WABC Radio last day of music (WCBS-TV report) 

The lengendary Ron Lundy passed away this past week. He was 75 years old. May he rest in peace. My condolenses to his family and friends. Seeing that story brought back alot of memories when I grew up listening to him, Dan Ingrim and the gang back in the 1970s. There will never be another one like him. He was the ONE and ONLY!!! ALWAYS!!!

I miss the nights in the midwest where you could tune in and hear AM's from all over the region. From Grand Rapids you could hear WLS Chicago, even WABC New York sometimes, and other smaller markets from Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and even Tennessee. Sure they would fade in and out, but that made it even more fun. If there was a thunderstorm somewhere you would here it crackle through the signal. A different era for sure, but I miss it.

I still own the small transistor radio I received as a gift in 1972, my first one, and will never forget listening to WABC and Dan Ingram.

I loved how music sounded on AM and still love when I find AM radio stations braodcasting music.

I feel gifted that I was able to live at the time when WABC was first playing the Beatles and Beach Boys, etc. Cousin Brucie! Dan Ingram! all the other great disc jockies! It was one of a kind. Incredible.

Ron, Dan , Harry and Brucie all moved to CBS FM and had great runs. CBS FM became the successor to WABC . NY had the best collection of DJ s in the Nation. Those of us who grew up in that era in the NY area had no idea at the time How good our radio friends were. That Station was ubiquitous in the 60 s and 70 s a major cultural phenomenon.

Dan Ingraham, Ron Lundy, Harry Harrison, George Michaels were classic DJ's and radio personalities. Grew up listening to them on Long Island. Lundy was right in the news report, no station has ever come close to being as big as WABC was. Thanks for posting.

I'm 55, and I can tell you WABC was LEGENDARY in breadth and scope! What a great station for music back in the day! They even gave away Kawasaki 75 minibikes I remember!

AM radio was so good in the 70's. I couldn't wait until it got dark so I could listen to WABC in Kentucky. And their was so many other good stations like WOWO, WLS, WCFL and many more that made AM radio king. Like most things You don't miss it until it's gone. I still like to AM dx but it's sure not the same, hardly no music at all. Take me back!

RIP Dan Ingram. NOW the era can be laid to rest.

Sad to see this. I grew up outside of NYC and listened to 77WABC continuously from 1964 until 1976 when I moved from NY. Thousands of hours listening to thousands of songs. Wonderful memories.

WABC reached England at night time back in the 70s, i remember hearing it on my father's worldwide radio, such was the power of the Lodi transmitter.

Wow. I'm only 15 but this makes me cry so much.

I was 26 years old when they stopped the music. I was shocked and saddened. I was mad too. I grew up with that station. A happy part of my growing up was gone forever. I haven't listened to that station even once since then.

Who remembers the intro ? Music radio , 77 WABCEEEEEEE I loved listening , it was a part of every day living for me. I was very sad when it all changed, It was like a piece of me died .

I listened to WABC at night here in South Carolina while I was in high school. I am now 74. It’s still the greatest radio station ever. The super hit sounds of 77 WABC. It’s now #1 from 77 WABC. I still remember.

RIP Ron Lundy, and RIP Dan Ingram.

I grew up with these guys ... WABC & WMCA. Thanks guys... Herb Oscar Anderson, Ron Lundy, Scott Muni, Dan Ingram and all of you! Life goes on, but you folks intro'd me to being a teen boy in 1963.Go With God!

I remember this day very well..A day that will live in infamy. What memories..Thank you for the memories WABC 77. .

I listen every night 1969-1974 in Norfolk Va.

WABC . . . at their peak . . . had a 20 share which means that one in every five radios that were on were tuned in to them . . . and that's out of something like 50+ stations available at the time. They were a monster and 50,000 watts 24/7 and a one-stick non-directional signal both day and night did not hurt.

"It's just a whole world of electronic media out there, whether it's wired or over-the-air...". If everyone's now a producer, who are the listeners? It was a sad day for radio, but only the start... Nice post, Jon!

WABC was a big part of my childhood .

