A history of WMPT Radio South Williamsport Pa, as well as radio in the Williamsport Marketplace. In addition a history of my time behind the microphone.

Monday, August 22, 2005

The "Other" stations, is this equal time?

Even though it is my intent to highlight the history of WMPT Radio, I don’t feel that any look at Williamsport radio of that era would be complete without mentioning the “other” stations and some really great people who toiled away behind their microphones. Lets take the oldest first:
WRAK (1400 AM and 102.7 FM):
Until WMPT and even many years after the start of “That damn South Side station” WRAK was a very powerful force in the marketplace. WRAK went on the air around 1930 founded by Rudolf A. King (hence WRAK) and in the late 1940’s added a very powerful FM (now known as KISS FM) to the market with a signal that could be heard as far away as Canada. One of the early staff members was Harris Lipez who went on to be the General Manager and Part Owner of WBPZ in Lock Haven. In my early years of listening to the radio, from about 1952 on in Williamsport, the airwaves were graced with the likes of Ev (Rube) Rubendal, I think he was the morning man for over 30 years, Bud Berndt who went on to teach communications at Williamsport Area Community College, Foster Gaines who at last report was working in Texas. “Rube probably had the best news contacts of anyone I ever met, everybody knew him and liked him. This was back in the days when you wrote a lot of your own news while you were on the air. Rube and I often attended the same meetings and dinners and became friends it was not un common for me to stop at Rube’s house, about two blocks from WMPT on East Central Ave and have a glass of lemonade and talk radio. WRAK was at one time owned by the Williamsport Sun and I can remember hearing Rube talking to the cleaning person, a fine black man called “Brownie” on the air. The General Manager and majority stock holder in WRAK in the 1950’s to the 1970’s was J. Wright Mackey. He and several other bought the station from the Steinman Group of Lancaster who owned WGAL TV Channel 8. At one time WRAK had a permit to construct a TV station on Channel 36, for what ever reason it never happened and Steinmen left town, the frequency was assigned to Elmira N.Y, I worked at Channel 36 in the late 70‘s.. I remember listening to J. Wright Mackey at the Lowery Organ, he was quite an accomplished musician and had a daily show of organ music. I can well remember listening to N.B.C.’s popular weekend show Monitor what I consider to be the forerunner of modern talk radio. We young folks had to get older before the market surveys finally gave WMPT the edge in adult listener ship. WRAK is still on the air and is now owned by media giant Clear Channel Communications in Williamsport they own several other radio stations as well.
WWPA (1340 AM):
In my opinion WWPA probably had the absolute best talent of any radio station in Williamsport in the 1950’s even into the 1960’s. While WMPT had very exciting D.J.’s for the most part they were young and just starting out, while WWPA had some real heavy hitters in talent. WWPA went on the air about 1947 and was owned by Woodrow W. Ott. Woody was a real task master, his nephew Bob Ott and I were friends and Bob once told me that Woody had a radio in every room of his house and they were all on all the time. If he heard anything he didn’t like, or dead air he would be on the phone asking why. On air was John Archer, one of the best voices I have ever heard in the business. John, as much as any, was one of my early radio idols, my parents liked WWPA and I remember listening to it every morning while eating breakfast. I met John in 1959 in the middle of Rideau Lake, Ontario, Canada where his father-in-law Bill Winters owned a resort island. John and I remained friends for many years. He later went to Alcan Cable but still found time to voice spots for political candidates and for his church. Bill Duel started out at WLYC, I don’t really remember what happened to him, but I believe he just left the business, one of the smart ones! Gordon Thomas, one of the finest news voices I ever heard he went directly from WWPA to WIP in Philadelphia where he stayed for many years. Jim Stowe, a very talented sports man, left WWPA and went to Harrisburg and was a fixture at WHP for years. George Gedon, yes the same, George was a funeral director back then, but worked in radio, I always liked listening to George on the air, he had a very smooth delivery and a great knowledge of music. WWPA also had one of the best engineers around Carl Steinbacher, he worked on Hammond Organs and was a whiz at keeping WWPA’s signal sounding crystal clear. The last I knew WWPA was owned by Backyard Broadcasting owners of several other radio stations in Williamsport and elsewhere.
WLYC (1050 AM, 105.1 FM):
A lot of really good radio people got their start at WLYC courtesy of Victor Carlson the first General Manager and Vince Campana who gave me my start. WLYC was owned by Keliher Construction Company I think from the beginning. I always thought that John T. Keliher had the station as a tax write off and a place for his kids to work during summer vacation from college. As I said above Bill Duel started there, as did Foster Gaines, other notable people included Mike Sarlo who trained me, Art Kiernan who was on air and did sales and sometimes news, Paul Kelley on air, Bob Johnson who I replaced in 1965 and Nick Green (a professor at Lycoming College) who did the Classical Music show in the evening on WLYC FM. WLYC was the only day timer, meaning they could only be on the air from sunrise to sunset. In the highly competitive radio market, a factor that I am sure was very tough to overcome. Interestingly enough WLYC started as an FM only station in 1949, since there were very few FM radios around then they petitioned the FCC for an AM, citing the fact they could not make any money and were granted 1050Khz at frequency they shared with a New York City station. They also were the only AM with their tower on top of Bald Eagle Mountain and the AM could easily be heard in downtown Harrisburg. Vince Campana was also well known as a sports broadcaster and remained as the General Manager until the station was sold in 1971 to Alpha Broadcasting. In recent years WLYC has been sold many times and has gone dark often. WLYC FM is a part of the Backyard Broadcast group and became WILQ in 1973 during one of the times I worked there. After Alpha Broadcasting bailed out the station was owned by Kerby Confer and Paul Rotfuss, The Grit Publishing Company and by Paul Rotfuss alone.

