Star 790 Going Off The Air And Radio Reviews

[LarryDallas]

Anyone else here a 790 Listener?

I'm 26 so I am not really in their demographic but I am so sad to see this station go. If you have never had a listen to them you have just until 12-17-04 to check out a part of Houston history that will go for good. They mostly play the real classics like Sinatra, Streisand, Dean Martin, etc. They also had a great show on Sunday nights called "When Radio Was" which was a broadcast of what people used to listen to before television. It was sci-fi stories, plays, etc....radio dramas were their main thing.

The thing I will miss most will be the Paul Berlin show. This guy is on 10:30am to 2 pm M-F. I first heard Paul on the now defunct Unforgettable 102.9FM back in 1995. It was the last station in town which still had class and dignity. They never had completely idiotic radio stunts like using cell phones to call some guy on Westheimer to wave to women with big breasts and see how many will honk at them as other "mainstream" FM programs in town do.

On a side bar, how do you feel about the Rula and Ryan show on 96.5FM?

I can't stand them anymore. Both are married adults who put on this cheesy show where they still pretend to be 20somethings that are "hip and cool" and are having fun dating and such. Their focus on the men vs. women thing is so played out. It is the least common denominator on the show at all times. And fo God's sale can that woman stop making reference to how she is Greek and her life is like the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"? Ugh....makes me want to puke to have to lsiten to someone day after day pretending some movie is about them.

Anyway, if you have never heard 790 AM take a few minutes to check them out. I have found that even their commericals are not annoying to listen to. They don't yell and scream about zero down payment. There are NO LAWYER commericals! In fact, Paul Berlin does the commericals like in the old days when the DJs gave the word from the sponsors. Very cool stuff I will miss a lot.

I hope the music of 790 and the DJs find a new place in Houston radio which is free from the influence of Clear Channel because that corporation seems to care little about what the people want. A locally owned and opperated ownership is the way to go for these guys. 790 goes to sports radio on Sat. YUCK! We already have 2 major sports talk station in town!

As for other stations here is my 2 cents:

104.1 FM - Used to be "power 104" in the glory days of INXS playtime. These days they are so into trying to be teenie bopper that it is disgusting. The morning show is sort of like a Howard Stern wannabe w/o blue language. Sam Malone just rants on a middle aged man thinking he is a twentysomething as Maria Todd laughs at every dumb joke like Robbin on the Stern show.

Their night show is much more disturbing. The Atom (or Adam is it?) Smasher guy seems to be a bordeline pedophile making sexual remarks to high school female callers. The whole show always come down to horny teenagers trying to score and this DJ trying to be in the backdrop. Pathetic!

99.1 FM - Generally good but they talk too much in the morning show. Their X-mas programming is ridiculous. I won't go back until after the holidays. I'd give them a 4 of 5 excluding what they do with X-mas.

95.7 FM - I LOVED them when they first came out cause the music was so great for driving. No annyoing DJs and okay commericals. Their play list is too small. For God's sake can they stop saying Mindy Abear this that and the other? On the weekend some realitor by the name of Karen Duhr advertises heavily. I dislike that very much. The commericals are not so bad but the woman's voice sounds very snooty and eliteist. She pronounces montrose "montross" and says terrace "terrrece". It drives me crazy.

107.5 FM - Great music but they don't have equal play time on the songs in their list. Frankie Valley and the Carpenters get no respect there. The commericals are trashy and loud which I hate. The DJs are entertaining. I love the southern flair they have to them. Just hearing someone say "I'm Coronel St. James" is funny. Barry Kay is also a riot. Listen to how this guy says "elvis".

I'll add to this later. Wanting to get a chat going on this was the plan so take this thread where you want it to go.

[Astro]

Yeah, I'm pretty sad about 790 going off the air. I'm listening to Paul Berlin's last show now while at work. IMO this is the best station in Houston... the only place you can hear such a variety. It seems most stations have a playlist of only about 50-100 songs... but this one plays hundreds and hundreds of songs of many different genres from the past 60-70 years.

Hopefully though this format can resurface again on another station. After all Paul Berlin & the others were on KQUE 1230 AM for decades before it went off the air a few years ago... I believe there was only a gap of a few months before they came back on 790.

[Astro]

Paul Berlin says goodbye to loyal listeners

DJ leaving after 54 years on Houston airwaves

By LOUIS B. PARKS

Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

James Nielsen/Chronicle

Paul Berlin, an on-air personality on KBME 790 AM Radio, is calling it quits.

Getting fired brought Paul Berlin to Houston.

Berlin, who hosts the last edition of his show on KBME (790 AM) at 10:30 a.m. today, had been on Memphis radio for two years. He was 19.

