The Rich Stadium dot-matrix scoreboard in 1989, five years before Buffalo’s first Sony JumboTron was installed.
Agiant video screen with video replays, shots of fans and all sorts of entertainment between the plays has become a given part of the experience of a big-time sports event.
The first JumboTron scoreboard was installed at Rich Stadium in 1994. At the time, it was the largest video scoreboard in the country – and second in the world, only SkyDome’s was larger.
“Bills fans are in for a real treat,” said Rick Fairbend, the Bills’ new scoreboard systems manager just before the new screen debuted. He told News Reporter Gene Warner that “the technology is so good that it will be like watching TV at home, plus you’ll have the atmosphere and excitement of being at the game.”
It might be hard for some to imagine that today’s drugstores have better displays to announce laundry detergent sales than the Bills did for their stadium scoreboard before that 1994 upgrade.
These images show the in-game experience at Rich Stadium at a 1989 game against the Saints.
Mighty Taco, Super Duper, Genesee Beer and Marlboro were all major sponsors on signage as well as in ads that played on the dot-matrix board opposite the stadium’s tunnel.
The now-rudimentary looking displays also encouraged fan interaction, describing the plays described by Bills public address announcer Stan Roberts, and even included the sing-along lyrics to the then-new “Shout” song.
This 10-minute video offers a glimpse at the in-game experience of a Bills fan in the late 1980s, with a focus on what was on the scoreboard as the game continued, plus the on-field introductions of the Jills cheerleaders and the 1989 Bills defensive starters.
Think of walking out the front door of the gold-domed Buffalo Savings Bank Building on Main Street to look straight up Genesee Street toward City Hall and seeing the open skies over Lake Erie. It wasn’t that long ago that view was still intact.
Genesee Street was one of those streets radiating off Niagara Square as designed by Joseph Ellicott in 1804. The square was designed as a public square and gathering place, and was used in the public execution of the Thayer Brothers in 1825, as well as addresses by Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson.
For more than a century, Niagara Square was once Buffalo’s most elite address. Millard Fillmore lived where the Statler now stands upon returning to Buffalo from the presidency.
Judge Samuel Wilkeson, “The Father of Buffalo,” lived where City Hall is now.
There were many other homes there as well.
An 1805 map of Buffalo.
Behind City Hall looking toward the water, including “the foot of Genesee Street,” where Genesee Street meets the Erie Canal.
Before the wave of urban renewal of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s blocked off Genesee and Niagara Streets, one could stand on Main Street and look up either of those streets to see the McKinley Monument.
An aerial view of Downtown Buffalo.
Niagara and Main no longer intersect — the first block of Niagara was built over in the construction of the Main Place Mall and Main Place Towers. Genesee has been built over with the Convention Center and the Hyatt.
WBEN signed on the air September 8, 1930—90 years ago today.
The station’s birthday is important to me because the station
has played such an important role in my life as a listener, employee, and now
alumni of the station.
I first walked into the station as a 15-year-old intern, and
would spend the next five years working my way up through the producer ranks up
to what was the highest profile producer job in radio—producer of Buffalo Bills
Football with Van Miller and John Murphy. I also met and worked alongside the
woman who’d become my wife during those days on Elmwood Avenue.
Five years later, I returned to the station, this time in
the newsroom—and over the next decade I worked my way up to news director.
Through all my years in media, I always took special
pleasure in being able to share my passion for Buffalo and Buffalo Broadcasting
with the listeners of WBEN, and the station’s birthday, I’ve dipped into the
archives to share some of the stories I wrote and produced about WBEN and the
people we all listened to at 930am.
Steve Cichon- WBEN celebrates 80 years-1
Steve Cichon- WBEN celebrates 80 years-2Steve Cichon- WBEN at the Aud-1Steve Cichon- WBEN at the Aud-2Steve Cichon- WBEN at the Statler-1Steve Cichon- WBEN at the Statler-2Steve Cichon- WBEN says Goodbye to Barbara Burns-1 Steve Cichon- WBEN says Goodbye to Barbara Burns-2Steve Cichon- Brian Meyer inducted into Broadcast Hall of Fame-1 Steve Cichon- Brian Meyer inducted into Broadcast Hall of Fame-2Steve Cichon- Remembering WBEN on 9/11 ten years later-1 Steve Cichon- Remembering WBEN on 9/11 ten years later-2Steve Cichon- John Zach celebrates 50 years in Broadcasting-1 Steve Cichon- John Zach celebrates 50 years in Broadcasting-2Steve Cichon- John Zach covers Martin Luther King-1 Steve Cichon- John Zach covers Martin Luther King-2Steve Cichon- John Zach lived the Jersey Boys-1Steve Cichon- John Zach lived the Jersey Boys-2
WBEN’s longest serving announcer
The 90th anniversary of WBEN’s first sign-on brings to mind
many of the stable and authoritative voices which have unflappably informed
Buffalo over those decades at 930am.
