WKAD continued

Now that the station, equipment wise was coming together, we needed a staff. To accomplish this I advertised in the "trades", Broadcasting Magazine, and took any applications we had in house at WMPT. I can remember talking to the late Floyd Avery at a little restaurant called "Our House" just south of Canton. Floyd had a keen interest in the station and the fact that Dave and I usually met there for breakfast on Saturday mornings he was pretty much in the fold. Well anyway, I decided that if Floyd did not mind, I would conduct interviews in his back dining area. He felt that would work since mid days he was not that busy. The advertisements in Broadcasting were quite successful and a large pool of potential employees were gathered. I, of course can not remember all I interviewed but, I do remember the first employees. The first one hired was a young lady named Vicki Metz from the N.Y.C. area. She was a graduate of Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Broadcasting and looking for her first job. As a side note, I found out as the first day on the air approached that she had never been on the air, I still to this day wonder how anyone who had a degree in broadcasting could accomplish that without any air experience. Next up was Ted Saul. I had worked with Ted at WILQ in 1973 so I knew he was very talented and I hired him for sales. Well because we were still a ways from air, Dave decided to put him on at WMPT, and like in the case of Cliff Horton, I lost another good employee. But anyway, Ted did contribute in the actual construction of the WKAD studios, and helped me in the hiring of several employees. Next hired was Dave Weeks, who was a student at Mansfield University in broadcasting. He actually had on air experience at WNTE the college's FM station. Dave was hired for evenings, and later would move over to mornings, and eventually follow me to WENY in Elmira. Next hired was a young man named Scott Deschane, I don't remember a lot about him, he was not with us a very long time. Other people on the original staff were Stu Streeter, the head of the AV Department at Canton Area Schools. I had known Stu for a number of years and he was looking to augment his income. With his connections I tapped him for news and to do an oldies show on Sunday night. Todd Ulrich was a local Canton lad, who also was in school for broadcast journalism, I hired him for weekends and vacation schedules. Patty Stroble had been a friend of mine back in my WILQ/WLYC days, she was also attending Mansfield and was hired as a part timer. Additionally local high school student Brian Greenough, and WMPT's Nancy Fay who had been in the Explorer program at WMPT was hired to do fill in when she was not doing the same at WMPT. Now that brought us to sales, I got the idea to hire local lady Anne Preston for sales and to do news in the Towanda area. Anne had worked many years earlier at WENY in Elmira, and her family were long time friends of my family. Sometime not long after we went on the air Rob Dee (aka Rob French) joined the staff. Sheila Bellows was hired to be my traffic and billing staff, a job she never actually did, as I moved her over to sales. Dave Johnson was our Chief Engineer, this was double duty for him as he was WMPT's Chief as well. As for me, I was the Station Manager, the Morning Drive Personality, did the logs, billing, P.R. some sales, and just about any other thing you could think of. As you can see it was quite a line up, some experience and a lot of raw untested talent.

Well the stage is set, with the help of a lot of people. Vic Michales, former owner of WMLP Milton, Pa did the tower work, the guy wire layout, supervising the raising of the tower, and installing the antenna and feed line. Larry Reinhart of Canton Telephone Company, personally supervised the installation of the leased broadcast quality telephone lines to the tower. Larry said when I ordered the lines, "well we've never done them before, but that's not a problem." The effort to get the station on the air could not have been accomplished without people like our local contractors. People like S.E. Williams Redi Mix Cement for the tower base and guy anchors, Lloyd Herman excavating contractor who built the tower road and did all the digging for the tower base and guys, William "Sweede" Eckman excavating contractor who did a lot of extra clean up around the site, Gene Segar of Morse and Segar our flooring contractor, and Herm Seeley, Seeley Electric who responded to my rather odd requests almost immediately.

I can not to this day remember the exact first air day, but I know it was Labor Day Weekend in 1978. I signed on at 5:00 AM and the first song was The Carpenters, "We've Only Just Begun," kind of fitting huh? I played that at the top of the hour all day long. There were a few bumps along the way, but the first day on the air went pretty well.

A bit of trivia,the first advertiser was T. Burke and Company, a family clothing store in Canton. The owner Mil Burke had been a friend for years and told me she was proud to be a part of something great in Canton. The first sporting event on the station was the "Old Shoe" Football game between Canton and Troy in 1978, Bill Byham came up from WMPT and I did the game with him. The first remote broadcast was from J.C. Penny in Troy and the second from Morse and Segar Furniture in Canton.

