WABC Musicradio 77 Home Page Dan Aron was an account executive
at WABC from 1966 until 1970.
Scott Benjamin interviewed Dan for this web site.
It's very interesting to hear how Dan became involved at the station...
and how much money it was possible to make at WABC as its popularity increased!
The senior account executives had the established clients, such as
Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and since everyone worked on a straight 7 percent commission, Dan
Aron, the most junior of the salesman at musicradio77 WABC in late 1960s, pursued other
avenues.
Over time, he landed Volvo, Braniff and TWA, for example, clients who
previously hadn’t considered Top 40 radio.
“George realized that I was selling on the basis that popular
music wasn’t just for teen-agers,” Dan said of George Williams, who was then the
sales manager at WABC and later would become Musicradio77’s general manager. “By
the time I left [in 1970], practically everyone 30 and under had largely been influenced
by rock music.”
By then, WABC had eliminated network commitments, such as the
Breakfast Club and the nightly Newscope, and had five and a half million listeners who
tuned in to hear the All-American air personalities, including such legends as Dan Ingram
and Cousin Brucie.
“Five and a half million listeners at a local radio station was
insane,” Dan said in a Feb. 17 phone interview with Musicradio77.com. The audience
eventually grew to 8 million in the 1970s.
Dan said that after some time the sales commissions were reduced to 6
percent, reportedly because Leonard Goldenson, the chairman of the board of the American
Broadcast Company discovered that some of the senior salesmen were approaching salaries
that approached his own annual income.
Even with the lower commission, account executives at Musicradio 77
could generate handsome salaries.
“That last year I was at WABC I made more money in real dollars
than I ever have,” said Dan, who has had several large corporate clients and has
captured several awards in the 36 years since he left WABC and began producing commercials
for No Soap Productions, which he has owned since the mid-1970s.
He said that he worked at WABC during an “interesting time, when
you had some colorful air personalities and there were people in the sales department that
were Damon Runyon-types.”
In the late 1950s while growing up in South Orange, N.J., Dan set out
to be “the next Alan Freed,” referring to the legendary father of rock &
roll who was the most popular air personality in New York City at WINS during the late
1950s.
At Harvard, which he graduated from in 1960, Dan hosted “Sound
of the Blues” at the campus station, WHRB-FM, starting in either late 1958 or early
1959.
He stated in a Feb. 25, 2006 e-mail message that it was, to the
best of his knowledge the “first college radio show dedicated to the full spectrum of
blues – from Robert Johnson to Leadbelly to Muddy Waters, Ray Charkes, Jimmy Reed and
Howlin Wolf.”
Among the live guests he had on the show were Memphis Slim, Willie
Dixon, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and Brother John Sellers.
Additionally, WHRB held blues marathons during exam periods, which
Dan said “were all-request and ran around 7-8 hours in length.”
After serving in the Navy, including a stint in Laos about two years
before the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was approved, a family friend arranged for him to
meet with Hal Neal, the president of ABC radio, and Wally Schwartz, who had succeeded Hal
as general manager of WABC.
“Wally told me that to become established as an air personality
in New York City you first had to establish yourself out of town,” he recalled.
“So I went to Long Island,” he added with a laugh regarding
his short stint at WLIR in Garden City.
A bit later Dan was working at WRFM during the week and WPIX-FM on
weekends, both in New York City, grossing a combined salary of $160 a week.
“There was a lot of competition for positions at the stations
then,” he recalled. “For every jock with work there were five or six that were
out of work.
“I finally saw that with the hours and the pressure that I didn’t
want to continue,” Dan said. “I was good enough to always have work, but I wasn’t
going to be able to go big time.”
In 1966 he met again with Wally, who told him that he ought to use
his Harvard education to pursue a path toward a management position.
He interviewed for positions in news, as an assistant to legendary
program director Rick Sklar and the sales department.
“I had never thought of sales,” Dan said. “Although I
also didn’t have any fear of it.”
Initially, he did sales for WABC-FM and then moved to the AM side as
the station was growing in popularity.
Under Williams, an ex-Marine, the salesmen had to wear suits instead
of sports coats and loafers were forbidden as footwear.
“The
fact that as the junior account executive I was given many of the small agencies and
direct accounts,” he stated in a Feb. 18 e-mail message. “They often didn’t
have broadcast background to be able to write and produce sports for WABC, and that job
would fall to me. That outlet for creativity made the opportunity to join No Soap Radio
when it came up [in 1970] extremely appealing, and was another major reason to leave ABC.”
“I had
fun producing commercials,” Dan said in a Feb. 23 phone interview. “Going to No
Soap was a natural outgrowth.”
He said that during his four years at WABC, commercials were
undergoing changes as a result of the influence of satirist Stan Freberg and production
wizard Tony Schwartz, among others.
“Freberg was incredibly clever,” Dan said. “He knew
how to use the media, particularly with his parodies.
“He also brought the techniques of Orson Welles to radio
commercials,” he added comparing Freberg to the renowned filmmaker.
Dan said that Schwartz, who used legendary WABC afternoon air
personality Dan Ingram on several voiceovers, “would buck-cut with very small,
attention-getting edits” that made his commercials more fun to listen to.
