Posted by William Brown on September 15, 2011 at 11:09:08:
In Reply to: History of the 1010 WINS Sounder posted by Andrew Johnson on September 15, 2011 at 10:35:39:
As far as the 1990's sounders are concerned, my only guess would be that each of those opening elements were to distinguish one from the other. It should be noted that even with this package, there were two V/O variations, both by Paul Anthony: pre-1995/96, when he spelled out the call letters ("This is W-I-N-S") and then afterwards when he adopted the other designation ("This is Ten-Ten Wins").
But the original sounder - first used by WINS in 1974, when Adam C. Powell III and Ed Rickards were news directors (it was Powell who claims credit for introducing said music) - came apparently from a production music library (though Powell says the instrumental was "inspired" by Leonard Bernstein's music score for "On the Town"), and was also used by at least one other production - the long-running (1970-98) syndicated TV series "Viewpoint on Nutrition" with Dr. Arnold Pike (which aired in the 1970's on WOR-TV on Saturday mornings), which not only used the xylophone and horn motif of the original sounder, but a subsequent section never used by WINS. (There is one complete "Viewpoint on Nutrition," on YouTube, split into two parts; where this music was used on the open and again at the close.) This original sounder music was used at least as late as 1989, maybe into 1990.
The 1970's sounders of :00 ("All news, all the time . . . ") and :20 ("The news watch never stops . . . ") are on a sound file of a late '70's jingle package at, of all places, Don Swaim's WCBS Newsradio 88 tribute website: http://donswaim.com/wcbssoundpage.html (go to section: "WINS Complete Jingle Package"). The voiceover going along with the sounders (by whom? I'm curious) was added on about 1976. Unfortunately, that sound file does not have the thus-far missing :40 sounder, which began with "New York wants to know . . . and we know it."
But there were several different re-recordings of this sounder. One other scoring was used in the late 1980's and early '90's by the late WMAQ 670 AM in Chicago when it was Group W-owned all-news. In those years, its sound and formatics were almost a carbon copy of WINS's (even down to a teletype sound effect in the background).