FMs and other stations that used to be in Central NY

[Bob1370]

PlayFreebird mentioned in passing during a discussion of unbuilt or defunct post-World War II FMs on the Buffalo/Rochester board, "I've been told there was once a WAGE-FM on 98.5 (sister of AM 620) which transmitted from a pole atop the WAGE studios in back of the Loews Building (now the Landmark Theatre) downtown on Salina Street, but I don't think it survived long enough to adopt the WHEN-FM callsign."

All true--WHEN AM/TV chief engineer Bob Ardner, who worked for WAGE when it was locally owned and stayed when Meredith took over and turned it into WHEN, once showed me the FM logbooks. Frank Revoir, owner of WAGE, shut it down and turned in the license several years before WAGE came under the Meredith corporate umbrella and became WHEN (AM). (Revoir also let a television CP for Channel 10 lapse in 1948--he could have had the ABC and DuMont franchises for central NY if he'd just built it out, and probably would have been bumped down to Channel 3 in the post-1952 shakeup, giving him a lucrative full-coverage TV signal while WSYR stayed on 5, WHEN got nudged up to 9 and Rochester wound up on 8, 10 and 13.) Ardner told me both he and TPTB at Meredith wished Revoir had held on to it and let Meredith take it on (he even tried to talk Revoir into keeping it up and running, to no avail), but it was long gone by the time the sale went through in early 1954. Ardner let it slip that if a full-coverage FM ever came on the market in Syracuse, Meredith would pounce. They didn't get the chance before devolving a lot of their radio properties across the country, but Roy Park got the chance to add an FM to the Syracuse cluster soon after he bought a lot of Meredith's radio stations including WHEN in 1979---he grabbed WONO, which eventually became today's Hot 108.

Parenthetically, Park was and is much missed in the business--he was a quality owner who tried to put a quality product on all of his signals on both radio and TV (and pretty consistently succeeded), and when he passed away, the business and the markets he served were much the poorer for it.

 

[therealjm12]

Park was and is much missed in the business--he was a quality owner who tried to put a quality product on all of his signals on both radio and TV (and pretty consistently succeeded), and when he passed away, the business and the markets he served were much the poorer for it.

As a former employee of Roy H. Park I have to find those remarks amusing. Uncle Roy, as we called him, was a tight fisted, old skinflint, and proud of it. But in his defense, he was a genuine broadcaster and loved the business. He gave a lot of people their first job in broadcasting. Many right out of college. Some, in fact, were still in high school. They just had to work cheap.
I got to learn a lot while working for him It was almost like going to college and getting paid for it (not much). I traveled around the country on his dime and saw a lot and had some great adventures. He kept his properties clean, there was always tiolet paper, and always made payroll.
It's funny looking back at it all. Too bad there aren't more people like him in the business now.
I did get to meet him a couple times. He reminded me of Mr. Potter in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, but he really seemed interested in me and what I was doing and did have a sense of humor. R. I. P. Roy Park. You certainly wouldn't be happy to what has happened to your broadcasting properties in your absence.

 

[DaveBullard]

Bob, I have to disagree.

Park ran ultra-cheap operations. At WHEN, the cart machines and open-reel players that were in the newsroom in 1981 (and were old then) were still there when the place closed in the 90s after ClearChannel bought the licenses and closed the Old Liverpool Rd. studios.

Nearly all of his 100+ newspapers were pennysavers. The ones that were not were run on itty bitty budgets.

The miracle is that great radio came out of WHEN for many years.

 

[CTListener]

Bob, I have to disagree.

Park ran ultra-cheap operations. At WHEN, the cart machines and open-reel players that were in the newsroom in 1981 (and were old then) were still there when the place closed in the 90s after ClearChannel bought the licenses and closed the Old Liverpool Rd. studios.

Nearly all of his 100+ newspapers were pennysavers. The ones that were not were run on itty bitty budgets.

The miracle is that great radio came out of WHEN for many years.

I went to SU from 1973 to 1977 and WHEN was my favorite radio station throughout. It had a great sound and lots of personality. WNDR and WFBL were doing pretty much the same thing for much of that time, but WHEN always sounded "big time" in comparison. Whose brilliant idea was the singing EBS jingle? I remember hearing it when it aired and was delighted to find it on YouTube.

 

[DaveBullard]

CT -- my memory could be faulty, but I think the singing EBS Test was the product of the LA Air Force, a top production house of the time. They supplied lots of production elements and bits.

But WHEN had some original music, courtesy of production manager Bruce Siegel. "She Got a Nose Job" was one of the tunes that Boogaloo Brucie pumped out, along with lots of production bits and sketches. I seem to remember a dirty little number about the Fotomat elves that never made air.

You can find lots of behind-the-scenes stuff on Jay Flannery's tribute to the place, at:

http://classa.net/62when/

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

That EBS Test was unique, but the FCC was not amused. WGR Buffalo also used the 'creative' EBS Test. The Buffalo office of the FCC notified the station that the EBS Test was not "in compliance." If you worked in Buffalo, you were always aware that the boys in the Federal Building could be listening. You took your readings on time and did your IDs within the prescribed parameters.

 

[Bob1370]

I recall that EBS test, or a version of it, making its way to WBBF in Rochester as well. Not to mention a live EBS test once run at 'BBF by Jack Palvino during his morning show. The tagline of the test was, "If this had been an actual alert normal broadcasting would have been discontinued", to which he added, "and normal broadcasters would have gotten the hell out of here." Hey, it was the 70s, you could say those things by then...

 

[Bob1370]

"Park ran ultra-cheap operations. At WHEN, the cart machines and open-reel players that were in the newsroom in 1981 (and were old then) were still there when the place closed in the 90s after ClearChannel bought the licenses and closed the Old Liverpool Rd. studios."

I'd left WHEN and moved on to Buffalo by the time Roy Park took over, although I did meet him at an antique auto show in Rochester around 1980 (where he was showing a classic Deusenberg he owned) and talked a little shop with him. He was very personable, and I got the sense he was very much in touch with everything his stations were doing in each market where he operated. One impression I got--his stations seemed to be well staffed with talented people. He may not have put a lot of dollars into the physical facility, but the talent, and the sound, was there. Kind of reminded me of working at WKBW under Capital Cities ownership--when we were at 1430 Main St. in Buffalo we worked in a facility that was an absolute toilet, probably the worst in all of upstate NY, but the people working in that facility were first rate and made great radio even if the gear wasn't the greatest. Park sounds like he did the same thing--put as little into the physical plant as he could get away with, and put most of his budget into talent.