"Good Just Barely Morning ..."
How WNEW in New York Remade Radio and Became the Place Where Rock Lived: Chapter 42
“Hello New York and America, this is WNEW-FM ... Where the girls are ... and my name is Alison Steele ... Welcome to history.”
— Alison Steele kicking off her first show during the all-female era of WNEW-FM, July 4, 1966.
Faced with the FCC directive to decouple AM and FM programming, John Van Buren Sullivan, president of Metromedia’s radio division, immediately invested $100,000 in upgrades to five of the network’s FM properties, including its flagship station in New York.
The goal was not only to accommodate independent broadcasts, but to do them all in stereo.
As Varner Paulsen, WNEW’s program director explained at the time, stereo had long been on the minds of Metromedia’s leadership, and “[s]ince we were remodeling and obtaining new equipment anyway, we decided we might as well go all the way.”1
By June 1965 Sullivan would be telling Broadcasting magazine the overall programming objectives for the FM stations had been set, and from that point forward, it was up to the individual stations to work out proposals covering the details.
In general, Sullivan said, the reformatted FM stations would have an “adult appeal” and a “slightly narrower” musical focus than their AM counterparts.
Most, he said, would follow a programming philosophy already in place at Metromedia’s Kansas City station, KMBC -AM -FM, which featured popular music and news, and would occasionally dip deeper into the catalogs of the artists they played, cueing up album tracks as well as the hits everybody expected to hear.
Sullivan also said Metromedia would set separate advertising rates for non-duplicated programming on its FM stations, and that he believed the stations could make money in their first year as independent entities.2
Within that context, WNEW’s still relatively new general manager, Harvey Glascock, came up with what he hoped was an elegant and novel solution: Stay true to the AM station’s Great American Songbook-leaning programming, while being “different” by relying solely on female air personalities on the FM side.
In a June 1966 interview with Billboard magazine, Glascock, formerly vice president and general manager at Metromedia’s WIP in Philadelphia, opined “one of the secrets in successful programming is to do something your competition is not doing.”
“I felt there was a void in female-to-female approach in this market,” he said, adding the station was not just trying to appeal to women listeners, but rather “to a broad base of audience very much in concert and compatible with our AM sound ... the 20 to 59 age group.”3
WNEW wasn’t the first to try this approach. Among those who led the way was Sun Records’ Sam Phillips, who sunk some of the proceeds from the sale of Elvis’ contract to RCA Victor into WHER, a Memphis radio station.
Phillips bought the station as a present for his wife, a former disc jockey, and installed an all-female format that quickly caught on with listeners.
When WHER relocated in the mid-1960s, one of Phillips’ requirements was that the new studio consist of glass booths and a storefront window so that passersby could see the women while they worked.
The format was so successful that Phillips opened a second all-female station, WLIZ in Lake Worth, Fla. He later claimed the Florida station was named for the actress Elizabeth Taylor, “the hottest female going in 1959,” the year he took ownership.
Surprisingly for someone who made his fortune in blues, rockabilly and rock and roll, Phillips insisted his stations only play show tunes, the most accessible contemporary jazz, and pop ballads of 1940s and ‘50s.
If Glascock planned to keep programming the same music being played on WNEW-AM, from the outset he was determined the FM station would have its own distinct staff. Among his first decisions along those lines was to name John Dale, a veteran broadcaster who had been with WNEW for 26 years, his station manager, and Allan Rosenburg, music director.
“Our future separate FM broadcasting in stereo will be the epitome of professionalism under the aegis of John Dale,” Glascock declared.4
To find the on-air talent, Dale put out an open call for auditions. It’s not known what his expectations were when he did this, what is known is that 800 mostly young women showed up in hopes they’d be plucked from obscurity and lifted into the radio limelight. In a contemporary account, Billboard reported at least 200 of these women were actually interviewed.
An unknown number of auditions followed. Out of these, four women were chosen: Ann Clements, Margaret Draper, Arlene Kieta, and Alison Steele.
Dale told Billboard each of the four he’d hired had been chosen on the “substance of her personality.” This was probably true. Although women had always played vital and important roles at the station, both on-air and behind-the-scenes at WNEW, it was rare indeed for one to join the almost exclusively male ranks of disc jockeys on the station.
