Updated July 21, 2002

These WPAT recordings are dedicated to Jeff Long (RIP) who worked at WPAT in the 1980s.

The WPAT and Gaslight Revue selections on this site were originally broadcast on WPAT FM 93.1 to the New York City metropolitan area. WPAT gets its call letters from Patterson New Jersey but it's studio and AM transmitter antenna were last located on Broad Street in Clifton, NJ. In the mid 1990s, WPAT was sold and now provides Spanish programming.

THE RECORDINGS:

The selections presented here were recorded from 1967 till 1992 while they kept their Easy Listening format. The earliest recordings I made from their FM signal were to collect some quality stereo instrumental music with my first stereo tape recorder, a Lafayette. WPAT used to publish a monthly guide "The Gaslight Revue Program Guide". They would list every song they were going to play for the next month from 7 PM to Midnight, which were titled "Gaslight Revue". From the hours of 8 PM to 10 PM, WPAT would transmit in FM stereo. The program during the hours just before Gaslight Revue was called "Limelight".

I finally subscribed to their guide during the last 6 months of its publication which ended in January 1968. I recorded four 1 ½ hour reels of tape using the last guide to select the songs to record. These 4 tapes are not presented here.

All the selections presented here were recorded without the use of the guide. Also, while most tapes were recorded in stereo, you will be hearing them in mono so that 28,800 BPS modems will get an uninterrupted music flow.

The June 1967 "Gaslignt Revue" tape was prior to my guide subscription. By the time of the 1977 tape, WPAT was 24 hour a day stereo, and had dropped the name "Gaslight Review". The tapes recorded in 1977, 1980 were not originally intended to be kept. These tapes were recorded to test something out; a recorder, a tape or a way of recording. However, the music was so good, that I never erased them.

In the 1990s, WPAT was already progressing away from Easy Listening and slowly added more and more light rock tunes to the mix. When my children were infants, my wife and I found that we could keep WPAT on all night to soothe the crying. I noticed that the rock tunes were absent at night. I was inspired to make an 8 hour overnight recording of WPAT in Sept. 1992 which became my last recording of them. One hour of this tape is presented here. This tape was recorded on a VHS stereo Hi-Fi recorder. Soon after that last recording, WPAT went full time rock-and-roll.

THE FALL OF EASY LISTENING: One of the WPAT personalities was Ken Lamb. Here, is Ken's account of what was going on:
"... Ken Lamb, operations manager, program director and on-air announcer. As one easy listening station after another changed music direction, Ken would assure the audience that WPAT would never change. But all good things come to an end including Ken's tenure at WPAT. His last day on the air was September 16, 1987."

"Ken went on to host, "The Special of the Week'," a nationally syndicated weekly easy listening show that premiered in November 1987 and was heard in over 125 markets at it's peek! Jeff Long was the program's founding producer until his death on December 22, 1987. Ken promised Jeff, on his death bed, that his name would remain in the shows credits as long as it continued! Ken made good on his vow and thus Jeff's name remained alive!
By the way, Ken says he has copies of every show in the series and still hears from it's listeners! (kenlamb@webtv.net)

"In April of 1988, Ken added to his work load, becoming operations manager of WCTO, a Long Island, New York easy listening station. But he left in the spring of 1990 because he knew that WCTO would soon be changed to a rock music format by its owner, Greater Media.

"Ken joined the announcing staff at ABC where he is today! Heard on the ABC-TV network, mostly in the daytime hours. The Special of the Week went off the air in the Spring of 1991 as the easy listening format began to fade away!"

From the listener's point of view as station after station in the NYC area was changing from the Easy Listening format to rock, Ken always promised "We [WPAT] will never let you down by switching our format". Then one summer it seemed like, Ken finally took that long deserved vacation, so it seemed. Two weeks, a month, two months went by, and no Ken.

Months later he is heard on WCTO, Smithtown, NY. Under his direction, WCTO was playing music similar to WPAT. Ken also was being heard on the syndicated program "The Special Of The Week" when Jeff Long passed away.

With Ken programming WCTO, his promise continued "We [WCTO] will never let you down by switching our format". After a year or so, Ken took another vacation, so it seemed. Two weeks, a month, two months went by, and no Ken. Then suddenly one morning, the music died, and rock-and-roll ruled on WCTO!

