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ROCHESTER RADIO 1967 - Only 12 stations in town........

Miscellaneous Rochester historical notes:

WSAY: how many of you remember the hypnotic, twice-per-hour chant, "Be Big, Be A Builder?" (It was also heard on top 40 clone-from-hell WNIA Cheektowaga, a GPB sister station.) There was some occasionally-recited, rambling incoherent explanation about what BBBAB meant, something involving how the Pyramids Of Egypt were built by men long remembered, but those who doubted were despised and soon forgotten. Or something. Sic transit non sequitur. I remember hearing WSAY jocks-du-jour roaring through the Pyramids Of Egypt live promo script at breakneck speed, with obvious lack of sincerity and much sarcasm, just to get it over with.....the staff exasperation frequently evident on-air at 1370 was a source of much entertainment to many of us in the industry. Gordon Brown refused to install cart machines, the oft-repeated excuse being: "I'm waiting for them to be perfected." (This was 1967, when cart machines had been ubiquitous in format radio for at least six years.) So the way recorded material was played back at Rochester's Hi-Fi Music And News Station was via a Lafayette $49 consumer tape deck with joystick control. Tommy Thomas, Jerry Jack or Mike Melody would put the Lafayette in gear and hold onto the supply reel until they wanted the horrible home-sung jingle, or whatever - then they'd let go and whip up the RCA "consolette" pot.

WROC-FM: Scottso is right - generally programmed from the TV site on Pinnacle Hill, but way before that - the station actually used a pair of Seeburg Select-O-Matic jukeboxes on Humboldt Street, with tunes played alternately and a foil-actuated tape deck with announcements!

1600 Geneseo: Yep, originally a 500-watt daytimer in the form of WDNY (1978.) Within two years field measurements of WYSL Buffalo revealed that a move to graveyard 1400 was possible making nighttime operation feasible. Interestingly DNY had to protect YSL so Dansville operated at reduced power during the DAYTIME - IIRC, 382 watts, then powering UP at night to 1KW when the protection requirements went out the window. About the time I filed for 500w daytime on 1030 in Avon (the original WYSL Avon) Lowell Conrad put together a Bill Sitzman app for 1600 kHz, DA-2 in Geneseo, a 3-tower dogleg. I think it was 1.6kw DA-D, 500 watts night, all three towers, radiating all of about 3 watts towards Brockport, so WLMO wouldn't have done very well in its home County if it had ever been built. You wouldn't have been able to get it in Avon or Caledonia, although it would have done okay along 390 towards Rochester. Once we went on the air Lowell abandoned the CP. I think there was also feuding among the partners, thinking back 22 years.

1560 Webster: For some reason Josephson (originally 98.9 WZKC country "KC99" programmed by Cary Pall, eventually WKLX) applied for this 3-tower 10kw daytimer, which would have been plagued with the same WADD/WJBT et al lack of presunrise or PSSA because of WQXR/WQEW. It was massively directional to protect first-adjacent WCGR. Of course this proposal came along years after Brockport added two towers and moved from 1560 to 1590.

The buzzin' beehive 950: Dr. Smith is right about the nighttime being lousy. But in much of the metro the daytime was (and is) lousier. WBBF's north-south figure-eight is very tucked in east and west, protecting WIBX Utica and second-adjacent WBEN. When I programmed the station 1975-77 I lived in Penfield opposite Panorama Plaza, and the daytime signal was so weak I had to have a centrally-located receiver with a tuned loop upstairs with speakers throughout the apartment, just to hear my own station. At pattern change, when the 3-tower cardioid kicked in, the field to the east and west actually increased.
 
JimMcGrath said:
I was still in the USN in 1967 but wasn't WHAM still doing Jazz in the overnight? Harry Abraham's "Best Of All Possible Worlds"?

Bill Ardis ("Ardis Against The Night") has that shift doing jazz for a long time.... up until late 1969 or early 1970. Then Harry Abraham got the spot, doing basically the same format. Both were very knowledgable of the genre. Ardis went on to WCMF after his stint at WHAM
 
Mark_Giardina said:
What I remember best about WGVA was Jerry Sherwin, the so-called "Mayor of Geneva" who was at the station for, I believe four decades, before he either left or was shown the door.

