WGEE 1590 & 103.3

[A#1]

Remember this as a very good Top 40 station around 1970 or so. It's reach was about a 25 mile radius of Indy and it seems to me they were also on the irrelevant FM frequency of 103.3, I think? We hear so much about WIFE, Windy 1260 and WXLW, but this was a pretty good station, obviously hampered by a poor signal. I believe it was called the "W-GEE Parade OF Hits" and it featured the now known "Truckin' Bozo" if my memory serves me correctly. Also, a guy named Lee Daniels who was on 10-7-0 at one time worked there, I'm fairly sure. Also, digging through my archives I came across a cassette featuring WFBQ as an oldies station from about 1973 or so. I assume it was a Drake-Chenault product?

 

[KeithE4]

Remember this as a very good Top 40 station around 1970 or so. It's reach was about a 25 mile radius of Indy and it seems to me they were also on the irrelevant FM frequency of 103.3, I think? We hear so much about WIFE, Windy 1260 and WXLW, but this was a pretty good station, obviously hampered by a poor signal. I believe it was called the "W-GEE Parade OF Hits" and it featured the now known "Truckin' Bozo" if my memory serves me correctly. Also, a guy named Lee Daniels who was on 10-7-0 at one time worked there, I'm fairly sure. Also, digging through my archives I came across a cassette featuring WFBQ as an oldies station from about 1973 or so. I assume it was a Drake-Chenault product?

WGEE was Top 40 in the late '60s and (IIRC) had an early urban format before that. It was simulcast on 103.3 until 1969 or so, when that became WXTZ. Neither station put a usable signal into Bloomington back when I lived there - 1590 just because it was 1590, and 103.3 was overloaded by WFIU when its tower was located on campus.

WFBQ went oldies in late '72 when it and WNDE (nee WFBM) were split off from Channel 6 (Time-Life had sold Channel 6 to McGraw-Hill - I forget who bought 1260 & 94.7).

 

[bigtime]

WGEE AM/FM did not do a straight ahead top 40 format, and they were never a factor numbers wise. They were what was known as "chicken rock". If it had a guitar solo they were too chicken to play it. It was sort of a hot ac format. WGEE-FM at 103.3 had a limited signal since their antenna was only about 200 feet up. 1590am was a daytimer. At one time in the late 60s they did urban on the AM while doing country on the FM. Dave Letterman got his talk show start on the 1590 frequency after it became WNTS.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

There may have been a short period of change and experimentation with WGEE in the final days before it was sold and became WNTS.

I arrived on the scene in May 1965 and here was the deal: Station owned by Rollins. Their specialty in broadcasting at that time was stations focused on the Black community. R&B primarily. The Black population of Indianapolis in that era was small enough the company decided that there was not enough advertising for that audience alone to support an entire day, so they had deveoped the following hybrid format: (Which I think had been in place for close to 10 years)

Sign-on til 10 A.M.: Country. Bob Todd was the voice as well as PD for the station. Glenn Scott was a significan part time participant in this programming.

10:00 A.M. - 2:00 P.M. An ecclectic mix of music beyond description hosted by Stan Barton, An ecclectic man beyond description. When people in these boards talk about radio needing to be live and have a personality, Stan Barton's picture should be in the radio dictionary to illustrtate personality.

[Side-note and social commentary on the times. Because of the factory jobs available in Indianpolis beginning with World War II and continuing through the 60's, the town was top-heavy with people from Appalachia who migrated to the jobs. We talk today about "train-wreck segue" situtations in music programming.... WGEE programming philosophy was that having West Virginia Hillbilly country segue directly into the afternoon R&B would be a trainwreck seque... this this undescribeable buffer in the middle.]

2:00 P.M. til sign-off. R&B, Soul Music hosted by Sid Woods. When Sid left, Paul Major came on board.

In the 1965 - 1967 era, The Rollins company was going through a change... becoming something in the direction of today's centralized management broadcasting companies. The manager of WGEE had been on a first name basis with Wayne Rollins in the earlier years. By the mid-60's he would find himself reporting to people and department heads half his age as the corporte HQ moved from Wilmington DE to Atlanta GA. (Rollins purchased ORKIN which became the tail wagging the dog.)

Arnie Johnson was the manager and I think he was the only one who understood this hybrid format and the only one who knew how to make it work. The young TURKS (I will re-spell that word in a minute.) in Atlanta kept squeezing him to see the world their way. I remember being in the office one Saturday morning and my phone rang. Arnie asked me the proper spelling of a four letter word... with a 'u' or with and 'e'... as in "What turd-head came up with this plan anyway?"

