Chuck Hoffman's Williamsportgate (part 2)

My Thanks to Chuck for his time in writing this addition to the history of Williamsport radio. It was during his time at WLYC/WILQ that WMPT was de-throned if only briefly as the king of Top 40 in the Market. The biggest problem was, as Chuck mentions, outdated programming policy and the wrong people in the wrong place. So now here is part 2 of Chuck Hoffman in Williamsport.


I sent Kelly a copy of the story of my radio career and he asked if he could post it on his blog. It was written for another venue so naturally the focus was not on my time in Pennsylvania. I've been asked to expand on my experiences in Williamsport so in Part Deux I will do just that:I arrived in Williamsport around Thanksgiving of 1972, having been hired as the Group Program Director of Alpha Broadcasting. It was headquartered in New York City's garment district and shared offices with corporate sibling,Alpha Computer Group. The principal owner, as I recall, was George Vajda. There may have been other stockholders but I was never privy to any of the information at the New York headquarters. Along with my duties of overseeing all of the programming for WLYC AM and WILQ FM in Williamsport, and WGGO in Salamanca, New York, I took over the morning board shift at Top 40 WLYC.” Following that was a one-houraudience-participation talk show that I also hosted, a remnant of the block programming that was still prevalent in smaller markets in those days.The other air personalities at that time were Harry Gahagan (nominally the program director of WLYC), Steve Migdon, Wendy Williams and Kelly Watts. OnBig Q Country (WILQ FM), were Lynn Bloom and George McKay, Big Q's PD. If memory serves, news was being handled by Ted Genevish and Henry Kirk. In those days, Big Q Country was only heard during the day because the FM was switched to Top 40 after WLYC's sunset signoff. I seem to recall that Wendy Williams had served as PD or group PD of Alpha for some period of time but resigned because he was not getting any backing from corporate. I should have seen that as a sign of things to come but didnot. More on that further down the page. I plodded onward, doing my board shift four days a week and making Fridaytrips to Salamanca to mentor the staff there. That was an interesting market. Salamanca is 70 miles from Buffalo and, of course, the Buffalo stations boom in. Because of that, WGGO - a daytimer - was not able toestablish any presence in its own market. The only solution was to blockprogram what the sales staff could sell. I perfunctorily did my dutiesthere but largely concentrated on WLYC and WILQ. As group PD, part of my responsibility was to devise and implement programming that would appeal to listeners and improve our ratings. At least, I believed that to be true. Henry Kirk and I devised a rudimentaryinvestigative news philosophy for WLYC and began to shake up some of the -up to then - unreported shenanigans of municipal government and localbusinesses.That got the community buzzing and some of it spilled over into my morningtalk show. On one occasion, a caller's remarks bordered on the slanderous and I had to use all of the skill and experience gained in two and a half years of handling talk shows in another market to diffuse the situation. But, as luck would have it, corporate heard about the flap and I was called on the carpet in Manhattan. I was told in no uncertain terms that it was not my place to make any changes to the station's programming. I, too, resigned as group PD and let it be known that I was available.That came to the attention of Lycoming County supervisor G. DavidCastlebury, the owner of rival WMPT, a full time Top 40 station in SouthWilliamsport. After a little more than a year, I was recruited away from Alpha and took over the programming duties at WMPT. First, however, Dave gave me the task of moving an entire production studio from one room to another and pulling a bundle of cables thru the attic to the patch panel in the control room. With that done, I had time to consider the task ahead of me. Morning drive was being handled by Ron Shobert, who - in all candor - justdid not fit the image that Dave and I wanted WMPT to project. Traffic clerkDolly Wilt was doing an insipid half-hour mid-morning homemaker show,probably left over from the era of block programming. High school senior Jim Sortman was doing the 6-midnight shift. He had a modicum of talent but, as frequently happens with the very young, he had a fragile ego and a world-sized self-image and wouldn't accept constructive criticism from me.The rest of the staff is a blank. I just have no recollection of them at all.The air sound was typical of a small-market rocker when I arrived so I implemented some playlist and format changes to soften the sound during"wife" time. I restricted what was the early years of psychedelic and heavy metal music to afternoon and evening hours when the audience was much more amenable to those sounds. I also made some subtle changes to the mix and placement of the station's considerable library of oldies.To update the sound during the morning, I eliminated Dolly's show and that prompted Shobert to walk out. That was a blessing for two reasons: 1) he didn't fit the new image, and 2) he was hired by WLYC and took his uninspiring personality there. At about the same time, Bob Evans (who had been working elsewhere in Pennsylvania) began visiting with Sortman, whom he apparently knew. I determined that he was available and had some moxie so I hired him to do the morning drive shift.There seemed to be no money for station jingles so I had to improvise. Gary Gears, with whom I had worked in Omaha, was then at WCFL in Chicago and agreed to voice some image tracks for a nominal fee. I don't know why they didn't pass the "Sortman test" but he voiced his displeasure at the "WMPT Plays Favorites" campaign. He loudly and constantly complained that "his audience" didn't like it. I tried to explain to him that a half-dozen of his high school buddies didn't comprise an audience and that I was striving for something bigger. The end game was in progress but I was not yet aware. When Dave hired me, Harry Seltzer, the general manager, apparently saw me as a threat. He made it a point to comment that my resume stood taller than his. I never deliberately gave him any reason to fear that I was undermining him. Conversely, he seemed to be undermining me. What I did not know until decades later is that Seltzer had been the program director of WMPT at one time and the changes I was making probably were superseding things he had put in place. It all came to a head one afternoon and I decided I was tired and had enough.I tried consulting for a short time but after being stiffed out of a fee by a station in Corning, NY, in early 1974, I turned my back on radio. And for ten years thereafter, I didn't listen, not even in the car.