Jerry Sherwin did sales full time at WVOR in the mid 70's but not on the air there. I think this was AFTER his Sunday-only shift on WBBF. - One of Jerry's on-air trademarks was his long pronunciation of "W", then a slight pause, then followed by three more letters quickly.... almost like he was making sure he said the correct ones after the "W". -for he was working Sundays at WBBF and weekdays at WGVA prior to 1974. Jerry is a likable guy. What ever happened to him?
 
Savage said:
I remember hearing WSAY jocks-du-jour roaring through the Pyramids Of Egypt live promo script at breakneck speed, with obvious lack of sincerity and much sarcasm, just to get it over with.....the staff exasperation frequently evident on-air at 1370 was a source of much entertainment to many of us in the industry.

It took me 2 years to figure out what they were saying every half hour. Always sounded like:
"PeeGibEuBidder"

I had the urge (along with 32,537 other budding radio programmers) to go to the ownership of WSAY to pitch a turnaround for that station. What we 32,539 guys didn't know is that he liked it that way. It's also ironic that as much as we all crab about how there are no stations in decent-sized markets where newbies can get some good experience these days, Gordon Brown of WSAY, even with all his faults, DID give newbies that chance... In fact, that seemed to be his driving force, an admirable quality!

But on the other hand, "WSAY" on a resume was not something to shout about!
 
JIBGUY said:
Jerry Sherwin did sales full time at WVOR in the mid 70's but not on the air there. I think this was AFTER his Sunday-only shift on WBBF. - One of Jerry's on-air trademarks was his long pronunciation of "W", then a slight pause, then followed by three more letters quickly.... almost like he was making sure he said the correct ones after the "W". -for he was working Sundays at WBBF and weekdays at WGVA prior to 1974. Jerry is a likable guy. What ever happened to him?

I believe that Jerry is still around Geneva, but no longer on radio. I was informed that in the early 90s WGVA and WECQ were sold and the new owners shortly afterwards dropped a number of live announcers on GVA in favor of syndicated programming. Jerry could have been one of those who lost their jobs. Maybe someone from Geneva can enlighten us.
 
Reading JIBGUY's three successive posts about Rochester radio personalities and WSAY in particular. Few may remember that the 1370 WSAY signal got into Buffalo during the day. Not a strong signal, but audible enough, just a nudge to the left of 1400 WYSL.

Most of the WSAY and WNIA jocks were eminently forgetable. Still, it could have been Mike Melody #79, Tom Thomas #241, Mack Maguire #163, Jerry Jack #302 or Bobby Bell #7, yet every so often, you'd hear a voice and a style that was a cut or two above the crowd that made you think, "hey, this guy's pretty good." Think of guys like Big Jim Davis (CKLW), Steve Mitchell (WKBW), John Zack (WKBW, WBEN) and the estimable Al Wallack (WEBR, WNED.) There weren't too many Bobby Bells. It could have been that was a house name used only at WNIA. There was a pretty good Mike Melody on WNIA for a while. He was a "side-mouth talker" that could have worked at KB or WYSL... well, maybe. 'Dude had a great sense of timing and a sly sense of humor that was between the lines. Never stepped on a vocal. He left for a while, then returned as Tom Thomas. he probably did 13 months of vacation in Quang Tri or the Mekong Party Strip.

Gordon P. Brown was a broadcast pioneer said to have owned several patents. Apparently, he also was half nuts; a poor man's Howard Hughes, except with shorter hair and fingernails... and he got out of bed. I used to pity the jocks who worked nine hour sifts on Saturday and Sunday. If I recall, it was 5:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. sign-off.

These WSAY-WNIA guys must have made some kind of impression on the radio dorks who troll these boards because 40 years later, we're still writing about 'em.

WAXC 14-60 was a great AM radio station that really tore up the market in the early 70's. I remember Robert Craig Savage's intro on one of those American Aircheck LP's... "WAX-CEE 14-60... Hollies been entertaining us all summer long with this one... Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress..." Typical big balls voice. Funny, even today, it's one of the best testing songs in AC and Oldies.

Also recall that WAXC used to back time the intro of the song following the top of the hour ID so it would always hit the vocal of the song. Pretty damn cool back in the day... today, we'd just q-mark the intro in AudioVault, Scott or Prophet, hit the vocal and never even think twice. And then there was The Greaseman... nights would never be the same.

Whitey, you had a helluva station there and any jock worth his salt would love to have been part of it. By the way, how many guys checked their AM station's processing while playing "Go All The Way" by the Raspberries? The needle on the mod monitor never moved... pinned at +1. If your station had a black box set-up, say like a Sta-Level feeding the Audimax and then the Volumax, the modulators wopuld have cherries on them!

