RADIO RATINGS FROM THE 60'S,70'S,80'S

[TRAVELINDAVE2]

DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE I CAN GET RADIO RATINGS FOR THE LOUISVILLE AREA FROM THE 60'S ,70'S 80'S? I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW HOW ALL THESE STATIONS STACK UP RATINGS WISE, AM AND FM. DOES ANYBODY REMEMBER WKRX 106.9 FROM 1967 TO ABOUT 1972 WHEN IT WENT TO EASY LISTENING,WVEZ?

[Mike Griffin]

It would be interesting to see the ratings again. I sent an email to Arbitron asking. Don't know if we should hold out much hope, but you never know.

I remember WKRX very well. I worked there from the summer of '70 until Jan '71 when they started playing beautiful music. I couldn't take the beautiful music. On the other hand it was very good for the owner, Keith Reising, who got a big increase in advertising revenues because of the bigger ratings with the format.

One of their best known WKRX DJs of the time, Bob Craft, now works for WAMZ. You can read about him on their web page. Other announcers of the time were Jerry Bigler who is now retired, Keith Reising (owner/announcer) retired, Dave Hanford, Dick Howser, Al Reisin (formerly of WAKY and WKLO), Ray Petigo (NAHS graduate), Mike Hublar (another NAHS graduate class of '69)...don't know where these last guys are. Also, Danny King who later went on to be program director of WINN and still later worked at WAVE also spent some time at WKRX.

[Mike Griffin]

About the ratings, in the early '70s, as I recall, WAKY, WKLO, and WAVE all had numbers in the 20's, WHAS was a little behind, followed by WINN, WTMT and then comes the FMs. FMs that showed up usually were in the 1s and 2s. The beautiful music pulled WKRX up a lot I think I recall 5 or 6.

I remember being surprised at how well WAVE did in the mornings. They were the only guys in town with a traffic copter and were often number 1 overall for the 6 to 10 am time period. WAKY and WKLO pulled better numbers among 18-34 year olds which was the golden age group of the time but usually more people overall wanted to hear that stupid traffic copter.

This is how I remember it, but hey, that was 35 years ago.

[bruiser]

IIRC, and I may not, WAKY and WKLO, sometimes in the sixties, had 60 to 70% of the entire listening audience. The two seemed to trade the #1 and #2 spots between them every few months. No other station was even close.

[Travis]

Bruiser, How is it that you know these things? Who are you, really? And, who do you work for? I'm sure John Quincy has ways of making you talk.

[bruiser]

I'm just a radio fan. Particularly of the period from about 1952 to about 1975. I'm a DXer from way back, and listened to all kinds of stuff, but music wise it was generally rock and roll, with a dose of hillbilly and blues thrown in. I also dabble a little bit in oldtime radio, and do some collecting in that field. My collecting is usually limited to sci-fi, action/adventure, some westerns, some music shows, horror, ect. Shows such as The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Creaking Door, Les Paul Show, Grand Ol' Opry, X Minus One, Sherlock Holmes, Witching Hour, Gene Autry's Melody Ranch, Smiley Burnette Show, Superman, Dragnet, things of that nature. Today I ran across a WHAS "Old Kentucky Barn Dance", which was also broadcast on the CBS network. Of course it features Randy Atcher and the Red River Ramblers.

I never worked in the industry, but you might say I'm a student of radio.

[Mike Griffin]

Don't know as much about the ratings in the 1960's except Tim Tyler saying that there was one book on Sunday evening where he had a 90.

He thought it was a sampling fluke, but it was there.