New York’s WINS Goes All News, All the Time

Mar. 18, 1965 - WINS, one of New York City’s leading outlets for rock ’n’ roll music, will become an all-news station starting Mon., Apr. 19.

Announcement of the change in format was made today by Donald McGannon, president of the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, which owns the station.

McGannon said the move was prompted by the conviction that “WINS can best serve the millions of people in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut” by providing a distinctive service that is not being duplicated by any other station in the area.

A spokesman for the station said WINS had been losing audience, which he attributed to the number of new faces among the station’s disk jockeys.

It is understood that WINS has been getting heavy competition for the teenage audience from stations WABC and WMCA, both heavily committed to rock ’n’ roll.

Under the revised format, McGannon said, WINS will broadcast news 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Each hour of broadcast time will be divided into 14 minutes of advertising time and 46 minutes of news, allowing roughly 5,000 words of news content, which will be revised hourly.

Music will disappear entirely from the station that rocked to the beats of Elvis Presley and the Beatles on programs once conducted by Alan Freed and Murray Kaufman. McGannon said the five disc jockeys now employed by the station would be offered spots in other Westinghouse outlets.

“We intend to be entirely flexible,” a spokesman for the station said. “As the news breaks, from spot coverage to the reaction story, we will report it.”A similar format was adopted a few months ago by station WNUS in Chicago and a Mexican station, X-TRA, which broadcasts news in Spanish and English.

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