For much of its history, women featured on WNEW turned up as the hosts of chat shows or, in the case of the distinguished Marlene Sanders, as a member of the news department. Among the few women to appear on WNEW as a disc jockey on the station, though it’s doubtful she ever spun a record herself, was the Hungarian-American actress Eva Gabor.
Billed as the “Glamour disc jockey” Gabor’s slick, 25-minute segment, entitled “A Little Night Music,” was broadcast just before midnight, Tuesday and Thursday nights, for at least a few months in 1950.
When the station’s new team was introduced to the media in late June 1966, Glascock said the station intended to hire a fifth woman but had yet to find precisely the right fit.
In the meantime, Steele, Kieta, Draper and Clements were being put through a hectic week of pre-air training, he said.
Forty-seven years after the fact, Kieta, the first of the women to be hired, said that version of events had a lot of truth to it, but it wasn’t entirely accurate.
“To begin with, I didn’t attend a large open audition, I was ‘discovered’ while serving as spokeswoman for Citroen, the French automobile manufacturer at the New York Auto Show,” Kieta, nearly 80 at the time and still living in Manhattan, said.
“Two producers for the ABC-TV show “Girl Talk” saw me and asked if I’d be interested in appearing on the program, and of course, I said yes,” she recalled.
“Girl Talk,” hosted by Virginia Graham, ran on ABC from 1963 through 1969. Beyond conversation, its central premise was to place a spotlight on women engaged in nontraditional work or activities. In that regard, Kieta was a perfect “get” for the show.
She started her career in her native Chicago — coincidentally, where “Girl Talk” was taped — as one of a group of very young child dancers. An early highlight of her career was a performance with the pianist, conductor and comedian Victor Borge at the Civic Opera House in Chicago.
“I must have been four years old at the time, and because I was dancing at the end of the chorus line, Borge grabbed me and presented me with his program,” she laughed. “I wound up falling asleep in his arms.”
Kieta started modeling a decade later, having realized her dream of being a ballerina was never to be.
“I didn’t have the toes for it, and I was also a little clumsy as far as the actual dancing went, but I was very, very entrepreneurial and open to new experiences, “ she said. “That’s what guided my career, and as a result it never followed a straight line,” she said.
In Chicago Kieta quickly found herself in demand for print and television advertisements, and she even appeared — fully clothed — on the winter-themed, February 1955 cover of Playboy magazine.
Nine years later, Kieta had a host of national accounts on her client list, and she said she wasn’t surprised when she got a call from soft drink maker Canada Dry, asking if she’d be interested in representing it at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair.
“They moved me to New York to be manager of their pavilion at the fair, and to oversee a dozen girls serving a new grapefruit drink called ‘Wink,’” Kieta said. “The girls all wore yellow and green uniforms and rode around the fairgrounds in these little ... trucks ... giving people free samples.”
When the fair ended, Kieta stayed on in New York and resumed her modeling career. That’s how she wound up at the Auto Show, and in January 1966, “Girl Talk.”
“Virginia Graham was blonde, sort of funny, but she also was a stickler for good manners and proper decorum. She stressed that a woman should always be lady-like,” Kieta said.
On the day of filming each of the show’s guests was kept in isolation, so their interactions with each other were fresh and natural. Kieta was introduced as a car saleswoman who did her demonstrations both in French and in English. The second guest was a standup comedienne. But the third, that was the one that threw Kieta a curve.
“She was a nudist and all I could think was, ‘How do I get myself out of this one?’ I was so embarrassed. And on top of that, I knew my mother was watching! I mean, this was the furthest thing from what I’d experienced growing up a nice Catholic girl,” she said.
Kieta said she recalls going from “fun” and “loquacious” and “alive” on the show, to stone silent. And yet, when the program was shown in New York two weeks later, she definitely made an impression. That very afternoon her agency called to say a “John Dale” had called from WNEW and he absolutely had to talk to and, preferably, meet with her.
“They said, ‘We don’t know if this is business or pleasure, but he says that he’s the station manager,’” Kieta recalled, adding she decided to respond coolly until she figured out what Dale wanted.
“I decided to call him back about five to 5 p.m., figuring he’d be on his way out the door going home and I could simply say it was too late to get together,” Kieta said. “When Dale came to the phone he asked where I was and I said, ‘40th and Second Avenue,’ which is where my apartment was. And he said, ‘Good, you’re just minutes away. We’re at 46th and Fifth Ave. Come on over.”