I stayed with WKAD until just after New Years in 1978, there were some very frustrating times, due to the lack of help and support from WMPT and I eventually decided it was time to move on. After a brief time selling for Smith Printing in Williamsport, I went to work for WENY in Elmira following Dave Weeks who had been doing Morning Drive on a temporary basis.

The experience of designing and building WKAD is something I will never forget, I hope that Mike Powers, who is the current owner (call letters WHGL, Wiggle 100) can appreciate all the time and effort that went into building that station.

WBPZ AM-FM Lock Haven

Before I continue on with the WKAD story, I noticed I had forgotten a very interesting part of my radio past, the 11 months I spent as the "Evening Guy" at WBPZ in Lock Haven. Some time after I left WLYC in 1966 I went to see the late Harris Lipez at WBPZ looking for a full time job. He had none, and told me to come back in early 1967 as he felt he would have an opening at that time. True to my word, I appeared in January 1967 at the station, and true to his word he said that he was in fact going to have an opening for the night shift, 5:00 PM to Sign Off (1:05 AM). I guess that Harris admired the fact I had remembered for so long and he hired me to start in February, just prior to my 20Th birthday.

WBPZ was a very interesting place in many respects, Harris' brother, Judge Abe Lipez was a stockholder as was Bill Piper Jr. or Piper Aircraft, all in all, there were a passel of stockholders, I believe over 20 some owning as little as 1/2 %. The station was located down town on the third floor at 132-1/2 E. Main St. Below the station on first floor was the Lock Haven Lunch, (best chili dogs and fries I ever had) and a furniture store. On second floor was a J.W. Church meeting hall. I remember how much I hated to arrive late, as I drove 55 miles one way and had to run up the steps arriving out of breath for the 5:00 PM station I.D. or when there was boxes of teletype paper to bring up. The delivery driver would stack them on the landing and the first few steps and each employee (male) was expected to bring one up with him.

When I first started there the control room equipment was the original stuff they had signed on with some 20 years earlier, an old RCA board, and turntables, one of the old EV long mikes, some newer cart machines and a Gates Spot Tape unit. That was an interesting idea from the days between producing commercials on reel to reel and the first broadcast carts. The unit had a manual slide track selector for one of 42 different tracks that could run up to 90 seconds. The tracks were recorded on a very wide magnetic tape belt, that would break at the most inopportune moment, causing all tracks to have to be re recorded, usually my job. The dis advantage, other than breakage, is the you could not play tracks back to back, and the rewind made a horrid noise like someone shoveling scrap metal. The control room also had two Magnacorder reel to reels, one (PT 6) dedicated to Unkle Joe's Woodshed's 5 minute commercials. Unkle Joe's was a discount store "on the hill in Flemington." The other was a "maggie" 1023 a great machine to do editing and recording. The usual assortment of remote controls for the AM and FM, monitors (both modulation and frequency) and one great patch bay that you could do just about anything with. It was not too long after I arrived, 4 or 5 months that the owners sprang for a new console a Gates "Gatesway", new turntables and another cart machine replacing the Spot Tape unit. I remember stying overnight as Al Stratmon the Chief Engineer and I installed the new board between 1:00 Am and 6:00 AM, we made it, but morning man Jim Eckert had to put up with Al and me under the console running wires to the patch bay.

The staff ws quite large, as you may imagine, for all programming, with the exception of 3 hours a day from Mutual Radio Network in the evening shift, was live, and even that was tended to by yours truly. When I first got there Jim Eckert was doing mornings 6:00 am to 12:00 noon. After Jim left to go teach at Career Acadamy Broadcasting School in Milwaukee, he was replaced by Chuck Studley. Jim Remick (JRZ) was on Noon to 5:00 pm and I was 5:00 Pm to 1:00 AM. John Lipez, Harris' son was the News Director along with Keith Kline, and Joe Hutchinson, Sales was handled by Dick Yohe and Benny Mathews, in the office was Jane Edwards (I think) Barbara Yohe and Ray Reese the Comptroller. Part timers included Barry Stott, Marc Sommer, John Salomone, and Randy Dory. The station was busy commercial wise and carried a lot of sports. If I remember correctly Harris Lipez was inducted into the Pa Sports Hall Of Fame a few years before he passed away.