Woke up, got outta bed, dragged a comb across my head...here in Tokyo, Japan as I get ready for the morning commute. It's a Tuesday, June 23rd, first couple of days of official summer and for some reason my mind went back to those early summer days long ago, when 77 WABC musicradio came out of the speakers of my transistor radio, and all I heard all day long, whether on my bicycle riding with friends or hanging out at the mall, or trying to find a public pool or country club we could sneak into, Dan Ingram, Ron Lundy, Harry Harrison and all the other greats were the familiar voices between the music and sometimes over it much to our laughter. It was an era that can't be replaced no matter how many choices of media we have. It was a communal feeling, everyone was listening out there, from cabbies in NYC to couples walking along Jenkinson's boardwalk in Point Pleasant to us kids building tree forts in the woods of Chatham, New Jersey. I can only thank the heavens above that I grew up in that era to enjoy such wonder years. Cheers from Tokyo, Japan.

Remember this day well, it was a "sad" day for music, and yes I agree it was "The day the music died" and look at the shit they call music today!! :(

I listened to WABC as a kid, while living in Dunellen, NJ in the 60s. What a wonderful time!

A classic Station all from The NY Metro area who lived in that era will remember it.

It was 36 years ago today when it was goodbye to music radio 77 WABC. Miss you guys

At 2:53 seconds we see and hear the PROPER way to announce the call letters, something that made Kevin Metheny very happy.

Newscaster explaining to an audience in 1982 what FM is. That's perhaps the most remarkable part of this piece. Thanks so much for posting.

The problem is today there are no deejays and nobody plays the REAL oldies anymore like the 50's they just want to be forgotten, they now play 80's.

Screw talk radio!! Bring back the music!!!

End of an era. I still love am music radio.

This video gives me goose bumps, as I reminisce about the 60's when I was a teenager faithfully listening to WABC from Upstate NY (Cooperstown area). They were really big on The Beatles and so was I. So much good music in the 60's. Music is always evolving. Each generation of teenagers has its era of favorite music while they are growing up.

Wow, I remember listening to both 66 wnbc and 77 wabc back when I was a kid.

Cousin Brucie! 77WABC...Just a favorite childhood memory now. Damn miss the '60s.

Gosh! I remember these folks on Channel 2! I loved growing up with WABC. Anybody remember the spotting buttons that we all wore that were given away at McDonalds? When WABC went to all talk I switched to 99X Fm, which was also fantatic at the time.

Yes indeed it was! I listened as a kid with my small battery operated radio growing up in central NJ.

I grew up in the NYC area. I heard the debut of what will become a huge Beetle classic. My clock radio woke me up to Harry Harrison to get ready for school.

42 years ago already. We have more radio stations today, but somehow, we don't have the quality.

R.I.P. Dan Ingram

I remember listening as a teen in the late 70s to 77 WABC NY in Scituate, Mass. at night after the sun went down and hearing DJs Dan Ingram and Bob Cruise, and WABC's distinctive big echo sound!

New York had WABC, in Chicago, we had MusicRadio 89 WLS

These guys were rock stars.. We all traced are rock n roll roots to these guys and so many great memories of a New York long gone...God bless these guys as they were the best.

77WABC was the best station for it's time, and the best time for this station. There was the rival station WMCA the Good Guys, which was also good. But nothing compared to WABC with the best of them all Cousin Brucie.

yes RIP WABC horrible loss I grew up with this station loved the DJ's

AM radio , actually radio itself has never been the same!!! and while FM radio was stereo it never, Never had the same impact on teens

From the early 1960's until the very late 1970's, WABC was the most popular radio station in New York, often by huge margins.

This paved the way for Rush Limbaugh.

You may not believe me, but COUSIN BRUCIE is back on 77 WABC Saturday nights, he plays the jingles, 50s-70s music, and the chime times! Then after Brucie is TONY ORLANDO! Yes, that Tony Orlando. He is now a DJ too, On WABC. ANDDD Sunday nights has all Sinatra music with Joe Piscopo. Listen on the radio, online, or on your smart-voice assistant. The show is a big hit! The new owner is really turning the station around! I live on Long Island in NY and 77 is my favorite station to listen to on the weekend! It’s all coming back! Wait a while and they will realize more people listen when they are playing oldies, they may even become a Mega-oldies station, like a new 101.1 CBS.

I loved listening to WABC in Antigonish, Nova Scotia Canada during the 1960's & 1970's. The night time Sky Wave brought this station to my Sony portable radio with a great clear signal. FM Radio is as dull as dirty dish water. The AM Powerhouses had great DJ's! Closer to my home 92 CJCH & 96 CHNS were great stations out of Halifax NS.

Anyone remember that during the Beatles coming to America back in '64 the WABC AM DJs when announcing the call letters for the station used to yell "WA-BEATLE-C!!"