Commercials, we'll be right back after this word from our sponsor

Commercials, now I am sure you are wondering why I added this to my look at the early days of WMPT and Williamsport Radio. Before WMPT radio commercials were pretty bland, what is called institutional advertising. Not too long after the Neat and Nifty Fourteen Fifty came into being, a company came to town wanting to sell local advertisers singing jingles, just like the big national advertisers, but written especially for the local people. What a great foot in the door for a station that, even though it had a large listening audience, was still thought of by the local businesses at “the Kids Station.”
The advertiser needed to commit to a long term contract, I believe it was a year and they got the jingle for either a very reasonable price, or in some cases free.
I wish I would have been working at the station in those days, I can just see all of them sitting around trying to come up with clever slogans to be sung. Here are some of my favorites:
“Mr. Sleep, Mr. Sleep it’s like sleeping on a private cloud of your own a custom built Lycoming Mattress, Just whistle for Rissell TV the house that service built, you’re aware at Carroll House they care, Phone 323-9488 for George H Ocker, and who can forget the most challenging one of all, for fresh floral fashion it’s Paul F. Glunk, think Glunk.” As I am writing this those tunes still run through my head, as many of those singing jingles survived well after my arrival in 1966 and many stayed in use till the Agnes flood of 1972 destroyed the master tapes.
Other notable early advertisers on WMPT included the movie theatres, Capitol, Rialto, Keystone (later known as the State), Central Music, we used to drive Francis Carducci crazy, J. P and M Sullivan, Lane’s Rexall Pharmacy, D.J. Vannucci Pharmacy, Montour Auto, Elery Nau Hardware, First National Banks of Montoursville, and South Williamport, Nippon Panel, Browns Pharmacy, Wallace and Perris Pharmacy, The Knit Nook, Hi-way Pizza (later known as Mr. Pizza) and of course Coca Cola. At times creating a commercial can be a real challenge, Steve George reminded me of a commercial (two voice) we did for Lisowski's Lawn Mowers in Montoursville. All the commercials for Snapper Lawn Mowers were written at the company headquarters in Georgia. One of the great features of the Snapper Hi-Vac was that is had a bag. The commercial copy read, "the Snapper Hi-Vac, it sucks the grass clippings up and blows them into the bag." Steve and I took over two hours to record that spot, and it ran for about 2 weeks. In later years I had the Lisowski account and got to know Walt Lisowski quite well, even later I met his sister and found out that Jim Tokarz from my high school class was his grandson.
It is amazing how many of those businesses, including WMPT are no longer around. Over the years I had the pleasure of writing a few unforgettable campaigns, including Smith Printing, and a great set of commercial for the Balls Mills Naval Academy, for the Sheraton Inn located on Montgomery Pike, that actually had a Sun-Gazette reporter driving around and around in Balls Mills looking for construction.
One of the classics I used for years in any talk I gave on radio advertising was for Holcomb’s Donuts that involved a couple of guys watching a drive in movie. One has a loud bag of snacks the other is chewing on a “quiet Holcombe’s Donut.” Dick Crownover and Mike Sullivan voice it and did a great job with the commercial. After it started airing Holcombe’s sold out of donuts in about 2 hours.
WMPT was always known for clever commercials and that in one way or another made it a successful station and created many business success stories.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

