A history of WMPT Radio South Williamsport Pa, as well as radio in the Williamsport Marketplace. In addition a history of my time behind the microphone.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Moving on in radio and other things

If you have ever lost a job you know that there is a lot of self examination that goes on in the days following your dismissal, such was the case with me. I finally figured out that life would go on, but probably not in full time radio. My friend Kevin Doran who ran WLEA/WCKR in Hornell put out the word I was available, but nothing came of it. I had a few offers locally, but I was not really enthused by the stations that wanted to talk.

For a couple of years I had worked part time for Chemung County Transit, starting as a part time driver, being promoted along the way to part time supervisor. After my release from WLEZ I called another friend, the late, Dave Abbey the Operations Manager at WCLI/WZKZ in Corning. I had known Dave for several years and even though we were competitors we got along well. Telling him of my situation I asked if he might have any part time work available. In radio, if you have experience and want to work part time it is pretty much a guarantee of hours. He had me come in and I met with Scott Fisher (Bloor) the General Manager. They hired me immediately for fill in on both stations. I have to say that the years I spent there were quite enjoyable with a genuine respect in both directions.

During the same time period I once again worked for Dave Cooper at Radio Shack In Horseheads. There were some fun days there as Dave and I were about the same age, and he respected me for my knowledge of the products and the "parts wall" and I liked his management style. One understanding we had was that I did not want any responsibility, or to be considered a full time employee. By virtue of the fact I had been around a long time, I knew most of the store procedures and Dave would feel comfortable leaving me alone or with a new employee. When Radio Shack first got there computer check out system, there was a lot of problems with it and many times we had to the the daily reports by hand, something I could do but even some store managers couldn't.

After the first of the year Tom Freeman at C.C.T.S. offered me a full time position as a combo Marketing and Road Supervisor. During that time that I worked for C.C.T.S, a division of American Transit Corp. I was even as a Relief Manager at Dutchess County Transit in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Working for American Transit was a job I held for nearly 4 years until I had gall bladder surgery and was off from work for 4 months. When I got back in November of 1989 I found that my position was not to be funded in 1990, here we go again! During the time I spent at C.C.T.S. I worked on a number of projects including a pilot project of a tourist information radio system, that project would eventually lead me to starting my own business, more on that later. After I found out I was being "un-funded" at C.C.T.S. I asked Dave Cooper at Radio Shack to use me heavy for the Christmas Season, which he did, while I continued part time at WCLI/WZKZ. Dave Cooper and I had a lot of fun during that Christmas Season working together again.

During that time I was back to looking for full time radio again, and was talking to the parent company of WCLI/WZKZ who owned a property in South Jersey. I found out during my talks with them that Jane Steele, wife of former WENY Inc. Corporate General Manager, Mike Steele was working there. Mike had left the cold of Minnesota and returned to work for Howard Green in Atlantic City. The station was losing money financially and would have been an interesting challenge, but it was one that didn't come.

One day while I was at Radio Shack Dave Campbell from WIQT/WQIX in Horseheads came in to get some stuff for the station and talk of course turned to radio. He said that Ron Ferro The General Manager, who had been Program Director at WELM/WLVY when I was at WENY was thinking of making a change of air talent in the morning on WIQT and would I be interested. WIQT was an oldies station and who better than this "oldie but goodie" to go there.

In the next edition I will talk about my time at WIQT/WQIX and the start of Watts Media/Multi Services.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

The Green WENY part 2


One thing certain about broadcasting is that there is NOTHING certain. When Mike Steele decided to leave The Green Group the station lost a good manager, and I lost a good friend. Mike had been with Howard Green for quite a number of years and I am pretty sure he was getting burned out, so he and his wife Jane bought a station in Walker, Mn. That of course left an opening for Corporate General Manager, the liaison between the department managers, such as me, and Howard. The Corporate G.M. was responsible for the overall operation of the Elmira stations.

Right before Mike left, Dick Ireland was transferred to WOND/WMGM in Atlantic City, and a fellow named John Richer was hired to replace Dick as WENY AM Manager. John came to Elmira from Syracuse where I believe he was the victim of a station sale. Anyway, John was a different type of person, and we actually did get along pretty well in spite of the fact that I was doing my best to take away the AM's business.

Anyway, back to the story! With Mike's departure that left John, Bob, and myself to run the property, which was OK, except for items that were beyond our scope of authority such as spending any large amount of money. Even though I had been Manager of WLEZ FM for only a bit over a year I applied for Mike's position. Needless to say I didn't get it, with the reason given that I didn't have enough TV experience. Looking back, I suspect it was because Howard didn't think I could make the change and treat John fairly. One day a fellow named Pat Parish appeared at WENY with Howard. I spent part of the day talking with Pat, he talked a good game, but there was something that was clawing at my insides that I could not put my finger on, I soon would know what it was.

