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WNIA question

M

mar46

Is anyone out there old enough to remember the nightly request show in the 60's that ended at 11PM with a very dreamy instrumental song?
My high school sweetheart & I recently reconnected after more than 40 years and we haven't been able to come with the name of that song. Can you help us?
It has some sentimental value to us.....when that song came on, it meant the end of the night's date. No matter what were doing or where we were, that song said "It's time to get home"....kind of our curfew reminder.
Thanks for your help on this one.
 
One of the things I remember about WNIA in the early '60's was all the dedications and the popularity of "16 Reasons" by Connie Stevens.

Now tell me how they got away without doing news???
 
Wasn't WNIA once owned by the late Gordon Brown?

If that's the case then this is the same person who owned WSAY for like a zillion years before he died and it was sold to Lou Dickey Sr.

I don't remember WSAY having any local news coverage before Dickey bought the station in 1980.
 
I remember visiting Rochester about 1964 and listening to WSAY and remembering how awful it was compared to Utica stations. I believe they did do news and it was Jerry Jacks etc doing rip & read off the wire.
I later found WBBF on the dial and heard Matt Rinaldi (a friendly, familar voice). He had come to BBF from WTLB in Utica. That made my day!
 
Mark_Giardina said:
Wasn't WNIA once owned by the late Gordon Brown?

If that's the case then this is the same person who owned WSAY for like a zillion years before he died and it was sold to Lou Dickey Sr.

I don't remember WSAY having any local news coverage before Dickey bought the station in 1980.
Click to expand...


"The Great" Gordon Brown always owned WNIA, when Chet M. bought it he turned it into WECK.
I don't remember newscasts or regular weather forcasts logged in.
I do remember ending the morning program with a spectacular intro into "The Angelis" at noon every day.

I also remember 3 inch tape reels containing jingles and gobs of splicing tape, and classic Magnacorders (maggies) that rewound so fast that you could slice salami with it.

I also remember Mary's legs.

-30-

Tommy Thomas #459
 
therealjm12 said:
I remember visiting Rochester about 1964 and listening to WSAY and remembering how awful it was compared to Utica stations.
Click to expand...

And I arrived in Utica in 1964 to attend college and remember how awful WTLB sounded as compared to WTRY &
WPTR from the Albany area where I grew up.
 
I visited both WSAY and WNIA repeatedly circa 1967, when I started in this biz, occasionally with WSAY alum Dave Mason in tow (now in San Diego.) I recall that WSAY had a UPI machine clattering away in one of the upstairs bedrooms on French Road, near the "announcer's studio," for Jerry Jack, Mike Melody and Tommy Thomas to rip-n-read wire copy for newscasts on "Western and Central New York's Hi-Fi Music & News Station."

At the WNIA studios on Genesee Street in Cheektowaga, I recall similarly antiquated RCA equipment and a shunt-fed free-standing tower about 6 feet from the back wall of the brick ranch-style home that housed the station. Since the tower was grounded there was no need for the real estate for a ground system. The hard copper feedline from the RCA transmitter ran around the 8-foot ceiling on porcelain standoffs, fully exposed. A tall DJ, stretching after a long shift, could easily have reached up and touched this live conductor.

The "format" (such as it was) was similar to WSAY;'s, but the WNIA incarnations of Jerry Jack, Mike Melody and Tommy Thomas had to keep listeners informed, as I recall, with weather four times hourly. Tuneful 1230 had no UPI or AP service but oddly, there was a weather wire. And, of course, endless repetitions of the trademark "be big, be a builder" campaign, which nobody fully understood.

Things tended to be a little strange in the wonderful world of GPB.

It's ironic to read the WNIA thread as we spent the day making field measurements on first-adjacent WECK for the 1220 pending application. It's a very good sounding signal today, entirely unlike the days of The Niagara Broadcasting System.
 
Brown was a hard guy to work for....he was cheap.....could care less about the people who worked for him....in other words the typical big cluster owner of today ...I was 17 and in high school when I started working there and was happy to be a part of it all...........including ML"S legs........WAS MAC MCGUIRE.....MIKE MELODY.........TOMMY THOMAS.....YES AND EVEN JERRY JACK from 60 to 64 than got a better job, went in the army
 
BJC said:
Brown was a hard guy to work for....he was cheap.....could care less about the people who worked for him....in other words the typical big cluster owner of today ...I was 17 and in high school when I started working there and was happy to be a part of it all...........including ML"S legs........WAS MAC MCGUIRE.....MIKE MELODY.........TOMMY THOMAS.....YES AND EVEN JERRY JACK from 60 to 64 than got a better job, went in the army
Click to expand...

Cheap isn't the word. I remember going to WSAY's office on East Avenue and seeing, what I thought at the time was construction work. I later found out that the renovation work started years before but was never completed.

When some of us former WHAMers went to WSAY in 1980, I couldn't believe the conditions of the studios on French Road. We had to work out of a townhouse for a few months while the entire inside of French Road was rebuilt with new studios, offices and a newsroom.

But I will say this about Gordon Brown, at least he gave people a chance to break into radio. Try getting a full-time on-air job in the business today.
 
As a "Jerry Jack" circa 1963-64, I though it appropriate to correct one the earlier posters. The song that most everyone recalls was the theme at midnight. Ironically it was called "Midnight Mood" by Richard Maltby. I do have a copy of it somewhere.

As far as Mary is concerned...she could have had her way with any of us "horny" 22 year olds back then.

We didn't make any money...but a lot of us got our start there.
 
Mary passed away from cancer in the early 90's ( I believe). I had the pleasure of having lunch with her a few months before she passed away.
 
I'm sorry to hear that. It makes you wonder how much asbestos - and RF - were in the air at WNIA & WSAY.
 
While working part-time for Eddy Jo at WHLD..I interviewed with Mary at 1200 Genesee Street during the summer of 1968..got the Mac McGuire (#332) job there in Sept. Did anyone else take the "audition" in Mary's office with that bogus newscast and the Webcor tape recorder (with the green "magic eye") She did have beautiful legs and a rather short skirt if I remember right..wasn't too interested in her teeth. WNIA didn't do news, and the weather was constant..I don;t remember if the log reflected news or not..but I was amazed at NO SPOTS..nothing..just a few goofy 3" reel PSAs that had to be threaded on (at that time) a 59.95 Lafayette tape deck. You had to pull the headphone plug out to cue it, and put it back in to feed the "util" pot on the four channel board. Ben Freedman (The Jingle Guy) apparently did the few "jingles" (W-N-I-A--One Twenty Three..) I think it was a silver ElecroVoice mic..and I do remember that in spite of it being a class IV it only ran 500 watts day and 250 night. Correct me if I'm wrong

I worked one week then..was "saved" by Tom Talbott at WJJL/WBNY in Niagara Falls after I found a place to live on Bird Ave in Buffalo..so the drive was about the same. I later moved back home with my parents in Lewiston so JJL was a better commute..Worked there for a couple of years before taking a short trip to Toronto, then to WTKO where I first became acquointed with Bob Savage (He did the Legal ID for Ithaca's 1470) the rest is history
 
WNIA was the only station I have ever heard that used the slogan, "No news is good news". That lasted only a short time.

WNIA's file at the FCC in Washington contained a lengthy treatise on "Be Big, Be a Builder" and how that phrase would cause young people to think positively.
 
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