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106.3 Lansing WLNR

WLNR in the mid 60's

I worked for the original owner of WLNR-FM, Gordon Boss, back in the mid 60's. It was my first paid job in radio and I was still a senior in high school, allowed to get out of my last two classes of the day to be on the air.

The station signed on at 3pm in the afternoon and went off the air at 11pm. I ran the board and was on-air until 8 in the evening. We were a true shoestring operation back in the early days of FM radio, broadcasting in mono. I remember we had an Associated Press teletype machine for news reports when I first started but that got pulled because of cash flow issues. The only phone in the station was an Illinois Bell payphone mounted on a wall. We used to beg for albums to play from the record companies because they didn't think that FM radio was a "thing" yet. I can remember that WENR-FM (later WLS-FM) was still running tone and just making a mandatory station ID every so often.

Our 3kw signal reached a good 30-40 miles out and penetrated a good portion of Chicago.

Gordon Boss and I got stranded at the station for three days straight during the great Chicago blizzard of 1967 https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-chicago-blizzard-1967-20170125-story.html We signed the station on in the morning and broadcast messages and emergency information for three days. I-94, right behind the station, was filled with abandoned vehicles stuck in snowdrifts. Fortunately for us nearby neighbors brought us some food and by the third day we could hike to a nearby store. Exhausted from working straight through the blizzard, I was working a Sunday morning shift and fell asleep at the controls during a church remote broadcast. The service ended and there must have been dead air for a long time until Gordon drove up, work me up and fired me from my first job. I still thought Gordon was a good guy. After that I went to work for WCGO and WTAS for awhile before moving over to WJOB.
 
Interesting story. Living in the northern Chicago suburbs I couldn't hear WLNR very well, but I did hear it from time to time.
Thanks for sharing.
 
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