Bad stations/ formats of yesteryear in Central PA

[RockofHBG]

I'll get it started:

Top40 Z00 102, WZUE 1980 -81 (Now Red)
Hot AC B-97.3. 1990 ? Failed attempt at hurting WNNK (Now The River)
Magic 93, WKCD 1982-84...that horrible AC in the era between QV93 and WTPA
WHIT 99.3 / 99HIT FM 1987-88...really bad attempt at CHR going after WNNK
Super CMB 1978.....not so "super" attempt at Top40
Sunny 99 1985-87......any number of the attempts to recover after WINK went top 40

 

[bossjock 56]

Y 98.....WYCR's short lived AC format in 1986 and part of '87 that was intended to go after WARM.

Here's a memory jogger. It wasn't a bad station.....but a bad promotion......MEL'S MOVIE MACHINE.....an early 80's promotion on FM 97 WLAN which gave away movie tickets.. Who the heck was Mel? For those of us who knew....it was Mel Edwards...then PD of FM 97. The listeners had no idea who Mel was. He didn't do an airshift!

Finally...short lived CHR Q100 (WQIC) in Lebanon.

 

[RockofHBG]

Some more:
Kiss 95 -1988 and Magic 94.9-1995....two aborted attempts at AC by the same company on the same frequency. Didn't they learn their lesson the first time?
106.7 Cool Pop early 2000s...neither cool nor pop
Anything on WCTX 92.1 when it was owned by Hugh Clinton. Sold to WTPA in the late 90s.
FM97 WLAN early 90s when Pete Michaels programmed it. He played anything the labels would pay him to.
WPDC when it was on AM and FM at 106.7 small time owner and sounded like it. Red McCarthy was fun to listen to, originating his show from his basement via dial-up phone.
WVLV 940 -70s and 80s when Art Greiner owned it. Now WADV

 

[jimbradley]

WFEC SUMMER 78 TO OCT 78 'town & country"
before the one month switch to top 40 then
disco 14.

 

[Play Freebird]

Anything on WCTX 92.1 when it was owned by Hugh Clinton. Sold to WTPA in the late 90s.

I went out to inspect WCTX with a prospective buyer back in the mid-'90s when Hugh had it up for sale. I'll never forget the dimly-lit studio (I guess he was trying to save on the electric bill by taking two fluorescent tubes out of each fixture) and "state of the art equipment", most of which wasn't -- for example, a CCA 1970-vintage console.

The price WTPA paid was a bit more than half what Hugh had originally asked, pretty much as I expected. Somewhere I still have the prospectus.

 

[RockofHBG]

Some more bad blasts from the past:
Z102.3 2004--started out O.K. as an all 80s station. By its last days, it was so badly stretched musically that even Bruce Bond couldn't save it.
Happy Day Radio 1-2-3 Radio KB 1971....the really bad format that immediately preceded KBO's successful Top 40 run.
WHP-AM 1970s---with Ron "Ducky" Drake in the morning, block religion at night and some of the worst shlock MOR music during the day with jocks who didn't know what call letters were.
Hot 105.7 WQXA early 90s.....who thought a Churban would work in York PA? A bad reaction to a ratings beating from YCR.
WAHT 1510 Summer 1979-----well after its Top 40 hey day Bill Haley and the Comets wanna be/never was Joey Welz programmed a horrible oldies format mixed in with his own recordings from "Cloud 15".

 

[RockofHBG]

Even more:
WSFM "W99" 1976 ----A really cheesy AC format that preceded the Rock 99 era.
MIX 99.3 1994-95-------the final version of MIX was a train wreck of "Imus in the Morning", "Don and Mike" in the afternoon and rhythmic dance hits all day.
1350 WOYK 1981----this was an expensive too much-too little-too late full-service AC that tried unsuccessfully to take on WSBA on the dying AM band.

 

[Seltzer]

Y 98.....WYCR's short lived AC format in 1986 and part of '87 that was intended to go after WARM.

