Head South Part 3, The Final Chapter

My role at WMPT, as I mentioned before was pretty much as "catch all" position. I did Sales, the Public Affairs show, called "In-Sight", wrote commercials, did production, and finally after Bob Evans decided I didn't "totally suck" on the air, did some fill in airshifts, and TONS of remotes!

If I had to pick a time in Williamsport Radio History that was exciting, this would be one of them, WLYC or course was under different ownership, WWPA came out of the "dark ages" programming wise, and WMPT was really promoting. The market was hot for radio and my fellow staff at WMPT was looked upon as one of the best, even by some of the competition. Vince Sweeney who was at WWPA has commented many times how he wished he would have been a part of it all in South Williamsport.

The biggest downside of that era, was a pretty steady staff turnover. Greg Isadore left, as did Bob Jackson, Jim Sortman, and quite a few sales people. In either late 1975 or early 1976 we hired Cliff Horton (Cliff Edwards on the air) to the staff. He and I clicked, and did many remotes together including the now famous Corvette Club Remote on VERY HOT summers day at John Powell Chevrolet. Notice the words "VERY HOT", now Cliff and I were in the air-conditioned show room, so we were nice and cool, but being a "VERY HOT" day the female attendees of the show were in short, short shorts, and halter tops! To say the whole event was very distracting would be a classic understatement. Our job was to promote the Corvette show, and there was a great crowd, well over 100 cars to view, I remember Cliff saying, "well Kel, there are a lot of classy chassis here today." My reply, "sure are Cliff, and the cars aren't bad either!" that was the end of it, we were both pretty worthless the rest of the remote. One reason we had hired Cliff is he came from Canton, Pa, and Dave and I were planning on building a station there, we felt Cliff would be a natural add to that staff. As it turns out, he didn't want to go to Canton but was a valuable part of the WMPT staff later leaving to replace Bud Berndt at W.A.C.C. as a broadcasting instructor.

Other staff during this time included Sue Andrews, who was a winner in our "Guest Disk Jockey" Promotion, along with Steve George, who came back with me to the "South Side", Pete Brown, Bob Ramsey in sales, and Glenaire Snyder in the office. It was also during this time that a group of young people started "the Citizen's Press" a weekly newspaper and daily radio news feed, unfortunately it didn't last, possibly because of their high staff turnover and being a bit ahead of their time. If I rememebr correctly they furnished news feeds to both WMPT and WRAK something that was totally unhead of in those days. Also during this time Dave and I hired the services of Paul Douglas who was a student in meteorology at Penn State in the class of Dr. Joel Meyers the founder of Accu-Weather. Paul came to us and I remember Dave saying something to the effect of "well, let's have you do forecasts for a week and see how good you are." I remember that Paul accurately predicted a "dandy" snowstorm when everybody else missed it. The biggest hitch in having Paul was we could not call him a Meteorologist, seems when we started to use that term, Dr. Joel and WLYC, Accu-Weather's station in Billtown, strongarmed Paul and to save him, changed how we referred to him on air to Weather Forecaster. Eventually Paul wound up at WNEP TV 16 in Wilkes-Barre, and then on to the Satellite News Channel during it's period of operation.

During this time, WMPT had its 20th birthday, Gary, Cliff and I spent a lot of time putting together a pretty good promotional package, if I remember we gave away 20 prizes a day for 20 days, a lot of fun and a good audience builder. WMPT through this period was #1 in the Professional Research Surveys in age 18 plus, something that did not set too well with the folks at 4th and Pine in Williamsport, in part because each time the Arbitron would come out we would counter the limited research of that survey with a comprehensive market survey.

Part of WMPT's community participation was participation in the Boy Scout Explorer Program with Post 99.3. At one point we had upwards of 15 young men and women in the program with Bob Evans as the Leader and help from myself and others on the staff. The post had a show on the air each Sunday night and were schooled in broadcast operations including how to obtain their F.C.C. license, required in those days.. A couple of the people, Nancy Faye (Place), and Mike Doyne went on to work in the media. One interesting sidelight from this era, Dave had a firm policy that did not allow voices from other stations to be on any of our commercials. That was pretty much the policy in all the market, I do rememebr that I was on WRAK and WWPA with commercials for the First Ward Fire Company Carnival. I guess they were treated differently since it was a non profit organization. During that time also there were a few free lance people around such as former WWPA Personality John Archer. John did commercials for a political party and once in a while for some other people. I never minded having John's voice on the air as he was one of my early radio heros.

In 1976 Dave and I announced plans to build another radio station, a new FM in Canton, Pa. my home town. I will look at that station in detail in a future entry.

I think that this time in South Williamsport was my most productive time working for Dave, at times a lot of fun, exciting, and frustrating. I often think fondly of the good days I spent at WMPT and being a part of Williamsport's Radio History.

