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Found mystery stations from 440.com

T

thebeach33445

Hey Guys:

First I want to say thank you for all of your help on the questions that I am asking. I just wish there was a site to find all of this great info on.

I was looking through 440.com and found some mystery stations. Could anybody help me out with these. I have no frequecies or formats for these stations and I could not find them in the yearbooks or the FCC files.

1. WJMK AROUND 1961-62

2. WSCY around 1983. I think it was AOR because the jock that worked for this station worked at other AOR stations.

3. WONG around 1958.

4. WVIK around 1976.

5. Does anybody remember a station called WQSR 1320 around late 50's early 60's?

Thanks again for your help.

T.J.
 
5. Does anybody remember a station called WQSR 1320 around late 50's early 60's?

Yes, I do. They were located in Solvay on the west side of Syracuse. I never heard them. They were long gone by my time spent in the Salt City. I do know they went dark pretty soon after signing on. They were a daytimer. Don't know the format or even if they had one. I don't know exactly where the tower was but am thinking it was near Rt. 690 somewhere south of Onandaga Lake. I was told after they shut down someone stole all the copper out of the ground field. Maybe, that's why they did go off for good. The tower was torn down soon after.
Wow, I'm good! (or maybe just old) What's next?
 
t.j. said:
I just wish there was a site to find all of this great info on.
Click to expand...

There is... sort of. The CNYRadio.com Station Wiki has histories on a number of stations. Sadly, since I don't have any of these yearbooks, the histories I do have posted are taken mostly from checking FCC records, and various other websites that have chronicled various stations. Depending on the station, it seems I'll find quite a bit of info quickly, or I wind up spending hours to find absolutely nothing.

Unfortunately, most of the Wiki has been just me so far... as a result, many of the station histories are likely incomplete and/or inaccurate to some extent, and many of the pages, especially in the Watertown and Ithaca markets, are still the default templates, untouched since the Wiki first launched several months ago.

Fortunately, since it is a Wiki, anyone can login and add to or edit the content. It's running on the same core software that runs Wikipedia, so the layout is very similar and the formatting commands/markup are the same. (Just one exception: You create your login on the MAIN cnyradio.com site, and then use that username and password to access the Wiki... no need to keep track of 2 different accounts.)

I know I have a lot of readers out there... Google Analytics says so :) If even just 25% of the readers completed ONE station page each, this project would be a LOT closer to being finished. Even if anyone out there isn't able to pull together a full written history, a timeline-like bulleted list of significant events would be helpful. Or just skip the history altogether and fill in the basic stats for any given station -- it's all info readily available on station websites and/or the FCC website. Granted, it's the kind of menial data entry crap that you'd normally assign to unpaid summer interns, but we don't have any of those here at CNYRadio.com and this stuff doesn't magically get done on its own... lol.

The original CNYRadio.com had most of this info (and then some) for all four markets in one place, back when Scott Jameson was running it. It was beautiful. Anytime you wanted to look up a station's tower stats, phone number, website or just see who's on the air at any given time, it was all right there. But he warned me when I took over, not to bite off more than I can chew. Designing pages for 100+ stations in 4 markets is a big undertaking, and trying keep them all current/accurate is just as much work.

That's why I decided to recreate the station directory as a Wiki everyone can help with. But it's still somewhat frustrating because it's still mostly me doing the work. I've been very appreciative for the small handful of people who've stepped up to help out, but there's still a long way to go, so more help (especially from the north and west, which I'm admittedly not as familiar with) would be very welcomed. In fact, t.j., since it appears you're researching station histories right now, it would be awesome if you could share some of your knowledge on the Wiki when you've finalized your original project. It sounds like you've found plenty of things I didn't know about before, and maybe you'll find a few items on the Wiki you didn't know about earlier.
 
t.j. said:
2. WSCY around 1983. I think it was AOR because the jock that worked for this station worked at other AOR stations.
Click to expand...

Yep, "SKY 101". They weren't around too long and I believe went easy listening after that. It's now "K-Rock" owned by Galaxy.
 
"WONG was a 1kw in Oneida at 1600"

That's still on the air as WMCR-AM, which used to simulcast on FM until they were sold to Leatherstocking a few years ago...after that the FM became its own classic hits outlet and the AM a simulcast of WFBL out of Syracuse.
 
When I worked there at then-WEZG in 1987, I found an old production reel with the Sky-101 station ID's on it, a reel I still have. The AM side on 1220 was WXRA running Satellite Music Network's nostalgia-MOR format. I also have reels of the jock liners for the previous AM format, which was SMN's AC format... I don't remember the calls for the format. Frank Lorenz was running beautiful music from Schulke on the FM and had hired retired WSYR personalities Ed Murphy and Charlie Hobart. I can't offhand remember the name of the overnight jock... I want to say Allan Millar... but I'm not sure if that is right. He used to fall asleep a lot and someone would have to call and wake him. Dick Mastrianno did mornings and Judith Mallory was on evenings.

When I lived in Syracuse as a kid, 1965 - 1966, WQSR was not on the air. If Roy Taylor is reading this, maybe he would have more info.
 
WSCY was a short lived AOR station back in 1982-1983 at 100.9...a class A station at the time with 3000 watts. Previously...it had been WEZG....an easy listening station. However....when WSYR-FM 94.5 dropped Album Rock in 1982, WEZG saw an opportunity to go AOR....and hired much of the WSYR-FM staff at that time. Unfortunately...during the year or so that they existed....they weren't able to over take competitor WAQX...also three thousand watts at 95.3 in those days...and ownership returned it to easy listening WEZG in late 1983...


quote author=ThePickleReport link=topic=149744.msg1263464#msg1263464 date=1248921081]
t.j. said:
2. WSCY around 1983. I think it was AOR because the jock that worked for this station worked at other AOR stations.
Click to expand...

Yep, "SKY 101". They weren't around too long and I believe went easy listening after that. It's now "K-Rock" owned by Galaxy.
[/quote]
 
"5. Does anybody remember a station called WQSR 1320 around late 50's early 60's?"

Know OF it, even though it was long gone by the time I got to Syracuse to take a job at WHEN in 1973. Heard about it from our sister TV station's chief anchor Ron Curtis. It was a daytimer that started up around 1962 and tried to be a full service station for the market even though it had a limited directionalized 500 watt signal hemmed in by another stronger daytimer out of Hornell and a regional 24/7 co-channel signal out of Pittsburgh that kept it shut after dark. They had their studios on Hiawatha Boulevard and transmitter nearby. It failed around 1966-67 when its owner decided it was too much of a money pit, shut it down, turned in the license to the FCC and walked away. No one ever seriously tried to revive it although lots of people talked about it for some years after its final sign-off. The site eventually got plowed under by the project that built the 690 overpass over Hiawatha Boulevard so there's no trace of it now.

Curtis told me in a conversation in the hallway between the radio and TV newsrooms one afternoon in 1974 that plenty of long time radio and TV people often dream about spending their "retirement" actually keeping their hands in by running little stations like that on a shoestring. He called it an old-timer's fantasy. (He was only in his 40s then, but he'd started at WFBL as a teenager while still in high school in the mid-1940s so I guess he qualified as a young 'old-timer'.) It would be another quarter century after that chat before he retired from Channel 5 in 2000, and AFAIK he never realized that dream of buying a small station anyplace...maybe he realized that kind of station is at least as much of a money-pit now as it was back in the late 60s when WQSR packed it in.
 
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