The longest tenured of those voices remains a daily fixture.
From her early days of airborne traffic reporting from the
Skyview 930 helicopter to the last two decades as morning drive host, Susan
Rose has been a steady, unwavering, and professional voice on WBEN and a clear
connection to the great news voices of generations past.
Susan Rose with current co-host Brian Mazurowski
Rose is not your typical “radio star.” She’s never
wanted to be. It’s exactly that which makes her a fit in the pantheon of WBEN
greats.
“A superb anchor,” wrote Buffalo News critic
Anthony Violanti. “Reads the news with journalistic style and skill.”
After graduating from Buffalo State College and starting her
radio news career at Lockport’s WLVL, Rose joined WBEN in 1985.
WBEN Newsteam 1988: Brian Meyer, Ed Little, Susan Rose, Tim Wenger, Monica Wilson, Mark Leitner
Her blue-collar approach to journalism combined with 35
years of continuous, daily broadcasting on the station puts her in the same
rarified company as past WBEN greats, many of whom she regularly worked with
across the decades.
Mark Leitner and Ed Little were WBEN stalwarts and frequent
Rose co-anchors through the 80s and 90s.
Rose was hired to join the WBEN news team by legendary news director Jim McLaughlin.
The legendary Lou Douglas was at WBEN for 30 years before
retiring, overlapping a couple years with Rose.
After three decades at WKBW, John Zach spent another 18 years at WBEN, including 16 years co-anchoring “Buffalo’s Early News” with Rose.
John Zach & Susan Rose, WBEN, 2002.
While she doesn’t have that booming voice— once considered
the most important hallmark of the then all-male radio news profession— Rose’s
even and reliable presence has been featured on the station longer than any
broadcaster, including Clint Buehlman, who hosted mornings at WBEN for 34
years.
Perhaps that’s part of the secret why Rose’s approach and
sound is still as upbeat and fresh as the day she walked through the studio
doors 35 years ago.
Rose’s husband, Tim Wenger, was her co-anchor on evening drive news program “Buffalo’s Evening News” in the early 90s.
She doesn’t project her personality into the news. Through
her career—rather than stand out in front— she has allowed her writing,
editing, news judgement, and steady on-air presence to support the team.
It’s even fair to say Rose avoids the spotlight— but it’s
also fair to say when crisis strikes in Buffalo, there aren’t many voices on
the airwaves today which bring credibility and calm like hers can.
A recent WBEN bio said “it was always her dream job to
work for the number one news station in Buffalo.”
The Buffalo area’s first Wegmans store opened on Dick Road in Depew in 1977. The store was torn-down in 2005 and a new larger store was built in its place.
While just about every Buffalonian knows that Wegmans is headquartered an hour down the Thruway in Rochester, it’s been a part of our Buffalo experience for so long and has become so entrenched as the benchmark by which our grocery shopping experiences are judged, that we can fairly claim Wegmans as a Buffalo institution.
The floor at the Wegmans Losson Rd store in 2015.
When Wegmans first arrived in Buffalo, “warm food colors” yellow, brown and orange were the store’s color scheme
The Wegmans experience has evolved since the first store opened in our end of Western New York on Dick Road in January 1977 – only days before the Blizzard struck.
By the end of the year, locations opened on Alberta Drive and Orchard Park Road “across from the Seneca Mall,” making three Buffalo-area locations.
Today’s Wegmans fan might look for variety and quality in areas like the bakery, prepared meals and the Mediterranean Bar, but those first stores had embraced the Wegmans concept that was promoted through the 1970s as “the mall in a store.”
Buffalo newspaper readers of the late ’70s would have been just as likely to come across ads for Wegmans “Fashion Fabrics” department as they would for groceries.
