Odds and Ends

The humble blog's latest feature is an aircheck of the late WRTK/1390 in Youngstown. Using the positioner "Real Talk 1390", WRTK was, for a few years, the unofficial competitor for market leading talker WKBN/570. The lineup featured nationally-syndicated host Don Imus in mornings, plus local personalities such as Thomas John and Vince Camp. Heard here are Valley sports guru John Caparanis, news director Don Ferguson with headlines and WYTV channel 33 meteorologist Stan Boney. After several years of hosting a local sports talk show on WBBW/1240, Caparanis was most recently heard on WANR/1570 (now WHTX). Ferguson, who previously ran newsrooms at WBBW and Warren's WRRO/1440, has apparently been out of the business since 1999.

The station started life in 1939 as WFMJ and was owned by the Youngstown Vindicator. When the newspaper decided to get out of the radio business in 1990, the station was sold to the owners of WHOT/1330 and 101.1. The historic WHOT call letters were then transferred to the 1390 frequency for an adult standards format. In 1994, Connoisseur Communications bought WHOT/1390 and The "Real Talk" format debuted the following year under the WRTK banner. The format lasted until 1999, when it was replaced by adult standards and the station took its current call letters WNIO. WNIO is now owned by Clear Channel and broadcasts a sports talk format using the positioner "The Sports Animal." As a result of Clear Channel's maneuvers to buy WRTK, those calls wound up at WNIO's original dial position of 1540, where they remained until last year.

Graveyard Shift

After a lengthy hiatus from the humble blog, your editor is happy to return with the latest discoveries from the world of airchecks. This week NEO Airchecks spotlights the overnight personality, represented here in a 1973 recording of Big Al Knight on WHOT/1330in Youngstown. He was the alter ego of longtime WHOT PD Dick Thompson. Many Mahoning Valley residents still recall how they speculated about the true identity of Big Al.

What may come as a surprise to some readers is the fact that Knight's airshift was voicetracked, long before the word and practice was as common as it is in today's radio industry. As you'll find out later, the secret was known among the area's radio folk, and at least one personality at a rival station was happy to fill in the listeners on that fact.

Thompson would stay with WHOT well into the 1980's before a short-lived retirement from the business. He would return to radio at WNIO/1540 in the mid-90s, stay on board through the station's eventual transition to 1390, then depart for WSOM/600 in 2001 with former WHOT and WFMJ personality Johnny Kay. Both retired in 2007.





As mentioned, Big Al's presence on Memorex caught the attention of a crosstown rival. Steve "Baby" Michaels, then holding down overnights at WFMJ/1390, regularly took shots at his competitor. An example of this can be heard on a 1971 aircheck of a New Year's Eve broadcast with morning man Ted Alexander. Michaels' "tribute" to Big Al can be heard beginning at 11:38, followed by a purported reponse from his target.



Special thanks to NEO Airchecks friend and regular contributor Jerry Coleman for providing these airchecks.

Hiatus

In the month since our last post, we've received e-mails from a few readers expressing concerns about the blog's lack of activity. The editor wishes to address these concerns by stressing that he is still among the living and that real life intrusions have taken up much of his spare time. That said, new features will be posted in the coming days, including an aircheck of the late, great WINW/1520 in Canton. As most of you know by now, the market's Top 40 powerhouse of the 1960's and 70's signed off for the final time earlier this year and its license was deleted by the FCC in March. Additional features are also in the works.


As always, if you have an aircheck of a northeast Ohio radio station you'd like to submit to NEO Airchecks, e-mail us at neoairchecks@mail.com

You're Talking, We're Listening: Part 2

In keeping with recent features concerning Canton's WHBC/1480, NEO Airchecks presents a 1973 recording of "Viewpoint", an evening talk show that ran on the station for more than thirty years. We were made aware of this aircheck by Tim Lones at Cleveland Classic Media, and decided to share it with our readers, too. Don Cirelli, who recorded the broadcast as a teen, posted the aircheck on YouTube. While it's incomplete and the dialogue is occasionally obscured by off-mic remarks made by Don's family (Don indicates that he was using a hand held cassette recorder), it offers a glimpse into an otherwise forgotten night in Canton. Jim Roberts, a longtime WHBC personality and regular host of the program, is heard handling the calls. More than once he is forced to hang up on a prankster. Some things never change.



"Viewpoint" was launched by personality Tom Morrison circa 1966. He would continue to host the program until his departure from WHBC in 1970.(Morrison can still be heard hosting "The Reed Musicale" every Sunday morning.) "Viewpoint", which aired weeknights at 11:30, had several other hosts over the years, including Bob Gilligan, Gene Dylan and newsman Bob Bishop. Current 1480 morning show co-host Pam Cook was among its final hosts prior to the the show's termination in the late 1990's.

The Hot Spot Revisited

The last time this blog featured a station at 1570 on the AM dial, the focus was on Warren's WOKG (now WHTX). For those who don't know the history of the frequency in the Youngstown-Warren market, it was originally home to a station spotlighted several times on NEO Airchecks: WHOT. This week's entry is a two-part composite aircheck of WHOT from 1960, taken from an LP featuring radio stations from across the country. Among the personalities heard here are morning man Boots Bell and midday host George Barry. Both would remain with the station well into the 1970's. Longtime PD Dick Thompson is also heard in a promo and some reverb-drenched imaging.

Taking to the airwaves in 1955 with a stable of personalities that included a young Dick Biondi, WHOT was among the earliest stations in the Midwest to adopt a Top 40 format. Despite the apparent misgivings of some advertisers and the station's daytimer status, the format proved to be a hit. WHOT would reign supreme among young listeners for many years thereafter, helped in part by a move down the dial to 1330 in 1963, which freed it from the constraints of sunrise-to-sunset broadcasting. In 1984 the format would make a successful leap to its FM sister station, where it remains to this day. WHOT/101.1 is now owned by Cumulus Broadcasting. The former WHOT/1330, now sporting the call letters WGFT and broadcasting a talk format, is owned by Bernard Radio.

Carnation City Radio

This week the NEO Airchecks WayBack Machine takes the blog to the previously unexplored era we'll refer to as pre-rock and roll radio. To quote a favorite band of the editor's, "no Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones" here; just block programming and features with titles like "Breakfast With Your Neighbor".
Featured is a recording of the on-air dedication of WFAH/1310 (now WDPN) in Alliance. This program aired September 9, 1953. Members of the Hoiles and Peterson families, which launched WFAH's FM sister in 1947, are heard here along with other movers and shakers of the worlds of commerce and politics. A snippet of a similar program for WFAH/101.7 (now WDJQ/92.5) is also included near the beginning of this aircheck. Special thanks to the Rodman Public Library and D.A. Peterson, Incorporated for providing access to this recording.
The Peterson family still owns both stations, which may or may not employ a member of this blog's staff. WFAH/1310 became WDPN in 1990. The station currently airs a locally-programmed soft AC format, featuring local news, high school sports and University of Mount Union football and basketball.

Can't Sleep? Get Up And Dance!

The last time NEO Airchecks featured Canton's WHBC/1480, we time traveled to May 2003 via a recording of midday host Tom Jarrett. This week the blog presents an aircheck of longtime overnight personality John Allen from September of the same year. Allen keeps the energy level up between the tunes, dropping in tidbits about the songs and artists that were a part of the full-service/oldies format of that era. It's worth noting that this was not a voice-tracked air shift, a fact that's made clear by Allen's frequent checks of time and temperature. While Allen's on-air shift was made irrelevant by WHBC's switch to a news/talk format in March 2007, he remained with the station as its production director until early 2009.