Chuck Hoffman chimes in

Chuck Hoffman was the Group program director for Alpha Broadcasting, and worked out of Williamsport at WLYC/WILQ. I had the pleasure of working with him for over a year. In addition to his programming duties Chuck did morning drive on WLYC AM and the talk show. Chuck recently found this blog and send me some information about his time in radio and gave me permission to share it with you! So now heeeeeere's Chuck!

My career in radio broadcasting should not have begun as it did. Unlike the vast majority of aspiring disk jockeys and newsmen, I started at KOIL, the most popular station in Omaha,then the 44th largest radio market in the country. Most radio beginners labor for months - or even years - at small stations in obscure markets, honing their craft and developing the voice techniques that mark them as professionals. In my case, however, there must have been a serendipitous alignment of the planets.While a member of the US Air Force, I had the good fortune to have Bruce Haines as a friend and roommate. Some of you may remember Bruce. He worked for years under the name of David Haines in the New York City and Baltimore markets before his untimely death in 2005.Bruce and I had been stationed together along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.Before joining the military, he was an announcer at WMYR in Ft. Myers, Florida. During one of the hurricanes that regularly batter the Gulf Coast region, I recall him telephoning live news updates to WMYR. After technical training, Bruce and I were reassigned to Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha and worked together for a couple years as computer technicians in the SAC Headquarters underground command post.While still in the Air Force, Bruce secured a part-time job as a weekend newsman at KOIL. As my discharge date approached, he told me I had a good radio voice and suggested that I meet with his boss, news director BobBenson (who retired a few years ago after a long stint as vice president ofABC News Radio). I did as Bruce suggested and was hired, to drive a truck. In the mid-1960s, KOIL had a Dodge van that had a sign with moving letters on its top called the Visual News Cruiser. Mobile reporter LJ Lancer and I split the duties ofparking it in highly visible locations in and around the Omaha area. Itspurpose, of course, was to prompt motorists to tune in to KOIL.When Election Day, 1966, neared, Benson apparently noticed my "pipes" and gave me a mobile news assignment covering polling places in Omaha in the BigRed mobile unit. I was to report on the number of voters at each of myassigned stops. I must have done fairly well because that led to further mobile news assignments and weekend studio news shifts. At about the same time, Star Stations, then the parent company of KOIL, was looking for someone with a first class radiotelephone license to be the overnight babysitter of the transmitter of KISN, the Star Stations outlet inPortland, Oregon. Since I had been trained in electronics in the Air Force,Mike McCormick (KOIL's program director) asked if I thought I could up grade my license. I told him I probably could. To keep me employed while I studied to secure the "first phone" ticket, McCormick created an overnight studio news shift, to which I was assigned.Morning "cop shop" beats along with other mobile news assignments rounded out full time hours.But, as often happens, something unforeseen occurred. Just before Christmas of 1966, Jim Hunter (Hal Widsten) and I were cruising Omaha in the Big Redmobile unit and stopped to view the KOIL Carol Tree, which was set up onNorth 30th Street in the parking lot of a furniture store. Parked next to us were two girls in a new Chevelle Malibu and we struck up a conversation.One thing led to another and I no longer wished to move to Portland. I have now been married to the driver of that Chevelle for over 35 years.That became a bone of contention