The kid sees “The Light(s)”

In 1957, something happened.  I was taking my allowance and buying a record or two a couple times a month.  We’d visit Daw’s Drug Store on Lake Avenue and I’d rummage through the bin with the 45’s in it -and the $3.98 LPs.  Where the hell would I ever get $4 to buy a 12″ album?  And why were there a couple of good songs on it, and the rest songs I’d never heard of?   Well suddenly something new appeared above the bin.  It was a music survey from Rochester’s very first full-time (sort of) Top 40 radio station.  WRNY had been a fixture in the market with pretty much easy listening music, but new owners made a big change.  It became “V-M, The Voice of Music”.  I didn’t know at the time the jingles were probably stolen from a manufacturer of record players.  Nevertheless, names like Rocky Gross, Johnny Holiday, Bill Edward and Bob Bohrer were spinning THE HITS at 680.  (Wait, “Bohrer”.  My cousin’s last name is Bohrer.  I asked him why the guy on the radio had the same last name as his-and he casually mentioned “oh, he’s my uncle”.  I had a RADIO STAR in the family and didn’t even know it!!).  WRVM had a contest they were running called “Radio Bingo”.   We could get the printed surveys/bingo cards at Daw’s every week.  You had to listen every day for the songs on the card to play, and when you had the usual bingo configuration you could win something like $68.  My next door neighbor and I had prime seats next to the radio listening to the station, and faithfully recording every song.  Must be all the cards were the same because at a given point during the day WE would have “Bingo” - -and so would a few thousand other listeners.  When it was time to call, the line was busy.  Every freakin’ day.  I was bummed.  We never did win.  And why did WRVM only play the hits 6 days a week?  It was beautiful music every Sunday on “The WRVM Sunday Musicthon”.   Why did they sign off every night when the sun went down? Why did the local paper’s radio listings show CBL-740 at night in the WRVM grid?  All of these would be answered as the years went by.  WRVM’s Top 40 days didn’t last very long.  It was either an announcer’s strike, or WBBF taking them on in the late 50’s, or both.  But while it was there, it was crankin’ out the hits.  I did meet Bob Bohrer once-and couldn’t even talk.  I was once again in the shadow of a media star. 

 My parents (whether they wanted to or not) had a very big influence in the course my life would take.  Their good friends Marian and Jim Hawley, and their son Craig lived on Rochester’s West Side until they moved to the suburbs.  When the Hawleys decided to move to Greece, they put up their Henrietta house for sale.  My geographic area was small -so on the rare occasion that we visited The Hawley’s it felt like we were in another country.  One evening when we were there, I asked Craig about those flashing red lights we could see out the kitchen window.  He said “I think it’s a Buffalo TV station”.  I left it at that.

One year later, my Mom remarried, and WE moved into the Hawley’s old house on Hillbrook Circle.  Once again those stinkin’ lights were flashing in our windows.  They were gone during the summer (trees and leaves) but back again every fall.  One hot summer day in 1960, Mike Zornow (my sidekick at the time) and I were pedaling our bikes aimlessly.  He said “Let’s go to the radio station”.   I scoffed at the idea knowing full well we’d never get in.  He convinced me we could be there.  Get in.  Talk to the guys on the radio.  Damn, if he wasn’t right on.  We walked in the back door of 2670 Clinton Avenue South, and I was petrified.  Big square racks of equipment.  Racks of records.  A room with big record players, and a really large Hi-Fi system.  We walked into the main studio while Nick Nickson was on the air speaking into that RCA 44-BX.  He actually talked to us, and almost made us feel human! Mike was admiring the picture sleeve from Johnny Horton’s “Battle of New Orleans” they had hanging on the wall, so Nick gave it to him!!  

I got nothing except the experience that would change my life forever.   In the ensuing year or so that we lived in the shadow of no less than 4 radio station sites, I learned what ONE of them was.  Only because you could read the sign from the road.  It was WVET (1280AM).  The rest, as I would learn, would introduce themselves to me through the ROCKET RADIO!!!!

