Utica-Rome radio in 1967

[therealjm12]

I found a thread on the Buffalo/Rochester site from a poster that reflected what was going on in Rochester radio & the stations themselves in 1967. He was a student at R. I.T. at the time. It was an interesting thread and a lot of others joined in on their reflections of the time.
So I decided since this thread is dying of boredom, maybe I'd try the same thing with Utica-Rome. I hope someone will do the same with Syracuse. I lived about 50 miles from 'Cuse at the time so I only really have knowledge of what WNDR sounded like in those days.
I was living in, and going to New Hartford High School in 1967. So some of this is from my teenage reflections and the facts are from the 1967 BROADCASTING YEARBOOK.
So here are a list of the stations at the time and some personal observations:

WBVM 1550. Put on the air air in the early 60's by the Fusco Brothers Danny & Michael. Danny was a long time morning man at WRUN and Mike was the G. M. of WKTV at one time. Danny did mornings, Mike managed. The station could have been licensed to East Utica (heavily Italian) with all the talk about St. Agnes Church. Allegedly the call letters stood for Blessed Virgin Mary but officially best voice of music. WBVM was a 1,000 watt daytime with no pre or post so they didn't sign on til 7:30 AM in November & December. Sign off everyday was the 15 minute Rosary. I worked there in the late 70's when it was oldies A/C.

WIBX 950. the granddaddy of radio. Signed on in 1926. The old peoples station. They seemed to never recover from the loss of golden days of (CBS) network radio.They automated early, Music with MacMasters. Everything seemed to be a filler. Good news dept and a killer 5,000 watt signal. They were family owned, Bowen family and a great P. D. -the late Ralph Allinger. Lot of local sports, full coverage of the Clinton (Mohawk Valley) Comets hockey.

WOUR 96.9 according to the YEARBOOK not on the air, no target date. They must have signed on after publication. Originally just simulcast WONO in Syracuse classical format. As I remember off the air more than on. Terrible distorted signal. They were at least three years away form the Drake Solid Gold Rock & Roll and album rock (The Forerunner) formats. I worked there for a short while in about 1970.

WRUN 1150 Owned by the Rome Sentinel (newspaper). A solid M. O. R. format at the time. The great Duncan McCully was the P. D. they experimented with "teen time" top 40 shows occasionally as block programing. Part owners were the Clark Family. Richard Clark Sr. was the original G. M. You may have heard of his son "Dick Clark" who worked part time at the station in the 50's. The 5kw/1kw directional array was a nightmare but chief engineer George 'Woody" Woods made it work.
I worked there twice in the 70's. As a jock and engineer

WRUN -FM 104.3. programing separate from WRUN. Actually it was a beautiful music format. semi automated. It was stereo by then and pushing 100,000 vertical / 33,000 horizontal watts -a monster. WRUN -FM actually signed on before the AM in 1946. Dick Clark told me that was the station his father let him announce on "because nobody was listening".

WTLB 1310. At that time owned by the Straus Broadcasting Group out of NYC -WMCA Good Guys. TLB is a legendary station. One of the first full time top 40 stations in the country (world)! Check out Budd Yeman's WTLB tribute page on Facebook. No station ever got more out of 1kw days 500 watts very directional nights. Successful from the day one when the Forman family out of Rochester (WBBF) bought it and changed the call letters from WGAT in 1957. I worked there in 1969-70

WUFM 107.3 A low power beautiful music station but a pioneer in stereo broadcasting. Studios in the Hotel Utica. The YEARBOOK listed the antenna height as minus 165'. I believe the old antenna is still on top of the Hotel Utica. Classy Al Bonaparte was a co-owner. Now is WRCK

It's the Utica-Rome ADI so in Rome:

WKAL 1450. Originally put on the air in 1946 by the Kallet Theatre chain co-owned by WKTV. Listed in the YEARBOOK as 250 watts at the time. Must have gone to 1kw days soon after. Mish mash of programing. M.O.R/ country but a great (at times) top 40 show at night. "NIGHTIME" actually showed up in the ratings.

WRNY 1350. A daytimer with pre dawn and post sunset but signed off at 6PM year round. A M. O. R. format but originally signed on as top 40. Mostly run by high school kids.

