Remarkable, isn't it, that KYW sounds pretty much the same today. WFIL was the typical Top 40 of the era, with legend Dr. Don Rose (who lingered on in Philly as the voice of Channel 48's cartoon block long after he decamped to San Francisco). WIBG sounded sluggish by comparison, and did until the end; by the time they tried to reinvent themselves as Wizzard 100, the handwriting was on the wall for AM Top 40. It's interesting to hear WIP and WPEN, middle-of-the-road stations that were all over the dial, all over the country in that time, and are now practically nonexistent, replaced by "adult contemporary," which has slowly mutated into more of an adult Top 40 as tastes changed and audiences aged. You couldn't do now what Ken Garland was doing back then -- the appeal is too old, the pace too slow. For its time, though, that was a dominant form of radio.

The YouTuber who posted this, stevations, has a bunch of airchecks posted from that era. I could listen to them all day.

It's a lot of staged action, but it's pretty rare stuff from that era, especially of UHF in its infancy, and of some defunct stations like WICA-TV Ashtabula and stations that didn't materialize the way they expected, like WHK-TV and WERE-TV.

There's a nice writeup at WEWS-TV's website- find that here.

A lot, but that meant I didn't have the time or energy to do anything here. And I'm far from alone, judging by the number of blogs you see abandoned or sluggishly (is that a word?) updated these days. As I've told you before, time has become a commodity in severely short supply for me, and my original reason for this site -- to maintain a regular, daily writing regimen -- has become obsolete, because I'm writing daily for AllAccess.com and Nerdist.com. They pay, this doesn't, and at the (literal) end of the day, I just don't have time or energy to write any more.

Not that I'm not grateful for that. To be gainfully employed, period, is a blessing in 2012, and to be gainfully employed by not just two websites but two great places for which to work is especially gratifying. But it doesn't leave much time for anything else.

But I still want to keep this going, because who else will look for things like this?:

That, courtesy of the indispensable FuzzyMemories.tv, is a Christmas-time commercial from Weise's department store in Rockford, Illinois, circa 1976. Weise's lasted until 1982, when it was renamed after parent store chain Bergner's (the logo, which is pretty much Bergner's with "Weise's" where "Bergner's" would go, is a tipoff). Bergner's, of course, still exists, part of the Bon-Ton chain. WHO ELSE WOULD CARE ABOUT THAT? See, that's why I have to keep this place going....

HT: Zoo With Roy

I wasted a LOT of time with Dig Dug. Not the home version, but the arcade version, which occupied the back of Roache and O'Brien's bar on Lancaster Avenue near my college campus. I think the Dig Dug machine went in either in my senior year or just after, and it became a ritual: Duck in the back ("Ladies") door, order a burger from the kitchen, grab a 25 cent Schmidts draft at the bar, then start pumping the Dig Dug machine with quarters. I became pretty decent on it after all that practice (and despite the beer). That, and Qix, were the cause of much distraction in my youth. What? You remember Qix, right? This:

Imagine what I'd have been had I not devoted all that time and money to soon-obsolete video games. I wouldn't have fit in as well at Nerdist, probably.

Sports were -- was? -- a primary bond between me and my father. He'd been an athlete, good enough to get a look by pro baseball scouts, good enough to play in the Army's league for the amusement of European base commanders during the Korean War, not good enough, at least after an injury, to make it his career. I was, to put it politely, non-athletic, when it counted, that is; I learned to be passable at basketball and tennis long after it was too late for it to matter. He never expressed disappointment in my lack of on-field prowess, at least not to my face, but I know he felt it. Nevertheless, when I demonstrated an aptitude for knowing ABOUT sports, and even talking and writing about it, it strengthened our relationship, and it led to our ritual.

Every day, he'd call or I'd call at about 5 pm Pacific, 8 pm Eastern, and we'd talk, but during basketball season, it was about basketball. He was once a Knicks fan but followed the Heat; I was, and am, a Sixers fan, but we talked about whatever game happened to be on the previous night. He marveled at Shaq and Kobe, loved San Antonio's Twin Towers, analyzed every game and every team. And, if a game that night came down to the wire, one of us would call the other and we'd watch the game together on the phone, analyzing and coaching and kibitzing the whole way through. All through the NBA season, that's what we did, night after night.

And then it was over, and to this day, I miss every moment of it. I still watch NBA basketball, but it's not the same. In a way, it's like how Dodger fans will feel when Vin Scully no longer calls the games -- there'll still be action, but it'll be different and not as good. On Father's Day 2012, at this moment, Oklahoma City and Miami are playing, and it's halftime. We would have been on the phone right now, going over the first half. I'll probably watch some of the second half, but it's hard to do without Dad. The love isn't there any more.

Dad didn't believe in religion or an afterlife. But if he was wrong about that... hey, Dad, you watching?

On Saturday, we walked once again in the Revlon Run/Walk for Women 2012, and it raised money for cancer research; We walk to honor Fran's survival, and our friends and family who have fought the disease, but also to honor Phyllis Simon, who we've missed for 17 Mother's Days now. This 10 seconds of drumming is from the band that greets walkers and runners at the end of the walk every year:

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

It's "Homer," I believe, the mascot the Braves put in because anything connected to the name "Braves" would be, you know, a little racist. Not that it stops them from chopping. But that baseball-head HAS to be the stuff of nightmares for little kids all across the South. Geez, he's disturbing.

That's how WINS in New York addressed ad agency questions about its about-to-debut all-News format. It's not like WINS was the first all-News station; Gordon MacLendon had gotten there first, at XETRA in Tijuana and at WNUS in Chicago -- but it was the first in New York and far more ambitious than MacLendon could afford. People really had nothing to go on, no idea what it would sound like, or whether, as the last question asks, they'd run out of news. 47 years later, they haven't run out.

He always loved Sinatra, so, Dad, here's one I know was a favorite. Happy birthday:

2. Lose weight or you'll look fat.

3. Invest in a comb, why don't you.

4. Maybe you should wear your glasses on camera, because the squinting makes you look like a fish.

5. Nice voice, Kermit.

"Zou Bisou Bisou," by the way, not "Zooby Zooby Zoo." Very French-like.

It's been an interesting few months.

I've been a little -- no, a LOT busy with my day jobs. Both All Access and Nerdist are going extremely well, but my responsibilities for both have left practically no time to do anything here. Hence, the silence. And then, unbeknownst to me because I never got a notice and I don't remember everything, this domain briefly expired. But when I discovered that, I took care of it. And now, we're back.

So, let's throw up a little thing I found in the interim, circa 1966, ad artwork from the legendary Jack Davis with the lineup of proto-talk station WNBC New York, featuring Brad Crandall, Big Wilson, Bill Mazer, Edith Walton, and Mimi Benzell. That was a different kind of talk radio, to be sure. I remember listening to Crandall, Wilson, and Mazer; only Mazer's still with us, at 92 years old, having been on radio and TV in New York forever and giving us "Sports Extra," which for sports fans in the New York area in the 1970s was must-watch TV every Sunday night in the pre-ESPN era.

Okay, see? Back. I won't be posting every day like the old days, but I WILL be posting. An eight-year habit's hard to break. In the meantime, there's also Twitter, All Access, and Nerdist, too.

I had no idea fishing poles grew like that, complete with lure. You learn something new every day.

I'm not big on carolers in general, and carolers in costume less so. It's just a little twee for my taste. The crowd was polite, but most folks just kept eating and chatting. It's hard to get a place where it's 68 degrees and sunny in December to feel like Christmas, and harder still when it's in a La Salsa.