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WTKO Questions..

J

jefflaurence

Okay I saw some memory flogging posts here and became curious about WTKO in Ithaca. Having worked there in 1972-73, I was wondering if anybody remembered Bob Lynch, Doug Finck..Jim Stevenson..Dexter Rowe..Adam Smith, or whatever became of the Erdman family who owned WTKO when we were in the Ivy Broadcasting building above the JC Penny store..across from the Chanticleer Bar...aaaah the Chantticleer!...mmmmm.

(((poof))) Where was I?

We had two sites at the time..one ran 5000w from one part of the county..and when we finally went nights (took several years) they had the four towers running 500w accross Tomkins County at night and had to have an engineer there..Lots of nights Richard Prenia (the slavic engineer) would call at pattern change time..I would have to wait for him to count down from 5 to 1 and kill the carrier on the 5kw site..but sometimes that wouldn't happen..and he would light up the 500w..causing the two xmtrs to beat mercilessly..Richard would swear something in Latvian and leave the 500w on while he drove the 30 minutes accross town to manually kill the 5kw site..What a fun station!

Anyone have any TKO stories?
 
We had two sites at the time..one ran 5000w from one part of the county..and when we finally went nights (took several years) they had the four towers running 500w accross Tomkins County at night and had to have an engineer there..Lots of nights Richard Prenia (the slavic engineer) would call at pattern change time..I would have to wait for him to count down from 5 to 1 and kill the carrier on the 5kw site..but sometimes that wouldn't happen..and he would light up the 500w..causing the two xmtrs to beat mercilessly..Richard would swear something in Latvian and leave the 500w on while he drove the 30 minutes accross town to manually kill the 5kw site..What a fun station!
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LOL! This is the kind of story genuinely appreciated by guys (like me) who worked with "colorful" engineers that resembled Andy Kaufman or Chico Marx more than Dr. Edwin Armstrong.
 
Having worked there in 1972-73, I was wondering if anybody remembered Bob Lynch, Doug Finck..Jim Stevenson..Dexter Rowe..Adam Smith, or whatever became of the Erdman family who owned WTKO when we were in the Ivy Broadcasting building above the JC Penny store..across from the Chanticleer Bar...aaaah the Chantticleer!...mmmmm.
Click to expand...

I worked at WTKO later in the 70s, when they were located in the house on Aurora(?) St. Pretty nice place to operate out of, compared to so many dumps I worked for later(often in bigger markets).

I worked with News Director Bob Lynch and Announcer-turned-Salesman Jim Stevenson. I heard Bob moved to Rochester and I think was a traffic reporter, possibly for WBBF-AM(in it's last years as a real station with an airstaff). Don't know what's happened to him since. Jim wound up in the early 80s at WJYE in sales - not sure what he does now.

Also wondering what happened to Morning News Anchor Marsha Lynch(Bob's sister), Ops Mgr/Morning Man JJ Regan, Afternoons/PD Big Jim Walker(was that his air name?) and so many others. I assume the Erdman family has long gotten out of the radio business, but I also am wondering whatever happened to them. Woody Erdman had other business interests in addition to the radio station.
 
Jeff, you might find it interesting to go to the Binghamton Radio web site and dig around the forum section for a WEBO thread. As you are aware, Woody Erdman owned Ivy Broadcasting and included both WTKO in Ithaca and WEBO in Owego. Some great postings on Woody who apprently was quite the character. Here's the ink to the Binghamton radio site.

http://www.scaptura.com/radio/index.html
 
An owner out of Norwich, who bought TKO in 1987, paired up Q-104 and TKO.

Q104-FM, which had studios on top of Connecticut Hill, had moved its studios to a 2nd-floor walk-up across the street from the old TKO studios on Cayuga St. (you could look out the windows and see the Ivy broadcasting building). That was 1984 or so. Then, Matt Coon (was that his name?) out of Norwich, bought TKO, which had been in receivership since about '84. I was one of the last to work for the Erdmans. Woody by that time was out in Vegas. I forget was he was doing. His son helped run the place, along with his mom.

Coon put the Q studio in the old PD's office, that nice big front room with the bay windows.

317 N. Aurora has been long vacated by radio, and is now occupied by some software firm, according to a Google search. I had heard back in the 90s that for a while ---appropriately-- it housed the Mental Health Association.

I remember shag carpeting on the walls of the air studio and production studio..The closet in the back of the air studio where all the music carts were keptin cubbies, and how if you threw a cart into there it would bounce off 2-3 walls...How the jock had to fire the news carts for the news person, making any newscast with sound a 2-person production..Using the ABC information networkk (the best goddamned radio network at the time, in my opinion)--I can even remember wherre it came up on the wonderful-sounding tube-powered Gates board from about 1958...The reverb we had on the air signal...One PD telling me "I don't care what you do between 2 and 4 in the morning, just keep us on the air" (referring to the air product)...

