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...disappearance of Java support, and quickly ditch the jewel in Sun's crown and start using XML, which forms the basis of Microsoft's .Net software. Much the same thing is happening with the XP version of Windows Media Player, which Microsoft has just announced will support the MP3 format - as long as you download a plug-in and pay an extra $15 for the privilege, that is. Otherwise, all your WMP digital music will be in Microsoft's proprietary format...
...that came free with my external CD-R drive (a Hewlett-Packard 8200, one of the most popular). It refused to recognize most of the tunes on my hard drive, which meant I had to hunt for another program that would convert those songs into a more amenable file format. Even then, the ungrateful software served up a CD with pops and clicks after every track...
...religious programming (its call letters stood for Why I Believe in God), may have been the first full-time Top 40 outlet in a major market. Top 40 referred to the tight list of current records (guess how many) a DJ could play, though at this early stage the format wasn't padlocked: "Wibbage," as the station nicknamed itself, issued a Top 99 list to record stores each week. Like the shift from network radio to the rise of independent stations, Top 40 happened quickly, between 1955 and '57. It soon became so codified that by 1959 a comedy...
...type ensemble perkily warbling, "W-IBG,/ Where your dial belongs the ev-en-ing through,/ W-IBG,/ Joe Niagara spins the hits for you." Known as the Rockin' Bird, Niagara had been with the station eight years before the music revolution, but the young pro fit smartly in any format. His shtick was to run the end of one sentence into the beginning of the next, then take a breath in the middle. It brought suspense to the simple craft of reading commercials you never knew. When he'd pause for a breath did it mean a thought. Had been...
...Jerry Blavat. WIBG remained No. 1 through the '60s, but Niagara wasn't there for all of it; he left town for a few years in the glare of the payola scandal. He returned in '62, but by then the station had both congealed and softened; the format was strangling the jock's freedom to go nuts. As Wibbage turned to cabbage, other DJs at smaller stations caught kids' attentive ears. At WCAM in Camden, across the Delaware River from Philly, Kal Rudman spun the widest playlist in the tri-state area and gave records away. (I still have...