And in sharp contrast to the distinctive high-end touches that make a trip to Wegmans an adventure for modern shopper, 40 years ago, as a new kid on the scene trying to butt heads with the likes of Tops, Super Duper, and Bells – Wegmans’ biggest draw was basic in a town that has traditionally been among the nation’s top coupon redeemers. The chain opened its doors offering deep discounts with double coupons.
Wegmans dropped double coupons after a couple of years, but rejoined the fray in the mid-’90s when Quality Markets and Jubilee Foods began promoting double coupons as they entered the local-market market replacing Bells and Super Duper.
Two Buffalo stores were added in the 1980s, Sheridan Drive in 1985 and McKinley Parkway in 1988. Another four stores opened in the 1990s, including the only location in the City of Buffalo – on Amherst Street, in 1997.
To avoid being caught violating the Raines law, several men carry a keg to Squaw Island (now Unity Island) by boat in 1897.
New York State Rules in place during the Covid-19 pandemic call for food to be served along with alcoholic beverages at taverns across the state.
It’s not the first time a patron wanting a cold one in the Empire State had to order some “substantial food.”
In 1896, The Raines Law went into effect, requiring that a meal be served with an alcoholic beverage. The far-reaching anti-saloon law also shuttered taverns that weren’t attached to hotels and banned drinking on Sunday.
The Sunday drinking ban had the greatest impact on the working man of Buffalo, specifically laboring immigrants who worked 12 or 14 hour days Monday through Saturday, and often spent their weekly “day of rest” in a tap room.
John Weyand, of Buffalo’s Weyand Brewery, said the law was unjust, because it most directly affected the gin mill proprietors who were just eeking out a living.
Robert Schelling, the treasurer of the Magnus Beck Brewery in Buffalo, said the implementation of the Raines law closed as many as 500 drinking spots in Buffalo.
Brewers called this unjust – but State Senator John Raines and his Republican compatriots saw the law doing what they had hoped.
Testimony in one Senate hearing said that before the law, for Buffalo’s 6,000 Italians, there were 64 Italian saloons. After a year under the new law, the number of bars was cut in half.
“These Italians were the poorest people in all of Christendom, and these saloons were a curse to them,” reported The News in 1896.
In general, according to state testimony reported in The News, Buffalo had one saloon for every 150 people, and that number, according to testimony, had dropped to a bar for every 200 Buffalonians.
“Do you consider that a sufficient number for the irrigation of Buffalo?” asked Senator Raines of one witness, who responded, “it is a great plenty.”
It was the places with a little more capital and imagination that were able to find ways around the rules. Many bar owners constructed ten “rooms” inside their spaces to fulfill the hotel requirements, which allowed them to serve meals – which could be washed down with a beer. The meals served with a beer were often inedible prop sandwiches.
Leviticus and Lodowick Jones – an anti-saloon father and son team of lawyers – became vigilante enforcers of the letter of the law in Buffalo. They first became known for fighting against baseball games being played on Sunday. They took the momentum of getting Sunday baseball shut down into working to have the licenses of fake hotels revoked. On several occasions, they photographed high-profile Buffalonians coming and going from the saloons and caused great scandal in Buffalo in the late 1890s.
The laws stayed in effect right through Prohibition, but were ultimately repealed in 1923.
When the UB Dance Theater Workshop presented an adaptation of “The Inner City Mother Goose” in 1970, director Billie Kirpich told the Courier-Express that the collection of poems is “a bitter comment on the paradox of what a child’s life Is supposed to be like — the innocence — and what it’s really like in urban areas.”
The UB ballet adaptation dealt with the book’s themes of poverty, like old Mother Hubbard’s bare cupboard.
“The ballet tells about the hunger for food and the hunger for the chance to live,” reported Tom Putnam in the Courier.
Poet Eve Merriam adapted nursery rhymes to reflect and dramatize the realities of urban living, but the book was never meant for small children. When the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library bought a copy in 1970, it was filed under “Literature and Fine Arts.”
When the volume was purchased by Buffalo Schools through a grant meant to enrich life in the inner city, it was placed in high schools, to be used with a teacher’s discretion.
In 1972, a controversy gaining nationwide attention erupted when Councilman William Duria railed against the book in a meeting discussing what he saw as the misuse of “Model City” grant funds.
Immediately, Mayor Frank A. Sedita ordered the book off the shelves at Buffalo Schools.