Kieta went, but when she arrived, she told Dale a lie — that her boyfriend would be meeting her downstairs in a half hour.
“I didn’t know what was going on. By this point, there weren’t very many people still left in the office — it was just the two of us, as far as I knew — and I thought if he was going to try to come on to me, his expecting my boyfriend to arrive would discourage him,” Kieta said. “I mean, you have thoughts like that as a woman, when you’re following up on a call out of the blue like that.”
Dale, however, couldn’t have been more of a gentleman. He sat Kieta down before a microphone and asked her to introduce herself.
“This is Arlene Kieta ... and you’re listening to WNEW-FM 102.7 on the FM dial,” she said.
He walked into an adjoining room and returned with a piece of copy for her to read. With that, he led Kieta back to his office.
“He said, ‘You’re hired,’” Kieta said.
“’Hired? Hired for what? I’m not a salesperson, I am an actress ... a model,’” she responded.
“He said, ‘No, no. no ... you don’t understand. We want you to be our first female disc jockey because in July, on the Fourth of July, we are going on the air with an all-female format ... where the girls are ... and you’re the first hire for the new air staff,” she said.
Kieta said she was still soaking it all in when the phone rang. Dale answered, turning his back to her.
“He said, ‘Hi honey, what’s for dinner?’ And then he said, ‘Guess what? I just hired the girl you saw this morning on the “Girl Talk” show. In fact, she’s here right now. She’s exactly like you said, she’s a lady, she’s got a voice and she’s going to be just fine.’”
At this point, Kieta said, she jumped out of her chair and grabbed the phone from Dale’s hand.
“I said, ‘I don’t know if you’re his wife or his girlfriend, but I’m going to kiss him on the forehead!,” Kieta laughed.
At that very moment, Glascock walked by the office door.
“Uh oh, what am I coming into here ...” Glascock said.
“And I said, ‘I’m just so happy. I’ve just been hired to be a disc jockey and I couldn’t be happier,’” she said.
The “new” WNEW-FM, which was set to debut on July 4, 1966, was assigned a budget of $100,000. The new disc jockeys were each to be paid $175 a week.
“Hopefully, we’ll be in the red for as short a period as possible,” Glascock told Billboard.5
“”Stereo is right now a big-ticket item, maybe stereo multiplex receivers will sell at a cheaper price later,” he added. “But our all-girl operation will be the first new venture in New York radio that I can remember — especially all live.”6
With that, the clock was ticking on what would ultimately be an 18-month experiment.
Kieta said she sat in on many of the interviews with potential staffers and confirmed, “We must have seen hundreds.”
What’s surprising, given the firm launch date for the new format, is that it would be a full six months — June 14, 1966 — before the station announced the hire of two more women for on-air slots, Margaret Draper and Alison Steele.
Draper was the oldest and undoubtedly had the most varied and impressive resume of the women hired to be the new personality of WNEW-FM. At the time, she was just coming off an extended tenure on the CBS-TV soap opera “Search for Tomorrow.”
A native of Utah, Draper began performing as a child and studied drama at the University of Utah before making her way east. She made her professional stage debut at the Provincetown Theater in Massachusetts and later joined the Chekhov Theater Players overseen by Michael Chekhov, nephew of the legendary Russian playwright Anton Chekhov.
The group performed on Broadway and toured across America, but Draper’s initial foray into theater was cut short by World War II. During the war she worked with the Red Cross in Europe and the Middle East.
Following the war, Draper returned to New York, but instead of the stage, she resumed her career in radio, landing a six-year role in a soap opera called “Brighter Day,” and another choice role in a popular drama, “Pepper Young’s Family,” which starred Burgess Meredith.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s she worked in television, appearing on “Robert Montgomery Presents,” “Inner Sanctum” and “The Violators,” and also as the spokeswoman in several radio and television commercials.7
Draper had also been featured on Broadway in “The Gambler,” with Alfred Drake, and “For Heaven’s Sake, Mother,” with Molly Picon.
The announcement of her hiring by WNEW-FM also notes that Draper had played leading roles in 15 Off-Broadway plays, and that she’d spent 10 years in summer stock and repertory groups.
But it was Steele who was no doubt the most steeped in the kind of work the women were about to undertake, and she was also, given subsequent developments, the most dedicated to making WNEW-FM a lasting career.
