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For Old Guys Only

V

VoiceGuyJack

By reading some of the posts I wonder if there is anyone out there who is old enough or even remembers the "old" WEBR. We're talk'n "really old"...before PBS...before McKibben came in and changed the format. I'm talking ,when the Courier owned the station? When the "Sound of the City" was a solid #2 on AM. 1969-1971

Anyway, there was a newsman at that time with a terrific set of pipes named John McKay. John was my newsman when I did middays. One day he just got pissed, walked out and no one ever heard from him again. Does anyone out there no what happened to him? Just wonder'n?
 
I remember WEBR in the mid to late '60's but unfortunately not the names of the people on the station. The Buffalo Broadcasting Professionals site had the "WEBR Sound of The City" jingle that I remembered from when the Courier owned the station.

WEBR was a classy adult radio station back then. My aunt and uncle used to listen to it all the time.

This probably sounds very negative but I can't help thinking if he walked out then what would he think about how radio people get treated by and large today? It hasn't exactly improved overall.

WEBR at 23 North Street looked really old from the outside of the building. My impression is the equipment was old too. Did you have an engineer or did you have to run your own board and turntables? I'm sure it wasn't easy to exist in the shadows of both WBEN and WGR. Any comments would be interesting.
 
Well Voice Guy Jack.....(do I have a house for you!),

John McKay was my newsman too, but I don't remember him getting pissed and walking. I was under the impression that he just retired. He was a very decent guy.
He has passed on.

As for 23 North Street, I loved that old screwed up building...spent 20 years there.
The building was old, the geer was old and the format got old fast. (Oldies)
Then when McKibben was ushered out, the next format was even worse. (MOR?)
When I got there, other than the news guys, the only hold over from the Courier days was Jack Eno.(another decent fellow)
I think other than McKay the rest of the news staff came in with Possum Riley.

I Now work in a large, fine looking building that is a pleasure to face in the morning; but I miss 23 North Street....it had character & was filled with characters.
 
"EBR" was old radio (at it's best) That era is long gone. Back then we (on the air people) sat in a studio and the engineers handled the turn tables, carts, etc. For the most part we just followed our play list , did our commercials, PSA's and made nice with the listeners with small talk. I never experienced what some of you younger guys refer to. I can't recall management ever getting on our case, with the exception of Jack Eno who would try (in vain) to teach me to correctly pronounce the names of some of the classical artists, when I did voice tracks on the FM side.

That creaky old building at 23 North holds some fond memories for me. I think after 36 years, I am the sole surviving on air talent from those Courier days.

ALW....my friend... we are all getting old.
 
Jeez Jack did you work with Bill Kimble? My Mom listened to him all the time...Who owned them when they did a hybrid Hot AC format? I think a pal of mine Greg Stevens was there..They had a cool jingle package kind of a TM knockoff on the Philadelphia Story package..I'd love to hear a few of those..Who are you Jack? Did you work in the falls? I Might know you.

JL
 
Ah, Bill Kimble. Remember how he began his show, with a long, drawn out "G-o-o-o-o-o-d M-o-o-o-rning." WEBR was as much a full service station as WBEN, perhaps even more so because they had Jack Sharpe in the traffic copter. When I graduated from high school, a friend of mine visited various radio and TV stations to get handwritten greetings from personalities and put them together with clips from newspapers and record companies in a radio collage that still hangs, all yellowed now, in my den. Bill Kimble wrote "To -------. All the best in radio. Good luck in the future. Bill Kimble, WEBR."

There's a nearly pristine recording of the Sound of the City jingle on the Buffalo Broadcasters site. In fact, calling it a jingle is a misnomer. It's a song! I love listening to it now and then because it brings back memories of when radio was great in this market. Make no mistake, there are some good things about Buffalo radio today. But the 60s and 70s were special.

This board has really come to life with some great threads these recent weeks. We're hearing from old personalities. Jack, I used to listen to you. I'll let you share your real identity if you'd like. But you were part of a great line-up of personalities like Bill Kimble, Carrol Hardy and Jack Eno. In addition to John McKay and Jack Sharpe, there was George Black and Tony Vallone in the newsroom. I can still hear the WEBR news jingle!