over which KOIL and I parted ways in the spring of 1967. I taught electronics at the Radio Engineering Institute in Omaha for about six months and then landed a news reporter job at KRCB inneighboring Council Bluffs. After a few weeks, I also began doing board shifts and learned how to be a disk jockey. At that time, KRCB was a 1000 watt daytimer that played anawful mix of swing, big band and middle-of-the-road standards sprinkled with a few light contemporary hits. New owner Jim Conroy finally was convinced that Top 40 was the way to go and we made the format switch. Not since KOWH abandoned Top 40 a few years earlier had KOIL experienced any competition for its audience in the Omaha market. Needless to say, we got their attention. A short time later, KRCB's new 100,000 watt FM went on the air and we simulcast until the AM's sunset signoff, the FM continuing(officially) until midnight. It was a young consultant by the name of CJ Jones who helped convince Conroy to switch formats and Jones implemented the Boss Jock sound along with theBig 15-6 playlist. Most of the KRCB personalities adopted or were given new names. I acquired a new first initial and became J. Charles Hoffman, which was shortened to Jay Charles when I took over the morning drive board shift a few months later. In early 1969, KRCB's program director, Buddy Scott (Mike Bothell), was recruited by KOIL. They thought they were performing a surgical kill but, no, KRCB continued its assault on ratings in the Omaha market. I don't know if we ever beat KOIL in any day part but we sure had fun, the competition was fierce and I learned a great deal in a short period of time. Around Christmas of 1969, I moved on to KLWW in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and a few months after that became the program director of Top 40 WSJM in St.Joseph, Michigan. I stayed for two and a half years and delivered a Pulsebook showing improvement from fourth in our own market to first in 18-49's in all day parts. That put us ahead of Chicago giants WLS and WCFL, which were just 55 miles across the lake and - up to then - had badly beaten WSJM's ratings. I attribute a great deal of the success I achieved to the things I learned from McCormick, Jones, et al, at KOIL and KRCB. From Michigan, I went to Pennsylvania, where I served as the group program director of Alpha Broadcasting, which owned WLYC AM and WILQ FM inWilliamsport, and WGGO in Salamanca, New York. Even though it was a daytimer, WLYC was the dominant rocker in the Williamsport area and my tenure solidified its status. The following year, having been recruited by the owner, I went "across the street" to fulltime WMPT in South Williamsport - the other Top 40 outlet -which had been laboring under less than competent management and programming direction. I made the necessary format and personnel changes, tightened upthe air sound, implemented a revised playlist and knocked off WLYC. But the general manager - who had formerly been the program director - took umbrageat the things I was trying to accomplish and in early 1974 I realized that I was exhausted and decided to leave the world of radio behind. The career that began so remarkably ended rather inauspiciously - a victim of broadcasting's incredible egos. I went on to a successful twenty-five year career in software engineering and high tech consulting in Silicon Valley and recently retired. I'm now attempting something of a broadcasting comeback. I've been a part time video news stringer for San Francisco and Oakland television stations for the last couple years and I'm looking toward full time TV news writing and producing. On air? Not me. Not anymore

The Flood Waters Came and Went

A lot of former radio people from Williamsport have found this BLOG by accident, believe me I am glad you did! Thanks for your input and contributions.

And now, as Paul Harvey would say, "The rest of the story."

Agnes, Was No Lady!