Born in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn on January 26, 1937, no one could have predicted then what the future for her would hold, least of all that she would become a trailblazing figure in the history of both rock and roll — a genre of music totally unknown at the time — and radio, in which almost all of the stars were male.
Her given name was Ceil Loman, and she was one of three sisters. At the time Borough Park was a strictly middle-class neighborhood of Italians and mostly Orthodox Jews.
The Lomans, by contrast, were decidedly Reform Jewish, so much so that they had a Christmas tree.8
According to a 1967 profile, Steele and her sisters were the products of a show business family, their father having been in vaudeville; their mother, a singer and concert pianist.
“Alison wanted to get in the spotlight too,” said the article, which appeared in The Baltimore Sun on Jan. 22, 1967.9
It was during the late 1940s when 14-year-old Alison, who lived on Tahima Street near 13th and McDonald avenues, became an errand girl at WPIX, a New York television station.
Several years later, after she had become New York’s premiere all-night disc jockey, Steele credited her mother for giving her the nerve to apply.
“She taught me a very simple rule: If I wanted something, all I had to do was go and get it,” Steele told the New York Daily News in 1974. “She helped me get self-confidence when I was 14.
“There was an ad in our local paper for a tall, good-looking girl to fill a part-time slot. I was neither tall nor pretty, but my mother told me to go and get it anyway,” she said. “I went down, bluffed my way in, then worked hard until I got it right.”
Steele added, “I was off to a great start.”10
After graduating from Erasmus Hall High School, the teenage Loman was made an associate producer at WPIX, and from then on, the job offers kept coming.
Over the next few years, she would be WOR-TV’s weather girl and would star in the New York market’s first physical fitness show, WPIX-TV’s “You and Your Figure.”11
According to the release announcing her hiring by WNEW-FM, Steele later conducted personality interviews on WOR-TV and was the commercial spokeswoman for many products of particular interest to women. She then served as a news reporter on WOR-TV and made many guest appearances on television variety shows.
For Steele then, the chance to audition for WNEW-FM was a chance to break the pretty-girl-at-the television-station cycle she was on and perhaps establish herself in a whole new way. The very idea of it evoked the future.
She would laugh later when she recalled that when she showed up at the station to audition, she was handed a copy of Roger Williams’ “Autumn Leaves,” a record which had reached number one in the pop music charts a full 11 years earlier.12
The history of Steele’s personal life would always be a bit sketchier due to her lifelong reticence about discussing it publicly.
What is certain is in 1956, when she was 19, Loman met band leader Ted Steele, who had a popular teen “American Bandstand”-type television show in the New York market and who was 20 years her senior, and the couple soon married.
Steele, who was born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, was a musical prodigy and had secured a full scholarship to the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music. However, it was through his work as a bandleader and conductor in the 1940s for the likes of Frank Sinatra and Perry Como that he really made a name for himself.
During these years he married twice — one marriage ending in an annulment, the other, a divorce — and he spent his time out of the limelight tending to at least two farms, one devoted to breeding rabbits, guinea pigs and other small animals which he sold to the U.S. government; the other, to raising dairy cows.
Prior to meeting Loman, Steele’s professional life was divided among the bandstand at the Stork Club in New York City, the Chesterfield Supper Club on NBC radio, and an afternoon Teen Bandstand on WOR-TV in New York.
Although the couple would have a daughter, Heather, in 1958, and Loman would use the name “Alison Steele” for the rest of her life, they eventually divorced.
The Baltimore Sun profile does not elaborate on Alison Steele’s personal life circa 1967. It describes her busy work life and mentions she cared for her daughter, who attended boarding school.
It does fill in a little bit more of Steele’s professional biography, saying “She started off on TV, doing commercials and kiddie shows, and had her own exercise program for a while.”
“She’s been a weather girl, covered news, done comedy bits, interviews -- everything you can imagine a woman doing on television,” the article continues. “From all this, she met thousands of people in show business and intersperses interviews between spinning the discs.”13
In short, at the time of her big break at WNEW-FM, Steele was a single mother pursuing every opportunity she could to make ends meet for herself and her daughter.
If there’s an enigma among the women who would comprise New York’s first and only all-female on-air team, it’s Ann Clements.
Arlene Kieta remembered her simply as a “country girl.”