"I fell asleep on the air," Berlin says.

He was an all-night disc jockey. One morning he went to a friend's graduation, and that threw his sleep cycle off. That night he got to work beat.

"I put on a (recording). Fourteen minutes, 30 seconds, this thing would play. I thought I'll knock out 14 minutes sleep. I put that on at 6 (a.m.) Sunday. At 7:50 a preacher would come in and preach. He woke me up. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. I look at the record going round and round, and I know I'm in a lot of trouble. From 6:14 to 8 a.m. it was dead air."

The station manager fired him but helped him get another job, which turned out to be at Houston's KNUZ. Fate must have had a hand in Berlin's on-air nap because it was a boon to a lot of Houston radio listeners who made him a favorite choice for the next 54 years.

KBME becomes an all-sports station on Monday. The Scott Arthur Show, 6-10 a.m., and The Bob Elliott Show, 2-6 p.m., will also end, leaving no Houston station playing adult pop music.

On air this week, Berlin, 74, keeps up his well-polished, easygoing patter between songs, dropping in stories, often personal recollections, in the caramel-smooth voice that has soothed Houstonians for parts of six decades.

And man, oh man, he does have a million stories about the great singers he's played, known and booked into various Houston clubs.

Standing in front of the high-tech soundboard in the studio, he makes it look as easy as it sounds. He has no assistants or partners; he can see no one else from the booth. While one song plays, he's putting the last one away, then looking in standard metal office file drawers to pick the CD for his next selection, which is always ready to go on time.

"I have no playlist. I'm a mood guy. A lot of times I'm in the mood for something. Or I create my own mood. When you know the lyrics to songs, you can have some terrific segues. I'm pretty good at that, because I know the words. I know what's coming up.

"If I play Barbra Streisand, You Don't Bring Me Flowers, and I segue to Mickey Gilley's Room Full of Roses, I'll say, 'If I sent a rose to you for every time you made me blue, you'd have a roomful of roses.' Now there's a segue that makes sense. Some kid out of radio school couldn't do that. He doesn't know the words."

In an era when most station formats and shows are prepackaged down to the ground, and the DJs must adhere to a narrow list, Berlin revels in his freedom.

"People ask, 'What is your format?' I say AOR, All Over the Road. Something from every era, every kind of song. Heinz had 57 (varieties). He blushes at the variety we have here."

For the record, Berlin was planning to go to law school when he won a Memphis announcer contest, and a summer DJ job, in 1948. He was 17. When summer ended, the manager asked him to stay on, offering him the princely salary of $55 a week.

"I'm living at home. Gasoline was 17.9 cents a gallon. The movies were 40 cents. I thought I was rich. I was playing big-band

[MidtownCoog]

Sports Talk, Right Wing Whacko Talk, and Mexican.

That is what Houston's airwaves have become.

[jmancuso]

Sports Talk, Right Wing Whacko Talk, and Mexican.

That is what Houston's airwaves have become.

seems it's heading that way....

[BayouCityGirl]

=

On a side bar, how do you feel about the Rula and Ryan show on 96.5FM?

I can't stand them anymore. Both are married adults who put on this cheesy show where they still pretend to be 20somethings that are "hip and cool" and are having fun dating and such. Their focus on the men vs. women thing is so played out. It is the least common denominator on the show at all times. And fo God's sale can that woman stop making reference to how she is Greek and her life is like the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"? Ugh....makes me want to puke to have to lsiten to someone day after day pretending some movie is about them.

I used to listen Roula and Ryan and I know what ya mean! they play ONE good song and about 10 truck ad commericals and then the weather traffic, laugh for 20 mins and then another song! Got SO annoying!

As for other stations here is my 2 cents:

104.1 FM - Used to be "power 104" in the glory days of INXS playtime. These days they are so into trying to be teenie bopper that it is disgusting. The morning show is sort of like a Howard Stern wannabe w/o blue language. Sam Malone just rants on a middle aged man thinking he is a twentysomething as Maria Todd laughs at every dumb joke like Robbin on the Stern show.

Their night show is much more disturbing. The Atom (or Adam is it?) Smasher guy seems to be a bordeline pedophile making sexual remarks to high school female callers. The whole show always come down to horny teenagers trying to score and this DJ trying to be in the backdrop. Pathetic!

*I want to know why everyone is laughing at 7:00 AM. What in the world is SO FUNNY so early in the morning! Again the same format as Roula and Ryan. play one GOOD song and then go to a million commericals and talk. I mean if they really need to talk and laugh. Go on coffee break! Some of us driving to work don't want to hear anything but music in the morning!

