Michael J Raymond

Michael J Raymond began one of the first successful FM Top 40 Stations in August, 1970. It was WKOP-FM, 99.1mhz, 33kW ERP, licensed to Binghamton, NY. Under the auspices of the Binghamton Broadcasters, Inc. WKOP-FM enjoyed incredible success within 1 year of operation. The premise of a max of 8 minutes of commercial time per hour certainly created for listeners an environment of entertainment orientation. Hosts had agreement on hire, to take and play requests 24/7. The station was unique as mornings would feature National & Local News, & a live host (unusual for FM at that time). Typical morning-mid day music would be light Moody Blues segued into Rosemary Clooney, Little Women (Bobby Sherman) into Hot Diggety by Perry Como & thus. The station featured a mix of '50s pop' oldies that just weren't being played anywhere at that time, along with past & current top-40 chart toppers. One Arbitron book showed WKOP-FM with double the next highest stations rating in the 18-35 demo during mid days. Afternoons, evenings & all nights brought a harder rock sound w/Led Zeppelin and the rest, but also featured great oldies you just didn't hear elsewhere at the time. Music like '40 Days', Ronnie Hawkins, 'Take Me In Your Arms'-Kim Weston, 'Boys'-The Shirelles and the like. The hosts were not restricted by consultants input, they had all grown up during the eras of music featured on the station and had familiarity with it. It is interesting to note that formats such as 'Music Of Your Life' (utilizing the pop oldies from the 40s & 50s) began springing up and many Top-40 stations re-thinking going beyond a year or two previous for the older hits. Raymond went on to WAAF (Worcester-Boston), WQBK-FM, WTRY (AM), WWWD & WPYX, in the Albany, NY area. WKOP-FM became WAAL in August of 1973 and switched to an AOR format. Throughout WKOP-FM's lifetime a host of local talent including Ray Diorio 'Ray D. Reynolds', Barry Dukes* (Peter Islenberg), Lou Storrow*, Rick Stone* (Silverstien), Gary Allen (Cianciosi), Len Smith (Al Quaglieri), Warren Lewis* & Jack Michaels w/ Michael J Raymond in PM drive were featured talent. (*denotes Harpur College Students)
By late 1974 it had become a totally different station and met success with an AOR format as time went on. Michael J Raymond went on to WAAF for the same owner and later worked as Mike Harres (WTRY-WWWD) and Mikel J at 'PYX-106.
References would be articles appearing in Binghamton Sun-Bulletin and Evening Press, also at the Binghamton Radio Site www.binghamtonradio.com

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