“She was very nice and had a personality that was very easy-going — she seemed like someone who would come from a place like Oklahoma,” Kieta continued. “And she was much less concerned with appearances. I don’t think she came from a modeling or acting background, and so she was like ... the one of us who used the least makeup.”
In fact, Clements had left a daytime show on WCAU-TV, a CBS affiliate in Philadelphia, to join WNEW, and she had also appeared in several shows at the Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the busy playhouse presented a steady stream of operettas, more musicals and plays, and was a magnet for guest directors and guest stars.
Among those who graced the playhouse’s stage during the era Clements would have been there were Donna McKechnie, Jane Fonda, Arlene Francis, Celeste Holm, Joan Fontaine, Eve Arden, Mike Nichols, Jean Stapleton, Chita Rivera, Gene Wilder, Dom DeLuise, Piper Laurie, and Fabian.
Unfortunately, records of Clements activities at either WCAU or the Papermill Playhouse appear to have been lost to the passage of time.
Quite a bit more information exists about Nell Bassett, the fifth member of the all-female on-air team, who, like Steele, was a single mother at the time of her hire, struggling to keep her family afloat.
Born in Somerset, Bermuda, Bassett met her first husband while still in high school, and after their marriage, traveled with him to England where he tried to establish himself as a professional soccer player.
In her 2004 memoir, “It’s a Dirty, Rotten ... Wonderful Business: My Life in Radio and Television Broadcasting,” Bassett said that dream quickly came up short, and the marriage soon became “unsettled and very rocky.”
Ultimately, she returned to Bermuda -- now with two daughters, Roxanne and Penelope, accompanying her -- where she had a support system that included her husband’s family as well as her own.
For a time, Lionel Bassett did what he could to provide for his family, but it wasn’t long, Bassett said, before the money stopped arriving from England. She hired a lawyer to try to find her husband and press him for child support, but to no avail. Bassett never saw him again.
In the short term that meant she would have to go back to work, and she secured a teaching job at what is now Bermuda’s Victor Scott School. Improbably it was this job, teaching English and Physical Education, which led to her lifelong career in broadcasting.
As Bassett recalled, fate intervened on a Saturday in the fall of 1959. She had spent the morning preparing a group of young girls for an upcoming athletic competition, and after a prolonged practice, suggested the girls take a break and listen to “The Children’s Hour,” a popular kid’s program.
On a typical Saturday, the locally produced show on ZBM, the Bermuda Broadcasting Co. station, featured a mix of music and educational features, but on this one, the station played nothing but popular music. As the girls grew restless, Bassett grew more and more indignant.
Before resuming practice, Bassett called ZBM program director Gordon Robinson to voice her concerns. While Robinson was sympathetic, he explained the show’s host was at that moment giving birth to a baby in a nearby hospital, and he wasn’t sure when, or even if, she would return.
“If you can do any better than I’m doing, why don’t you come down and try to do the show?” Robinson said.14
Bassett recalled being shocked at the suggestion but encouraged by Robinson and pushed by family members, she showed up at the studio the following Saturday. Within weeks, “Aunt Nell,” as she was called on the air, was Bermuda’s biggest radio star.
Over the next six years, “The Children’s Hour” was expanded to television and Bassett also appeared on a number of other programs, including “The Gospel Hour,” “Saturday Afternoon Concert” and “The Ladies Page.” From time to time, she even showed up on television presenting the weather.
But for all of her local celebrity, Bassett later admitted she was taken aback one Sunday afternoon in 1966 when she received a call out of the blue from John Dale.
Bassett recalled15 that she was hurriedly dressing for a friend’s wedding, and that her initial thought was someone was playing a trick on her — particularly after Dale mentioned WNEW, which, despite its physical distance, was widely popular with Bermudians.
She also remembered that as Dale kept her on the phone, she grew angrier and angrier at his persistence.
Still, Dale pressed on. He explained he had seen a tape of Bassett’s recent interview with Sammy Davis Jr. In fact, on the strength of that interview, Dale said he had been quietly gathering tapes of her other appearances.
Still unconvinced Dale was who he claimed to be, Bassett thanked the caller not to bother her again and said she would have her phone number changed the next day.
Undeterred, Dale offered her the fifth and final spot in the all-female lineup. Now Bassett was flummoxed and nearly speechless. She responded by again explaining she had to go, but at the same time, even as she said this, she found it difficult to end the conversation. Dale assured her he’d call back later that day.
