u/JnAnthony

Taken from Radio Shack Realistic branded cassette tapes & originally recorded on Sunday 10/7/84 from 8p - midnight.

NOTE: There’s a Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 channel on the iHeart app playing continuous countdowns from the 80’s, 90’s & 2000’s! That made this cassette discovery even more awesome because it led to me finding out that exists.

KLIT Glendale CA (K-Lite 101.9) Dec 1991 - Fri 10p hour

He was a business genius and proved that time and time again with many of his companies. The highlight to me was Darien Lake. In the 80’s (when he actually owned & controlled it either fully or partially) it was perfection in every way.

One of the creative moves he made back then was teaming up with HUSS and having them place their new ride concepts they were trying to sell in the park. This resulted in Darien Lake having one of the newest & most elaborate collections of rides before other parks. Ranger, UFO, Thrillbilly, Corn Popper & Pirate were all part of this. This also resulted in Viper (at the time a world record breaking roller coaster) when Arrow & HUSS merged.

To this day, I consider that era of Darien Lake the best amusement park I’ve ever experienced. Sadly, the owners that came after (mostly starting in 1995 with Premier Parks) messed a lot of that up over time.

RIP Paul Snyder & thanks for creating the place (the original version of it at least) that I now judge all other parks by.

It was hosted by comedian Kelly Monteith and featured Mal Sharpe, Nonie Breen, Mark Fauser, Rhonda Bates & more pranking people. 24 episodes of the 100+ episode show are in the link.

Hit Squad was produced by Bob Booker, who's best known for various television variety shows & the syndicated sitcom Out of This World (which was also airing in 1987).

I watched every episode of Hit Squad more than once. I even managed to get my voicemail featured on one of the episodes.

Rhonda Bates was one of my favorites on the show (I was sad when Nonie Breen left, but Rhonda was a great replacement). Rhonda was in a bunch of short-lived series, but deserved so much more. She was in the 13-episode Blansky’s Beauties in the 70’s, but Hit Squad was her best. She retired from acting in the early 90’s. The last appearance I can find of her is as a panelist on a week of 1990’s Match Game. That unfortunately didn’t go great, but she was by far the most entertaining part of that show.

I wish Tubi or Pluto would add Hit Squad to their shows, but at least I saved these episodes on VHS.

Other than giving coins, there’s no way to communicate in-game, so wanted to say “hi & thank you” here.

I started playing MKT in 2022 & have been a Gold Pass player since then (I never bought additional items, just did the Gold Pass).

When I first started, I came to this sub to ask for people to play against. Many of the friends I know personally have stopped playing, but there’s 3 from here that I’ve competed against all this time. Every week I try to keep up & top your scores. That’s usually more important to me than the generic opponents every week.

It’s been a fun ride. I wish it could continue but it’s been an awesome time while it lasted.

I’ll continue playing right til the final day & will hope Nintendo eventually creates an offline mode (yes, I’m sending them a support message but still plan on 9/30 being the end).

Thanks again & I look forward to competing for 2-1/2 more months!

- JonAnthony on MKT

Over the past few months, the music libraries have shifted a bit. For a while, I was only listening to Utopia but then it moved to an upper channel my radio can’t get and I went back to Studio 54 & 80’s.

I love all the obscure 70’s stuff & 80’s disco that’s been popping up on Studio 54. But even better, some of the 12” versions are now in rotation! If ever there was a station that should embrace 12” singles, this is the one.

I would love if 80’s on 8 would add 12” mixes to rotation too. That was the height of their popularity and many of them are the best versions of the songs. For now, some alternate remixes have started to show up though.

80’s on 8 also seemed to expand their playlist a little - I was surprised to hear Robbie Nevil’s Dominoes recently (a song that rarely gets heard on 80’s playlists). The countdowns also help get a ton of songs that barely get heard back in rotation.

What’s everyone else’s thoughts on the music shifts for these two stations?