Fritzinger, it was more than that. Orbert is only talking about one aspect of it. Yeah, you had no idea when a release was coming out, but further, you had no idea about ANYTHING, except what might be leaked out by a magazine like Cream or Hit Parader, and even then, the writers were more interested in their take on things than any real insight. There was MYSTERY about bands. I only ever knew what Sabbath looked like from the pictures on the album covers (and if you've seen "Sabotage" you know that that's not a ton of good info). There was no Twitter, there was no "The Osbornes" reality TV bullshit, there was just the myth, the legend. When Orbert said "totally absorbing everything you could about the new album", it doesn't do it justice; it was hunting for every little scrap in what was otherwise a desert of information.
There were no "making of..." DVDs with albums, there was no "Behind The Music", there was no "EPK", there was no Twitter/Facebook/website to explain the releases and build temptation... for the very biggest bands, you MIGHT get an advance single* and maybe a poster at the record store saying an album would be released in the coming weeks.
* Didn't help much, because if there was a dearth of info on the records, the singles were even worse. At best, it was a 12" with a picture on the front and writing credits on the back - ala Iron Maiden - but at worst (and typically) it was a 7" with a plain paper cover.