Pat came from Atlantic City where he had worked for the Merv Griffin Group, yep, the same Merv who was an entertainer, talk show host, producer, etc. The station Pat ran in A.C. NJ was from what I was given to understand losing money, no big surprise there. Once Pat was in place the troubles started. He tried his best to violate my contract and make life miserable in general for me and the other managers. John Richer was the first to leave and was replaced by Don Murphy who had been manager at WQIX/WIQT in Horseheads and for a period of time had run his own advertising agency. I had known Don since I had been in the market and we got along well, making many agency trips together and working on getting national business for both stations. I think Don lasted about a year till the Coup! More about that later, it could be a whole chapter by itself! Also around the time that Mike left, Bob Edwards retired from WENY TV and Lew Robelyer was named Manager of TV 36 and Meade Murtland who had been doing sales for WENY AM moved over to TV Sales. I believe the Lew lasted about a year also and he too was butting heads with Pat Parish when he left Meade was named TV Manager.

My relationship with "Puff the magic pipeman, as we all called Pat Parish," was bad at best. Several times there was no communication between us for a month or more. Every time I went to him with a request he would never give me an answer so I finally started to run the station the way I thought best. By the way, the bottom line showed that! How did he get his nickname? That was courtesy of his always smoking a pipe, it was given to him by John Richer after a particularly frustrating managers meeting.

During this time, a lot of people came and went in the organization, my staff turned over again with Laura being transferred to I.T. Department Head in charge of all the new computers for logging and billing on all three stations. I replaced her with a very bright lady named Deb, Donna Pulito left as did Byron and they were replaced by "Smilin" Jack Ryan who had retired from Corning Glass and Jim Flynn. Both were really good salespeople and we made a lot of progress. As far as the three stations went I was one of the "old timers" with about 7 years to my credit. I was definitely the senior manager on the property and had the station that was actually increasing in revenue. Finally Don Murphy had enough of Pat and left to go sell cars, and once again I took care of the National business for both WENY AM and WLEZ FM. Little did I know that when I met Art Kendall, I was meeting my replacement! Art had been a partner in Howell and Kendall Advertising in Elmira and was some backdoor relation on my mother's side. Pat brought him in to manage WENY AM and in the spirit of cooperation I helped Art settle in took him to meet the regional agencies and brought him up to speed on all the national business.

In late September of 1986 on a Friday, I arrived at the station and immediately received a call to come to Pat's office. At that time he informed me my services were no longer needed as Art Kendall would be managing both stations. I could not believe it! I was handed my severance pay and yearly performance bonus and given an hour to clean out my desk. My performance bonus was based on the amount of increase over the previous year, I can tell you it was a rather large check, so it was not a performance issue, but rather a "I didn't hire him so he is gone," issue. Those of you who have worked in media know that this is the rule rather than the exception.

My time at WENY left a very bitter taste in my mouth for corporations and media in general and was my last broadcast management position. I researched many possibilities, but looking into the organizations I found that they were not any better than what I had just left.

I may sound very bitter but I can only hope that Pat got what he deserved in life as well as Howard, they were two men who climbed the ladder on the backs of others, only to shaft the very people who brought them success.

Now it was time for a career change, that story is next!

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

The Green WENY, my times at WLEZ FM

In my business life I have always tried to run any business with integrity and customer service, along the way I have found that personally you can not survive, doing that, UNLESS you own the business.

As I mentioned the last time WLEZ FM was part of "The Green Group" owned by Howard Green and Donald Simmons, that group included WENY AM, WENY TV 36 in Elmira and WOND AM, WMGM FM, and WOND TV 40 in Atlantic City, N.J. and at one time an AM FM combo in Utica/Rome, N.Y. Each station in Elmria had their own manager, (who reported directly to Corporate General Manager Mike Steele),when I started to run WLEZ, the manager of WENY AM was Dick Ireland, and Bob (C.Robert) Edwards was the manager of WENY TV 36. Each station had their own sales team and shared other administrative, news, and support staff. I always felt that WLEZ got the short end of the stick, but at the time I took over from Ted Hodge, the station was floundering in revenue.

WLEZ in 1982 was programmed "Beautiful Music" using TM Productions music package operated by and SMC automation system. AT 92.7 Mhz it was a Class A FM with tower facilities on Comfort Hill to the South of Elmiria. The signal was a pretty good one in spite of the age of the transmitter. Ray O'Donnell the Chief Engineer had it peaked nicely and with an Orban processor it had a clean sound. The station did not have any live capabilities when I took over the thinking even then was that FM was not important. Back in what the insiders at the station called "the bomb shelter," was some production equipment that was bought as part of the Emergency Broadcast Service. There was a generator for power as well, but when it was in operation you could not hear yourself think, plus the room had no ventilation to speak of and got terribly hot in the summer. It, as I was given to understand was built as a fallout shelter and came complete with Geiger counters! The one thing, in addition to ventilation, they forgot was bathrooms, I am not sure what they though you would do in the even you had to spend a long time back there.

