Fire up your AM transistor radio and get ready to travel back in time Friday night to the heyday of the Top 40, when WLS-AM 890 and WCFL-AM 1000 battled it out for supremacy on the Chicago airwaves.<\/p>\n
Bob Sirott and John Records Landecker, who held down afternoon and evening shifts respectively for much of the 1970s on WLS, are reuniting on the air at WGN for a three-hour tour of anecdotes, DJ interviews, vintage jingles and listener calls.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes people back to the days before streaming, before cable, before the VCRs, DVRs, DVDs, video games and smartphones and all that,\u201d said Sirott, 76. \u201cAnd the No. 1 source of entertainment for people of a certain age was rock \u2018n\u2019 roll radio.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show, dubbed \u201cFor Radio Geeks Only,\u201d will air from 7 to 10 p.m. on WGN-AM 720, which has been the new radio home for Sirott and Landecker for the past five years. The idea of taking listeners back to a time when AM ruled the airwaves has been percolating for a while.<\/p>\n
Sirott hosts mornings and Landecker evenings at WGN, so on-air interaction between the two veterans doesn\u2019t happen very often. Last month, they decided to team up for a one-hour Radio Geeks special, and the listener response was so strong they decided to bring it back and expand the show to three hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just did an hour, and we didn\u2019t do any interviews or play any audio,\u201d Sirott said. \u201cJohn and I just talked, exchanged stories and then listeners chimed in on the phone and the text line, and that was basically it. And the response was really great, and it was positive, and people wanted more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friday night\u2019s show will include an interview with Ron Riley, an influential WLS DJ during the seminal \u201860s, digitized air checks from Sirott\u2019s own collection of dusty tapes and call-ins from listeners sharing their recollections of being on the receiving end of the radio waves.<\/p>\n
The show will also include some mic time with former WGN Radio<\/a> morning show host Spike O\u2019Dell, who retired in 2009 after 22 years at the station.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t expect a \u201cBoogie Check,\u201d however, Landecker\u2019s signature rapid-fire caller segment, which once beamed across the Midwest to millions of listeners each evening via the 50,000-watt blowtorch that was the \u2018Big 89.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s impossible to do these days,\u201d said Landecker, 78, who nonetheless plans to field listener calls and texts on air and \u201csee where it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n Landecker arrived at WLS in 1972 and Sirott joined the star-studded lineup the following year, which during their tenure included the likes of Fred Winston, J.J. Jeffrey and \u201cSuperjock\u201d Larry Lujack<\/a>, who also spent time at rival Top 40 station WCFL.<\/p>\n By the early 1980s, both Sirott and Landecker had left the station, with their post-WLS broadcast careers taking different paths.<\/p>\n Sirott shifted to TV news in 1980, with stints at nearly every station in Chicago over the course of the next three decades. He returned to his radio roots at WGN, hosting \u201cThe Noon Show\u201d from 2007 to 2010 while co-anchoring the WFLD-Ch. 32 news at 9 p.m. Sirott co-hosted middays on WGN<\/a> with his wife, Marianne Murciano, from 2013 to 2015, and was brought back to helm the morning drive<\/a> in December 2019.<\/p>\n