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Buffalo radio history questions 2 fm (help)

T

thebeach33445

Hey Guys:

Thanks for all of the great info on the AM's. It has helped alot, now I am stuck on some FM's. Can anybody help?

1. Can anybody give me the history of 94.5 before it became Classical WNED in 1976? I know it began in June of 1960 as WEBR. It also has the calls WBCE and WREZ. I keep hearing that is was classical, beautiful music and in 1975 jazz. I'm all mixed up.

2. Did WBNY change calls to WJYE in 1974?

3. About 92.9: I saw on Wikepida the WBUF was Progressive rock in the 70's. True? When in the 70's? Was WBUF Beautiful music before progressive rock? I also saw on Wikepida that 92.9 was WFXZ Foxy 93 for a year. What was the format?

4. Can anybody tell me what was WUWU 107.7's format from 1982 to 1986? I saw in yearbooks the it was Progressive, Variety and Wikepida says it was New Age. Really confused on this one.
I do remember The Bear: Damm good rock station!!!

Thanks again for all of your help!!

T.J.
 
I can answer some of these questions. The WBCE call letters stood for the station's owners, the Buffalo Courier Express. I'm not sure of the various formats. Perhaps ALW can enlighten us. But it was beautiful music as WREZ. Thus, the EZ call letters. The jazz you refer to might have been what WNED-FM was playing when the station was first purchased by Western New York Public Broadcasting. 94.5 was simulcasting WEBR's jazz at the start until they got the classical music format up in running on the FM side.

Indeed, WBNY became WJYE, but I'm not sure of the year.

92.9 featured beautiful up until 1974 when Bob Allen convinced the owners at the time to go to progressive to fill the void created when WPHD was returned to top 40 format as WYSL-FM. Soon after, Q-FM-97 was created by many of the hold PHDers. As a listener, I thought Q was more mainstream album rock, while BUF was more free-form. I'm not sure about the late 70s. But 92.9 became Foxy 93 in the early '80s. The format was AC, and was very popular. Eventually, the WBUF calls were brought back and the station did pretty well until WJYE took it on by switching to AC in the late 80s. By the mid 90s, 92.9 was floundering, which led to the hodge podge of formats -- smooth jazz, Alice, Dancin' Oldies and rock -- that leads us to today with Jack.

WUWU started as a progressive station in 1982. Then, the tinkering started. They started playing more popular music. That's when Bob Allen infamoulsy took over the WUWU transmitter one Friday afternoon. They even played some jazz, if I recall. They tried to mimick the sound of the old WADV for a time. The station didn't really take off until it became WBYR, the Bear, in the mid '80s, filling the void created when Taft inexplicably dropped 97 Rock for light music. But the arrival of WHTT, Classic Hits, took some of the steam away from the Bear. Eventually, John Casciani bought 107.7 in 1988 and that's when it started playing a mix of new age and smooth jazz as the Wave!
 
When I arrived at WEBR, in 1970, the AM was playing mostly Oldies…the FM was then WREZ-FM and playing, not what I’d strictly call a format, but rather a bunch of carted music from various genre’s. Somewhere around ’72 a new admin. arrived led by Larry Levite and things changed. AM was a toxic blend of oldies(1940s), Lite Rock, Showtunes, Lite Jazz, Country & whatever else we could dredge up from the discount bins at Cavage’s and The Record Theatre.
I was assigned the duties of finding some hip tunes to fill the minutes between spots, PSAs and various other carted minutiae to keep the automation happy.

The format consisted of album cuts that I personally found to be Hip.
(and everone knows I’m so hip that when it was hip to be hep
I was hep!)

Then came Jazz for a year, and then those pointy headed Classical freaks showed up and relegated me to the 5,000 watt flamethrower that exists to this vary day as WNED-AM 970.
 
Eventually, John Casciani bought 107.7 in 1988 and that's when it started playing a mix of new age and smooth jazz as the Wave!
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Possibly a "Little Help from our Friends" here (confirmations or corrections appreciated). IIRC there was a long stint there at WNUC (as the calls were at the time - possibly the acronym of New Country ::)) that catered to the Country crowed (IIRC - WNUC promoted the Garth Brooks concert at the Aud). This happened before the new age, smooth jazz Wave thing. And it didn't start in 1988. A HUGE missing hole in that historical account.
That's all
 
Actually the Wave did happen before WNUC-- Hot New Country. In fact, there was a beautiful music format between those two formats as WEZQ. IIRC WNUC didn't start until around 1991.
 
I'm sure that there are others who are far more qualified to comment, but my recollection is that 107.7 went from being part of the old "Ivy" network to WUWU in the early '80s, then WBYR around 1986. The Bear exited the building when John Casciani bought it in '88, and they switched to WBMW, a smooth jazz format that deserved a longer test run. But, they pulled the plug on jazz and went Beautiful Music as WEZQ in the '89-'90 time frame, and moved on to country as WNUC in '92.

Country lasted until Casciani sold out to Adelphia in 2000. They rebranded as WNSA, The Sports Authority, which remained until Entercom outbid Citadel and bought the station for a reported $10.5-million in 2004. Entercom was afraid that Citadel would buy the signal and target Kiss/Star with a CHR approach that they'd pushed while LMAing CKEY and marketing it as "Wild 101".

Since 2004, it's been WLKK, The Lake. Bird and crickets have been chirping, and water has been lapping at the thighs of the shore ever since.
 
Rox certainly rocks!! I believe you get the cuppie doll. I just knew there were missing parts to the history...and if you're gonna do it...get it correct. Can't leave out the good parts!! ;D
That's all.
 