Here's a memory jogger. It wasn't a bad station.....but a bad promotion......MEL'S MOVIE MACHINE.....an early 80's promotion on FM 97 WLAN which gave away movie tickets.. Who the heck was Mel? For those of us who knew....it was Mel Edwards...then PD of FM 97. The listeners had no idea who Mel was. He didn't do an airshift!

Finally...short lived CHR Q100 (WQIC) in Lebanon.

Mel's Movie Machine. I actually won this contest and was greatly disappointed when I found out I had only won 1 Movie Ticket. Gyess I was expected to pick up a date AT THE theater!!

 

[loeper]

here's another one. WORK in York around 1974..... programing line up was as follows. 5:00am to 6:30am...country. 6:30 am to 9:am AC. 9am to 11am a give away show. 11am to 1pm, back to AC. 1pm to 3 pm (wait for it..........) BEAUTIFUL MUSIC!!!! 3pm to 5pm back to AC. 5 TO 6 PM...TELEPHONE TALK , 6pm to 7 pm a news block, 7 to midnight (wait for it again.)..........BIG BAND MUSIC!!!! this is completly true . I know because I worked there at the time. what a nightmare. I had to do both morning and afternoon drive every day plus in the winter I also did high school basketball three nights a week. in 74 the station was sold and became WZIX>

 

[RayThomas]

Following on the heels of Jim Bradley's example of WFEC's Town and Country format...Jim Hepler's original WQLV Love 99 hybrid Country and AC mix comes to mind. You would literally hear Whitney Houston into George Strait into Madonna into Reba McEntire. WNOW tried the same thing for a while back in the late 70's. You'd hear Merle Haggard into Loretta Lynn into....."Copacabana" by Barry Manilow! While I believe pushing the boundaries of Crossover can help Country stations broaden their appeal a bit, there seems to be a fine line that can't be crossed. My station (Classic Country) plays Elvis, Jim Croce, B. J. Thomas and Jimmy Buffett, all of which would be considered Country by today's standards. Likewise AC stations can play Crossover Country artists like Shania Twain and Keith Urban. But formats that have been total mixes of the two have never worked.

 

[theengineer]

Slightly further west and probably most of you never heard it, but the Big Gene show on WGMR, 101.1 Tyrone was the worst. Nobody else is close.

 

[JSM]

Following on the heels of Jim Bradley's example of WFEC's Town and Country format...Jim Hepler's original WQLV Love 99 hybrid Country and AC mix comes to mind. You would literally hear Whitney Houston into George Strait into Madonna into Reba McEntire. WNOW tried the same thing for a while back in the late 70's. You'd hear Merle Haggard into Loretta Lynn into....."Copacabana" by Barry Manilow! While I believe pushing the boundaries of Crossover can help Country stations broaden their appeal a bit, there seems to be a fine line that can't be crossed. My station (Classic Country) plays Elvis, Jim Croce, B. J. Thomas and Jimmy Buffett, all of which would be considered Country by today's standards. Likewise AC stations can play Crossover Country artists like Shania Twain and Keith Urban. But formats that have been total mixes of the two have never worked.

Ray, can you say what your station is? Somes like something I'd like to listen to!

 

[RayThomas]

My station is Country Gold Radio, WIOO FM 97.9 and AM 1000 in Carlisle, and WEEO FM 93.9 and AM 1480 in Shippensburg. Of the 4 signals, AM 1000 goes the greatest distance, 50-60 miles in any direction.

 

[rekcuhc]

Isn't "your" station all satellite? 4 wasted signals.

 

[RockofHBG]

Q106 WQXA 1976-1978 really bad automated programming. You could hear the computer on the air during low passages. For brief period in 1977 the went with a terrible soft AC format and called themselves "Mellow Music Q106". They returned to top 40 and live programming in March 1978 had a good run.
1480 WSHP Shippensburg 1970s-80s. Never actually heard this format or lack thereof on the air, but I've heard they programmed at least 5 different formats across the day in order "to reach the total available audience".