Great Stuff, Jon--Thanks for the clip & the effort!!

Today there are a few AM music stations like WMTR in morristown that play oldies.

Art Athens. His first guests were Dan Ingram and Ron Lundy, who had just completed the 3 hour (9-Noon) retrospective seen in this video. Many of the other shows in the early days of WABC Talkradio originated on the west coast at KABC Los Angeles and KGO San Francisco, and were distributed to affiliates via the ABC Talkradio Network.

The WABC sound continues on WLNG 92.1 FM and streaming on the web, check it out.

*"🎵The music's on Us!"🎵*

Music don't die it's just moved to FM and now to Satellite Radio so you can take it anywhere

Ron lundy,Rick sklar,Dan ingram are gone now RIP!!!

And, yes...Cousin returns to WABC for a Saturday Night Oldies Show 6 to 9 pm. WABC will play music...if only for a few hours a week...again.

Was the place to be back in the day

Nice piece

It was sad that they change it to a talk radio format. FM kicked AM’s ass when it comes to music. But now, not only do you find these kind of songs on an oldies station on FM, but also in streaming format on the web through WIFI, and cellular data, smartphones, computers, Amazon Firestick, etc. The only station I know that mimics WABC 770AM, and that’s 70’s on 7 on SiriusXM. That particular satellite radio station reminds of that cool AM station in New York. And I thank SiriusXM for that. 😎👍

3:56 "Today there are more stations, more choices, no giants." Walks in Clear Channel.

You know for a brief blip in time last year 2007 I got the chance to somewhat re-create the MusicRadio sound at a station I worked at. The owner was a big WLS fan as a kid and so we took their jingle package and did it up with heavy reverb major compession and a PHATT oldies library.I brought my WABC/WNBC Time Machine & WFIL growing up style to the table and it worked great for about 5 months,the owner buckled under pressure & switched format to Classic Rock.Have no video,but cool audio!

In my opinion, this really cements why there was so much outrage when WCBS-FM was yanked from the air all of a sudden five years ago. It was really the only remnant left of the giant that was WABC. To take it away was utterly foolish. Even though it's not the same in its current form anymore, hopefully it will never leave the airwaves again.

I live in Pittsburgh & use to listen to Cousin Brucie every night back in the 60's. The signal was so strong it was like a local station.

c:étais le bon temps en 60.70. ce poste de radio de new york entrais bien a montreal le soir apres 22heure et toute la nuit

I graduated from college a few days later on May 26th. End of an era.

I understand the irony, but it was many years later before Limbaugh and Hannity arrived. In the beginning, WABC's talk shows were fairly mellow and not totally political. Many of them originated on the west coast and were part of the ABC Talkradio network. In fact, Ross and Wilson continued to do the morning show for a while and even played some music!

Still listen to WABC 770. Bernie and Sid in the morning!

I listened to WABC back in the early 70's at night they were the boss with the hot sauce back then

when radio was great

Wow this is just amazing and such a beautiful, innocent time as well as a much simpler time when people we’re people! No one is or was good as Cousin Brucie…2nd maybe Wolfman Jack or the real Don Steele

3:28 Art Athens kicked off the talk radio era at WABC and his first guests were Ron Lundy and Dan Ingram, who had just ended the music radio era on WABC. Interestingly, all 3 of them would go on to work for CBS Radio, Athens at WCBS-AM (where he had worked prior to going to WABC) and Ingram and Lundy wound up at WCBS-FM.

I remember in the late summer/early fall in 1977, A Philadelphia AM radio station, known as WIBG, aka Wibbage,(990 AM) changed their call letters to WZZD, calling themselves Wizzard 100, with Kevin Metenny as the new Program Director. They gave that station quite an overhaul, with a Top 40 format, sounding a lot like an FM station. To me, they would be the perfect station, but with pop music transitioning to FM, they never quite caught on. Kevin Metenny was gone in less than a year, and whoever took his place obviously changed it to an all disco station by 1979. That did not seem to catch on either, and by spring of 1980, the station was sold to a religious organization, who changed it to a Gospel station. Disco was the fad in the mid to late 1970's, but by the time the station went all disco, the fad was on it's way out, and the Disco format never caught on either.

the truth is that it was time to go... I was a faithful listener of AM music stations as a kid, but once FM-Stereo became more and more available esp. in cars, AM was dead for music. Cousin Brucie et al., were old-timers playing old-timers music.

