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WSBA MYTHS AND LEGENDS

B

bossjock 56

It was the summer of '69.....the summer of love! Three Dog Night's smash hit "ONE" was on the top of the charts all accross the USA.....but NOT at WSBA "The Mighty 910". WSBA played it as a future hit for maybe a week or two, but then it went away, never charting on the WSBA "HIT"S OF THE WEEK SURVEY". Once the song dropped off the charts....WSBA played it a couple of times....kind of like a recurrent...which there wasn't much of in those days. The story I heard was that somebody at WSBA had a riff with their rep form ABC DUNHILL, which was Three Dog Night's label. At their sister station in Scranton...WARM (not to be confused with WARM 103)....One hit number 1. WSBA played every song by Three Dog Night from that point on. Another story I recall was in 1966...when John Lennon made his statement about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus....WSBA at least talked about banning all Beatles music. If they did....it was very brief, due to listeners wanting the "fab four" back on the station, just in time for some of their best stuff.
They did at one point ban X-rated movie ads form WSBA, Lou, from the Columbia Drive-In Theater spent alot of money on WNOW after that ban. You never heard the term "ROCK AND ROLL" on WSBA. When Bill Drakes documentary "THE HISTORY OF ROCK AND ROLL" was being played all over the country, WSBA ran a version called "THE HISTORY OF MODERN MUSIC". Last but not least....Chicago legend Dick Biondi was said to be the first top 40 jock on WSBA. He was said to have done nights right before they made the full time flip around 1958. The story I heard was that he was too wild for them...and was fired by Bob Shipley. If anyone has any WSBA oddities to add....or can let me know what's fact or a myth....feel free to chime in. If you have any facts or legends from other stations, join in as well. Let's have some fun with this.
 
Oh my---the Columbia Drive In! I remember during high school summers stopping along Route 30 to "gaze" at the screen. It's surprising there weren't more accidents on that road in those days.

As far as WSBA goes, WSBA was about the personalities and marketing. Music programming at times didn't make any sense.

Funny----some things haven't changed in that building after all these years.
 
I have a few WSBA Hits of the Week surveys in my collection. On the one dated August 16th 1969, "One" is charted at #8, down from #4 the previous week. Did they chart it but not play it? Not likely, but who knows. Makes more sense - if you can call it that - to simply ignore it all the way around. A WFIL Boss 30 from just a week hence doesn't list it at all, the song having peaked on their survey back in July. The song had peaked on WFEC's survey in June, and by mid-August they already had "Easy to be Hard" at #17. WSBA certainly was conservative by that time weren't they? I heard they never played "Honky Tonk Women" by the Rolling Stones at all.

The Dick Biondi story is supposedly true. The version I heard was that Biondi had two styles, one mellow and one wild. WSBA was only rockin' at night at that time, and management thought his wild act a bit much. They asked him to tone it down, he refused and was fired. He then went on to a bunch of little stations with calls like WKBW, WCFL and WLS. The funny thing is that after WSBA flipped to Top 40, he would probably have been a good fit.

I've no doubt WSBA refused advertising for X-rated movies. In conservative York County they could never have justified it. In Harrisburg, WFEC turned down spots for the Senate Theatre too. At that time, the heat from other advertisers would have made accepting it foolish.

The Lennon thing...well at the time WFEC very publicly said they would not stop playing the Beatles because of the controversy, that it was their place to pass judgement on the politcal or religious views of the artists they played. Tony Montgomery was the Music Director then and Lucky Pierre the Program Director. It was a gutsy thing to say. By the way, that's one of the biggest misquotes in history. Lennon's comments were as taken totally out of context and made into an issue by a bunch of gasbag politicians. Look it up.
 
I missed an important word in my last paragraph. WFEC said it was not their place to pass judgment on the views of musical artists.
 
I didn't think "One" charted....but my memory can be clouded after 40 years. I do remember them playing it in August.....which was late. As far as "Honky Tonk Women" is concerned...I thought that they played it...but it would't surprise me if they didn't. They were always conservative by nature. In the late 50's and early sixties they were pretty much a state of the art Top 40 station. Then the Beatles and the Brittish Invasion hit. Then it was Woodstock and the harder rock of the late 60's...The Doors, Cream, Steppenwolf, Jimi Hendrix...it seemed as though the powers at WSBA were ill at ease with the changes popular music was going through. On the HITS OF THE WEEK surveys, The PICK HIT was many times by a middle of the road artist like Al Martino or Frank Sinatra. Most of their Pick Hits never got above the upper 20's. Every once in a while they'd pick a no-brainer that would go to the top. By 1970 they were so dayparted that they sounded like an adult MOR format until 3 in the afternoon. When Sinatra retired (the first time)...they did a Frank Sinatra weekend. Stations like WFIL were starting to become the trend. Locally WFEC and WLAN sounded alot hipper during this time. WSBA sounded like a station that played Top 40....but was programmed by your parents, teachers, and principal. All this being said......the line-up of personalities could not be beat. Their humor at times was a bit corny and sounded like it was taken from Rowen and Martin's Laugh In (they had a field day with Tiny Tim).....but these were all jocks who were capable of working much bigger markets....and many of them did move on.
 
