History's Dumpster = GLORIOUS trash! Kitsch, music, fashion, food, history, ephemera, and other memorable and forgotten, famous and infamous pop culture junk and oddities of yesterday and today. Saved from the landfill of time...
One of the most memorable infomercials of the '90s, starring babe-o-rama Suzanne Somers and her new gadget, the Thighmaster.
You can see she was having a great time with this thing. And so does her doctor. Hmmm......
During the height of this infomercial's popularity, Alice In Chains released their classic Dirt album. In the opening lyrics of the first single "Would?", everyone thought they said......
Yes this was a REAL product. In 1981, the Pet Beverage Company of Covington, KY made this. It was allegedly chicken flavoured. However, cats are persnickety and most don't like carbonation.
Radio
stations
are a unique breed. Some
of them sign on the air and gain instant success, some never amount to much. Or until they are bought and transformed by
another entity. And there are those that just simply fall by the
wayside.
Every major city has a few AM radio stations that were once popular 40-50 years ago that have gone through countless ownership/call letter/format changes and now languish as unknown ethnic, religious, Radio Disney, sports or fourth string talk formats. The intentions of the owners were good. A new and untried format. Or a stab at competing with the heritage local station with a different spin on their format. But somehow, fate had other plans.
Let's look at a few of those who somehow just fell apart and their remains still stand.......
WHOW 1520 AM Clinton, IL
Probably the very best (and rare) example of a radio station that
has gone to hell.....and BACK to tell about it.
I don't know what the hell happened in here. But Casey Kasemnever did it this way. Note the ashtray on the console and dig that Radio Shack mixing board .......
Please
note the station had signed off in 2002, about the time these pictures
were taken. Note the lack of computer equipment in the WHOW on-air
studio. Virtually ALL radio stations in 2002 - including most of the smallest, had fully digital computer controlled automation by that time.) Not WHOW.
There is what appears to be an
elderly computer mouse on top of that 1970's vintage automatic record
changer you see in the first picture and it's quite possible all the
computer equipment was taken out from it. But how many stations
played their programming off cassette tapes in 2002? There a LOT of
those you can see there, including cassette player - an ancient 1990s ghetto blaster! Most small stations like WHOW rarely, if ever played
cassettes in 2002. It just wasn't a suitable quality medium for radio programming
In fact, cassettes were rarely used in most
commercial radio stations beyond recording news bites,
occasional public service/religious programs (usually speech), and for DJs to record
"airchecks" (a kind of live sampling of how they sound over the air to
play for radio stations that hire them....or not., with all the
music cut out and just the DJ's monologues and some commercials
recorded.) Even THAT had gone to CD-Rs by the early 2000s in most parts of the
country, as they were recorded onto hard disk and edited digitally by
then.
Today, WHOW is back with modern facilities and runs a News/Talk format with an emphasis on farming news.
There's more....
WISL 1480 AM, Shamokin, PA
Photo by Jim Treese
There's an old gutted tape automation system back there and what appears to be a cart recorder deck and a reel to reel tape deck.
WISL was an Oldies station in central Pennsylvania. It left the air in 2003 after it was sold to Clear Channel and a subsequent sale to another broadcaster who could not afford to keep the station on the air and the station's license expired in 2006. The station was officially deleted from the FCC database in 2008. However WISL remains online as a tribute internet radio station - http://www.wisl1480.com/
KOME in Tulsa was off the air by 1965 (although the Stetson Hats poster in the studio here looks oddly '80s vintage), the KOME call letters were used
a few years later for a rock station in San Jose, CA. However the remains of the KOME station building in Tulsa remain. AM 1300 in Tulsa is now KAKC, an all sports station.
WCHR 94.5 FM Trenton, NJ
WCHR is a religious radio station in Trenton, NJ which currently broadcasts on 920 AM. WCHR originally broadcast on 94.5 FM. But left the FM dial in 1998 and after a number of call letter/format changes 94.5 is now WPST an Adult Contemporary radio station. This is the former WCHR station building.
KSVY 1550 AM, Opportunity, WA
Photo by Bill Harms
KSVY was an Oldies (later Classical) music station located in the Spokane suburb of Opportunity, WA. The photo above is the remains of the trailer that held their transmitter.