I think if you drive up route 79 and west Hill, at the right spot one can still see the origiinal transmitter shack, covered in brush and trees...At night, you could drive not too far and still be able to see TKO's 4-tower array, yet not be able to pick up the air signal. Curious, when you think about it--most AMs are in swamps, not on the tops of hills, but in Ithaca almost EVERYTHING outside the city was a hilltop.

Is this the same Jeff Laurence who became PD at 62-WHEN?
 
P.S.

Wasn't "Big Jim Walker" aka Chet Walker, aka Jim Roberts ( I can't remember his real name),..The same guy who went on to GM at Q104, when they switched from beautiful music to AC in 1983?

No, not the same Chet Walker who's been at WHAM for years.
 
I think the Matt you are talking about is Matt Cooney, who owned WCHN and WKXZ in Norwich until the stations became part of the BanJo broadcasting group.
One thing I really enjoyed on the old Q 104, was the Sunday night jazz and blues shows. I always thought it was somewhat of a novelty for a powerful commercial radio station, with a rock format no less, to still be playing classic jazz for a few hours on Sunday nights. It was too good to last of course. The shows were canned shortly before the station flipped to country in '96. Not sure when the shows started. These days, there is no jazz at all on Sunday nights in central NY that I know of.
 
curious about WTKO in Ithaca. Having worked there in 1972-73, I was wondering if anybody remembered Bob Lynch, Doug Finck..Jim Stevenson..Dexter Rowe..Adam Smith...



Dex here... good to hear from you, Jeff! 'Here' is in the wilds of central VT
 
Hi Dexter! Wow..I remember doing the "remotes" at the Trumansburg Fair..A remote for TKO consisted of a wooden ladder and a Gates Unimote..interviewing the carnival people like "Pretty Kitty from Kansas City" and "Gina..The italian Love Goddess" from the belly dancing show..and of course when the power switch happened..we couldn't hear anything on the headsets except bleed-thru from CHOW in Welland Canada.

The music already had a jingle attached to the end of each song. Pretty edgy.

The processing was very different during the day..Sta-Level..and atnight a Collins fixed setting limiter..Station sounded really flat and quiet at night at the time.

Bob Lynch was a CKLW fanatic..We would spend many hours at the "Rosebud" making up CKLW style news stories..His sister Marsha as quite good..whatever happened with her?

And yes I am the same Jeff Laurence from WHEN..we had a real ball at that station!

www.jefflaurence.com
 
Peter King here! I was at TKO from '76-78 and what a blast I had there! And tonight,Wow,seeing TKO legends Jeff Laurence and Dexter Rowe in the same column! Nice surprise! Am still in touch with a number of TKO alums. Big Jim Roberts, last I heard was still here in Central Florida, as is former jock Rick Allen(Rich Reis), running WDBO and other Cox stations. JJ Regan was working as a techincal writer for Boeing near the Kennedy Space Center as of about a decade ago. Steve Morris is in Los Angeles. Ricky King, my brother, is a NY City social worker after spending more than a decade in NY Radio as "Rick Sommers," mostly on Lite FM. Bob and Marcia Lynch were still in Ithaca at last check. Dave Drummond is in Los Angeles and about to enter law school. He's also a certified flight instructor. And I've been in Orlando for 13 years, the last 10 as a correspondent for CBS News Radio, covering everything from the space shuttle to hurricanes. Hope that helps!
 
You asked for funny TKO stories? Well, there are a bazillion of them but since you mentioned the Erdmans, I'll mention their son Hans, who was a n'eer do well type...the first time I met him was as a part timer when he introduced himself to me as "Hans Erdman, Chief of Security." OK, maybe not that funny if you didn't know him or never saw him, and I'm sure he meant well. Anyway, I googled him once and I believe he's a forest ranger or something out west. He was an outdoorsman, so it looks like he found his calling. And googling the Erdmans tonight, I found this interesting piece of legalese. As I recall, they were allegedly involved in several "shell games" throughout the years...

http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/lr16268.htm

That said, TKO gave me-and countless others a GREAT education in radio. And it was all fun!
 
Great to see so many former WTKO staffers on this site. I worked in the news department with Bob and Marcia Lynch, Dan Cummings, Elyse Gellerman, and Maggie Gribbroek(now Monroe County executive). DJ line-up was JJ Regan, Don Harvey, Big
 
Continued..Jim Roberts, Peter King, David Black and Chuck McCoy. I began to gravitate more toward the DJ side of things, and I eventually got a Saturday morning shift. From 6-10am I was Jay Reynolds(the only time I ever used a fake name). Then at 10am I would go to the other side of the glass and do news under my real name. During my time there I never met Woody Erdmann. He was always in New York City! Funny how things change. Peter King was the ultimate Disc Jockey, and now I listen to him every Christmas Day, anchoring the CBS Radio news. I was in news but I have spent most of my non-illustrious career as a jock. Worked with Bob Lynch in Rochester too..I have run into so many people over the years who worked at TKO. Note to Jeff Laurence: I just missed you when I was at WHEN. Met you at Oswego State when you dropped in on old friends Pat Bradley and Scott Lowe. I think you still owe me a jock intro!
 
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