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.