If I remember somewhere around June 20, 1972 the rains came to Williamsport in the form of what was left of Hurricane Agnes. Now rain is nothing new to Pennsylvania and Williamsport, many severe floods over the years had struck including the "Great Flood of 1936" remembered by many as the worst ever! So when heavy rains were forecast from Agnes, nothing more than a few eyebrows raised at WMPT, after all, urban legend was that cows stood on the little knoll where the station was built during the '36 flood and didn't get wet, so surely this little storm would not threaten "The Mighty 1450." I might point out that WMPT was located outside the dike system that protected South WIlliamsport.

n 1972 WMPT was the "Powerhouse" of radio broadcasting, holding off challenges by WLYC, under the new ownership of Alpha Broadcasting as well as changes at WWPA, and even staid old WRAK was picking up steam. At the time I was working the all night show, called oddly enough "The Watts Watch." It was the first, and at the time the only 24 hour station in Williamsport, I must say that show was one of the more interesting things I have ever done. There is a whole strange yet wonderful class of people who belonged to "The Land Of The Living Dead." Mrs. Louise Swartz, who was the overnight switchboard operator at Williamsport Hospital, named it that! The WMPT lineup at the time included long time veterans Ron Shobert, and Harry Seltzer, Myself, Caesar Mattioli, Jon Paul, Bill Byham, Clyde Thompson, Dolly Wilt, Steve George, and David Lee (Mosteller). We had done away with block programming and had adopted a top 40 AC format with the all night show being easy listening contemporary, you couldn't beat the sound. Dave was opening his pocketbook, we had new jingles, he was upgrading equipment (new transmitter, audio processor, etc) and Caesar was doing a great job of getting us music service.

The day that the rains began in earnest, I had a first date with a girl I had met when she and a couple of mutual acquaintances stopped into the station to pick up a prize. Anyway, she was going on vacation at the "Jersey Shore" with her folks and at lunch that day we made plans to get together again after she came back, as I too was headed out of town to Indianapolis to visit an old friend. I think it was that day WMPT received a brand new CBS Volumax Audio Processor, at the time it was "THE THING" to make your signal really HOT, that in conjunction with the new CCA transmitter and new ground system would really improve our signal. Anyway, Dave and I mounted it in the control room equipment rack planning to hook it up when I got back from my time away. It never was on the air before it had a complete factory rebuild.

At the time of the flood I lived with my parents along the Loyalsock Creek in Barbours. The land was actually "creekfront" but the house was some 75' above "The Sock" so no flood waters ever reached the house, although there was damage in the cellar to the furnace, and water pump from groud water. As I said I was woking the all night shift at WMPT and I remember I went home looking at the creek at "Slabtown" and Shore Acres, Best Beach and other places thinking "Wow that is really high." Normally I would have stopped at Bud and Betty Bells' Airport Restaurant for breakfast, but that day I chose to go home and get some sleep as I had been up early the day before for my lunch date. Anyway, I was sound asleep when my mother knocked on my door, sometime about noon and told me the Plunketts Creek Fire Dept. was being called out to evacuate people along the creek. I was a member there and at First Ward in South Williamsport and my Father was Asst. Chief at P.C.F.D. so it was only natural for me to get up. As I drove over the old Barbours Bridge the water was higher than I had ever seen it, there was water in the roadway at the end of the bridge. As I looked around I saw Plunketts Creek Engine 25 in front of Hank Borowski's General Store. So I stopped to see what was up. They were "at draft" in the cellar and trying to move his freezers out. Before long the water was rising so fast that it was decided to abandon that task as we might lose the only pumper the department had. Well to make a long story even longer I spent the next 4 days with P.C.F.D. and our firehouse became the emergency center for the area. We were fortunate that the Ladies auxiliary had purchased a generator for the department just the week before and that kept some lights, the base radio, freezers, and coffee pot going. We were also fortunate to have L.P. gas stoves in the kitchen so with the food we got from Hank's we fed fire fighters and residents. It was during that time, while the phones were still working that I learned that the staff was ready to abandon WMPT. We actually had phones for a while and I filed reports with WRAK.
Fast forward to June 25 or so, I took and ambulance call into WIlliamsport so I found a way to get from Barbours to town. While I was in town I called Caesar Mattioli and asked if I could crash at hisapartment. He told me about the station and how he Steve George, Bill Byham and Jon Paul had to wade through deep water to get out. He didn't know how much water the station had received but said before they left they set stuff on top of desks and the office counter. The next morning the water was down enough for all of us to go to the station and assess the damage. I remember after our initial inspection of the station and finding the water had just about made the ceiling we were all standing in the parking lot talking. I looked at Dave and said , "ya' know if cows stood here in '36, they were mighty damn tall ones." We then set about the task of moving stuff out of the station to the sunny parking lot hosing it out and using case after case of Dow Bathroom Cleaner on all the electrical stuff.