OK. Enough. Time to get out of the way back machine. Mr. Peabody and Sherman have been waiting long enough. I think I'll go find that 60's compilation CD with "Talk Talk" by the Music Machine, "Little Bit Of Soul" by the Music Explosion, "I Love You" by People and "Hey Little Girl" by the Syndicate Of Sound. Oh, and "Give Me One More Chance" by Wilmer Alexander and the Dukes.

"JPB"
 
There was a pretty good Mike Melody on WNIA for a while. He was a "side-mouth talker" that could have worked at KB or WYSL... well, maybe. 'Dude had a great sense of timing and a sly sense of humor that was between the lines. Never stepped on a vocal. He left for a while, then returned as Tom Thomas. he probably did 13 months of vacation in Quang Tri or the Mekong Party Strip.

We may be thinking of the same guy. He worked there in the early 70s? If it's the same person I'm thinking of, it was the only time I actually enjoyed listening to a WNIA jock. Had sort of a Jerry Farrell type sly sense of humor. Maybe he went on to the big time...or maybe he works at a post office.

And I thought I was the only one who remembered stuff like that? :)
 
My personal favorite WAXC memory was the "I Listen To Wax-Cee" contest. Y'know ... people had to answer their phone with "the phrase that pays" and they'd get $500 bucks. The "I Listen To CHUM" contest in Toronto had winners almost every day, and had a bigger payout ... a thousand dollars, if memory serves. Anyway, in Rochester it went on and on and on without a winner until one afternoon, Larry White came out of a song and said, " ... well, it FINALLY happened ... " and then ran the tape. He couldn't have been happier if you had told him he'd just won the lottery.
 
There was a secret procedure on backtiming the music on WAXC so the TOH liner would always hit the vocal, and it had nothing to do with seconds or "time." It was actually a beautifully simple idea that was tailored to the fact that many of the WAXC board ops were inherited from TV. In 1972-1973 WAXC, the former WHEC
 
...what the heck?? Computer's in "auto-post" mode this morning. Anyway:

...WAXC was unionized and was announce-op with NABET board ops inherited from WHEC Radio, so backtiming had to be reliable and quick, and easy-to-train.

We gave the length of liners in revolutions of a 45 rpm record, not in seconds, on the cart labels. So the TOH ID, for example, might be labelled "4 1/2 turns." All the engineer had to do was cue to the vocal, back off the record 4.5 turns, and then hit the TT start and the cart simultaneously. It worked every time.

Credit my IC roommate and former WFIL board op John McCurdy Jr. for bringing the technique up to WAXC from Philly.
 
Mark_Giardina said:
I believe that Jerry is still around Geneva, but no longer on radio. I was informed that in the early 90s WGVA and WECQ were sold and the new owners shortly afterwards dropped a number of live announcers on GVA in favor of syndicated programming. Jerry could have been one of those who lost their jobs. Maybe someone from Geneva can enlighten us.

Jerry survived the transistion of the CQ and GVA merger, still doing mornings. When the appliance company that owned these stations (they bought the pair for 1.2Million) sold them to George Kimble, Jerry was still there, but change was in the wind. His air time started to get whittled down, and when the Finger Lakes News Network was born, he was being relegated to a small part of the on air, in the form of a daily interview/talk program for about 30 minutes. He retired shortly thereafter. He is still around. You usually could see him either in Duncan Donuts or Tim Hortons most mornings in Geneva, having coffee, at least that was last year.
 
It's good to hear that Jerry is still around. I'm sure he misses his radio gig, but as many of us have learned, there is life after broadcasting.

As I posted earlier, the postings on here brought back a lot of memories for me. Radio was so much fun when I started out in the early 70s and especially during my time at Malrite in the early 80s. Even WXXI was a great place to work under Bill Pearce.

There are times I wonder if I did the right thing in leaving broadcasting full-time in 2004. But then I read the trades and see what has happened to the business with all the layoffs, mergers, and cut-backs, and think that perhaps I did make the right decision.

But despite that there is still the old news hound in me that wouldn't mind getting up at 3AM to report to work; making those police rounds, gathering news and interviews and reporting the news. Call me crazy but I just love the business.
 
Crazy???

Mark_Giardina said:
But despite that there is still the old news hound in me that wouldn't mind getting up at 3AM to report to work; making those police rounds, gathering news and interviews and reporting the news. Call me crazy but I just love the business.