WABC's future came into question after WKTU "Disco 92" -- no relation to the current WKTU -- overtook them in the ratings, which was probably in 1978-79 (WNBC remained at a solid #2). Currently, two classic hits stations are atop the NYC radio ratings, though Z100 is the #1 Top 40 station. And in the last few years, a growing number of AM stations have been simulcasting on FM; WSB-AM 750/FM 95.5 (as WSBB; WSB-FM (B98.5) still plays music to this day) here in Atlanta is among them. And just like WABC, WSB also switched from music to news/talk in the '80s.

Howard Stern nemesis at WNBC Kevin Metheney weighs in at the 3:00 mark.

Didn't know that the station lasted that long. I was listening to FM radio in 1974.

Almost all of the AM & FM stations are worthless today. All you hear is the phrase DOT COM and BUY, BUY, BUY every few moments ....it's really sickening.

WABC sounds came from all the transistor radios on the street and cars all day and night...in a 500 mile radius from NYC.

Thank God WABC now has Cousin Brucie and Tony Orlando on Saturday nights.You can only stand so much of talk radio!

Anyone who (as of 2009) is in their mid-to-late-30's or older who lived anywhere on the East Coast between 19690 and 1982 listened to WABC Musicradio 77 at least once. And now, talk is starting to migrate to the FM dial as well. Proposed legislation that would force radio stations to pay royalities to performers for music played could accelerate this trend. Ironically, WABC-AM today consists of 24/7 syndicated talk shows , although several of them are produced at WABC's studios.

WABC is doing a music format on Sat nights, have been for about 8 years. Its a throw back to the MusicRadio days.

from .1960 to may 10th 1982 it was a top 40 and music station.

listen Ron since i could remember

At 3:00, the reporter mentioned WNBC going to AM Stereo. Had more AM stations done that, I would guess in the mid-70s, music may have survived on the AM band. Somebody posted a few years back on youtube that you could take the people who listen to terrestrial radio (AM and FM) and fit them in the backseat of a VW Beetle. A bit of a stretch, that, but there are so many more ways to get music nowadays. I have a circa-1998 analog radio, and the only thing I listen to on it is sports. Posting 11-7-23.

How times have changed

I was there in 1974 with Ron, Dan and Rick, as an engineer. My favorite was pretty Nancy, Rick's assistant. We went to "Yankee Doodle Dandy" that year on the Fourth of July! Tom Klemesrud

WNBC bit the dust in 1988.

WABC stood as a example for Europeans too.Radio Veronica, a 1960 to 1974 offshore broadcaster sent DJ's to New York to see how radio was made there.

IN THE 70'S I LISTEN TO RON

WABC Flipped to Talk & News back in May of 82, 22 Years behind its then Sister Station 790 KABC here in L.A. which was the 1st Talk Radio Station that was Launched in 1960 & it's Other Sister Stations at the Time Like 890 WLS, Chicago & 810 KGO San Francisco went to Talk Also. & WABC got Sold Off a Couple of Years Ago, Along with Sister FM Station WPLJ, that was Sad Days for New York Radio when that Happend.

As for the other ABC stations, KABC/Los Angeles went talk in the early 60's after the radio network shut down, KQV/Pittsburgh was sold and has since gone dark, KTRH/Houston went news/talk, as did KGO/San Francisco. WLS/Chicago was the last to give in, holding out until 1989 before giving up. In 1982, ABC was developing Superadio, with the best jocks from WABC, WLS and FM'er KLOS; the station I was working at at that time had signed up for it, but contracts, union rules and the dropping of music on most of the ABC AM's scuttled the project.

00:35 compare him to the children (ages 35-55) doing the local news today, especially on ABC-TV.

2:50: WNBC was the only top 40 AM Radio station left at this point in 1982-BUT-This was just before Howard Stern came on board!

...And that's the way it is folks ...The Good Old Days Just Die. ..Enjoy today ...We are Next.

When i was a kid i lived in the country and were pretty secluded. I remember when my parents got me my first transistor radio and one of the stations that i picked up at night was WABC in New york. Was the best station too. I couldn't believe i was getting that station where we lived which was up on the canadian border. Needless to say i listened to it all the time and now its gone. You have the power to bring it back. Big deal if times change. Just change the music. Tired of politics and talk!!

Rip kemosabe Dan Ingram radio god