Hurricane Ike

Here's the video I put together of Hurricane Ike. As the storm moved west, I downloaded video from various cable and local television sites to document to progress of the storm. Enjoy.

WHYI-FM 1978

One of the personalities that really brought Y100 to life was Robert W. Walker. The guy oozed energy. He truly was one of the best. He's has been doing voiceovers or many years, now; I've heard his voice on countless car commercials. Here's his website. (He also has a TV/film production company, which can be found here.)

Walker was on top of his game in 1978, as you can hear in this unscoped aircheck from March, 1978.

WHYI-FM Miami 1978

This is both a scoped and unscoped aircheck of Kid Curry from 1978. He was my favorite jock at Y100. He had energy, related well to the targeted demographic, and was well, just plain fun. I've searched the web to find out what he's doing these days, and surprisingly, there's not much I found other than he went on to be the Program Director at WPOW-FM.

Before we get to the airchecks, here's a little background after Curry left Y100.

From Allbusiness.com:

Date: Friday, March 11, 2005

Kid Curry is approaching his 15th year at WPOW (Power 96), having risen to PD in 1996 after arriving in 1990 as a DJ. What's even more impressive is that since 1990, WPOW has changed its tune several times. "We've gone from freestyle to dance to hip-hop," Curry says. "We change to what our target is into."

He calls working with new talent one of the highlights of his career. "I get to program a legendary radio station with the best GM in the business [Greg Reed] and the most talented group of fresh radio people I've ever worked with," he says. "As of today, I only have one person on my on-air staff that has ever worked at a radio station. For all but him, it's their first radio job, so there are none of the ghosts of past PDs. They've only learned one style?ours."

Curry isn't concerned about satellite radio. "There's a billion radios out there in America," he says. "It's going to take some time for satellite to catch those kind of numbers. There's 4 million satellite subscribers, but there's about 275 million of us. And remember, content is king!"?

I've always wondered where Curry went, and this is the best I can do, from FMBQ:

August 15, 2006

Tom Calococci emerges as OM of Rhythmic/CHR WPOW (Power 96)/Miami. Calococci, most recently PD at KKBT/Los Angeles, fills the nearly year-long void left vacant when Kid Curry exited for health issues.

When you listen to these airchecks, you'll hear some background noise/music when Kid Curry is talking. Here's why: when you recorded something on a cassette tape that already had something on it, you sometimes heard the original recording in the background. That happened on this aircheck.

00_Kid Curry WHYI 1978_unknown.mp3 - 4shared.com

WINZ-FM Miami 1984

Update from mk9775:

By the way, the aircheck is actually from 9/18/1984, not '83, since Cox was actually fired from Y-100 in October 1983, and was hired by I-95's Keith Isley soon after.

Yeah, I'm back. Another summer vacation to transfer all my cassettes to a digital format. I hope I can finish by August.

Don Cox, aka "Cox on the Radio" made his name at Y-100 in Miami, then moved to WINZ-FM, which was known as I-95 at the time. The two stations were great competitors. Cox died in 2003.

A little background:

I-95 was hot from late 1981 until about 1983. It caught Y-100 off guard, but the mighty WHYI successfully fought off a station that took advantage of the demise of 96X.
I-95 went back to Zeta after WSHE exploded in the ratings with a Hot Rock format.
I-95 could have stayed in the CHR fight, but it was really a flash-in-the-pan station with a mountain to climb against “America’s Megastation” in a market about to rapidly change with the arrival of Cuban immigrants and a whole generation of high-school age offspring from those who fled Cuba in the early 1960s.
The result? Hot 105 shot to No. 1, and then Power 96 took over.
Y-100 stumbled in the mid 1980s because it suddenly had an identity crisis, and by 1988 eventually failed in its valiant effort to be the “everything” station Z100 was in New York.
But a white rock n roll jock (Sonny Fox) anchoring mornings on a Top 40 station balancing Erotic Exotic records with Heart and Van Halen – even with Miami Vice the hottest thing on TV – just couldn’t compete with Power’s dance music and “She’s Only Rock n Roll.”

Here's an article about Cox.

In two parts, here is an unscoped aircheck from September, 1983:

Part 1
Part 2