A week later, Erie County Judge William Heffron empaneled a grand jury to investigate the book.
“This book of so-called nursery rhymes advocates the commission of certain crimes,” Heffron told grand jury members.
He read several of the poems out loud to the jurors, including, “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick—snap the blade and give it a flick. Grab the purse—it’s easily done. Then just for kicks, just for fun, plunge the knife and cut and run.”
Heffron said that at least eight of the poems attack policemen and one attacks a judge. He read that one aloud as well.
“A wise old judge sat in court,
“The case was long, his judgement short.
“Why change the way it’s always been?
“Convict the man of darker skin.”
“We have to realize that 70% of the crime committed in Erie County is committed in a 40-block area in the core of our city,” railed the judge. “To teach these little children to commit crimes is something that I think should be stopped.”
Newspapers in Chicago, Phoenix, and other cities around the nation offered editorials in support of the judge and the removal of the book from schools—although the Buffalo Public School system said the swirling controversy surrounding giving this book to little children was completely misplaced.
Buffalo Schools Associate Superintendent Eugene Reville told reporters that the book “has never been available for elementary school children to read” and “that it is not the policy of the school system to make the book available to such children in the future.”
The grand jury investigation ended with Erie County District Attorney Michael Dillon assuring the panel and the judge that the book wasn’t available to students through the school district.
In 1950, Your Host opened its ninth restaurant — rapid growth after starting with a hot dog stand in 1944.
The Kenmore Avenue location, serving Sahlen’s hot dogs, was the first Your Host.
The restaurant chain’s growth, one ad proclaimed, was built upon “cleanliness, fine food and excellent service.”
A 1950 newspaper ad trumpeting the new restaurant showed photos of each of the restaurants first eight locations.
By 1968, there were 38 Your Host locations, with more than 850 employees serving 11 million meals a year.
The last 11 Your Host restaurants closed up for good in 1993.
Among the fine foods offered at the local chain with both booth and counter service, was Buffalo-baked Wonder Bread and Rolls, made by the Continental Baking Company, 313 Fougeron St.
Wonder Bread ad, 1930. Wonder Bread would come sliced starting in 1931.
Ward & Ward built the bakery in 1915, baking “Ward’s wonderful bread, the achievement of four bread-baking generations of the Ward Family.”
In 1924, Ward & Ward became a part of the Continental Baking empire, which became the makers of Wonder Bread in 1925.
For the next eight decades, Wonder Bread and the Hostess Cakes line of snacks were churned out the building where 100-foot-long ovens of brick and steel were capable of between 50,000 and 60,000 loaves a day.
“Ward’s” is visible on the smokestack of the Wonder Bread Bakery, as shown from the New York Central Beltline tracks.
There were still 300 employees making Wonder Bread and Twinkies when Continental Baking was bought out by Interstate Bakeries in 1995. Interstate let the ovens go cold in Buffalo in 2004, eliminating the last 150 jobs as well as the smell of bread baking along the Beltline railroad tracks.
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.
“I try to skewer with grace. I love being called a curmudgeon.”
John Otto may have been Buffalo’s greatest curmudgeon. He was scholarly and erudite, but had a playful silly streak that kept listeners glued to his “conference call of all interested parties” for nearly 40 years.
He spent the 50s and early 60s doing just about everything imaginable on-air – and doing it superbly, first on WBNY and then on WGR, both radio and TV.
He was a classical music host, radio news anchor and TV weatherman – but he seemed best in his element once he began hosting talk shows, specifically WGR Radio’s “Expression,” a nightly moonlit program that invited “listeners to telephone spontaneous, unrehearsed opinions” starting in 1962.
1962.
Such would be Otto’s gig, more or less, for the next 37 years.
“He’s a good show with his deep, pulpit-shaped voice because his unshakeable confidence forces you take sides,” wrote News radio critic Hal Crowther in 1973. “If you agree with him, it’s ‘Give ‘em hell, John,’ but if you’re against him you’re often sorry that there are six or seven miles of night between your fingers and his windpipe.”
“Dracula and I have a lot in common,” Otto told News reporter Mary Ann Lauricella in 1981. “Daylight rather frightens us back into our caves. My metabolism is so attuned to nighttime hours that I’m more comfortable at night, when a velvet cloak is wrapped around the world.”
“He takes delight in practicing conversation as an art,” wrote Lauricella. “He uses a metaphor here, a simile there, perhaps a humorous play on words and weaves them into bright, conversational tapestries.”