Head South part 2

When I returned to WMPT in 1975, there had been a lot of improvements equipment wise. Two new consoles, one in the Master Control and one in Production, new audio processing, new turn tables, new reel to reel machines, and the control room had moved. The on air sound was pretty solid with Bob Evans, Program Director and Morning Personality, Bob came to WMPT from WSBA Susquehanna Broadcasting in York. He had a warm easy going charm that really had the market solid in the mornings. I think Bob was the first one ever in morning drive to beat Rube and WRAK in that time slot. Mid days were handled by Greg Isadore. I don't really know a lot about Greg, except to say he was good on the air and a nice guy. If I remember correctly Johnny Knight (Crawford) was doing Afternoon Drive at the time. Johnny was solid on the air, but loved to do engineering, so he did that as well. Evenings had Tom Turner a young man from Loyalsock Township, lots of raw talent and energy. Overnights was Glen Watkins, what he lacked in experience he made up for in energy on the air. Part timers included Mona Patt,Jim Sortman (who later became a District Justice) Dave Wollett, Jackie Robinson, (not the baseball player) and Al Hoover. Al's show "The Hall Of Fame" was what I consider to be the benchmark for oldies shows of that period in small market radio, it was on Saturday Night, and I often stopped in to "Help him" do his show. Other staff included Bob Jackson, sales and fill in on air, Gary Strausser also in sales, and the best sports staff with Bill Byham, Mike Fogarty, and Scott Lowery. In those days WMPT carried Montoursville and South Williamsport Football and Basketball, Lycoming College Football, Williamsport High School Basketball, and of course the Little League World Series. Additionally we carried Little League action when one of the area teams got to playoff level. It was not uncommon to have one game on 1450 Am, one of 99.3 FM and be taping another, with three play by play teams, I was with Bill most times, we really had the market covered for sports and it was a money maker for the station and GREAT P.R.

Head South Young Man

Hi again, I probably will write this in a few different parts as there is a lot of history to talk about at WMPT from 1975 to 1979. After a big mistake in working at WLYC/WILQ I took some time and worked for a friend of mine selling of all things cut flowers, plants, and floral supplies, wholesale, in a large part of Central Pa. I must admit is was at times a nice job, I covered a lot of ground every week. Well then came the recession of 1975 and the floral industry dried up, so I was laid off. As luck would have it, I ran into Dave Castlebury on the street one day, and told him I was looking and explained my situation. Dave asked me if I would be interested in a short term position, maybe 3 or 4 months doing license renewal for him. In those days the F.C.C. license had to be renewed every 3 years, and the process was quite exhaustive, surveys, and tons of exhibits that the station was serving the "community interest." Well anyway, I took him up, as he was offering a steady pay check, at least for a few months, and the hours were good, and a lot of the work I could do at home and only come into the station after hours to use the copier. As I progressed along in the project I soon found that WMPT was adrift. No one was really at the helm, and while the air sound was decent, with Bob Edwards as the P.D. and a good staff on the air, sales were slumping and critical items were not being attended to. I should point out that after Chuck Hoffman left and Harry Seltzer left, Bob was not given the authority to do a lot. Well to make a long story even longer, after I finished the license application and follow up corrections and additions, Dave asked me if I would be interested in staying on and "helping out." I was given the title of Public Affairs Director. That job involved producing a 30 minute weekly informational show as well as coordinating the station "public file" and other public service programming. Behind the scenes I was looking at all area's of the operation, sales, expenses, facilities, etc. It was quite a job, and at first Bob Evans was, I think, figuring I was out to get him. After a time, he saw what I was up to and we became allies and worked hard in promotion of the station. I had a good track to Dave and Bob knew it so we all benefited. The biggest problems I saw were sales and expenses. I found things like lease program lines that were never used the station was paying for, no one followed up on collections, etc. On the sales side was Bob Jackson and Gary Strausser, I had worked with Bob before and knew Gary for a long time. Both were decent sales people but not really motivated. Well as I looked over the inactive accounts, I decided to take a shot at some of them as I had serviced many of them before. The result, I took a cold list, and with some additions turned it into the hot list on the station. One mistake I felt Dave always made was the sales staff was on salary, no commission. While I never could change that per say, I did get bonus deals for the staff in the form of dinners, clothes, and other stuff that the station traded out. It was a hit, and along the way I added another sales person to the staff. One thing we did was to use the stations two way radio system to a real advantage. Each person had a two way in their car, so we could instantly handle sales calls, breaking news, etc. We even covered the arrival of the Freedom Train with Dave following the progress from the air in his Cessna 150 from Bellefonte to Williamsport. Using the two way radios was a real advantage to sales as well. One day Jack Lowery (Dodge) called in from Jersey Shore to talk to Gary, now I knew Gary was in the area, but was not scheduled to see him that day, well I called Gary on the radio and he was at Jack Lowery's doorstep in less than 5 minutes. Jack was impressed to say the least! More to come soon, I promise!!