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WBUX's 'Dandy Don' Meredith Dies at 72

J

John1

Don Meredith, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback who helped build the success of "Monday Night Football" died Sunday of a brain hemorrhage in Santa Fe, NM at 72.

The local radio connection: in August, 1975, Meredith, along with author James Michener & local businessmen Walter Conti, John Knoll, Herbert Barness & Robert Vailmont, formed the Central Bucks Broadcasting Co. and bought radio station WBUX 1570 in Doylestown (now WISP). Meredith did occassional sports call-in shows from on the road & added more local sports & PSU football to the station. The station added more local interest programming, including Joan Stack's interview show "Bucks Co. Living" live from Conti's Restaurant at noon weekdays. Mitchener did a 'creative writing' series on the air.

As I remember, Meredith's presence on the station didn't last too long & eventually the station was sold to other owners. WBUX went through a number of format changes & went off the air for a time over a dispute to build new towers before it eventually became WISP.
 
I had not seen anything before about Dandy's involvement in WBUX. Michener, of course, was a local resident. What was Dandy Don's connection to Bucks County? Never lived there. Never went to school there. Never played there. Lots of small town and suburban stations in Texas. I don't see him hanging out with an author a generation older than he.

I thought Dandy Don's only Philly connection was Howard Cossell puking on his cowboy boots at Franklin Field.
 
WBUX was founded by longtime local news publisher Charles Meredith Jr. (no relation) in 1948.

I got to meet both Don Meredith and James Michener at the WBUX 40th anniversary party in 1988. I recall that Dandy Don was a bit glassy eyed at the time, but very nice. They later sold the station to the AmQuip Crane Company in '91. AmQuip had a side business of leasing tower space around the Delaware Valley and they wanted to add WBUX's four towers to the mix. This was a poor decision, since the tower location is nestled in a valley in suburban Doylestown. AM broadcasting is about groundwave, so tower height is not factor with broadcasting, but that's not the case with what AmQuip wanted to use them for. So for several years, they tried to get the township to allow them to raise the tower height. The local residents said no-way! Under AmQuip ownership, the station coasted along with a couple of formats, most notably the all 70's Oldies format and after a period of being dark, they went all news under the leadership of Brad Segall. Eventually, AmQuip sold the station for a cool million $.
 
Of course in the era that Meredith & the others owned WBUX, they were hindered by the daytime-only licence. No matter how hard you try to be local & full service, it was hard when you had to run Friday night football games on tape Saturday morning, sign off in the middle of a Penn State game, or with Meredith, do sports talk in the daytime, unheard of then (sports talk was evening programming only until WFAN & WIP broke the pattern in the '80's). Especially in December, during the Christmas advertising season & snow day announcement time, came the shortest days, 7:15 am to 4:30 pm. (WBUX eventually had a 6 am pre-sunrise 500w. sign on all year.) There was 1 time I think 1978 that we had a huge blizzard & they stayed on all night under 'emergency' authorization. At that time the station was in the middle of nowhere in a cow field & they were snowmobiling the staff in. (Housing surrounded it later, leading to the fight over the new towers that caused them to go off the air for a year or so.
 
= There was 1 time I think 1978 that we had a huge blizzard & they stayed on all night under 'emergency' authorization.=

I was there. Stayed on until midnight, slept on the floor, got up at 6 and did it again.
Can't remember if George paid us extra.
Rich Mates
 
A 24-hour license didn't do WBUX any good financially either.

Worked there in the mid to late 80s. After they got their night signal, they paid full-time evening and overnight jocks to keep the station on 24/7. Plus a full slate of weekenders working evening and overnight shifts.

The station really didn't make money. Each December, the office manager would tell us that we couldn't order any office supplies until January. Need paper for typing? Find old paper, turn it over and use the other side. The GM was trying to eak out a tiny "profit" to show the investors. The "profit," from my understanding, was as little as a few hundred dollars a year.

Automation equipment would have helped save one or two full-time jock salaries plus some weekenders. Or, they needed to do what WNPV was doing at the time: signing off a 10 pm and then back on at 6 am the following morning.
 
WBUX got out well for its night power. I would hear it in Rhode Island after WPEP Taunton MA would drop power at night.
 
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