By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
The newest book from Buffalo Stories & Steve Cichon!
ORDER NOW at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore!
Meet and reacquaint yourself with the people and stations that have created and reflected who we are as Buffalonians with this 432-page in-depth look at the first 50 years of radio and television in Buffalo.
Packed with more than 600 photos, it’s a look at the stories of the people, places, and events that have entertained and informed generations of Western New Yorkers over the airwaves– and under our pillows, into our cars, into our living rooms, and into our hearts as a part of what makes us Buffalonians.
From the scholarly to the nostalgic, the earliest pioneering days of Buffalo radio will come to life with new research on Buffalo’s status as one of the birthplaces of modern radio—and then the birth of rock ‘n’roll radio here a decade later, about the same time television was wrangling more and more of our attention.
We visit Clint Buehlman and Danny Neaverth; Uncle Mike Mearian and Rocketship 7; The Lone Ranger & KB’s War of the Worlds; Meet the Millers and Dialing for Dollars; John Corbett & Chuck Healy and Irv, Rick & Tom; The Hound and John Otto and so many more of the great broadcasters who were there as we experienced the best (and worst) times of our lives.
The book’s covers by themselves are a study of the century of broadcasting in Buffalo, with another 269 images, showing some of our favorite stars in action.
Sales of the book benefit The Buffalo Stories Film Conservation Initiative, which funds the storage, maintenance, digitization, and interpretation of thousands of hours of discarded Buffalo film and video from the 1960s-1990s.
Author Steve Cichon has spent three decades in Buffalo media in radio, television & print. His journey started as a wide-eyed 15-year-old at WBEN learning about radio, journalism and life. The lifelong Buffalonian sees this, his sixth book, as a kind of family history– as these are the stories of the people who made him the person he is today.
Available for pre-order now in The Buffalo Stories Bookstore.
Books are expected in stock by mid-September.
A history of the Frederick Law Olmsted designed neighborhood, from its place in the history of the Seneca Nation, to its role in the War of 1812, to Olmsted’s design and the turn of the century building out of the area, and the neighborhood’s 20th century evolutions.
A BUFFALO SCRAPBOOK history of the North Buffalo, NY parish with a special emphasis on Sr. Jeanne and Fr. Braun’s combined 64 years of service to the community.
The story of a TV anchorman so universally loved in Western New York that only one name is necessary… Irv. From the 1950s through the 1990s, Irv Weinstein informed and entertained generations of Buffalonians with his unmistakable style of writing and delivering the news. Together with Rick Azar and Tom Jolls, Irv was a part of the longest running anchor team in history, and their story is the story of Buffalo over the last half century.
Through his unequaled 16 years in office, Jimmy Griffin was the bigger-than-life, most talked about mayor in the history of Buffalo. Author Steve Cichon and Mayor Griffin’s children have selected nearly 200 photos from the personal and mayoral archives of the Griffin family. The images are interspersed with the stories, quotes, and wisdom of James D. Griffin himself, recorded in print, audio, and video over a nearly half-century in public service.
My ol’man, Steven P. Cichon, died Palm Sunday, 2010 at the age of 58. Losing a parent is unimaginable, even when you spend the decade up until the death imagining it over and over again.
Since 2003, Steve Cichon has been posting the sights, sounds, and stories of Buffalo’s pop culture past and present at staffannouncer.com.
Fast forward to 2017, and many of the pages created more than a decade earlier aren’t formatted properly for the desktop, tablet, and smartphone browsers of modern web surfing.
The essence of Buffalo Stories is defining and
Irv. Danny. Van. Carol. The men and women who’ve watched and listened to have become family enough that we only need their first names. Buffalo has a deep and rich broadcasting history. Here are some of the names, faces, sounds and stories which have been filling Buffalo’s airwaves since 1922.
North and South Buffalo. The East and West Sides. But how many neighborhoods can you name that don’t fit any of those descriptions? From the biggest geographical sections, to the dozens of micro-neighborhoods and hundreds of great intersections.
There is a category for Buffalo Neighborhoods, but as the historian of Buffalo’s Parkside Neighborhood, and having written two books on the neighborhood’s history, giving the Fredrick Law Olmsted designed Parkside Neighborhood it’s own category makes sense.
My family history is Buffalo history. All eight of my great-grandparents lived in Buffalo, including my Great-Grandma Scurr, who is among the children in this Doyle family photo taken in Glasgow, Scotland. Aside from Scotland, my great-grandparents came from Pennsylvania, Poland, and England. One branch of my family tree stretches back to Buffalo in the 1820s, and a seventh-great aunt was among the first babies baptized at St. Louis Roman Catholic church back in 1829, when the church was still a log cabin.
While my primary focus for this site is sharing about things that make Buffalo wonderful and unique, sometimes I have other thoughts, too. I share those here, along with some of the titles from other categories which I’ve written about in a more personal manner.
I wrote about a Radio Shack ad that was just about right on top of the pile. Virtually all the technology in the ad for “America’s Technology Store” had been replaced in my life by my iPhone. So I allow words to vomit-forth from my fat fingers onto keyboard for a half hour or so, and I have 