My shift at WBPZ started as I said at 5:00pm, from 5 to 6 I played kind of an easy listening format and lots of comemrcials. On the Half hour we had Mutual News and a short sports feature. From 6 to 7 was the news block, local, and then Mutual commentary. 7 to 9 was more Mutual feature programming. I can't for the life of me remember when they were. This time was spent by me in one of two ways, either doing my production, or sitting at the back of the control room, looking over Main St in Downtown Lock Haven. That was pretty nice in warm weather, in that college town! One other thing I did while I was on the air was to write the local news for 11:00 pm, making police and fire calls. I started my music shows at 9:00 with "The Music Hall." From 9 to 10 I played Top 40, from 10 to 11 is was country, 11 to midnight big band/easy listening, and from midnight to sign off at 1 am it was classical. I really did have to do much in the last hour as Dick Lipez, and son of Harris, recorded the intros and outros to the show and left a music list. During that time I usually finished up my production and caught a bit of the Tonight Show on TV. At 1 am, I did a 5 minute news cast and signed off. The station also carried Philadelphia Phillies baseball. Not being much of a sports fan, it was quite boring and my attention span was to say the least, short. My duties during the games was to do the station I.D.'s and insert any local commercials. The games were fed on lease telephone line, like Mutual Network, and if that system when down, we had an agreement to pick up WRAK's FM signal for the game broadcast. That was a good back up EXCEPT, that station I.D.'s could be a bit tricky, since you had 10 seconds you had to "pot down" the feed and insert your call letters and pot back up for the game. If someone, or everyone, was a bit slow, or the game announcers called for I.D.'s too quickly then you might hear far more than your own. That happened one night, I suspect everybody was asleep at the switch, and at least three sets of call letters made it on the air before WBPZ's.

As I mentioned earlier WBPZ carried a lot of local sports, Harris Lipez and Keith Kline were the play by play team. Since this was way before cell phones we had a system. They would go to the school set up and if they were within range listen on the FM. I was instructed when to monitor the line, in cue, and when they asked send a tone over the air to let them know I was receiving them. This usually worked pretty well, notice I said usually. One night they were, I believe, in Bellefonte for a game, I was listening, and they came on the line right away. Keith called for a tone and I sent one, there was a push button on the console, no response from him. I hit is again, still nothing. In the mean time he is calling for tones, I keep sending them. I was monitoring the air signal, so I know they were going out. I even cut the audio and sent nothing but tone for 10 seconds. Keith and Harris were getting pretty agitated with ME because I was not answering them, which as I said I was. I got listening to the line carefully when they were not talking and low and behold they had a State College station, close to WBPZ's frequency on their radio. Finally Keith said something to the effect "I'm going to go call Kel and read him the riot act." Well, I was READY! A few minutes later the unlisted line rang I answered and Keith was in high boil. I interrupted his fuming, and said, "I've been sending you the tone, but you won't hear it with your radio on the wrong station!" Keith said, "oh," and hung up. A few more minutes went by and I hear Keith back at the microphone. Harris asked if he got through to me and set me straight, Keith said, I think we are listening to the wrong station. I hear them tuning it, and all of the sudden they finally had the station. They called for a tone, so I cut audio and laid on the tone for a good 30 seconds. They laughed and apologised to me and said "looks like we've got you now."

Keith Kline was not my favorite person at the station, but for the most part he left me alone. He was usually doing morning news so he was long gone when I came in. I remember he left sometime while I was there, but I don't remember where he went, or for that matter even care!

I left WBPZ in November of 1967 to become WMPT's News Director, that chain of events is mentioned elsewhere in this BLOG. I did return to WBPZ in 1970 for a few months to do the Saturday overnight shift. All in all WBPZ was not a bad place to work, a good staff and a lot of talent. I had the opportunity to see Harris one last time in about 1996, I was in Lock Haven making calls for my business, Watts Multi Services, and stopped at the station. It was almost as if I never left! They had moved to Belefonte Ave, but there was John Lipez, Jane, Randy, and Mark, it was nice to see them all and I will cherish the time I had with Harris that day as we talked about the old days!

Well that is my look back at WBPZ, I hope I remembered everyone and the good times we had there!