Dan states on No Soap Productions’ web site that he is, “A
fervent believer that commercials must be as entertaining as programming.”
“Radio used to be better at creating pictures,” he said of
Musicradio 77’s hey day in the 1960s and 1970s.
“WABC, for example, had the All-Americans and the reverb sound
that gave you excitement that now is sorely lacking,” Dan said regarding Musicradio
77’s air personalities and the audio processing.
Although he honed his production skills while in sales, he also
“encouraged clients to use live commercials,” he said.
“You had distinct air personalities that could add something
through their ad-libs,” Dan said. “It wasn’t as though we just gave the air
personalities a fact sheet; but they knew how to improvise and make the copy even more
interesting.
“I think today on some stations the live commercials might get
lost in the clutter of talk and even when there isn’t a lot of talk, the air
personalities are no as well defined as they were years ago,” he added. “You
also don’t have as many distinct personalities, which is why I think [Howard] Stern
and [Don] Imus, in part, stand out so much.
“You had the same play list, but with Herb Oscar, Ron, Ingram,
Brucie and Chuck, you had distinctive personalities at WABC that made each show sound
different,” Dan said, making reference to Herb Oscar Anderson, Ron Lundy, Dan Ingram,
Cousin Brucie and Chuck Leonard.
His career as an air personality not only helped him in producing
commercials, but in establishing relationships with people in programming.
“I believe that I was the only one in that [sales] department
who actually loved music, and listened to the station as a matter of course,” he
said. “That, of course, was a factor in my relationships with Dan [Ingram] and Rick
[Sklar].
“I was more into the music, particularly the rhythm and blues,”
Dan said. “Rick would ask me about records, and I might tell him that there was a
song out that had some crossover potential to a Top 40 station.
Ingram would occasionally join Dan when he was meeting clients in
hopes that the presence of the air personality with the largest audience in the United
States would make a favorable impression.
After Dan joined what was then No Soap Radio, he had Ingram voice
some commercials and in 1973 they became the partners of the firm, a relationship that
lasted for about 15 years.
“I have immense respect and personal affection for Ingram,”
he said. “We both love the blues and have some other similar interests.”
He said Ingram who has been one of the most successful voiceover
announcers of the last 50 years, is “in truth a radio actor.
“Ingram could quickly switch to different wavelengths,” Dan
said. “He related to the adults on one level and to the teens on another level.
“He got listeners for WABC who probably only listened to WNEW-FM
at the other times of the day,” he added.
He said many of the air personalities were interested in attending
promotional events.
He said the biggest client program that he coordinated was a 1968
promotion for Mallory, the maker of Duracell batteries, in which WABC asked listeners to
send in a transistor radio, which would be outfitted with a Duracell battery and sent to
the troops in Vietnam.
The thousands of small radios were displayed at Madison Square Garden
at an event that was attended by Musicradio 77 air personalities Herb Oscar Anderson,
Charlie Greer, Chuck Leonard and Roby Yonge.
The station also rented a cabin cruiser during the summer that was
docked at the 79th Street Boat Basin and was frequently used to entertain
clients.
However, many client contacts took place at New York City bars and
restaurants.
“A lot of business was done over long, liquid lunches,” Dan
said. “I was turning into an alcoholic, which is part of the reason that I left”
in October 1970, right after he landed a 52-week commitment from Datsun, now Nissan, to
sponsor Howard Cosell’s Speaking of Sports commentary during the Six O’clock
Report.
Through the years, No Soap’s portfolio has included the New York
Stock Exchange, Walt Disney World, JP Morgan Chase, American Express, the New York Times,
Pepsi and AT&T. It has won Clio’s, New York Radio Festival honors and Mercury
Awards.
The company, based in the New York City borough of Manhattan, has
recently done work for Exxon/Mobil, Court TV and Volkswagen.
“The airwaves are loaded with commercials that are poorly
conceived, inadequately executed, or both,” No Soap Productions states on its web
site.
“Radio is the step-child medium,” Dan said in a phone
interview regarding the amount of money that sponsors spend on it. “Television comes
first.”
He and his wife, Ann, have three children – Mike, 35, Zam, a
student at the University of Miami of Florida, and Jake, a student Fordham University in
New York City.
The family now lives in Madison, N.J., after residing for 22 years in
Montclair.
Dan teaches a course in radio acting at Montclair State University.
He said the “$64 million question” in radio is what impact
satellite networks XM and Sirius, which offer commercial-free music channels, will have on
advertising.
“Terrestrial radio will continue to survive, but as has been the
case with the major television networks, its audience will decline,” Dan said.
“And actually, I think one or both of the satellite networks
will implode,” he said regarding their wider financial losses during the fourth
quarter of 2005.
“I would put my money on Karmazin,” Dan said of Sirius
chief Mel Karmazin, who has held similar positions with CBS Corporation and with Viacom.
He said that to survive, the satellite channels “might have to
go to a two-tier system where you will pay more for commercial-free music and then a lower
fee for the package with channels that have commercials with music.”
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