Coming soon - News Radio Giardina - on a web stream near you!

Pretty soon you'll be able to get it in your Chrysler as you drive around town...
 
Thanks to Bob 1370, JPB and all for the compliments on WAXC way back in the early 70s.

I remember reading an interview with Charlie Van Dyke years ago when he mentioned (and I’m paraphrasing) that once, maybe twice, in career you are fortunate enough to work with a group of people where everything comes together and it’s almost magical.

While I’ve had a couple of occasions in my career that I was very proud of, the first two or three years at WAXC were heady times. Working with talented people like Larry Black, Don Ryan, Bob Savage, The Greaseman, Dave Mason, Tom Birch and the many others was a great time. One only has to look at the success that each of these guys attained in their careers to realize just how talented that staff was. Truly, they made me look better than I was.

Thanks to them, and thanks again guys, for remembering!
 
Re: Crazy???

SirRoxalot said:
Mark_Giardina said:
But despite that there is still the old news hound in me that wouldn't mind getting up at 3AM to report to work; making those police rounds, gathering news and interviews and reporting the news. Call me crazy but I just love the business.

Coming soon - News Radio Giardina - on a web stream near you!

Pretty soon you'll be able to get it in your Chrysler as you drive around town...

That would be tough Rox considering that I drive a Toyota ;D
But I like the idea of News Radio. Shame NBC dropped their all-news format years ago. I bet get it could generate an audience today. However NPR is still the best for in-depth news coverage. Breaking news is another story, but they are working on it.

Allow me to add a comment about WAXC. Larry you programmed a damn good radio station and you should be proud. I visited WAXC once and was impressed. Working at WHAM at the time, WAXC gave our news department a run for its money.

Isn't it a shame that in a market the size of Rochester there are only TWO radio stations that staff news departments? I think so. Maybe others think news is a waste of time, but that's not my feeling.
 
Don't forget AP All-News Radio, 1995-2005 (RIP.) It was a damn fine service. I had firsthand experience with the old NBC "NIS" (news and information service) which only lasted a couple of years, 1976-78. There was no comparison. WYSL was fortunate to have AP ANR during 9/11. I think our coverage kicked butt in the market.

Unfortunately AP was taken over in 2004 by radio-hating Tom Callahan, who whined to me that "we only have 48 ANR affiliates." So I said: go out and affiliate more stations then. See? This is the USA. If you don't have what you want, you have the opportunity to go out and get it - that's how this country works. This rather obvious advice was lost on him.

Tom thinks that it's a far better business model for AP to be in the business of sending news to cellphones. What a doofus.
 
Larry, what about Springer Jones? I think he started at WAXC before moving over to BBF. I heard he's dead now. True?

Also, Savage is quite correct about the brilliant simplicity of back-timing a 45 to hit the post/intro at the top-of-the-hour. I learned it from CHUM, and Jay Meyers (who hung around Philly stations before coming to Rochester) taught it to his jocks at a mess called "R-100 Solid Gold Radio" in '77-'78.
 
I'll add to the cheers for WAXC. It was an exceptional Top 40 radio station.

Enough of the WSAY posts. What I'd really like to hear and read more about, especially from you Rochester radiophiles, is WHFM. As a lad living in Lancaster-Near-Marilla, that station was one of my favorites. Top 40 hits in FM stereo. And the signal came in gangbusters on the family's Sansui receiver.

I once had a tour of the WHAM-WHFM studios. It seemed like WHFM was in a studio the size of an airplane hangar. There was a stand-up operation with a board, mic, two turntables and cart machines in a massive room. You coulda put the Count Basie Orchestra in that room!

When WAXC was beginning to slide and went to WWWG, I thought it would have been cool if WHFM had adopted the WAXC call letters and moved the whole shootin' match to FM. Hey, I was a kid. What did I know. BTW, 3-W-anything call signs are stupid. 3-W-E, 3-W-G, 3-W-S, 3-W-D-40...

Need more Q !
 
Mark_Giardina said:
But despite that there is still the old news hound in me that wouldn't mind getting up at 3AM to report to work; making those police rounds, gathering news and interviews and reporting the news. Call me crazy but I just love the business.

Mark, have you ever given any thought to working on the assingment desk at a Rochester TV station? TV stations usually need street smart news people who know the city. I know other radio news hounds who have gone that route. Just a thought.
 
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