WMPT Radio The early staff and early memories

I am always afraid that I might leave someone out, so if you notice the name of a missing staff member from the early years, please add it in the comment section.
The staff of WMPT in those early days was quite unique, if you could paint, build a wall, or run wires you probably had a job with WMPT. Some of those early names, Mike Sullivan, famous for the Sully Soda ( cherry soda consuming 2 before sign on), Dick Crownover, (Mrs. Crownover's favorite son), Mike Steinhelper, Paul Rotfuss, Kerby Confer, they went on to become multiple station owners and highly respected in the broadcast industry, Bill Stutzman, Woody Langley, (who went on to become a TV producer) Louise (Weezy) McLaughlin, Connie Hurst, Fred Plankenhorn, and Hal McCulus. I am sure there are other from those early days who I missed, but after all that was some 48 years ago. The first person I met was Dick Crownover at the time he was the Disk Jockey for the "Coca Cola Hi Fi Club" (often referred to in error as "Night Train") a Friday night dance in Montoursville at the Fireman's Social Hall on N. Loyalsock Ave. As a young "teenie bopper" I attended the dance faithfully and got to know Dick and eventually was allowed to come up on stage and help with music, even doing some D.J. ing myself during his breaks! WOW!!! It was during this time that I also met Harry Seltzer, more on him later, Bill Stutzman, and Fred "FP on MPT" Plankenhorn. Of The early staff I knew Dick Crownover the best, as I attended as many "record hops" as I could such as the Saturday Afternoon Royal Crown Cola Dance at the Naval Reserve Center on Sheridan Street and once in a while I ventured into foreign territory to the "Original Night Train Hop" (Sponsored by Pepsi Cola) at First Ward Fire Company on Main Street in South Williamsport. (I wonder if I got a pass to go to Night Train because I lived in the Borough for a couple of years when I was very young and went to the old Central Grade School on Southern Ave at Bayard St.) One thing that stands out in my mind was some of the dances that were done in front of the old Hub Men's Clothing Store in Market Square. The D.J's would set up in the store window and half of the square would be filled with dancers. American Bandstand had nothing on Williamsport and WMPT!!! To be sure those were really great days in Williamsport Radio, with show names to catch our attention such as Up and At-em, Mid Morning Melodies, Music For My Lady, The Platter Party, Disk Jamboree, Music In Hi Fi, The NIGHT TRAIN, and The Waxworks. A quick story from those early days, when WMPT went on the air, they were viewed as the "Kids station", but young adults liked the sound as well. After all there was some really great music played then. I think that Coca Cola was one of the first sponsors, after the late Zender "Dick" Confair (Pepsi Cola Bottling) told Dave Castlebury that he would not advertise, because the station would be gone in 3 or 4 months. For many years when ever Mr. Confair would come to the station (he was a State Senator for many years) who ever would meet with him always made sure to buy him a coke! I hope you enjoyed this bit of history form the dark corners of my mind, it is funny, it is writing itself.

WMPT Radio the beginning

Hello to one and all, I started this blog because I fear that a great part of Williamsport, Pa radio history may disappear forever. If you have memories or comments please feel free to ad them.
My first association with WMPT came not long after they went on the air in 1957. The sound was new, the D.J.'s were young and the music was great! In those early days WMPT's studios were on the second floor of the South Williamsport Borough Hall at the corner of W. Southern Ave and Percy St. To say they were sparse would be an understatement. After climbing an endless set of stairs you entered the office area, the nickel (five cents) Coke machine ( a staple of WMPT) was on the left, straight ahead behind the counter was the control room and beyond that the announcing studio. The tower was located the left side at the end of East Central Ave, then just a dirt street through a corn field. WMPT was founded by Galen David Castlebury Jr. son of a well know Doctor in Williamsport. Legend has it that Dave hocked his wife's diamond ring to get the station started, however that in fact was NOT TRUE. The equipment was hardly first rate, an old Gates transmitter control board that was converted for audio use, two old Gates 16" turntables, and a old tape recorder ( a Voice of Music,) that set on a wooden folding chair. Ah but the sound, something never heard before in Williamsport, rock and roll!!!!!!!! In the next BLOG I'll talk about some of the very early WMPT "Good Guys" and "Good Gals" As Bill Byham would say, for now "That's 30."