Arriving at the wedding with her head still spinning from the strange telephone encounter, Bassett cornered her friend — and future husband — Kenny Harris, and quickly told him what had just occurred. Harris, she said, immediately grasped the size of the opportunity.
She had to go to New York, he said. At the least, he told her, the in-person job interview would give her a chance to visit relatives who’d already moved to Brooklyn.
As the narrator of her own story, Bassett has a penchant for the big and the bright and positive.
When describing what happened next, she sounds almost breathless; as if she’d been swept up in a large wave that just happened to drop her off in mid-town Manhattan, and specifically, at Tavern on the Green in Central Park, where Metromedia pulled out all the stops to officially launch “WNEW FM: Where the Girls Are.”
As reporters, record company reps and others gathered to record the “new” station’s birth, Bassett was introduced to her radio “sisters,” as well as Metromedia Chairman John W. Kluge and WNEW-AM’s reigning star, the already legendary William B. Williams.
From Bassett’s account one gleans a few impressions: the first is that the event itself was a fairly standard media affair — people were well-thanked for coming, new faces were introduced, and the established AM team was on hand to make clear they were firmly behind the new FM venture.
The other is that Alison Steele was already highly confident of her talents and was determined to be the most prominent of the group of women. It’s Steele who is always at the side of someone in management, who welcomes Bassett by phone upon her arrival in New York, and, at Tavern on the Green, takes the lead in working the assembled invitees.
Back at the station, Bassett said, the women got a fuller indoctrination into the history and ways of WNEW-AM.
The choice of what music to play — primarily big bands and singers — and how frequently, was made by Gertie Katzman, WNEW’s music coordinator. The women were told Katzman could tell them everything they wanted to know about the artists the station played, and also that she had a relationship with the record companies that was no-nonsense, based on respect and straight talk.
Katzman warned the new air staff to ignore suggestions from agents and other song-pluggers that they play one track or another; instead, she said, they should simply tell such individuals that the station required them to adhere to the play list.
Dale assured the women that with all the attendant publicity, the new all-female station would be an easy sale. In fact, Bassett would recall Dale saying the station’s sales force had been “swamped with sponsor calls.”16
Bearing in mind that this is just the kind of thing management would tell new employees about to launch a new venture, it is nevertheless shocking how difficult it is to find very much in print on this period of WNEW-FM’s history. There are a single Billboard story and a few brief newspaper pieces. Then nada.
Even a book commemorating WNEW-AM’s 50th anniversary, “Where the Melody Lingers On,” says nothing about it.
“They all had nice voices, but it was a complete throw away,” recalled Carol Klenfner, who was given a temp job as John Dale’s assistant as the station went through the process of hiring its female disc jockey team.
Klenfner, then Carol Strauss, would go on to become one of the most important, New York-based publicists of the rock era, handing clients ranging from The Who and Elton John to Aerosmith and Three Dog Night to the Bay City Rollers. But those high-flying experiences were still years in her future.
In fact, Klenfner landed at WNEW on the employment rebound and only due to an apparent pang of guilt felt by her previous employer.
Upon graduation from Barnard, the private women’s liberal arts college, she got a job as a receptionist at WRVR, a nonprofit radio station affiliated with the interdenominational Riverside Church, a New York institution nearly as famous for its Neo-Gothic architecture as for its longstanding activism on social justice issues.
Klenfner’s job there, however, left a lot to be desired. “It was like a lot of first jobs out of college,” she said. “It was entry level and the kind of position in which you devoted a lot of time looking busy but really doing nothing.”
On the plus side, however, a WRVR staffer saw that Klenfner had potential. She taught Klenfner to write press releases and even gave her the opportunity to produce a few shows.
Then one afternoon, the French actor and singer Charles Aznavour, star of several films made by writer/director François Truffaut, including “Shoot the Piano Player,” stopped by WRVR to be interviewed.
“I had seen the movie a number of times, so I got an intern to cover the front desk so I could watch the interview in the studio,” Klenfner said.
Shortly after it got underway, Klenfner felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned to face the station’s general manager, who had chosen this moment to come down from his office in the church tower.
Staring her down, he told Klenfner to go back to her desk, but the receptionist explained she had someone covering for her; when the general manager insisted she do what she was told, Klenfner resisted.