He was writing a memo to home office. I was soon out of there. Within a year or so, Arnie was out also. There was maybe an 18 month to two year period from the time Arnie was out until the station sold. Some the Top 40 or whatever you were describing in the original post on this thread may have taken place, but it was simply the interim treading-of-water while the ship went down.

Why did the ship go down? WIRE (1430) went with the smooth as silk "Countrypolitan" format which was the rage in that era with took a chuck of the morning country music audience. The classical WAIV (in the Dearborn Hotel) was purchased and became WTLC-FM and there went a major portion of the Black audience.

I don't think even Arnie Johnson could have kept the WGEE ship from sinking at that point.

If memory is being kind to me... WGEE-FM was sold to WIRE (The Small Family out of Kankakee, IL ???) and became WXTZ with lush Easy Listening.

 

[ten_four]

10:00 A.M. - 2:00 P.M. An ecclectic mix of music beyond description hosted by Stan Barton, An ecclectic man beyond description. When people in these boards talk about radio needing to be live and have a personality, Stan Barton's picture should be in the radio dictionary to illustrtate personality.

After his years at WGEE, Stan was the owner of 101.7 WBMP Elwood. He was indeed an ecclectic man. His breakfast table routine with Steve Dunham over the years spanned the gammet of topics. Then Stan's news and commentary at 8AM were always a highlight.

 

[thatrossguy]

I remember this very well. I found it by acccient in the summe of 70. Bruce (Dale) Sommers was the PM drive. Dale would move on to WFBM in 1973 (as Bruce) and then would become one of the 7 to flip 1260 to WNDE in sept of 73

The FM lasted untill the sale to WIRE (apr 72). I can remember ex-WIFEer Ron Hofer doing PT for a while. 1590 became WNIR in 1972 with a county format. I have a jpeg of a survey from this period. Became WNTS around 74 with NBC's short lived News and Info service. I'm not sure when relious progamming came along.

1260 and 94.7 were sold to Rahall (WLCY Tampa). Q95 flipped to Drake classic rock (50;s) about sept of 72 and then picked up stereo rock about labor day of 73.

 

[cspotrun]

i don't think Dale Summers worked at wfbm, i DO know he was at WXLW doing mornings in 1973, i know because i was there too. two of the biggest mistakes in Indy radio, WXLW giving up its FM to the fcc in the mid-50's and WGEE selling off its FM in the early 70's, WXLW is still somehow clinging for life and WGEE is gone. was WGEE-FM the 1st top-40 FM or was WNAP?
i think it was close.

 

[KR4BD]

I can fill in some gaps about WGEE AM/FM and the brief "Parade of Hits" era there. I was hired there as an Account Exec in September 1970. At the time, the GM was a really nice guy named Harry Callahan who was an experienced ad man out of New York City and the Sales Manager was Mike Kennedy, who had worked for some other Rollins stations including WAMS and KDAY (I believe). Both came in with the new format (WGEE Parade of Hits) which started in the spring/summer of 1970. Bob Todd was the PD and Warren Fuchs was the CE. Some of the jocks I remember were: Wally Baker, Ray Robin, Tom Nelson (later at WXTZ), Jim Fox (later at WIFE), Steve Miller and Ron Hofer. The News Director was a guy named Dick Shane (not real name). All the jocks had First Phone licenses as the AM was a three tower directional daytimer at that time. Since I had a Third Class Phone with BC Endorsement, I did some on-air fill-in work on the FM graveyard shift if someone was on vacation or sick during my year and a half there. It was a great sounding station but with the AM signal limitations and low ratings, WGEE was a "VERY HARD SELL". FM had not "taken off" yet, so that was not a big help audience-wise even though the FM had a 64KW ERP signal which decently covered the city. But AM was still King. The top four stations in town then were WIBC-1070, WIFE-1310, WIRE-1430 and WFBM-1260 and the ad agencies would not touch anything outside these four stations at the time. WNAP-FM was still in its infancy and since most car radios were AM only, they did not get much respect number-wise in its early days. Most of the agencies only bought the top four stations. Sometime in early 1971, Harry Callahan (GM) was sent packing after a visit from John Wilson, one of Rollin's VPs out of Atlanta. Mike Kennedy, who was the SM left shortly after, as well, leaving no one to run the place except for Bob Todd. This went on for several months leaving me and another guy to try to sell time. John Wilson would fly up to Indy most every week to make sure the place was still there while also trying to show me how to sell advertising. Even he had no luck getting new accounts! Eventually he was able to hire a new GM in Milt Lewis who had been at WIRE in Management. Milt was well known in Indy Radio ad circles and was another really super guy to work for. To show you how bad things were there, one of Milt's first promotions was to get a MAJOR singer to come to town. WGEE arranged to sponsor a concert with Kenny Rogers at the Fairgrounds Collesium. It was heavily promoted on-the-air as well as some print exposure. On the day of the concert, only about 25-30 soles showed up. Rogers tried to back out, but Milt persuaded Kenny to go on with the show. It was a very intimate concert as Kenny invited the 25 fans to come sit around the stage. Shortly thereafter, Rollins pulled the rug out from under Milt when they informed him they were selling WGEE-FM to WIRE (which became WXTZ). For a while, the WXTZ transmitter remained at 4800 E. Raymond Street while they prepared its move to the Channel 13 TV tower North of town. Mile was left with a low-rated AM Daytimer and it wasn't long before he and a group of investors bought WGEE-AM from Rollins and changed the call letters to WNIR (Winner 1590) playing country music. I left to sell cars at Shadeland Dodge a week or two before WNIR started. WNIR did not last long and by late 1972, while Milt was still there, the country music was ditched and the call was changed to WNTS (News Talk Sports). David Letterman was hired as host of an afternoon talk show at this time. I don't remember the Truckin Bozo working there, but it would not surprise me if he did. The entrance to 4800 E. Raymond St. was a "revolving door" and it was hard to keep track of who was coming and going! Another key name who worked there in Sports in 1971 was Jim McIntire. Jim had been the voice of the Cincinnati Reds in the late 1960's, but was replaced by Al Michaels about 1970. Jim was from Indy and while at WGEE, did play-by-play of the Indianapolis Indians Game from Bush Stadium on W. 16th St. It was always a treat sitting in the booth him while he did those broadcasts. I always felt WGEE had a good format with the Parade of Hits, but I think failed because Rollins would not promote it. The only promotion we could get was if we traded out for it.

