What Station Is This?

After 6 years in the business, I got a job at a major-market radio station, WIBG in
Philadelphia. It's equivalent to a baseball player coming from a minor league team and
getting to play in the majors, in the big city.

I'd been doing an evening air-shift for a couple months and things were going great. I was
happy to be there "spinning records" (yes, back then there were records and they did spin).

In the WIBG air studio, there was a button we could push to listen to our major
competitor, WFIL. Supposedly, we could hear what they were doing and beat-them-to-
the-punch, somehow. I had enough to keep me busy, so I never pushed that button.
Except...

One night, I pushed the button for only a few seconds and heard the WFIL jock do a
song intro. My record's ending and it's time to do one of those dramatic, radio hype, big production ID's (station identification).

Song ends... timpani's boom... high-energy rock rolls... and I say...

"Ladies and gentlemen, you're listening to the greatest music in the world

ON   W  F   I   L   PHILADELPHIA."

I knew there was something wrong when I got the "L" out. WIBG doesn't end in an "L".
And getting the "L" out was what I thought would happen to me.

I'm sure word about my misspelling reached our Program Director, Ed Richards.
But he never mentioned it... and nothing happened.

Oh, one thing happened. They took out that button.

About 15 years later, I'm working in Philadelphia for EAZY-101. The station owners buy
WFIL. Eventually, I was an announcer on WFIL.

How Bizarre.

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