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 The biggest problem was, as Chuck mentions, outdated programming policy and the wrong people in the wrong place.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.