“He said, ‘Well, then, I am going to have to fire you,’” Klenfner said. “I said ‘Alright.’ But I stayed until the end of the interview.”
By the time she collected her things and started out the door for home, the general manager -- though unwilling to rescind Klenfner’s termination -- evidently felt some remorse over what had occurred.
Before she left, he placed a call to a friend — John Dale — whom he knew had just gotten his new assignment at WNEW and needed a temp while his assistant was away on maternity leave.
“John Dale was a ‘Mensch,’” Klenfner said when asked what her new boss was like. “He was a really nice guy ... a good person ... a good soul. He was the kind of guy who always let you know he was appreciative of your efforts.”
Being so young, and only a temp, however, meant no one paid much attention if Klenfner was around when they were discussing the future of the FM station.
“As a result, I was a fly on the wall for broadcasting history,” she said, and more than 40 years later, she still expressed amazement at what she heard about the new format.
“They said, ‘What can we do that won’t compete with our AM station?’ That was the stated goal,” she said. “And then someone said, ‘Well, we’ll come up with an all-girl format.’”
“And that’s exactly how it was referred to, although you have to remember, this was the “Mad Men” era, and women hadn’t yet ascended to a place of equality in the workplace,” Klenfner said.
“I found it mind-blowing then, and interesting later, that they set out to do something they didn’t want to be successful,” she continued. “They were actually concerned that if the all-female format was successful, it would cut into listenership and profits on the AM side.”
The new era dawned on Monday, July 4, 1966, with something familiar to WNEW-AM listeners — the very same Gene Klavan and Dee Finch they’d been listening to and laughing along with for 14 years.
Following Alan Walden’s 9 a.m. newscast, Klavin and Finch introduced “a whole galaxy of gorgeous girls” to the WNEW audience.
Calling them “stars to lift you above the spirit of the ordinary,” Klavin handed the microphone to Margaret Draper.
“Well, heavens to Betsy,” she said. “Betsy Ross that is, Happy Fourth of July and here is one of my co-workers, Arlene Keita.”
“What a pleasure. Have a good day, because I’ll be back, as will the other girls,” she said, passing the microphone to “Mary Poppins of the Midwest.”
“That’s not fair,” Ann Clements said as she broke into a fit of giggles. “Good morning and have a marvelous day and until 4:05 [p.m.] keep up the firecrackers and the sparklers. And here’s a real swinger. ...”
With that New Yorkers listeners heard for the first time a voice many would return to for the next 29 years.
“Alison Steele speaking and I want to say to Maggie that I admire her courage because I’d hate to be the one to follow Klavan and Finch.”
“The whole bunch is drunk as skunks,” Finch said.
“You said it. Well, I’m one-fifth of the newest and finest in stereophonic sound. The sound with a difference. Viva le Difference,” Steele said.
With that, Klavin and Finch played a record, “You’re a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith,” by Frank Sinatra with Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians.
The performance, which appeared on a 1964 album called “American I Hear You Singing,” was a remake of a song originally sung by The Andrews Sisters in the 1941 Abbott and Costello movie “Buck Privates.”
It was a fitting preview of the kind of MOR music the ladies would try to put over, without success, for the next 16 months.
The idea of having Klavan and Finch open for the ladies made perfect business sense. They were a money-making juggernaut in the morning, and the suits at Metromedia believed the presence of the highly popular duo on the FM dial would hold loyal WNEW listeners long enough for the FM station to get its legs underneath it and start generating revenue of its own.
Similarly, as the first day came to a close, Ned Powers sat down behind his microphone in the AM studio and began the simulcast of WNEW’s long-running Milkman’s Matinee. He and co-host Dick Shepard would divvy up the Midnight to 6 a.m. duties at the station for the remainder of 1966, Powers handling Mondays and Tuesdays; Shepard, Wednesdays through Fridays.
As for the ladies, their era got underway a breath after 10 a.m. On air the first words ushering in the new era were Steele’s:
“Hello New York and America, this is WNEW-FM ... Where the girls are ... and my name is Alison Steele,” she said.
“Welcome to history,” she said, her delivery smooth and confident.
As Steele continued to speak, her refreshing demeanor was a marked contrast to the heat wave building across the New York metropolitan area.
For the next 30 or so days, the daily temperature would reach 90 degrees or higher, many days surpassing the record temperatures for their dates kept since after the Civil War.
