How a really bad song made me #1

     Late Spring/early Summer 1975, I took over as PD at Mid-West Family's WYFE-AM & FM combo in Rockford IL.  The AM (the frequency of which I forget) and the FM, at 95.3, were doing different things.  The AM was oldies, automated many of the station's daytime-only hours and overseen by the station receptionist, and the FM was Top40/AOR (and in their case that meant "all over the road"...from 11PM-6AM, the FM ran "Progressive Rock" and reverted to formatted radio the rest of the day). 

     My first move was to simulcast as much of the programming as possible, under then-current FCC regs, originating from the FM. That meant that, for many of the top-hour ID's, we were saying this:

     WYFE Rockford and WYFE-FM Winnebago-Rockford.  A long, tongue-twisting station ID.

     The station's real competition in the market was WROK, at 1440AM, owned by Vern Nolte, the man who literally invented the tape cartridge system for broadcast use.  It was a great sounding Top 40 station, with a real budget (remember, I was working for MidWest Family) for staff, promotions and gear.  I was working with only my imagination and otherwise I had bupkis.

     I had to bring in a new staff.  One of them, JC Corcoran, wrote about it in his first book.

     So my strategy was to emphasize the music, playing current hits and a lot of hit oldies, and work with the jocks to say a lot in a few words.  JC and John Larson and Marc McCoy and Joanne Haas (your transistor sister)...they all worked their guts out on the air and at appearances.  Good bunch of people.

     Then we hit a Pulse rating period (back in the days before Arbitron ruled it all) and I was stuck.  I found a record, a novelty "break-in" song, called Mr. Jaws, created by Dickie Goodman. It was horrible, truly a piece of crap.  But back then a novelty record could go a long way with listeners, so I stuck it into hot rotation and prayed that it's currency with the then-in-the-theaters movie played out.

     Played Mr. Jaws every 45 minutes, all day long.  The jocks thought I was either under the influence, taking money from the record company or just nuts. See, my intent was to influence WROK's music research.  They were doing store calls and listener call-outs. I knew three things. 

     -- First, novelty records burned out with listeners very quickly. 

     -- Second, Mr. Jaws would show up in WROK's research way before the burnout happened.

     -- Third, WROK would add the song based on their research.

     WROK added Mr. Jaws but by then we had so overplayed it (and had already dropped it) it was just a tune-out.  Nobody ever wanted to hear that thing again, ever, ever, ever.

     And in the Pulse Report, we won.  We actually beat WROK.

     WROK's PD, Dave Hamilton, later graciously pointed me out at a radio programming conference in Indianapolis as the only guy who had ever beat him.  Thanks to a bad Dickie Goodman record and a lot of luck, that was true.

     Full disclosure:  I was fired from WYFE shortly after this.  Spent six months on the beach and wound up in radio Hell, Flint MI.