As luck would have it, I had some of the remote gear, a Shure mixer, a portable turntable, and a couple of mics from the sports kit in my car, so as an experiment we set them up jumpered the FM control line to get it back on the air, and started to play some music late that afternoon. Dave said, "I wonder if anyone is listening, why don't you give the phone number and ask for requests." SO I did, and YES I got some, we had one phone set up, one that was in Dave's second floor office and we were surprised. By the next afternoon, with the help of Glenn Sherman from WRAK, Carl Steinbacher from WWPA, and Warren "Lommie" Lomison from Lomison Sound (he had a music service way before Muzak) we had the Gates Dualux working on one channel, which was ok, The old Gates 16" turntables, one cart machine, and the CCA AM transmitter all in operation, well sort of! When we got into the CCA Transmitter we found that the modulation transformer was shorted out, BUT someone got the bright idea that if we insulated it from ground it might just work! What did we have to lose? Now what can we use? AH HA! old vinyl L.P.'s, we had to pry the record library apart with a fire department portapower so most of albums that were on the outside were damaged. It worked! Dave figured that we could only get about 110 watts at high power out of a 1 KW transmitter, BUT the ground system was so wet, we had damn near as strong a signal as we did before the flood at 1KW. We set up operations in the old lounge/production studio and gradually got back to normal? Since for the most part we had no production facilities, we either dubbed stuff while we were on the air, when we got the second channel of "the board" working, or did production after signoff. We started back on the air with regular programming within 5 days of when we first came back in the building. Cables across the floor giving way to my now famous line, "if it is temporary for more than 3 weeks, it is considered permanent! During that time we actually did two remotes, 3 days from the Lycoming County Fair, and I did a remote from Tri-State Discount Center. That was probably the last time I saw ALL the staff really pull together as we had a goal, sound as good as possible, and make sure the listeners didn't turn their dials to the left!

One bad thing we found, was that the cinderblock walls held water for some time, and it was not un-common to find a stream coming out from under the wall. Oh then there was the fish! The back half of the property was quite low and held a pond for some time. Yes, people came in to fish but the pond dried up before they got them all, so, we wound up with lots of dead fish. Eventually Lyle Keeler, Fire Chief of Independent Station 9, used them in his garden that he had just outside of the ground radial system! Lots of good stuff to eat that year!

I stayed for two or three months after the Agnes flood, but by then I noticed that WLYC was really putting a move on in the market. J.T. Kelliher had sold to a company called Alpha Broadcasting, who owned WGGO in Salamenca, NY and also was a computer services company. I applied and was hired part time and shortly there after I started the second all night in Williamsport on WILQ (WLYC FM). So, for a brief period of time, once again I was the ONLY all night voice from WIlliamsport.

The next time, my life and times and the characters I met at 1050 LYC and Q105, it was a lot of fun! (at times)