 

[Interstate 78]

I'm interested in the history of 92.1 FM. Can someone give a fairly accurate timeline of formats/call letters/owners on 92.1? I know it was called WCTX for awhile and even WNCE.

 

[RayThomas]

Isn't "your" station all satellite? 4 wasted signals.

No. Live and local in morning and afternoon drive, during our news and information Noon hour, and Saturday and Sunday mornings. Local news every hour all day weekdays. Only satellite in off hours.

 

[bossjock 56]

WEPN AM-FM (106.7/1600) in Elizabethtown 1969-70. Actually, I used to listen to this station from time to time because it was so unpredictable. When an outfit called East Penn Broadcasting bought the stations from Hershey Broadcasting (WMSH/WHRY)...the AM and FM were seperate. They changed the calls to WEPN AM/FM and started doing a bad AC format. I'll never forget the moon walk. They had no network and the on air jock was reading the entire account of the event fom the AP wire word for word. They stated in the summer of '69 with a bad AC format, but it was live with young new jocks, who were for the most part bad. In August of that summer, they went Top 40 for a month with slightly better jocks and cut up WFIL jingles before becoming "BIG E COUNTRY that fall. Around April of 70, they dumped that format and went to a real hodge podge. They started calling it WEAPON RADIO...your weapon against the everyday bordom of life. Needless to say...it wasn't boring. The line-up went something like this
6am-4pm BAD AC.....a mix of AC, MOR, and Country that was branded as "beat the bordom music"
4pm-5pm an hour of BEAUTIFUL MUSIC...sponsored by a local clothing store
5-9 pm Top 40
9pm-1am Progressive Rock...which was actually done quite well.
I also recall a TALK SHOW around 10 in the morning where the real "crazies" of the area would come out from under rocks and rant.
On Weekends it was whatever the jock wanted to play. They also had leftover brokered country and gospel shows for the previous format. Word had it the PD would flip a coin every morning to decide what the format would be for that day.
The station went under and was put up for a sheriffs sale in early June of '70 as I recall.

 

[John-Summers]

I recall WEPN quite well, BossJock. They did Progressive Rock at night for one fabulous summer in 1969, even expanding to 24 operation and rolling album cuts all night. And there was the daytime hodge-podge. They had a bunch of college kids as jocks mostly. A friend with whom I'm still in contact was among them, Jim DeAngelo. The names Rick Rebert and J.J. Hildebrand spring to mind too. I think they were F & M students. Rebert had an awful high-pitched voice but really knew his rock. They went out in a blaze of glory, playing album cuts all weekend, then flipped to Country at 6am on Monday. Rebert was still there and called himself "Tex," obviously not taking the format too seriously. That lasted about 6 months, then the hodge-podge of MOR, Top 40 and Progressive Rock at night came back until the stations finally went dark. I went to Philadelphia to get my third class license and when I came back, WEPN was gone. I'd already talked to someone there about possibly getting a job. I was crushed! BossJock: What was the story on East Penn Broadcasting anyway? How could they have possibly screwed-up so badly?

 

[bossjock 56]

John, I don't know much about the inner workings of East Penn. I think they were out of DC. A couple of lawyers. My guess is they come to town with pie in the sky ideas, but couldn't pay the electric bill in the end. Some other names I remember....Walt McKay (Konetsco)....a guy named John Burdick did the progressive stuff on weeknights...he had great pipes and and a great knowledge of music. Tim Downs, who later worked at WPDC after Charlie Smith took over....and I remember people like Vic Vernon and Don Martin. I actually got to know some of these guys. I too was looking for a start in the business and was in contact with them. If they would have gone all Progressive Rock...I think they would have had a chance at success.....but it would have been a tough sell back then. Starview came along a couple of years later. They were MOR in the daytime when they first went on, but the Rock soon took over.