And:
WREM 1480 Remsen. They station went dark and may have been dark when the 67 YEARBOOK was published. I remember hearing the station as a little kid when we went on family trips to Hinkley Lake or the Adirondacks. They did play some of the pop hits of the day. Most notable about the station was it was co owned by Ed Slyzarzick and Jerry Prouty. A weak 1kw daytimer. About a year later the vacant 1480 frequency was bought by a group of businessmen including the owners of WUFM and Old Forge residents Richard Cohen & Joe Uzdavinis (The Enchanted Forest owners). The call letters were changed to WADR and power raised to 5kw nondirectional, with pre & post. I worked there when it was WADR

WLFH 1230 Little Falls Put on the air in 1950 on 1230 (WIBX's old frequency) by the Feldman Brothers. Mousey owned the furniture store next to the building which acted as the ground system even to this day. His brother was a famous WWII war correspondent. Mousey told me they were both radio heads growing up. At the time owned by Lenard Aurbach out of Cleveland. A nice little station. Also, your's truly, a high school junior, was working there rocking his brains out on Saturday nights. It really went downhill after I got fired! I worked there two more times in the 70's

WALY 1420 Herkimer. It was fully automated at the time. They were very proud of that. All I can say it was shape of things to come. Mostly M.O.R with an afternoon country show -real old school. The G. M. was Don Alexander another very classy guy.

 

[Dave4120]

Hello....I found all of your information a pleasure to read as it bring back memories. Having worked at WKAL from 1974-79 and again from 1982-1989 (different owners, different call letters, different formats, including FROG) it's amazing how time has flown.

There is no doubt the old WKAL and their FM at 95.9(K-Lite 96-FM) was a mixture of who knows what. When I was bothering people in high school and early in my college days, the station was pretty much an AC station on the 1450-AM during the day, and more top 40 at night. The AM and FM from the early to mid 70's was simulcast, then later separated. The FM was changed to K-Lite 96-FM and was an automated Drake-Chenault format. Problem was that the FM tower was mounted to the side of the AM tower that was only 105 feet above average terrain at 3,000 watts. Not good. Signal didn't go anywhere without interference. The signal basically went into the trees.

Some popular people had gone through the building over the years including some former WTLB on air people such as Dick Romano, George Boyce, Maurice Burke. By the the early 80's, the Maurer family that had owned the stations since 1964, decided to sell. As I remember from 1983 until 1988 when it turned into FROG, the Wooster Publishing Company and a company owned by Howard Green were the owners. In 1983, K-Lite became WTCO-TOP Country, and the 1450 AM, played an oldies based Drake-Chenault format.

Too bad the owners back then did not have the foresight to try and change frequencies because the WTCO Country format did not do bad, even with the low power and bad signal. Obviously, everyone knows what happened when Keymarket bought the station in 1988, changed frequencies to 96.1 and increased the power? It became FROG and it is now history. the previous owners were afraid to take the chance. Even the Maurer family that owned WKAL had an opportunity to swap the K-Lite frequency of 95.9 with Norma Eilenberg's 102.5, (Now Mix-102.5) back in the early 80's, but were also afraid to do so. Norma was willing to take the 95.9 and sell the 102.5 to the Maurer's because she wanted to save money, but the Maurer's balked. Boy, if they had done that, and gone country, they would have made a ton of money.

Will say that both stations did very well locally, especially in Rome. They really were the hometown station(s). It was amazing to me how many people listed to the stations for music, local news, local sports, etc. It was great at the time. As radio began to change from the mid to late 80's, that local flavor wasn't going to work anymore and the rest is history.

 

[Play Freebird]

I have a few newspaper articles on WRUN that I found online -- for example, a piece from the Feb 9, 1967 Observer Dispatch that mentions FCC approval of the new "duo polarized" FM antenna which allowed an increase to "133,000 watts" just three months after the station began broadcasting in stereo.

A valuable resource for upstate NY broadcast history research is this newspaper search engine:

http://www.fultonhistory.com/fulton.html

In addition to WRUN, try searching on call signs like WMBO, WSYR, WGVA, or WOPT (formerly in Oswego) and you'll find all sorts of interesting stuff. Unfortunately, the quality of some images (which were scanned from microfilm) isn't very good, but as long as the text is legible, you'll learn a lot. As expected, most newspapers gave superior coverage to co-owned broadcast properties.