When I took over WLEZ my staff consisted of myself, John Savino as Sales Manager and Mary Ellen Pannell as and Account Representative. The remainder of functions were handled by shared staff and the jock on duty on WENY was responsible for keeping the automation supplied with music reels, Ted Hodge agreed to stay around and do morning news, and production. One of the first things I did was to add additional local news in the morning drive as well as weather forecasts and community announcements.

As with most computers the SMC Automation suffered from a bad case of "GI-GO," garbage in, garbage out. Ted Hodge was a great guy, but I soon found that he knew very little about the programming of the unit. There were a number of commands to move it through the different routines and sub-routines, time corrects and the like. I can remember spending one entire weekend re-writing the routines and sub routines to change commercial availability and music flow. One thing was to add more vocals to the mix, giving the station a somewhat brighter sound until I could do a complete format change. My first priority was to try to increase sales based on what we had and I instituted several new policies most of which were not to popular with John who I found out felt that he should have been chosen to replace Ted.

While I was doing that, I started shopping around for a new format, I felt that an oldies based "Easy Listening" format would be the way to go. No one in the market was playing oldies and a lot of really good "baby boomers" music was not being played by anyone. I finally got hooked up with a fellow by the name of Dave Nelson at Century 21 Productions in Dallas. Tx, C-21 had just the format elements I was looking for and were willing to talk with me. The problem, we still had almost 2 years to go on our TM contract. By a stoke of fate, TM dropped the format into a station in Binghamton, N.Y. The TM contract we had gave us market exclusiveness for 75 miles, Binghamton was 70 air miles from Elmira! This was the way out! In addition to being able to cancel our contract the station got a complete TM production package at no charge, I suspect this was to keep us from suing for breech of contract.

Now the road was set, except for equipment! As luck would have it, WMGM FM in Atlantic City, our sister station was doing away with automated programming, so I requested that I be given my pick of stuff! Surprisingly I managed to get 3 commercial carousels, and three reel to reel machines, this crammed the equipment racks full. By this time Ray O'Donnell had left and was replaced by an old time engineer Vaughn Richardson. Vaughn and I hit it off and had many lively debates about things that the automation system could and could not do. Usually I would ask Vaughn if we could do this and that and he would say no way, well in a few hours he would be back in my office showing me how we could do a certain function. One thing that really amazed me was the unit he rigged up to record ABC news. Using the clock on the automation he rigged a system to switch the satellite, arm the recorder, start it and put an advance tone on at the end of the newscast. The recorder, an old delay cart machine from the WENY talk show. As is was recroding the new ABC newsacat, would erase the previous news it was recording the new newscast from ABC. It would then cue up and be ready to go at the top of the hour. Pretty amazing as as soon as the ABC news feed was done the satellite had to switch back for NBC news for the AM.

I would like to say that the format change went smoothly, and from a technical standpoint it did, but from a public view it didn't! The station received many phone calls from angry business people who used WLEZ as their "in store" music. They loved it because of the "elevatorness sound." These were the same people who would NOT buy advertising on the station, but could not understand why we changed to format to something that could be sold! One of the the most vocal was the Director of The Corning Chamber of Commerce Cy Levine, who would not accept that it was a business decision on our part. I often told people that it was also an effort to keep me awake while I was in the office as I remember falling asleep one day while sitting in my office at the station. But as time went along people discovered the station and the format was a big hit financially and ratings wise.

Once the format was squared away, I set about the task of increasing sales. The Green Group was represented nationally by McGavern-Guild and I became a regular caller to their offices following up on national business. In addition I began making regular regional agency trips to Rochester, Syracuse, and Binghamton to meet with the agencies that placed business in the market. I really enjoyed the challenge of the agency visits and became quite successful in landing quite a few major accounts.

Locally the sales effort was, for a long time, stymied by the sale people I had. Over the course of time I completely changed the staff, first by adding a part time traffic person, Laura Peck to the staff. While she did not have any radio experience, Laura quickly became my right hand person and defacto Assistant Manger. New sales people included Donnalee Pulito, Byron Palmer, and Debbie Lusk. Both Byron and Donna had radio experience and Debbie was a natural sales talent and the bottom line started to show it.

WLEZ was off and running, but then Mike Steele my boss, friend and ally left to buy his own property, it was the beginning of my end! More next time when "Puff The Magic Pipe Man" appears!