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WHUN / WRLR HUNTINGDON, PA

M

MikeThom

Guest
I was curious about my old station's WHUN / WRLR in Huntingdon.... I worked there in the late 70's... what happened to the signals?? Lost touch with the gang. It was another time then -- I remember covering a fire in Shade Gap... wanted to use the phone to call back reports (our Marti system didn't make it that far) The woman, with a Marlboro tightly clinched between her teeth, looked at me like I was crazy.. "We don't have no phone service down here!" Take care!

Mike Thompson
 
My wife went to Juniata College 1987-1991. Back then the FM had a morning guy by the name of Rocco Pollato. Not sure of the spelling. They used to sign off at midnight. During my wife's senior year, they went 24 hours and changed their moniker to "Lake 103.5" for Raystown Lake. Their production was so poor on their sweepers, and the jocks had such rotten diction, my wife thought they were saying "Late 103.5". I still haven't stopped laughing.
 
MikeThom said:
I was curious about my old station's WHUN / WRLR in Huntingdon.... I worked there in the late 70's... what happened to the signals?? Lost touch with the gang. It was another time then -- I remember covering a fire in Shade Gap... wanted to use the phone to call back reports (our Marti system didn't make it that far) The woman, with a Marlboro tightly clinched between her teeth, looked at me like I was crazy.. "We don't have no phone service down here!" Take care!

Mike Thompson
Click to expand...


CHECK OUT HTTP://WWW.MERFRADIO.COM . That will answer all your questions.
 
1150/WHUN is now owned by Forever Broadcasting and simulcasts Altoona's 1290/WFBG, while 103.5/WLAK is owned by First Media and simulcasts Lewistown's 95.7/WMRF, where Rocco Pallotto does mornings. The other two FM sticks that eventually came along are both owned now by Forever. Mount Union's 99.5 was used for a few years to simulcast Altoona's "Hot" CHR format until last year when it got moved to State College as "Lite." Huntingdon's 106.3 now simulcasts Altoona's 98.1/WFGY as Country "Froggy."

The result of all this is that Huntingdon's only locally-generated radio station is Juniata College's little 13-watt student FM station, WKVR, which is off-air much of the time and is very poorly programmed & produced when it does hit the air.

Huntingdon is a nice town and is perfectly capable of supporting a radio station--but not four. The extra signals just created a situation where all of them starved to death. And now they're all just "repeaters."
 
Thanks! Huntingdon was a great town.... I had fun there... I remember our morning man Don Stuller, a very nice gentleman in his 60's, who delivered co-owned Daily News newspapers in the afternoon. My big stories were a tractor trailer plowing down a herd of dairy cow on Route 22....and the tragic slaying of 83 year old Mrs. Helen Poppa found bludgeoned to death underneath a piece of tin in her Mount Union backyard. I was chastised by management when I referred to DUI/DWI arrests as "Drunk Driving" -- I was told that in a small town the stigma those labels caused -- better to use what the newspaper refered to as "tipsy driving"!
 
In the early 70's, I can remember riding through Huntington and hearing WHUN-1150 playing live piano music. And wasn't WRLR on 1080 for a while? It didn't last very long and had a very tight directional pattern.
 
DaveWilliams said:
In the early 70's, I can remember riding through Huntington and hearing WHUN-1150 playing live piano music. And wasn't WRLR on 1080 for a while? It didn't last very long and had a very tight directional pattern.
Click to expand...

Right. That was Jo McMeen playing the piano on WHUN. She did that for many years until her nephew, Joe Biddle put it up for sale in the early 90's. The station had been in their family for many years. Cary Simpson actually helped build that station in the late 1940's, as he grew up in Huntingdon. I explored buying that station when it was first put up for sale, but I was told by many people to "walk away"...that it wasn't a sound investment for a first-time owner-operator.

WRLR did begin on AM 1080 as a strict DA daytimer. However, once they were granted the FM license, they turned the AM off and gave the license back faster than a time warp.

It's sad to see that there's no local radio in Huntingdon anymore. The market CAN support at least an AM and an FM, provided that the staffs are kept small and you have a motivated sales force. That wasn't the case when I looked at it, though there were people jumping ship left and right towards the end and those who stayed pretty much gave up on it. I heard that Rocco was putting in 12-hour days at one point.

I know that Huntingdon officials were checking into purchasing an LPFM license after the flood came years ago and there was no local radio station alerting listeners about the situation. It was my understanding that when evacuation orders were issued, none of the Huntingdon-licensed radio stations (all of which were controlled off-site by this time) jumped in to answer the call.
 
Actually, WRLR was ONLY on 106.3. When the Biddles moved their FM to 103.5 the calls were changed to WLAK. 106.3 returned a few years later as WQHG under a different ownership.

The AM on 1080 was WQRO -- they had a 2 tower DA, so it was not very tight. What it lacked was power and any presunrise or nighttime power. They initially were only 500 Watts, but I think they later went to 1 KW. I'm not sure when it went silent, but they signed on around 1978 .. To the best of my knowledge the 106.3 and 1080 ownership were not the same entity -- As I understand it the company that brought 106.3 back bought the 1080 facility after it had gone silent...Only one of the towers remained the last time I went thru there (about 8 years ago) and that was an STL Antenna for 106.3.
 
theengineer said:
Actually, WRLR was ONLY on 106.3. When the Biddles moved their FM to 103.5 the calls were changed to WLAK. 106.3 returned a few years later as WQHG under a different ownership.

The AM on 1080 was WQRO -- they had a 2 tower DA, so it was not very tight. What it lacked was power and any presunrise or nighttime power. They initially were only 500 Watts, but I think they later went to 1 KW. I'm not sure when it went silent, but they signed on around 1978 .. To the best of my knowledge the 106.3 and 1080 ownership were not the same entity -- As I understand it the company that brought 106.3 back bought the 1080 facility after it had gone silent...Only one of the towers remained the last time I went thru there (about 8 years ago) and that was an STL Antenna for 106.3.
Click to expand...


For some reason, I am thinking 1080 and 106.3 was owned together by Lou Maierhofer. 1080 came back to life after 106.3 was put on the air.
 
clangham said:
For some reason, I am thinking 1080 and 106.3 was owned together by Lou Maierhofer. 1080 came back to life after 106.3 was put on the air.
Click to expand...

Perhaps .. there is a big gap in my knowledge, from 1983 to 1995, and WQRO was silent by then, although the license was not deleted until 1999 according to the FCC's database.
 
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