A number of WSBA's jocks were in their late 30s or more when they started the Top 40 format in the 50s, so they were as old as your parents or teachers. The night jocks were younger and more hip. WSBA did Top 40 radio right out of a playbook, did it extremely well in the early days, and were regarded as one of the best Top 40s in the country. I have a Dan Donovan aircheck from 1966 I think - it's topical and very funny - and one of Bob Harper from a little later - it's corny and silly and not so funny. I also have one of Bob Janis from 1963 or 64, and that's really nothing to write home about. How their jocks dealt with all the clutter I'll never know. They had to talk between every spot, even if it was just a time check. How they had time to be the personalities they were was an amazing feat. And all those little features they used to run, obviously to placate the parents, like "Look Up to Learning," were real snorefests. WSBA never attempted to go "Much More Music." They had no reason to. But by the late 60s they were sounding past their prime. They did allow Bill Campbell to do a "progressive" show on Saturday nights at midnight, called the "Underground Experiment" as I recall, and I remember him playing some really wild stuff when he was on 7-midnight in the early 70s. But going MOR was inevitable and they finally did it around 1975. If you can find a copy, read Phil Eberly's book "Susquehanna Radio: The First 50 Years." It's a fascinating chronicle of their triumphs (WSBA, WARM) and flops (WICE, WHLO, the original WSBA-FM, and the sad story of WSBA-TV.)
 
finally talking about my favorite station!! i worked 3rd shift during the mid 1980s. i would schedule myself to work every Saturday night-Sunday morning so I could listen to the Bill Walker Soul Show. i remember he would always play "the best in jazz" from 2am to 3am. finished off the night by listening to his "Bill Walker Gospel Show" at 6am. what a great personality. we miss the greats: Hal Raymond, Ed Lincoln. loved the syndicated shows like Jamboree USA, Sunday at the Memories, Dick Clark's Rock,Roll, and Remember. And finally, hearing Ron Corbin call high school basketball during the glory days of York Catholic. WSBA will never be the same as it was back in the 70s and 80s!!!!!
 
Some of the great personalities of the 60's on WSBA include Ed Lincoln, Ed Coles, Bob Janis, Jim O'Leary, Ralph Lockwood, Gil David, Paul Roberts, Jim Pride, Larry Hall, Dan Donovan, Don Steele, Peter Porter, Bob Woody, Len Woloson,and Bill Campbell...just no name a few. Who were the WSBA PD's? Bob Shipley was always the main guy...but Bob Janis, Bob Harper, Jack Barry, Mike McKay, and Johnny Andrews were also key players during the top 40 era. Andrews was at the helm during the flip to AC in the mid 70's...followed by Rod Burnham....and right up to the present....Jim Horn. Some of the greats have been left out....if you can add to this list.....by all means I'd love to hear from you!
 
I did overnights on "The Mighty 910" from 1984 to 1989. I followed Ed every night and preceded Hal every morning. Ed was Mister Showbiz and a real character. I recall one Sunday afternoon I was on and Ed was doing remote drops from a charity hair cut-a-thon. Thank God his breaks were pre-taped. As I'm recording and listening to him go on about the event, Ed says "You get your hair cut, and there are girls from York Vo Tech here to give you the blowjobs." He stopped dead, burst out laughing and said "John! Whatever you do, don't run that break!" I was on the floor! To this day I don't know if he just said it by accident or he did it for my entertainment.

Hal was a very nice man with one of the quickest wits I've ever seen. I would wrap up my shift by doing the 5am news. I always had a whimsical or silly story to wrap up and hand it off to Hal. He would walk in about a minute before the end of the newscast and stand by the mike on the other podium. No matter what I threw at him, he always had a funny quip that would break me up. What a fine talent and a pleasure to work with.

By the time I got to WSBA in 1979, I had been in radio for close to ten years. But my first night on the air I could barely think or talk straight. Why? Because WSBA had been the first station that made me want to get into radio. "Me? On the Mighty 910? Talking to people all over WSBA-land?" It took me a bit of time to get over the intimidation. Although they're audience was aging at that point - none of my friends listened to WSBA - they were really clicking on all cylinders then and the music was very contemporary. The news, the sports, the personalities...if it was happening, it was happening on WSBA, a sterling example of the Full Service AC station of the time. I've always thought that had they moved WSBA lock stock and barrel to FM, they would have ruled the market.
 
