compubit 670 Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 I had "This American Life" on the radio today and wasn't paying a whole lot of attention until a sound caught my ear - the start of "Hello" from Frank Gari, followed by "There's a feeling in the air, that you can't get anywhere, except in Calgary". The gist of the story is that the the folks in Calgary had a song that was "their own" and aired on 2 of the 3 channels they had (factual error, it only aired on 2&7 CKKX, and not CBRT or CFCN - CKKX is now CICT/Global and is OTA 2/Cable 7 - opposite of the pairing in Lethbridge which used the same branding, but was OTA 7/Cable 2). And Edmonton didn't have their own song. The story goes on to discover that over 100 different markets had their own version, and even contacted Frank Gari (no relation to Architect Frank Gehri - duh...) about the theme. Kind of fun to listen to. Here's the link to the podcast, which will be available Sunday evening for a week. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/520/no-place-like-home J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoadStar 363 Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Glad to hear them get it right that it was commissioned for WISN Milwaukee, something I've seen other stories get wrong. On the other hand, they relied too much on Gari's poor memory as far as who was second. (According to the piece, he wasn't sure if it was Utah or Calgary; it was neither. WBAL Baltimore, WISN's sister station, went live with the Hello News campaign almost simultaneously with WISN. According to the NMSA, Utah didn't get the campaign until '83.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TServo2049 81 Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Utah must have picked up Hello some time in the 80s - they had previously had the "2 Together" campaign by Peters, and that logo shows up in the original Hello Utah promo. So WBAL was second; does that mean the third Hearst station WTAE was third? Or did WTAE start at the same time as WBAL? This does make me wonder, which station was the first to use the Florence Warner version of the song? NMSA says Florence's version was first, but I think that's backwards - all other information I can find points to Gari's rendition being the one that launched the campaign on WISN. On the flip side, I don't believe Gari versions for WBAL/WTAE have surfaced (I may be wrong on this), so did they launch their campaigns with the Warner song? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MYosua 1 Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 This does make me wonder, which station was the first to use the Florence Warner version of the song? NMSA says Florence's version was first, but I think that's backwards - all other information I can find points to Gari's rendition being the one that launched the campaign on WISN. On the flip side, I don't believe Gari versions for WBAL/WTAE have surfaced (I may be wrong on this), so did they launch their campaigns with the Warner song? The Gari-sung version of Hello Pittsburgh does exist and at least (featuring a slight melodic alteration on the "loves you" lyric). I've always believed that the Gari-sung version was the first arrangement as well - for some reason, I picture that it was easier to adapt the song to the slower tempo instead of the other way around. Either way, that arrangement was definitely composed for WISN - the instrumentation clearly accents all five syllables of "Hello Milwaukee," and the background singers join in on the "Hello Milwaukee" where other versions do not have them in those sections. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoadStar 363 Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 Yes, the Gari sung version was definitively the first. Actually, according to this article, a slightly different Gari sung version (that probably doesn't exist anymore) that doesn't reference "Channel 12" was first, but then the "Channel 12 Loves You" version followed 4 weeks later. I saw a comment that indicates the Florence Warner version first arrived on WISN in the early 80's (around '83) when they re-launched the campaign. I don't know if other stations had her version before that point, but I would guess they did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ABC 7 Denver 1554 Posted March 20, 2014 Share Posted March 20, 2014 This is what Gari does!! It's very cool that each listener can claim this and other syndicated imaging as the descriptor of their community, however I think we understand how this imaging works better than the majority of people which shatters the illusion for us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWUpdate 1290 Posted October 30, 2014 Share Posted October 30, 2014 I just stumbled upon version of "Hello Calgary" that a YT commentator describes (aptly, I think) as a mashup of the original theme and the song "Time of my Life" from Dirty Dancing: Was this version used by any other station? (And sorry if this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find it.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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