More from WWPA from Eric Mease

Below is a posting from ERIC Mease antoher escapee from the Williasmport, Pa radio market, Eric worked with Vince Sweeney at WWPA. He was kind enough to share some details of his life and times at "The Twin." Thanks Eric
I started at WWPA in August of 1974 while a sophomore at Williamsport Area Community College which recently morphed into Penn College. I did weekend gigs, Saturday night and Sunday afternoons on "Quality Radio for Williamsport, WWPA." Vince notes that he succeeded Rob Reynolds. I like to point out that he succeeded me, as I filled in on afternoon drive for a couple of weeks until Vince arrived from the Scranton area. And God was I terrible! My worst snafu was the daily 5 p.m. Local/CBS newscast. The network ran ten minutes of news at 5 o’clock which was recorded at WWPA and played back at 5:15. The DJ was supposed to record the CBS cast and do a local live newscast at 5. Both the CBS report and the local report were sponsored. Too many times, in my rush to put the newscast together while doing a DJ show, I would forget to start the CBS tape. Frank Barber, the PD, was a little upset, but he never showed it to me very much. The sales manager, Phil Lane, was not as subdued... and understandably so. Once Vince arrived, I went back to my weekend gig while I continued to go to school. In the fall of 1975 I went away to Penn State, leaving my radio career on hold. I returned in the summer of '76 as a reporter, weekend DJ, and anything else I was asked to do. At some point, Frank Barber left to be PR director at Williamsport Hospital and Ken Sawyer became PD in addition to his morning man duties. Many a time the other jocks talked about pushing Vince into the morning slot. He and Ken never took the bait. I still think he would have been perfect for the job. In the summer of 1976 Ken asked me to become the News Director, full time, but I turned him down, as I wanted to finish my senior year at Penn State. Upon graduation in May of 1977, Ken renewed his offer and I accepted. I was news director from 1977 until I left in the summer of 1979 for Wilmington, Delaware. Here is one of many side bars to the Government place fire story. When the Market Street facilities opened, the newsroom had no recording or dubbing equipment. All of the stories I produced I had to do at the charbroiled Government Place studios which were kept up and more or less running until the Market Street equipment was installed. I remember I had to do all of my phone calling, interviewing, tape dubbing, and story writing at Government Place then literally run over to Market Street for the noon news block. If a call came in at Market Street, I'd have to tell the caller I'd call them right back from Government Place and I'd run over there, do the story, and run back to Market Street. If this sounds complicated, it was worse in real life... but lots of fun, now as I look back on it. Working with Ken, Vince, Gary and Jack Frost had their moments. Vince is right, WWPA-The Twin, never quite made it in the Williamsport ratings wars... even though we had some tremendous talent. The group of us spent many an evening talking about how we would run the station if it was ours. Maybe what we discussed would have worked. We'll never know. Radio was evolving then, maybe more so than it is now. But, like I said, it was a lot of fun. Eric Mease

Vince Says! From Vince Sweeney WBRE 28

Recently I received a wonderful e mail from Vince Sweeney from WBRE TV 28 in Wiles-Barre. Vince and I got to know each other back in the 1970's when he worked at WWPA in Williamsport. In the e mail he shared a lot of his memories of "Quality Radio-WWPA" also known in later years as "The Twin". It is with his kind permission that I share his thoughts with you!
Thanks again Vince!

I'd come in the Fall of '74 to replace Bob Reynolds, who, as you know, eventually ended up making a career for himself at WNEP-TV. Back then, WWPA was up on the second floor along Government Place, and it was a dump. It had the look and the feel of a radio station as you'd imagine it looked and felt on the day the bells went off announcing the attack on Pearl Harbor. And it sounded equally as dumpy, despite the never-ending efforts of Frank Barber, who was PD at the time. Frank and I swap an occasional e-mail, he's still in radio, working in Tiffin, Ohio. Great guy, always thought the world of Frank. From a quality standpoint, WWPA sounded extraordinary, thanks to Carl, but programming-wise, forget it. In fact, you might remember this, the station billed itself as Quality Radio-WWPA.

It was astounding to see Woody Ott's name in print on your blog. By the time I got there, Woody's health was in serious decline, the place was essentially being run by two of his surrogates, Phil Lane and Cecelia Shick. WWPA was heavily block-programmed at the time, with a ton of superfluous CBS stuff, and an equal amount of local crud that Phil Lane had managed to sell. It was classic "program what you sell," rather than "sell what you program."

Thinking back on it, I have no problem remembering how depressing it was to be at WWPA, at least for the first few months, especially after realizing that there were some "real" radio stations in town, namely WMPT and WLYC. I so wished I'd managed to land a job at WMPT. Instead, there I was in a dingy antiquated studio, playing drab music that's hard to describe. We were JACK, long before JACK was invented. WWPA had an enormous LP library, and we could play just about anything we damned well pleased, and that is pretty much what I did. Interspersed with obscure album cuts, you'd also hear current singles, which Frank Barber was bound and determined to get on the air one way or the other. Frank just would not give up in trying to make some sense of the sound of the station, and to some extent, he succeeded.