I have no idea where I got this, it must have cost $2.95.  But in the daytime, if you clipped it to the right metal thing you’d hear WSAY, WBBF, WVET and WHEC (sort of).  Well, after the WBBF visit, that was the only station I wanted to listen to.  It was disappointing that once the sun went down, ‘BBF would disappear.  ‘SAY was alright during “Melody Corner”, but the rest of the time the music was junk.  (It was the effect of the payola hearings that were going on at the time.)  Well, once I had been to ‘BBF’s transmitter/studio site, I wanted to see how well that radio would work at the source.  The next Saturday morning I rode my bike (all by myself) the two miles to the BBF transmitter.  The door, as always was unlocked and open.  I sauntered in, immediately took that Rocket Radio out of my pocket and clipped it to a switchplate.  Gee, it worked great.  Some guy walked in and asked me what I was doing.  I explained, and he seemed fascinated by the radio.  My older brother -for some reason-follwed me that day, and walked through the door a few minutes later.  He was always a lot more brave than me, and he actually struck up a conversation with that guy who was interested in the radio.  That “guy” turned out to be my first radio mentor, John Plumeri.  My brother knew something that I didn’t about my family.  He shared with John that day that my Uncle Ken (my Mom’s brother) had at one time worked in radio.  John knew that, because John -as a kid-used to visit my uncle while he was at work as an engineer at WRNY (which would become WRVM).  I never knew that because my uncle moved his family to Massachusetts in the late 50’s.   But John and I became great friends, and for the next 2 years (at least) I would spend every Saturday and Sunday sitting in the control room at WBBF watching, asking questions and trying to soak in everything I could.   WBBF’s control room wasn’t really a room.  It was isolated from the transmitter area only by an equipment rack which contained a modulation monitor, an RCA limiter and some patch panels.  In the back of the building was the room behind “The Green Door”.  The bathroom.  One day during my visit, John had to use -er, the John.  He didn’t get back in time as the record playing faded into oblivion, so I did the only thing I knew to do -and that was hit the mic switch  on this Raytheon console.  Leon Marguerite was on the air at the time, and was totally surprised.  The first thing you heard was the chair squeak (he was reading the paper at the time) and him mumbling and stumbling because he had no idea what was happening.  John came back and told me to stay there.  After about a year of watching him cue the tunes, rock the pots and hit the switches I almost knew what to do.  ‘BBF was an interesting exercise in technology.  Originally they had 4 turntables -two on the left were Gates 16″ for the hits, (Gray Tone Arms with GE VR-II Cartridges-and a pivoting needle carrier for microgroove and standard groove needles) and two RCA transcription players on the right for all the spots.  In the racks there were a slew of tape decks, some which could remote start from the board.  An Ampex 601, a Magnecord PT-6, a floor mounted Magnecorder and one or two others.  There was also a disc cutter which I got to see them use a couple of times.  The production was usually done in the “news booth” - a large studio to the right of the control room (which this Scott Fybush picture looks into) - with a homemade mixer in the studio.  The spots were sometimes cut directly to disc, but mostly to tape then cut on the transcriptions to be played on the air.  The 3rd turntable had an issue that (as radio people do) they overcame by slip cueing the discs.   Every other element was started by simply fading up the pots.  There were two cue positions on the pots, one for cue and the other to start the device.  In subsequent years, WBBF installed a Gates Spot Tape….a device with a wide tape and a movable head.  It contained 110 tracks.  The head had to be manually moved to play the right track but it was pretty ingenious.  The tape “belt” would run for 90 seconds and then (when the photo cell inside sensed the hole in the tape) rewind.  Or it could be rewound manually.  It was used mostly for promos and jingles as the engineer couldn’t go from one spot on the Spot Tape to another without something in between.    Then, along came the cart machine.  It may have been Gates Criterion, but I remember John’s enthusiasm for the device, and his questioning of the wisdom of it.  The first one was put in the rack to the back of the engineer and it had a “C” type cart (one of the long ones) in it.  ‘BBF was pretty up to date with Pams jingles, and the cart was loaded with ‘em.   Eventually they replaced the “wow-ing” turntable with another cart machine.  Then came the “moving” talk.  The station’s offices had been downtown anyway, and they talked of moving the studios from the transmitter.  That talk went on for about 2 more years. 

Shortly after that first visit, Charlie Conrad and I biked over to one of the other transmitter sites.  This one was closer.  Much closer.  This house on French Road was about a mile away.  Picture from Fybush.com. 

We heard Johnny Mathis coming from the upstairs window-and were ready to stroll in like I did at WBBF.   Trouble is there were two doors.  One said “No Admittance”, the other said “Employees Only”.  I was ready to leave.  Charlie knocked.  The transmitter engineer (Ron Steve) came to the door and gladly let us in.  In fact, we got a complete tour of the transmitter plant (and I was warned not to do pullups on the transmission lines)-and then we were escorted upstairs to the studio.  The station has an interesting history.  Somewhere in the 1950’s, Gordon P. Brown (the owner) decided each of his announcers would have pre-fabricated names.  This meant that the VOICES would change, the names wouldn’t.  Tommy Thomas always did mornings (including “The Hillbilly Jamboree” from 6-7am), Jerry Jack did middays/afternoons and “Mike Melody” was the host of “Melody Corner”.  Weekends were hosted by “Bob Bell” and Mac McGuire”.  The name shift happened between the time my sister visited Jerry Jerome (who’s real name was Isaacson-and became Jerry Sherwin on WBBF and WGVA).  But the staff was hired pretty much off the streets and learned on the job.  The format was Top 40 for awhile, but was changed to more of an MOR station (probably because of the Payola investigation of the 60’s).  The equipment was much different - a small console , an Ampex 601 tape deck, an Ampex 300 - and two Rek-O-Cut Rondine turntables.   We met the guy on the air (”Tommy Thomas”) and his engineer Dave Orlando.  Yes, even this minimum wage station had a “split” operation.   The building, while built for the radio station, still had a lot of accoutrements of a real house.  The on-air studio was the kitchen, and the control room was the upstairs master bedroom - complete with a (boarded up) fireplace.  The mic was a vintage RCA-type, but as I found out was instead a british import.  The station was always trademarked by a “buzz” on the signal which I would find out was 5000 watts of poorly grounded RF racing through the equipment.  (It wasn’t there when the station was on the 1000 watt backup though.)  After a quick chat with the boys upstairs, we invited them to come visit us at The Bowl A Roll, the local hangout.  We wrapped up our visit, and as we had planned met some other folks at the local bowling center.  Wouldn’t you know it - the guys showed up shortly after their shift was over.  WE were stars, and again in the midst of media stars.  I introduced them to all the grownups at The Bowl-A-Roll…and when I introduced Tommy Thomas, he corrected me by giving them his real name.  To this day, I’m not sure, but I thought he said it was “Tommy Berman”.  Then when Len Berman showed up on NBC, with basically the same voice, I was convinced that was the same guy.  But I’ve read a couple of Len’s books on his career and he never mentioned WSAY.  Anyway, I went through the next few years knowing the real story -that when the voices changed, the names would stay the same.   I did try to visit the other transmitter sites to meet the dee jays, but was greeted by dead silence when knocking on the doors at WVET and WHEC.   Little did I know the technology (at the time) of the remote transmitter site.  In the years ahead I would.  Sometimes in very strange ways.