Apparently noone else is going to hazard a guess, so here goes.

The four AM rock stations in NYC in the late 1950s and early 60s were:

WMCA - 570
WABC - 770
WINS - 1010
WMGM - 1050

WMGM was owned by the MGM record label to promote their stuff. They were sold to Storer sometime in 1962, regained their original call of WHN, and went EZ listening. I think they were WNEW for a while. Then Bloomberg. Today they're WEPN sports.

WINS remained rock until late 1963, when the entire Westinghouse chain went all-news.

I'm not certain when WMCA dropped rock, but they became the original all-talk station in NYC, and later got religion.

WABC remained rock until the FM rock stations took over, beginning with WOR-FM and later WNEW-FM. I believe that WPLJ is the FM version of what WABC would be today, but I can't hear it from here for some odd reason. ;)

And WABC never sounded as good as it did in the Spring of 1967 during the AFTRA strike, when management was doing the on-air shifts and the tight format went out the window..! Otherwise their format sucked. But they were #1. Go figger...

And now you know...

For the record, there may indeed have been other AM rock stations in NYC, however these four were all rockers at the same time period: In the late 50s and early 60s. WNBC came much later. WWRL was always more of a soul station.

America needs a sense of humor...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2015 11:25AM by jtart.