An example of the craziness at the time would be Ken Sawyer. Kenny did mornings, 5:30-9:30. At 9:30 it was time for Here's Elaine, starring Elaine Rauff, a local woman who somehow they'd managed to put on the air for a half hour each morning. Elaine was a lovely, lovely woman, but just how she ended up doing a radio show was a complete mystery. Then at 10:00, it was back to Ken Sawyer, who'd do a talk show until noon. If that talk show had a name, it beats me completely, I have no recollection that it did. The delay was achieved by recording the show on one Ampex, but winding the tape down and playing it back on the Ampex below it, if you can get that image. Frank was on noon to 2:00, then it was me from 2:00 'till 6:00. But I wasn't quite finished yet, no sir. I'd come on back at 6:15 and read a ten minute news cast, THEN I could go home. As was standard, we all worked a six day week. Oh, they paid me $140 per week, which for Williamsport wasn't half bad at all. And full BC/BS, along with hefty Christmas bonuses, cash bonuses.

Everything changed when Woody died in, I believe, late '75. His son Bill, probably to his never ending regret, left a big job with NCR in Dayton, Ohio, and came back to run the station. Bill had a vision, and he immediately set out to make it a reality. Quickly, he morphed the place into a full-service AC, including a name change to Twin-W Radio, The Twin as it came to be known. (Although some would challenge me on this claim, I am the one who came up with the name The Twin.) In the middle of drawing up plans for a relocation over to Market Street, the place burned on a Saturday night. More accurately, the floor below burned, the station suffered mostly smoke and water damage. That damage chased the staff out of Government Place and over to Genetti's until the new studios/offices were finished high atop Market Square, a name we tried to force on listeners, but it never did catch on at all. No one wanted to call the corner of Market and Third, Market Square. While the office staff had split, we continued to broadcast from The Ruins, as we wasted no time in nicknaming the place. An already dumpy building had been made even dumpier, and the air-staff all went to work there every day for what had to be six months. By that time, two other names had joined the line-up, one of which is likewise synonomous with Williamsport radio, Gary Chrisman. The other guy, Jack Frost(Paul Mowery), did evenings, and sad to say, I doubt most folks would have even the faintest memory of him.

We then made the move over to Market. What a gorgeous facility it was. So much so that Broadcast Management and Engineering magazine made The Twin their Station of The Month at one point, a copy of which I have somewhere. We were all tickled by that.

For all his vision, and for all the hard work by a lot of people, maybe even me, The Twin never got the recognition it deserved. Within the business, yes, it did achieve a bit of a name for itself as being a great little radio station. But in terms of audience, nah, it just never happened, at least not while I was there, which was until late 1978.

Goodbye My Friend

This past Friday morning, Feb 10, 2006 Don Holcombe host of KMOG radios Rim Country Forum passed away at age 59. Since I have been at KMOG Don and I became friends, he won my admiration for his courage in the face of severe medical problems. Don was a highly gifted artist and for many years was in residence at the Grand Canyon where his work gained the attention of scores of people including Paul Harvey, who purchased several of Don's works for his two homes, Chicago and Phoenix, and several other items Don created to give as gifts. Diabetes caused Don to lose his sight until becoming legally blind. Many other things happened to Don's health along the way, but he kept on going hosting the Forum for over 9 years.
Don and I would have a running battle on the air about anything, but it was all in fun, with each of us trying to best the other. Being the "newbie" at the station was tough, but having Don come in to "help" me along made my settling in that much easier. Along with News Director Dan Haapala we formed "Dufas Cubed" as one of the listeners named us. Our love of trivia and bad jokes and music, did I mention Don was a great singer and a founding member of The Beeliner's Barbershop group? Anyway, the mornings on KMOG were a lot of fun, probably the most fun I have ever had in radio.

Don, my friend, I will miss you, your humor, no matter how bad you were feeling, your bad jokes, trying to beat you at calling a "key change" in a song, and trying to stump each other with trivia. Goodbye buddy, you had an impact on everyone you touched with your life, including this old DJ.