I'll tell you. If it weren't for the personalties on WEBR, WBEN, WKBW, WGR and WYSL, I probably would have followed my father into the food business. But somehow, these guys spoke to this 13 year old kid, and well, I achieved my dream of getting into radio. Let's keep these great threads and stories coming!
 
alw said:
As for 23 North Street, I loved that old screwed up building...spent 20 years there.
The building was old, the geer was old and the format got old fast. (Oldies)
Then when McKibben was ushered out, the next format was even worse. (MOR?)
When I got there, other than the news guys, the only hold over from the Courier days was Jack Eno.(another decent fellow)
I think other than McKay the rest of the news staff came in with Possum Riley.

I Now work in a large, fine looking building that is a pleasure to face in the morning; but I miss 23 North Street....it had character & was filled with characters.
Click to expand...

Al did you work with Andy Bickel? I know Andy from WBT and found out somehow that he had worked at WEBR. I never could get him to say anything about it though.

As for the old building vs the new, I know what you mean.

Mike
 
I recall that Bill Kimble came to WEBR from WNBF in Binghamton. Like all of the WEBR people of that era, he was a genial, companionable old-school MOR host - and I mean that in the most complimentary way.

Around 1983, I heard him doing 7-Midnight on standards-formatted WPEN in Philadelphia. He also spent some time in the 80's as PD at WARM in Scranton.

Nick Seneca
 
I worked with a Bill Kimble at WHAM back in the 1970s, is this the same fellow you folks are writing about? He wore glasses, kind of on the short side and a very nice fellow.

The Bill Kimble I worked with was PD for a while then the owner of WHAM (Bill Rust) came in and replaced most of management with a group that wanted to change WHAM's image. That resulted in the mass exodus of talent from WHAM to WSAY, which later turned out to be a major mistake. Jack Slattery and Chet Walker returned to WHAM, the rest of us went to other stations, or in the case of the late Walter Dixon, started his own ad agency.
 
Al did you work with Andy Bickel? I know Andy from WBT and found out somehow that he had worked at WEBR. I never could get him to say anything about it though.



Mike
[/quote]

I arrived at WEBR shortly after Bickel left. I don't know the circumstances of his leaving, but I never heard a bad word about him from those who were there with him.
Maybe he found the format to be as cacophonous as I did, and wanted to put it behind him.

Upon Kimble's departure I replaced him as mid-day guy, a pair of shoes that I didn't even come close to filling. He was a very nice man who was very helpful to me; a young jerk who -at least- didn't think he knew everything there was to know.
 
No problem giving away my idenity. I'm Jack Horohoe.

Back in those days at EBR, Bill Kimble did mornings 6-9, I followed him and did a split shift from 9:00AM - 11AM, Jack Eno did 11:AM - 1 PM, I was back from 1PM -3PM and then Eno took it till 5:00PM.

Between shifts and for an hour after my last shift I did production. Production was composed of three distinct parts, Commercial work, voicing the FM side or Voicing tracks for the evening. WEBR was not live at night in those days. It was hard to explain to people how I could be on the air and out on the town at the same time. Those were unsophisticated days. People didn't realize things could be pre-recorded and inserted into a show.

The announcer I replaced was a guy named Jerry Glenn. I think Jerry went to work for the VA Hospital. Carrol lHardy had left the station by the time I got there. Kimble once told me that Hardy had met some chickie one night at a local watering hole and they decided to go to Hawaii (with Kimble's credit card) He was fired upon his return to Buffalo. Kimble got his money back.

I have a lot of stories from that era...but instead of boring you any further...I'll just sign off for now.
 
Hey Jack....

Remember 106.5

WADV..............Ken (Harris) Kiedrowski here

How the heck are you....it has been so long!!!!!!!
 
alw said:
Al did you work with Andy Bickel? I know Andy from WBT and found out somehow that he had worked at WEBR. I never could get him to say anything about it though.



Mike
Click to expand...

I arrived at WEBR shortly after Bickel left. I don't know the circumstances of his leaving, but I never heard a bad word about him from those who were there with him.
Maybe he found the format to be as cacophonous as I did, and wanted to put it behind him.

Upon Kimble's departure I replaced him as mid-day guy, a pair of shoes that I didn't even come close to filling. He was a very nice man who was very helpful to me; a young jerk who -at least- didn't think he knew everything there was to know.
[/quote]

Al, Thanks for the reply to my question. I think Andy went from WEBR to WBT as PD, not a bad gig at all! He did very well with the station for a number of years.

In defense of WEBR most stations have a problem going up against one big competitor. WEBR had 3 big stations to compete with and then there was the beast known as FM. In addition to the Top 40 FM's some of the early success stories were the Beautiful Music stations like 96.1 WBNY (WJYE). Small staff, low overhead which really gave full service stations a difficult time.
 
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