Monday, September 17, 2007

Radio History - Programmer's Digest LP Magazine


Programmer's Digest was an unusual vinyl LP magazine targeted for radio broadcast professionals. It was only around briefly, published for just a few years in the early to mid 1970s. Issues were originally sold on a subscription basis, like a print magazine.

1972 programmers digest


The brain child of publisher/editor Buddy Blake, who along with Bobby Byrd assembled a nice collection of industry gossip, various air-checks (station ids) by many radio on-air personalities, interviews, sales strategies and some comedy bits in their issues.


These were great radio days - before the air-waves were largely run by just a few mega-media outlets as is the case today. Nowadays the dial seems over-run with morning zoos on every station except NPR and, with a couple of solid exceptions, showing a sad lack of compelling music programming.

There are some true broadcast gems to be found in this series. One of my faves is some great ribbing of recently fallen, but back then on-air, shock-jock Imus at the hands of a gravelly-voiced howler know as the Wolfman Jack.


The LP magazines don't turn up all the time - possibly a small number of subscriptions as compared to the relative expense of pressing up vinyl led to its early demise - and now to its rarity. A few sites offer downloads of snippets from different issues (along with other sources), but to truly get a feel for 1970s radio, its best to spin a platter - analog, baby, analog!

9 comments:

  1. Wow these are really nice! You don't find many of them around either! Thanks for sharing!

    Alana

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  2. This is the second time I've tried this, we'll see. Just for the heck of it I Googled my baby, "Programmer's Digest." I found this spot and nice comments. I figured everyone had forgotten.
    Buddy Blake

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  3. Buddy! You're alive!!
    I'd love to talk to you..
    phil dot beckman at g mail dot com

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  4. I have just about the whole set! Looking to see if there might be a market for them.

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  5. Peter -

    Yes, there are collectors who are looking for these. What you might expect to receive for them individually can vary depending on both content and the condition of both the cover and the vinyl.

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  6. i have premier issue volume 1 issue 1 also 1/5, 1/11, 1/13, 1/14, 2/4 am looking to sell to colector,

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  7. I would put these on eBay, or on a radio discussion group's website. I have all of them, but they are not for sale.

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  8. I have vinyl in the attic, don't know how many or which edition. The demise of Pd came about as the result of pure weariness; a virtual one man band production and not enough equipment to do the proper job. And at the time people with finance money just wanted to take it away from you, so I let the baby die. It was physically doing me in anyway.
    BuddyB

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  9. Id love to get copies
    Walterocner@hotmail.com

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