 

[cspotrun]

it was about that time late 68-69 i got an FM converter for my car so i could listen to WGEE-fm(i didn't even know about wnap) in fact being a radio geek as a teenager i remember going to WGEE-FM more than once to check out the place, it was usually after dark, i remember a guy named Russ Carter let me and a buddy in the studio with him-quite a treat! i think i was the about the ONLY teenager in Indianapolis listening to wgee-fm at the time, and i remember hearing the promos for the ill fated kenny rogers show.
i guess i should have went to it.
one of the many problems with wgee, the call letters may have killed them. wgee AM was always a "mixed bag"- with block formats-country/black/top-40 and no real identity.. they should have divorced themselves from the call letters on the FM and went right after WIFE, had they done that and stuck with it..........

 

[flashback]

I remember being in the studio when ron hofer worked weekends.it was a very interesting experence.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

This fits right in with the Time_line KR4DB shared. I went to Louisville in 1970 to sell radio. I had sold for WGEE in 1965 and 1966. The Rollins organization apparently interviewed everyone who gave any hint that they might be alive and know something about radio in Indy. They stopped of in Louisville to interview me which I found rather amazing. Don't remember the name of the interviewer but he would have been out of Atlanta.

When I returned to Indy in 1971 and took up non-radio ventures, I ran into some of the people that I knew from the past. Several were part of a bunch that came through Butler U about the same time. That may have included Dick Lee, Doug Zinc and some others. Found out they had all been interviewed also. The bit of humor going around was that before the interview was over they would ask each person: "What do you hear about us (WGEE) on the streets?" One of them claimed that with great facial expressions and dramatic voice he responded: "Do you REALLY want to know?" Why yes. "The WORST possible thing!" And what is that? (Now with GREAT expression and drama "Absolutely NOTHING!"

Compared to today... what great care-free days!

 

[cspotrun]

I remember being in the studio when ron hofer worked weekends.it was a very interesting experence.

hofer had a great sense of humor, but i don't remember hofer at wgee? was this before or after wife? i do remember he did an overnight public affairs talk show on wnde once a week i think it was in the early 70's, and that's the last i heard of him being on the air in Indy. i understand he died last year.

 

[KR4BD]

Goat Rodeo Cowboy...

Ron Hofer definitely worked at WGEE around 1971 when I worked there. Somewhere in my archives, I have a picture of him doing a WGEE remote at the Home and Garden (Flower & Patio Show?) at the state fairgrounds at that time.

 

[bigtime]

Yes Ron did weekend at WGEE after WIFE. Seems like he was a detective/investigator for an insurance company later on.

