NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- A 1010 WINS pioneer has died. Joel Chaseman, the general manager of 1010 WINS in 1965 when the station switched from rock and roll to all-news, died Saturday morning at his home in Maryland. He was 93.
1010 WINS Program Director Ben Mevorach called Chaseman "a man whose legacy will be forever etched in the granite of the history of this industry."
In an interview for the 50th anniversary of the format, Chaseman explained that then parent company of 1010 WINS, Westinghouse Broadcasting, was unhappy with the station’s image because they felt it reflected badly on their other businesses and he was ordered to find a replacement. With all the obvious music formats already taken the decision was made to try a continuous news wheel based on the top 40 format.
Newscasters were hired in secret from all over the country and rehearsals began, but the initial results were not encouraging. “We had the most boring, droning, monotonous broadcast you could possibly imagine,” Chaseman said.
But on the morning of April 19, 1965 Chaseman (at right next to Johnny Holliday in the photo above) announced the new format to the world telling listeners that “now news is at your fingertips whenever you want it,” thereby marking the birth of today’s 24-hour news cycle.
Chaseman admitted that initially he wasn’t optimistic that the format would succeed, but with some help from the great blackout of 1965, 1010 WINS became the nation’s first successful all-news radio station, spawning many imitators.
Joel Chaseman was born in Albany in 1926. He graduated from Cornell and worked on-air on TV and radio in Washington and Baltimore. He even did play-by-play for the then Philadelphia Warriors of the NBA. He entered management in the 1950’s at WJZ-TV in Baltimore, which was owned by Westinghouse.
After his time at 1010 WINS, he went on run the radio division of Westinghouse Broadcasting and later was president of the Post Newsweek Television Stations.