A MCRFB NEWS brief:
Billboard Magazine; March 2, 1963
DETROIT — Deejays are competitive, but they can also be cooperative.
While recuperating from a knee twist which had him away from the WJR studio turntables for about a week, midnight record-spinner Jay Roberts received a note from station owner Jon Holiday, of WAIR (Winston-Salem) asking permission to use the basic format of Roberts’ “Nightflight 760.”
Roberts simulates a jet flight to a different city every night, beginning with a whooshing takeoff sound effect and a (pre-recorded) airline hostesses’ voice issuing a welcome and instructions just as though it was a real flight. During the flight, “Captain” Roberts describes the city of the night in detail.
Roberts told Holiday, a former top jazz deejay from Little Rock, Arkansas to go ahead. END
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(Information and news source: Billboard; March 2, 1963)
Jay Roberts did a very creditable job. However, he did not originate the “Night Fllight 760 concept. American Airlines had the program on a number of 50kW stations around the U.S. Pete Mathews, my announcing teacher, did it in WLW in Cinicinnati, and I had heard it on other stations around the country.
I remember as a young man of 15-16 listening to WJR late at night on my transistor radio and Nightflight 760. Clebanoff, Montavani, some great music. One of the classiest shows around
Does anyone want a copy of the Nutso Calendar Jay would site as a reason to celebrate a particular day from time to time? If anyone would like a copy of it, contact me and I will email it to you. I found the calendar as an insert in a greeting card, that was being disposed of. I was one of the porters in a department store in Toledo at that time and found it in the trash. It was a little booklet. I was a night flight fan then and kept it. I checked it from time to time with Jay’s announcements and they always agreed. The little booklet wore out and was scrapped decades ago, but not before I had copied it into my computer. I have moved it from computer to computer since, and still have it.