 

[IndyDan]

Geez, I remember listening to "Hofer the Loafer" on WIFE overnights as a kid. He did in fact have a great sense of humor. Sorry to hear of his passing if in fact it is true.

 

[cspotrun]

Goat Rodeo Cowboy...

Ron Hofer definitely worked at WGEE around 1971 when I worked there. Somewhere in my archives, I have a picture of him doing a WGEE remote at the Home and Garden (Flower & Patio Show?) at the state fairgrounds at that time.

i was a big hofer fan, at wife he was one of the "few" if not the ONLY one that had a "personality" (i'm sure he broke format doing this because all the wife jocks were tightly formatted) he probably got away with it because no-one could hear what he was doing after midnight. my father AND later my brother were "Wife" business man of the day" hofer made a funny comment about my brother and the fact that the 1st 3 of his kids were born on the same date 1 year apart. hey post the picture somewhere! i would love to hear the aircheck too... someone should do a wife or indy radio tribute site...alot of markets are doing this.

 

[Jinglefreak]

I can fill in some gaps about WGEE AM/FM and the brief "Parade of Hits" era there. I was hired there as an Account Exec in September 1970. At the time, the GM was a really nice guy named Harry Callahan who was an experienced ad man out of New York City and the Sales Manager was Mike Kennedy, who had worked for some other Rollins stations including WAMS and KDAY (I believe). Both came in with the new format (WGEE Parade of Hits) which started in the spring/summer of 1970. Bob Todd was the PD and Warren Fuchs was the CE. Some of the jocks I remember were: Wally Baker, Ray Robin, Tom Nelson (later at WXTZ), Jim Fox (later at WIFE), Steve Miller and Ron Hofer.

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Do you remember working with my dad, George L. Davis? He came to WGEE in December of 1970, after working for 6 years for WFBM, mainly doing mid-days along with Howdy Bell. He was only there a couple of months before moving on the a bigger gig, 55 KOY in Phoenix (and a lot nicer weather, too!). I have about 5-6 of some scoped airchecks of his shift on WGEE (made from the studio), if anyone is interested. They are from the period of December of 1970 through February of 1971. The station sounds great, with a LOT of music. The jingles are the Pepper Tanner "Fun One" series, but most of them were cut down to the "shotgun" style versions - just short cuts in between the records. The top of the hour ID started with a voiceover announcing the "Parade of Hits" on "WGEE AM and FM" and was tagged at the end with a sung "WGEE, Indianapolis!". The music appears to be a mixture of currents and gold, and the format seemed to be what today would be called "Adult Contemporary". Thus, much stronger musically with bonafide hits than say, WIBC or WFBM at the time, but no hard rock. Janis Joplin's "Me and Bobbie McGee" was played as a current, but not Mountain's "Mississippi Queen".

 

[Jinglefreak]

Hey KR4BD -

Do you remember working with my dad, George L. Davis? He came to WGEE in December of 1970, after working for 6 years for WFBM, mainly doing mid-days along with Howdy Bell. He was only there a couple of months before moving on the a bigger gig, 55 KOY in Phoenix (and a lot nicer weather, too!). I have about 5-6 of some scoped airchecks of his shift on WGEE (made from the studio), if anyone is interested. They are from the period of December of 1970 through February of 1971. The station sounds great, with a LOT of music. The jingles are the Pepper Tanner "Fun One" series, but most of them were cut down to the "shotgun" style versions - just short cuts in between the records. The top of the hour ID started with a voiceover announcing the "Parade of Hits" on "WGEE AM and FM" and was tagged at the end with a sung "WGEE, Indianapolis!". The music appears to be a mixture of currents and gold, and the format seemed to be what today would be called "Adult Contemporary". Thus, much stronger musically with bonafide hits than say, WIBC or WFBM at the time, but no hard rock. Janis Joplin's "Me and Bobbie McGee" was played as a current, but not Mountain's "Mississippi Queen".

(sorry for the duplicate post)

 

[KR4BD]

Jinglefreak:

For some reason, I don't remember your dad. Did he use a different air name? I was definitely there from September 1970 through most of 1971. One DJ I forgot to mention in my earlier post who was there back then was Scott Evans. Scott later went on to work at WXTZ (easy listening).

Does your dad remember me? My first name is Tom and I was mainly an Account Exec at WGEE but did do on-air graveyard fill-in, midnight to 6 AM, when people were on vacation, or sick.

 

[IndyDan]

This may have been prior to the times you guys worked at WGEE, but does anyone remember a guy named Bill Goodall? I think he worked there in the 60's, but is still very active today in ham radio and has shared a few stories of his time there with me.