VETERAN TRENTON PD PASSES

[fennessy]

Lane Rogers, who served as PD of Trenton's WAAT-AM, and launched WTNJ-AM in 1971 died in Benson AZ on July 30th at age 64. Arriving at WAAT in 1969 as News Director, he ascended to PD the following year, and led the station's conversion from a sort of " Pop Adult" or " Chicken Rock" format, into a standards-driven MOR format, and the call letter change to WTNJ. Long time morning man Jack Pinto was part of that conversion, which ended with WTNJ flipping to R&B in 1972.

Rogers went on to do on air and production in Beautiful Music radio at WDVR, Philly, WPAT New York and WGAY in Washington. He was Program Director of KMEO in Phoenix before exiting radio, to become a writer, sindicated columnist and published author of three books on Southwestern History.

He firstly worked in Trenton in news at WBUD-AM.

 

[KC2LDY]

Thanks for posting this. It's easy to overlook people who worked in a given market 30-plus years ago, even if they were there for a number of years. It may be different in major markets, where some personalities may have been at the top of the charts with hundreds of thousands of listeners for two or three decades (and even this is changing along with the nature of radio). But people starting out or moving up through small and medium markets - even if they were there for a while - can be easily forgotten after a decade or two.

Steve
KC2LDY