Within a few weeks of the format change on WCTO, WPAT went full time rock-and-roll. It was almost like the end of a war between the last 2 stations playing the Easy Listening format. WPAT was not going change its format as long as some of it's listeners might be wooed away by WCTO. With the end of Easy Listening music on WCTO, WPAT was free to change format (finally). Now rock-and-roll ruled on WPAT too. WHUD, a Westchester station that carried "The Special Of The Week" also followed suit. No more Easy Listening Music in the NYC area! There were other formats that aired, hits of the 40's through 90's, but none could be called Easy Listening.

There are Easy Listening stations in other markets, CA, FL, NH, TX, VA, but none in NYC. Now we have the Internet, and everyone can listen to my recreated legacy that was WPAT and link to FL station WKTZ and TX station KNCT for listening. Unfortunately the recently imposed Internet music charges have removed CA station KWXY and NH station WEZS from the Internet. We really miss KWXY and WEZS.

WPAT OWNERSHIP:

In the 1960s, WPAT was owned by Capital Cities Communications. In the 1980s Capital Cities bought American Broadcasting Company (ABC). However, Capital Cities now owned too many stations in the NYC area and decided to sell WPAT to Park Communiations. (Disney eventually bought Capital Cities/ABC some years after WPAT was sold to Park). Park used the extensive WPAT library of music to improve the other Park stations. It was under Park that Ken Lamb left and the format changed to rock-and-roll. It almost seems that under Park, WPAT was in a war to get more listeners so the station could be sold at a higher price. When the station was sold to a Spanish broadcasting concern, the letters WPAT were kept.

OTHER WPAT FACTS:

WPAT broadcast on both AM and FM. Both had the dial position of "93". They were 93.1 on FM and 930 on the AM dial! Most NYC stations had AM and FM facilities because an early way to transmit stereo was to use AM for one channel and FM for the other. WPAT always broadcast the identical same program on AM and FM until the FCC ruled separate programming for large listening audiences like NYC. WPAT's answer to that ruling was to broadcast the same tapes first on the AM then one week later on the FM during prime time hours of 7 PM to midnight. Even after they dropped the guide in 1968, you could listen to a tune on the AM and record the selection on week later on the FM. Of course one person couldn't be listening on the AM for next week while recording on the FM for this week.

Several years later, they used a different scheme to play similar music on AM and FM. In spite of the separate programs on AM and FM, the news and commercials were the same. At first the music on the AM was faded down when when the FM was ready for commercials and news. Later on, they used 2 copies of the same news report, one for each station, so there was no need to fade.

WPAT was always a highly technical station. When Jeff Long let me visit, in 1980, they had 2 racks that formed an "L" in the studio on Broad Street in Clifton, NJ. One rack was the AM programming and the other the FM. Each were similarly equipped with 4 Scully 14" playback decks, commercial cartridge stack, news cartridge slot, and automatic time announcer. One of the differences between the AM and FM racks was the audio processor optimized for AM and the other optimized for FM. The Scullys produced the high quality music automated in either a 1-2 sequence or a 1-2-3- 4 sequence. The commercial cartridge stack held all the commercials for the month one for each the AM and FM. The automatic time announcer would have an even minute cart. and an odd minute cart. Every minute one of the tapes would advance and the other was still free to give a time announcement. The AM cart would give the time and WPAT AM 93 and the FM cart would would say WPAT FM 93.

In the FM transmitter 60s, the FM transmitter was improved. Once the World Trade Center was completed, the FM antenna and transmitter was moved there in the 70s. When I visited in the 80s the FM rack in the studio had control and communication with the transmitter at the Trade Center. The AM transmitter and antenna was right there by the studio. The AM antennas were (and may still be) 4 top hat antennas in a square configuration. When I was a block away, my AM car radio sounded almost like FM. When I visited they had the 2 old water cooled tube transmitters as standby in case the 2 mono Gates solid state AM transmitters would both be down. When they got their stereo AM transmitters in the late 80s, Ken Lamb said he could see them carting out the 2 old transmitters, which I would assume were the tube ones. I'm sure they kept those solid state mono ones as standby.

They would always have pairs which they alternated between so that maintenance could be performed while reamining on the air. They would alternate at times of the day when the transmitter power or pattern needed to change at dusk and dawn. Ken made it a point to make this switch over between commercials, songs or even between words while he was speaking on the air. They called him the "old smoothie" because he didn't want any technical noises. Jeff showed me some old switches Ken had him remove because they made too much noise on mike.

They also had a generator to run the whole studio and AM transmitter in case of power failure (without air conditioning).

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