But Otto preferred self-depreciation to plaudits.
“I’m certainly not modern in anything – from the way I dress to the way I think,” said Otto in 1978, when he was still dressing in “outdated narrow ties and straight-legged pants.”
“Weekends, I tend to fall out in customary corduroy slacks and white socks. I even let myself go a day without shaving. It’s a very exciting life I lead,” Buffalo’s congenial co-communicator told News reporter Jane Kwiatkowski in 1986.
His biggest vice, Otto confided nightly to his listeners, was his “regular investment of fortunes at Hamburg or Batavia.” Otto loved the horses, and would announce the winners from the local tracks on his show.
“We have the first three from Batavia Downs,” he’d say, often with commentary on the horse’s name, but sometimes with the hint of disdain in his voice.
“It’s the rental of a horse for two minutes to run across the finish line first, and they seldom do,” Otto said of his horsing around.
Catching him in a moment of serious self-reflection, it was clear Otto had loftier goals for his nightly meeting of the minds.
“If it works right, it raises the level of community thought and sets people to thinking with some added knowledge they didn’t have before,” he said.
“We want to occupy and engage thoughts and to allow the opportunity for people to have access to a forum they are otherwise denied,” Otto said. “Some people call in who are just passing through and want to say ‘hi’ to the world – to let others know they are alive – a fact sometimes overlooked by the rest of the world.”
Not every caller “wants to unburden himself on the big hot-line issues like Vietnam, Watergate, crime in the streets, drugs and the rest.” Otto’s often hardboiled entrenchment on those issues easily and often made way for the kind of calls an overnight program attracts.
“We get a lot of older people, lonely people. What they need are some voices in the night. And they have other things on their minds besides the headlines,” Otto said.
“One thing I’ve learned on this show is that many of them have an abiding fascination for marvels. Anything about the supernatural, ESP, UFOs and experience that can’t be explained – that will get them talking like nothing else.”
For decades, Otto was ol’ trusty – the iron horse of radio. Starting in 1955, through his first 30 years in broadcasting, he never missed a day of work – not once called in sick.
However, he landed in the hospital in 1985 with pneumonia.
“Forty years of smoking,” he said.
The streak was broken and over the next decade and a half, sickness in breathing would slowly take Otto’s life – right before his listenership’s ears.
Eventually, very labored breathing made it difficult for him to get around, and he spent his final year “on the radio, on the telephone” broadcasting from his home. Even in his final days, “John, John, your operator on” didn’t miss a broadcast. He signed off with his signature “I’ll be with you” on a Friday, went to the hospital on Saturday, and died early Monday. He was 70 when he died in 1999.
The son of Holocaust survivors who settled in Buffalo in 1949, Wolf Blitzer arrived at CNN in 1990, after years of covering the Middle East and Washington for the Jerusalem Post and occasionally for The Buffalo Evening News.
He was named after his grandfather who died in a Nazi camp. His family came to Buffalo when he was an infant and his father, David, found work in the Bethlehem Steel coke ovens.
Later, David Blitzer opened Blitzer’s Delicatessen on Hertel Avenue, before becoming a contractor and President of Forbes Homes.
Wolf Blitzer in his Ken West days.
The family moved from North Buffalo to Kenmore, and Wolf Blitzer played linebacker at Ken West before studying history at UB.
He fell into a job with Reuters because he could speak both Hebrew and English — and in the role of journalist, the historian made history.
When Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Washington, Wolf Blitzer was the first Jewish reporter to ever ask him a question, about the possibility of allowing Jewish and Israeli reporters to cover Egypt. Sadat later said the question resonated with him and helped him find his way to peace talks with Israel.
“Wolf was the kind of young man who always pushed himself,” said David Blitzer of his son. “He always wanted to be something. Look at him now. Only in America.”
Wolf Blitzer became a national figure during CNN’s coverage of the 1991 Gulf War, at a time when CNN was the only 24-hour cable news channel and he was the Pentagon correspondent. As is often the case in TV news, it wasn’t just his solid reporting that gained him acclaim — his unassuming manner and unusual name made him the fodder of Johnny Carson and other comedians.
Wolf Blitzer won an Emmy for his coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. He moved into the studio for CNN in 1999, and he has hosted “The Situation Room” since 2005.
By Steve Cichon
