The Buckinghams Part 1

Hi again everyone, and thanks for taking the time to share some memories with me. The results are in and our radio station is #1. Recently I was watching an old episode of WKRP where the story concerns Program Director Andy Travis and Station Manager Arthur W. Carlson and the Arbitron Survey. I could see myself sitting there with “the book” in front of me afraid to open it for fear of what the results might be. In major market radio, careers are ruined by one bad survey. I have worked at stations where the whole staff, of our the sister station was replaced because the numbers were down one or two percentage points. I always felt that while they are a useful tool for judging the stations performance, they should never have been given as much importance as they were. For the most part, the Arbitron Survey relies on a realitively small number of diaries (survey forms) from a particular metropolitan area. I have seen as few as 40 “diaries” placed in a county of 100,000 people. If the diaries happened to fall in the rural area there was a good chance the people might not ever receive the station. Back in my early days in Williamsport, Pa. On of the competing radio stations always bought the results. Oh yes, you paid BIG MONEY for this report. My stations budget was such that we could not justify the cost versus the benefits. For many years my station would instead commission a telephone survey of roughly one to two percent of the county. I always felt that those numbers were far more important since the questions were asked directly of the person who answered the phone. Why are the numbers so important? Most national advertising agencies use the survey to place advertising on stations that reach their target market. So a “bad book” can have a far reaching impact.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Carl in 2006 on “The Class Reunion.” Now before I get to the meat of that interview, let me tell you a story that goes along with that. When I started out to do the “Legendary Artist Series,” I sat down with one of my reference books and made my “A” and “B” list of artists and groups that I wanted to interview. Once I did that, I set about finding them through various methods, but mostly computer searches. Along the way I would ask certain people I knew if they had a group they had an artist or group they wanted me to interview who would it be? One of the people that I asked was the former co-host of “Good Morning Payson”, Donnalyn Williams. She told me that she knew a member of a popular group from her home town of Chicago. When I asked her who the group was she told me The Buckinghams. As coincidence would have it, I had just made contact with a member of that group and had an interview scheduled. To my surprise, Donnalyn's long time friend and my contact were one in the same, namely Carl Giammarese. It was then that I asked her to be a part of the interview with Carl.

In the years 1967 and 1968 the Buckinghams had a total of seven songs that made the charts. I remember telling Carl that when Mercy, Mercy, Mercy hit I said “ Another Buckingham's song, aren't we already playing two”. I have to think one of the secrets to the groups success was the rapid fire release of songs, when one was dropping off the charts, there was another to take it's place.

The Buckinghams songs were a staple of my “record hop kit” in the late 1960's. I could always depend on playing a couple of their hits usually more than once during the record hop. It came as no surprise when Donnalyn asked Carl if it was true they were named “The Most Listened to Group in 1967” by Billboard magazine. Billboard was one of the publications that music directors such as I used to pick songs for the station play list. Oh yes, The Buckinghams did get that honor against some pretty good competition.

The Buckingham's share the pretty typical group start up story, a couple of guys get together and form a band. Carl said, “when I heard the Beatles, I wanted to be a Beatle.” One big difference in the case of the Buckinghams success was a really aggressive manager, who actually paid for a lot of demo tapes himself.