listening to AM (or stuck listening to AM) for music at that point.

[RoddyFreeman]

To this day, I think of a couple of former great stations that could have continued to this day but were messed up by bad decisions.  One is WPGC in Washington.  The other is Z93 here in the ATL as a CHR station.  After PD John Young left, new management managed to fix what wasn't broken.

[BarryATL]

My freshman year in college was 1980.  Z93 had the first high dollar call in contest in this market.  I think it was $1000.00 a day when a certain song was played.  The entire dorm was listening to Z93 all day waiting for that song.  I bring this up, because this particular contest is what caused the 404-741 phone numbers to be created as call in numbers for all radio stations in the market.  The first day of the contest caused BellSouth's Peachtree Place central office (next to Midtown MARTA) to crash for a couple of hours.  It made the local news.

The new 404-741 numbers only allowed five calls from each central office to be forwarded to the destination central office.  The draw back to the system was if Z93 was having a big contest, the no calls could get through to 94Q, Peach, etc.

Anyway, that was when Z93 still was on their game.

[kilamanjero]

To this day, I think of a couple of former great stations that could have continued to this day but were messed up by bad decisions.  One is WPGC in Washington.  The other is Z93 here in the ATL as a CHR station.  After PD John Young left, new management managed to fix what wasn't broken.

You didn't ever lie with the WPGC situation in Washington.  They could have made a number of other decisions over the years post-PPM, but now just sorta of recovering but still battling 2 UACs, 1 CHR, and 1 mainstream urban.

[donta1974]

Is Roddy Freeman talking about the Old CHR WPGC circa (1980) or the current reinvented WPGC starting in 1987 and that is still around today?

[RoddyFreeman]

Is Roddy Freeman talking about the Old CHR WPGC circa (1980) or the current reinvented WPGC starting in 1987 and that is still around today?

The old WPGC even a little before 1980.

[donta1974]

Is Roddy Freeman talking about the Old CHR WPGC circa (1980) or the current reinvented WPGC starting in 1987 and that is still around today?

The old WPGC even a little before 1980.

Ok thats what i figured THX.

[donta1974]

To this day, I think of a couple of former great stations that could have continued to this day but were messed up by bad decisions.  One is WPGC in Washington.  The other is Z93 here in the ATL as a CHR station.  After PD John Young left, new management managed to fix what wasn't broken.

You didn't ever lie with the WPGC situation in Washington.  They could have made a number of other decisions over the years post-PPM, but now just sorta of recovering but still battling 2 UACs, 1 CHR, and 1 mainstream urban.

He`s talking about the late 70`s/early 80`s WPGC Kilamanjero

[RhubarbFan]

At the time Fox97 was in Gainsville,I'am not sure what year the moved to Atlanta. WYAY hadn't even launched yet,I believe it was WIDE,WPLO gave way to Kicks. WNGC I don't think you could pick them up outside Athens.