[LarryDallas]

I was also listening today to the entire Paul Berlin Show and it was a time of great sadness. I felt like I lost a friend. Never have I met this guy in person but I've enjoyed so many of this Houston stories and tid bits of trivia that I kind of felt that I knew him even though I did not.

The last 5 minutes of the show were bad casue the producer came in and made some lame excuse about music radio not being viable on the AM band. What a LIAR! The shows were not about music as much as they were about the talk and anecdoes free of political slant. Well, all KBME DJs were leaning pretty right wing but it was at tolerable levels.

Astro, you are so right about their play list. I would say KBME had easily over 1000 songs on the list and most of them were unknown to me which is what I LOVED! Just this week I heard some Italian song from the 1950's with a donkey noise as a part of the song. Where can you get something like that?

The music of the eras covered in their lineup was pure gold. Today's music is nothing like it.

By what Paul has said about not ruling out a future home on Houston radio I would speculate that he has already started to make a deal somewhere. If he were calling it quits for good I'm sure he would have just told the audience that he was going to enjoy retirement and no one should feel bad about him not doing the show anymore.

I would like to see him get away from the evil clutches of Clear Channel but in the meantime his mid day show could go to 107.5 FM KLDE. The listeners of that station already like oldies so what difference would it make to make it oldies+.

The music library could go with Paul and be confined to his radio show.

Another possibility would be for him to get a webmaster and start a site to stay connected to the public. He could even do a weekly show in his home in an MP3 format and have it archived for the listeners. I'd love to get music reccomendations from such a site.

If you read this Paul do a web site either way!

[emil76]

I switched to satellite radio a year ago after getting tired of the endless commercials and sorry morning shows. I enjoyed listening to 790 from time to time when I wanted to hear something local, but I guess now that its gone there's no real reason to turn the XM off.

LarryDallas: The Italian song you refered to was most likely a song from Lou Monte called "Dominic the Donkey".

[LarryDallas]

You are right! How did you know the name of that song? Maybe you should start a web site with rare music like that.

Anywho, the last good station in town is gone so I am considering sat. radio as well.

Which is better; XM or Sirius?

I've looked at their web sites and seen the selections but I lean XM because Sirius made that deal with Howard Stern and I don't want a penny of my money to go to him.

The guy was all pro-Bush and war war war but then does a total 180 when the Micheal Powell lead FCC threatens his job. You can't have it both ways. Stern then got on the radio telling his audience to be anti-Bush not because it disagreed with policy but because Bush was a threat to the Stern show. What a spineless POS!

Which service has better reception and better hardware?

I want to get a unit which I can plug into my existing car stereo via the aux. jack in the front. This will require a special antenna either way but I lean towards the one that requires less stuff to buy.

[Astro]

Larry,

I read another article that said it was Paul Berlin's own personal music collection that he played from while on the air, of over 4000 songs!

Did you hear the final song he played? It was by an artist named "Little Willie Wayne" called "Doo Re Woo" or something like that. Apparently he was a popular local artist here in the 50s. I tried to do a little Net research on the artist but couldn't find a lot of info about him, much less that song, but I did enjoy the song

Yeah, satellite radio may be the way to go in the future. But do they have any satellite stations that pay a format similar to that? Or what about free web radio stations? A few years ago that was pretty popular but I haven't heard much of it lately.

[emil76]

Unfourtunaltly I had to hear that song and lots of others by him over the years growing up. Lou Monte was often called the "King of Italian American Hit Records".

As far as the satellite radio, I own XM. I spend all day driving so I get pleanty of use out of it. I like the programming and the hardware over Sirrius, but thats just me. Both companies offer numerous plug and play devices for your car, and I believe that XM is now offering a walkman style device that will work almost anywhere.

[LarryDallas]

emil76

I am working on starting a business which if it materilizes I will be driving around town all day. I would go nuts with existing Houston radio if I heard hours upon hours of it. Sat. radio is a 100% sure thing for me if I get to start this business.

Astro

I did hear that last song he played. It was very enjoyable but like you I do not know the signifinace of it. Berlin says you will know it if you lived in Houston in the 50s and also you will know the significance. Too bad for me I was not yet born in the 50s.

Sat. radio seems more divided up by decade rather than genre. Like that song "Dominic the Donkey" would probably be hard to find even on XM or Sirius. 790 had a niche that was very unique and no where have I found anything comperable. If you or anyone finds any station like that that does a web broadcast please post a link. The music will live on but the DJs will be forever gone.

If that music was from Berlin's private collection he has got to make a web site with a complete listing, album reviews, Houston stories, etc.

Did you hear that story he told in the final hour where he went to some back room of a private club in town to listen to a live violin performance. What a cool story! Ugh....it's so unfair that this type of stuff will be replaced with sports radio centered on overpaid ego-maniac athletes.