 

[oldkeith]

Ah yes I ( Keith Barber)was there, at WIBX 1966 to 1969, doing news first in afternoon drive and evening, later in morning drive to mid-day. Dave Miller was News Director, and as mentioned Ralph Allinger was Progran Director. Ralph was a sterling guy, although it was pretty easy to get him flustered. One year in December, Frank Davis and John Ashwell (both air talent) recruited me into Joy to the World campaign, i.e, we'd agree with everything Ralph said. He wasn't used to us not giving him a hard time and it drove him crazy. He was really relieved when Christmas passed and we were all back on our usual argumentative ways. I went there from WIGS in Gouverneur, based on WIBX' really rich and impressive history. I realized to late that its story was all history without much future. Indeed, WIBX really did not adapt to the new realities of radio. As they say, past performance is no guarantee of future results. When the t-v sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" debuted, I said "Yes -- that's real. I've been there," in reference to my WIBX days.

I was the last new hire to get elocution lessons from Elliot Stewart, who had been there since the 1930s. I fought it, resented it, and in retrospect have to admit it made me a better announcer. Elliot died while I was there, if I recall in New York City in a taxi en route to the Metropolitan Opera in the company of a beautiful young blonde. What a way to go.

Jay McLinden came in during my tenure and took over morning drive. What a wonderful guy, great talent, and friend. Jay was from West Virginia. I took him up into the Adirondacks one weekend, and his comment was "Well this is very nice, but where are the mountains you're always bragging about." Jay went into public service and at the time of his death a couple of years ago was a heavy hitter in, I believe Minnesota. Brian Whittemore was there briefly before going over to WTLB. Later he moved on to WGY (Schenectady 50kw clear channel) and then to Boston and Minneapolis.

Tom Green was the enthusiastic high school aged gopher in those days. Turns out Tom is as smart as he was enthusiastic, earned a degree at RPI, is now retired, living in Rochester, and a grandfather. Doesn't seem possible that all those years have gone by. It was Tom who tracked me down and put me in touch with a couple of others from that era, Lee Hamilton, still wowing listeners in San Diego, and Jim Ashton, still in Central New York State, and passing along lots of tid bits.

I left WIBX in 1969 for WROW/WTEN in Albany, left the business in 1975, only to crop up again in Miami at Production Director at WLYF/WNWS in the late '80s and early '90s. That gig came to an inglorious end with format changes at both stations. Oh well. I'm happily retired now, back in Albany by choice and having the time of my life.

 

[wakeupq]

I've enjoyed this thread tremendously. I'm especially gratified to read about my dad, Ralph Allinger. I would dearly love to hear more stories of those days as I was pretty young.
I don't know if you all heard the news that Bill Heiderich passed away over the weekend. My godfather, "Uncle Bill" would have been in the sales department in those days, maybe even sales manager. He still had ties with Townsquare.
Thanks for a great thread and kind words and a smile for my father,
Chris Allinger, Cayuga Radio Group, Ithaca

 

[Dave4120]

Hello Chris...Even though I did not know your Father, I also worked at WIBX/WLZW for a short period of time from 1988 to early 1991. I did know your brother Ralph from the Disco era days in the 70's because at that time, I used to be the DJ at "The Sting" and "The Waterfront" in Utica. I remember Ralph being the star attraction at those clubs teaching everyone how to dance. Great young man and a lot of memories. Everything I ever heard about your Father was always positive and that you can proud of.

I also worked with Bill Heiderich. What a gentle, kind man who knew this business and to PR everyone. Small world.

Take Care

Dave

 

[Frankie]

The unusual negative antenna height above average terrain mentioned about WUFM was due to the antenna location located atop the Hotel Utica. That location was at the center of the city of Utica terrain "bowl" of the Mohawk valley, with increasing ground terrain elevation in most directions from the antenna site-- especially to the Smith Hill side. The first two miles of ground terrain radials are excluded from height-above-average-terrain calculations-- thus resulting in a negative terrain for the original WUFM antenna-- because of excluding the relatively good height advantage of the Hotel Utica with respect to Utica proper.

 

[therealjm12]

So is the antenna on the Hotel Utica being used by anyone?

 

[Play Freebird]

So is the antenna on the Hotel Utica being used by anyone?

The short tower atop the hotel is the licensed site of W256AJ, a translator for WJIV in Cherry Valley, but the antenna is not the same as WUFM's; its pattern is directional towards the east.