But here in the world conjured between WNEW-FM microphones, everything would be cool and dreamy.
Never mind the conflict in Vietnam or the riots that were beginning to break out in several American cities in response to persistent discrimination against Blacks, gays and women. The new format was an invitation to escape all that.
Steele went on to explain how it would all work and assured the listeners “You will want to join us 24 hours a day for the very best in music, comments and fun.”
The first song played on the new WNEW-FM: “Take the A Train” by Duke Ellington and his big band.
Other artists on the playlist included Vikki Carr, Oscar Peterson, the King Sisters, Andy Williams, Barbra Streisand, Peter Nero, Mel Torme, Lena Horne, and Ed Ames.
Meanwhile, racing up the Top 40 charts was “Summer in the City,” by the New York-based Lovin’ Spoonful, a more hip and propulsive song than any of the women would play in their debut, though probably equally apolitical.
For a time, Steele would quip, “I was the Scott Muni of the geriatric set,”17 a reference to the 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. slot Muni would fill during the coming rock era at the station, but which Steele held down for the next 15 months. On weekends she also hosted a morning program called “Steele, Sinatra and Strings.”
At this point, Bassett was a frustrated observer, temporarily sidelined because the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists objected to a non-member and non-American taking a position that could have been filled by someone meeting both criteria.
Nevertheless, she shared in the revelry and was a conscientious member of the team as she looked forward to her own debut. Four hours later, Steele raised her arms in a victorious gesture, ceding the studio to Margaret Draper. Despite the hour, champagne was uncorked.
Hall, Claude. “FCC Order Brings Burst of ‘SM’ Outlets.” Billboard October 30, 1965.
Unsigned. “FM’s Drag Feet on Program Split.” Broadcasting magazine. June 21, 1965.
Unsigned. WNEW Looks to Female to Carry the (FM) Mail. Billboard. June 25, 1966.
Hall, Claude. “FCC Order Brings Burst of ‘SM’ Outlets.” Billboard. October 30, 1965
Unsigned. WNEW Looks to Female to Carry the (FM) Mail. Billboard. June 25, 1966.
Unsigned. WNEW Looks to Female to Carry the (FM) Mail. Billboard. June 25, 1966.
Unsigned. Margaret Ruth Draper, Actress and Radio Disc Jockey, Dies. Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. http://www.emmys.tv/news/2011/margaret-ruth-draper-actress-and-radio-disc-jockey
Greenberg, Eric J. “Flight Ends For ‘The Nightbird’: Jewish broadcaster with sexy voice. The Jewish Week” Oct. 6, 1995.
Unsigned. Alison Steele: Her Job is to Gab 4 Hours a Day with no Script. The Baltimore Sun. Jan. 22, 1967. Pg WM6.
Blumberg, K. Michael. ‘Nightbird’ of Fm Accentuates Positive. New York Daily News. February 17, 1974.
Unsigned bio. Central Park Music Festival program. July 1969.
Alison Steele on-air with Scott Muni. WNEW-FM 20th Anniversary Live at the Hard Rock. Oct. 30, 1987.
Unsigned. Alison Steele: Her Job is to Gab 4 Hours a Day with no Script. The Baltimore Sun. Jan. 22, 1967. Pg WM6.
Bassett, Nell. It’s A Dirty Rotten ... Wonderful Business. Roxpentiff Publishing. 2004.
Bassett, Nell. It’s A Dirty Rotten ... Wonderful Business. Roxpentiff Publishing. 2004.
Bassett, Nell. It’s A Dirty Rotten ... Wonderful Business. Roxpentiff Publishing. 2004.
Alison Steele on-air with Scott Muni. WNEW-FM 20th Anniversary Live at the Hard Rock. Oct. 30, 1987.
That is great. I actually tried to reach out to Alison's sisters about the pet shop, but they never responded. I figured they were just respecting her lifelong penchant for privacy.
Fabulous! You have put together a terrific history of the WNEW FM All girls format I was a newscaster at WNEW AM We were in the
same building and I got to
meet ‘the girls.’ Alison Steele
was my favorite. Years later when I was an entertainment correspondent at ABC we co-hosted a Cat Show judging at Madison Sq Garden.Alison passed on many years ago but she’ll always be a great friend and
it all began for me in 1967 at WNEW. Bill Diehl