WBIV was part of the old Christian Broadcasting Network back in the day. They also programmed WMIV out of South Bristol @ 95.1.
 
For the record, HeyDay, I didn't get it wrong. T.J. asked for the some recollections and a timeline for WUWU and the Bear, which I provided. I stopped at 1988 when John Casciani bought 107.7 because I had addressed the original question. I was fully aware that after the Wave, 107.7 was briefly beautiful music before Casciani launched the New Country format. I'm pretty knowledgeable about the history of Buffalo radio, HeyDay. If T.J. had asked for the full history of 107.7, I would have been able to give it to him the exact timeline that Rox provided.
 
qman said:
WBIV was part of the old Christian Broadcasting Network back in the day. They also programmed WMIV out of South Bristol @ 95.1.
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The Fybush link is very helpful. Prior to CBN, the radio stations, as the Ivy Network, were owned by Gulf + Western, the precursor to Paramount Pictures. It was a brief affair with radio and the entertainment company soon realized radio was not a part of its core. G+W sold the whole shootin' match to Pat Robertson's clan, and the network became CBN. Robertson sold to Seven Star and the lunacy ensued. Things got more wiggly when Chris Devine bought WUWU out of bankruptcy, changing it to WBYR-The Bear. There are about four people in Buffalo who didn't get stiffed by Devine. John Cascianni purchased WBYR, changed the calls to WBMW and programmed it for his country club friends. Actually, WBMW wasn't a bad format, just a tad too hip for the room and little ahead of its time. The call letters said it all... "B-M-W." Tough nut to crack in a Chevy and Ford, meat and potatoes town.
 
WBNY changed its callsign to WJYE ("Joy 96.1") in 1979. Word was, after WBEN beat them for the overall lead in the fall '78 Arbitrons, they thought it was because people got the two stations confused because of alleged similarity in the callsigns. Kind of absurd, really, since the two stations were on different bands, with different formats, and WBEN had (and still has) one of the strongest heritage brands in the market.

The callsign change didn't make a difference. JYE has always been competitive, before or after the callsign change. And WBEN stayed out front 12+, still is.
 
t.j. said:
3. About 92.9: I saw on Wikepida the WBUF was Progressive rock in the 70's. True? When in the 70's? Was WBUF Beautiful music before progressive rock? I also saw on Wikepida that 92.9 was WFXZ Foxy 93 for a year. What was the format?
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It was certainly Foxy 93 in 1981 as that was the year I was an intern there for Susan Hunt and Jeff Appleton. The studio was at Main and Summer. Steve Mitchell did PM drive and Chuck Stevens (who I think now is the OM for WJYE) was there too.
 
For the record, HeyDay, I didn't get it wrong. T.J. asked for the some recollections and a timeline for WUWU and the Bear, which I provided. I stopped at 1988 when John Casciani bought 107.7 because I had addressed the original question. I was fully aware that after the Wave, 107.7 was briefly beautiful music before Casciani launched the New Country format. I'm pretty knowledgeable about the history of Buffalo radio, HeyDay. If T.J. had asked for the full history of 107.7, I would have been able to give it to him the exact timeline that Rox provided.
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Touche' Airtime. You did as requested. Shame on me for missing this very important detail of date "stoppage"! Tail is between legs, howling like the hose was turned on me! I sit in the wings.

Guess he told you HD! LOL
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Qman - Harboring such subliminal anomosity, ready to strike at any time!!! I can admit the errors of my ways....
 
I remember WUWU FM as a mix of new wave, metal, and mainstream rock. Imports and "new artists" were common. At first they seemed Buffalo's answer to Toronto's Free form/Alt. CFNY (which had loyal listenership in Buffalo, despite a then weak to nearly unlistenable signal).

Remember someone claiming on air they were the first station in N. America to play "A Flock Of Seagulls". It got more mainstream as it went along, and was pretty much a straight forward AOR before the flip.

They were quite popular among my (teen) friends in the Falls, though their signal to the north wasn't the greatest. But of course, we weren't the ones that filled out the diaries.

I also remember them stunting with "Papa Oom Mow Mow" over and over before the switch to WBMW.
 
WBUF was a beautiful music station in the early 60's when I worked there. I started in the summer of 64 as a summer vacation fill in and ended up staying for about 6 months when I decided not to return to college. The main channel carried virtually no commercials and ran something we called Jake's music which was beautiful music edited into great melody segues . The money was made on the Sub-carrier. It was pure Muzak, with storecasting tones that muted all receivers then selectively turned on classes of receivers, i.e. specific supermarkets, industrial saftey messages and some receivers remained mute until the music was about to start. Our college station in Fredonia, WCVF, used those muting tones to automate during the day when the students were in class. Imagine a college radio station today running beautiful music! The transmitter and studio were up on a hill over Boston, NY, and I had worked there for a couple of weeks before I found a microphone in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. Everything came to us from downtown on Cart to be played in the Carousels. (Wish I had that mic today, it was a true RCA 44!) About the time I left in the fall a project was underway to put up large colinear antenna arrays to simulcast relay from Rochester.
 
Element9 said:
qman said:
Prior to CBN, the radio stations, as the Ivy Network, were owned by Gulf + Western, the precursor to Paramount Pictures. It was a brief affair with radio and the entertainment company soon realized radio was not a part of its core.
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Not sure of the chronology re: Gulf & Western (maybe Mr. Fybush can help), but in the early 60's, a gentleman (?) by the name of Woody Erdman was involved in Ivy Broadcasting ownership. He's the same guy that owned WTKO-Ithaca, WOLF-Syracuse and also might of had something to do with the NY Giants Football radio network.
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