13Q – a brief blip in the grand scheme of things
March 12, 2023It’s is extremely hard for me to believe it has been 10 years since I wrote this article about it having been 40 years since the “New Sound of ’13Q'”. I thought about writing a similar story for today’s 50th anniversary celebration. But why recreate the (in a few cases – critically critiqued) masterpiece from 10 years ago? Admittedly there were a few points I could have made in that article, but most of the history is there.
The history of Pittsburgh’s 1320 having been known as WKTQ or 13Q is a relative “blip” in the 101 year history of WJAS. Friday morning I was honored to be a guest on the GD Morning Show with Greg Maxwell and Darryl Grandy on WJAS to talk a little about the short time in history. (Click here to listen and chose the program from 03/10/2023 on the play list.)
Anyway, rather than focusing again on 13Q as the history of it really hasn’t changed, I will be taking some time this week to focus on what happened to WJAS-FM (99.7) in 1973. Stay tuned! Please, no help from the audience!
“I Listen to the New Sound of 13Q”. The most fiendishly successful radio promotion of all time. You could not call a bank, bakery, accountant or doctor’s office without someone answering the phone “I Listen to the New Sound of 13Q”. Maybe even 911. You’d occasionally get that greeting years after the promotion had ended.
I used to listen to 13Q, usually on my own pocket radios as Q had a bombastic presentation, and I don’t think my parents liked it too much. I saw it as totally a station for kids, playing the hits from Abba, ‘Does Your Mother Know’, Three Dog Night, ‘Joy To The World’, and Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’. Every kid at school knew 13Q I’m sure. Later I got FM radios of my own and switched over to listening to WAMO as my hits station.
Another 13Q memory is when I got a tiny AM radio from Spencer Gifts’ catalog. It looked like a miniature pocket radio with a headphone, and a wire with a clip on the end of it that you attached to a large metal object as an antenna, and it would pick up the strongest radio station in the area. For me, that was 13Q, as I lived about half a mile from the Crane towers.
Even at my school in Dormont 13Q was the strongest, 1974 era, so I assume they hadn’t moved the transmitter to Swissvale yet. I wonder why they moved, Swissvale is farther out of the city.. I had that little radio in school and lost it, I’m sure another kid stole it from my stuff, it was tiny and such a novelty. Even today I curse whomever took it and condemn them to a radio hell.. 😉
Imagine summoning air talent from all across the country to run a 5000 watt station today, but live and local worked for them at the time, and they had to be billing a lot of money to do that.
I had friends who won a color TV from 13Q, it wasn’t the phone contest; they had a 13Q bumper sticker that was seen by the prize patrol, which made sense, they lived in Greentree where 13Q vans would have been rolling around a lot by the station.
Boomer