Can't forget Dusty Reese loved those chops. The has some killer sales guys Dave Bernstein Ed (spelling Benafie) Chris Huber Those guys could sell and had a certain swagger. You could tell a WSBA sales person they were at least a foot taller than anyone else in the room.
 
Does anyone remember Commander Burns (Tim) or know what became of him. He was morning man on WINK for years and had earlier worked in the Lancaster/Lebannon market. Did all nights at WVAM/Altoona in the late 60's.
 
Add to the list---Mike McKay, Rick Burton, Bill Bradley, and Harry West. Also PD during the shift to really soft in the late '70's I believe was Dave Pennington.

As for Burnsy, after he retired from WINK he disappeared. I heard he was in real estate, but he is absolutely unGoogleable. Tried to find him a couple times.
 
That's right. Dave Pennington became PD when Johnny Andrews was bumped up to Ops Manager. Add to the 70's jock list Steve Cannon, Joe Columbo, Johnny Knight, Jack Armstong, Stan Douglas (Craig Senior), Phil Sargant, Brad Flick, Wayne Gracey, Bob Brooks, Kevin O'Conner, and Lou Rogers.
 
does anyone have a radio listings section from the early 70s Lancaster Sunday News, i remember they listed WSBA's full schedule.
 
Back in the late sixties--1967 or 1968--when WSBA was hitting on all fours I contacted the PD at the time seeking some basic information about the station for a term paper for a college course I was taking, and you would have thought I had asked the CIA for top-secret code-breaking formulas. Like it all wasn't out there on the radio for anyone to hear! Anyway, the guy was a complete A-hole, going so far as to write me a letter threatening to sue if I featured his damn station in a damn term paper. I'm not making this up.

WSBA did a great job marketing itself as a regional player, generating TV-type money and providing a top-flight product so obviously superior to anything else in the market that if Susquehanna had understood the AM to FM transition--and had simply shifted WSBA's programming from 910 to 103.3 at the right time--we'd still be playing catch-up 40 years later. But, of course, they screwed it up.

I've often wondered whether the arrogance that the A-hole PD showed me was related... that maybe the guys running the ship back then just thought they were indestructable... and didn't need that FM in the closet down the hall to stay on top...
 
Let's see '67 or '68.....could have been Bob Janis or Bob Harper...who knows? I never met either of these guys but I did meet Bob Shipley and he, being the nice person he always was, wouldn't have treated anyone, especially a college student, that way. Then again, he probably wouldn't have given out too much information. I called WSBA one time around this same period and asked for a request. I was told...."sorry, we don't take requests. At least they were honest. Another time I called and asked to speak to their program director. They said "we have several program directors....which one do you want." That person then told me that Bob Shipley was the main program director. This was in the late 60's. I'll admit, I was a pest and used to call serveral radio stations and they would always talk to me and were happy to answer the questions of a kid who was interested in radio. At WSBA...you never got to talk to the on air personality.
 
The on-air personality was never to answer the phone, under any circumstances. That was a long-standing rule that was still in effect when I worked there. The idea was that you had to concentrate on being a personality and should not be wasting your time on the phone. It's true that with the enormous spot load and all the elements you had to juggle, plus time into newscasts twice an hour and play a little music here and there, you really had no time to socialize with listeners.

One Sunday evening in the early 80s I was working 6-9pm. The late Bob Markham was in the newsroom, on the phone getting an actuality. Nobody was at the sports desk. The phone lit up, and rang and rang and rang. I had a song playing and thought it was stupid to let the phone ring when I could answer it. I did. It was General Manager Phil Eberly on the other end. He asked who he was speaking to. I answered. He said "Aren't you on the air? The air personality is never to answer the phone!" He asked to be transferred to Markham, to whom he read the riot act. The next day Rod Burnham called me at my regular job and said "John, just a reminder. Do not, ever, under any circumstances, no matter how long it's been ringing, answer the phone while you are on the air." I said OK and that was that. Of all times to try and help out, it would be the time the GM called. And Mr. Eberly knew all the rules and was a stickler about them.

They had rules, and rules about rules, in a packet about 80 pages long. It was really intimidating.
 
I think the same could be said about many major market stations at that time. In all fairness....WSBA was more "big market" than many other Central Pa stations at the time.
 
If radio would follow similar plans - not merely from upper management, but through the ranks, with PD's who are in charge, personalities / jocks who don't have to prove they are "stars" or better than anything a radio station has to offer, and if people were more than card-reader idiots with rules that required that they follow the rules, no matter how much they "hate" following the rules, the better radio would be.

Plus, there would be fewer phone jammers, contest whores and "would you play so-and so, like, in a minute for my boyfriend?" then, maybe, there wuld be competition, instead of ego inflated laziness in markets from York to San Diego and back. Sometimes, we just know too much for our own good.
 
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