The year 1985 in radio involved some significant events.

Events

*January – "Solid Gold Country," the United Stations Programming Network’s country music spinoff of its oldies-focused "Solid Gold Scrapbook," switches from a three-hour-a-week show (from its debut in 1983) to a five-day-a-week program (with the option to air all five hours in as a weekly program). Under the new format, each hourly program covered a different topic, such as a profile on a singer, songwriter or producer; a look back at the popular songs from the current week in a past year, gold records from the current month and other topics under virtually every conceivable topic. Stan Martin (and a few weeks into the reformatted program) Joel Sebastian are the initial hosts under the new format, with Sebastian succeeded by Mike Fitzgerald in July 1985; Fitzgerald stepped down in early 1990, with Charlie Cook taking over for the rest of the run. Producer remains

Ed Salamon Edward R. Salamon is an American entertainment industry executive and radio broadcaster. He is credited as one of the people who led to country music becoming a major force in the mid-1990s. He was dubbed “country radio’s most influential prog ...

, with country music journalist Tom Roland continuing as lead writer. The program will run through September 1993 and air roughly 2,300 one-hour shows. *January 1 –

CKLW CKLW (800 AM) is a commercial radio station in Windsor, Ontario, serving Southwestern Ontario and Metro Detroit. CKLW has a news/ talk format. It features local hosts in morning and afternoon drive times, with syndicated Canadian hosts ...

Windsor, Ontario Windsor is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, on the south bank of the Detroit River directly across from Detroit, Michigan, United States. Geographically located within but administratively independent of Essex County, it is the southe ...

adopts the

Music of Your Life Music of Your Life is an American syndicated music radio format featuring adult standards music. First created by recording executive Al Ham in 1978, the format achieved popularity in the 1980s among AM radio stations in the United States and C ...

format. *February – A fire in downtown

Clinton, Iowa Clinton is a city in and the county seat of Clinton County, Iowa, United States. The population was 24,469 as of 2020. Clinton, along with DeWitt (also located in Clinton County), was named in honor of the sixth governor of New York, DeWitt C ...

destroys the studios for

KROS KROS (1340 AM) is a commercial radio station serving the Clinton, Iowa area. The station primarily broadcasts a Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and tele ...

(1340 AM) and KSAY (96.1 FM), knocking both stations off the air for several days. When the station returned to the air in a new studio, the first program was a two-hour show devoted to the fire and volunteers that helped get KROS/KSAY back on the air. *March 28 – A Roger Waters concert is broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall. It is the first time that

holophonics Holophonics is a binaural recording system created by Hugo Zuccarelli that is based on the claim that the human auditory system acts as an interferometer. It relies on phase variance, just like stereophonic sound. The sound characteristics of h ...

is used for a live radio broadcast. *September 14/15 - Airdate of the famed "dead dog dedication" episode of American Top 40. During the recording, host Casey Kasem became upset after realizing that a "Long Distance Dedication" requesting a ballad ("Shannon" by Henry Gross) was in his opinion improperly programmed after an upbeat song ("Dare Me" by The Pointer Sisters) and went on a profanity-laced tirade. The aired program did not include Kasem's rant, although the outtake has been uploaded to various video sharing sites. *The year brings other significant changes in Detroit radio, as

WDRQ WDRQ (93.1 FM, "New Country 93.1") is a radio station licensed to Detroit, Michigan. Owned by Cumulus Media, it broadcasts a country music format. Its studios are located in the Fisher Building in New Center, while its transmitter is located ...

flips from

urban contemporary Urban contemporary music, also known as urban music, hip hop, urban pop, or just simply urban, is a music radio format. The term was coined by New York radio DJ Frankie Crocker in the early to mid-1970s as a synonym for Black music. Urban conte ...

soft AC Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quiet sto ...

as WLTI, and WCLS flips from AC to rock-based Top 40 as WDTX.

Debuts

* WZLX (100.7 FM) in Boston debuts with the

classic rock Classic rock is a US radio format which developed from the album-oriented rock (AOR) format in the early 1980s. In the United States, the classic rock format comprises rock music ranging generally from the mid-1960s through the mid 1990s, prima ...

format. *

Bayerischer Rundfunk Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR; "Bavarian Broadcasting") is a public-service radio and television broadcaster, based in Munich, capital city of the Free State of Bavaria in Germany. BR is a member organization of the ARD consortium of public broadcas ...

in Munich debuts with ''

Bit, byte, gebissen ''Bit, byte, gebissen'' was a German radio program. It was the first program on computer topics, produced by the Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian Broadcasting). ''Bit, byte, gebissen'' was broadcast from October 1985 to September 1993. The idea was ...

'', the first radio program on computer topics in Germany. * In July, after stunting with

Christmas carol A Christmas carol is a carol (a song or hymn) on the theme of Christmas, traditionally sung at Christmas itself or during the surrounding Christmas holiday season. The term noel has sometimes been used, especially for carols of French ori ...

s, WKJJ-FM "Magic 100"

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...

flips from Adult Contemporary to CHR as

WDJX WDJX (99.7 MHz) is a Top 40/CHR-formatted radio station located in Louisville, Kentucky. The station has an effective radiated power (ERP) of 24 kW. The station's studios are located in downtown Louisville and the transmitter site is in N ...

. *WJJF/1180-Hope Valley, Rhode Island signs on October 5.

Births

* December 17:

Greg James Gregory James Alan Milward (born 17 December 1985) is an English radio and television presenter, comedian and author. He is the host of BBC Radio 1's breakfast show, co-presenter on the cricket podcast '' Tailenders'' alongside Felix White and ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

Deaths

* February 26: Charita Bauer,

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

radio and television

actress An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...

. * October 15: Ted Steele, American bandleader, musician and host of radio and television programs.DeLong, Thomas A. (1996). ''Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960''. McFarland & Company, Inc. . P. 251.

References

Radio by year {{year-stub

Events

Debuts

Births

Deaths

See also

References