Word: wor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When television put the big whammy on radio, most radio stations took to rock 'n' roll and platter chatter to survive. Not Manhattan's WOR, which was 40 years old last week. Now more prosperous than ever, WOR has a simple and astonishing formula. On the air for 24 hours every day, it devotes 20 hours and 30 minutes of that time to talk. Some good, some bad, some indifferent. But talk...
...socials. Almost singlevoicedly, Gambling comes as close as anyone can to transforming New York Radioland into a single, small town community. He plays occasional records by genteel orchestras and hearty sing-along groups. When his show goes off the air at 9 a.m., there is no more music on WOR for the next seven hours...
...WOR takes its listeners to a "house on East 68th Street in little old New York," where Dorothy ("Sweetie") Kilgallen and Spouse Richard ("Darling") Kollmar fill the air with papier-máché sophistication, some slightly dated hep talk (Dottie still peppers her sentences with words like cat, bug and dig), and some vicious meows. Dorothy also has an inclination to be hilariously wrong. With authority and certitude, she misplaces geographical landmarks, mispronounces French words, and misnames the heroes of history. WOR listeners tune her in with something of the same impulse that makes crowds gather at a fatal...
...evening, WOR gets farther out. At 11:15 Jean Shepherd comes on, a brilliant and undisciplined night sprite. A sort of oral abstract expressionist, Shepherd begins to talk, gains speed, and skims along by free association. He remembers his Indiana boyhood with a command of imagery so precise that he can spin into the air everything from the smell of an old-fashioned icebox to the guilty excitement of an adolescent boy looking through a stack of Breezy Story Magazines down in a corner of the cellar. When he begins to run out of breath, jazz comes on softly behind...