Around Buffalo’s Radio & TV dials in the 50s

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


Ch.7’s Main Street studios on a snowy night in the late 50s.

WBNY’s bright red “News from Where It Happens” cruiser, with “Flash Mike and the Mike Patrol.”

Chuck Healy goes over prizes like a case of Squirt and TV dinners on Strikes, Spares, and Misses on Ch.4.

Henry Brach (with dark glasses) broadcasting live from Sattler’s with WBNY deejay Mark Edwards.

Engineers Harold Smith and Leroy Fiedler in the WKBW master control room in the mid-1950s.

WBUF-TV weather personalities Joy Wilson and Mac McGarrity share a laugh.

The Kenneth Baumler family won a 1959 Studebaker Lark in WBNY’s “Lark Hunt” contest, sponsored by Buffalo’s six-area Studebaker dealers.

Bill Mazer called Bisons games on WKBW before moving to WGR. This team photo, with Mazer superimposed in the top right corner, was taken at Offermann Field in the early 50s. The Bisons moved to War Memorial Stadium in 1960.

 WBEN’s staff announcers in the late 50s included, standing, Jack Ogilvie, Lou Douglas, Van Miller, Ken Philips, Gene Kelly, Virgil Booth, Carl Erickson, and Bernie Sadler. Steve Geer, Harry Webb and Mike Mearian are among those seated.

 WKBW’s team of disc jockeys, about 1960.

Bob Diamond was a utility man on WKBW, at various times holding down the overnight shift, weekends, the farm report, and production work from the late-50s through the mid-60s.

As a member of the boys’ choir singing on WGR starting in 1926, Ed Tucholka’s first announcing job was on the PA at Sattler’s, 998 Broadway—talking about the bargains of the day, paging mothers of lost children and generally keeping things moving without benefit of a script.

Soon, his deep rich voice would be heard on WEBR, and in over 20 years there, he hosted the wartime “Noon Day Review” highlighting local GIs and as well as Uncle Ed’s Children’s Hour.

After stops at WWOL and WHLD, Tucholka moved to the WBEN stations in 1966 and oversaw WBEN-FM, always reflecting simple dignity and elegance he presented on the radio for nearly 70 years.

WBEN Operator/Engineer Tom Whalen gets ready to cue up albums for Clint Buehlman.

News anchor John Corbett looks over news scripts hot off the typewriter of Fran Lucca in the Ch.4 newsroom.

WBEN’s Sports team: Dick Rifenburg, Chuck Healy, Van Miller, and Ralph Hubbell. When injury ended Rifenburg’s professional football career with the Detroit Lions, the former All-American Michigan wide receiver turned to broadcasting and spent nearly 30 years at WBEN Radio and TV.

Officially, they were Memorial Auditorium and War Memorial Stadium, but to Buffalonians they were the Aud and the Rockpile, and they were the great WPA-built stone homes of Buffalo’s greatest diversions:  football, hockey, boxing, basketball, and wrestling.

The men in this photo and their compatriots across the radio and TV dials helped bring those diversions closer. Maybe more than in other cities, Buffalo’s sports guys have always been among the most popular broadcasters, as they seemed like one of us while helping to bring us closer to heroes on the court, on the field, in the ring, and on the ice through their work.

With the smooth melodious voice of a classic announcer, Ward Fenton joined WBEN as a radio news man in 1941. After serving in World War II, he returned to the station and was named chief announcer in 1947. He was also heard as the announcer on the NBC network program Mr. IQ, which originated from Shea’s Buffalo Theater for a national audience.

His fluency in French, German, and Italian made him a natural for decades’ worth of announcing classical music programs, especially on WBEN-FM.

When Ch.4 signed on, he was the station’s weekend weatherman, and by the 1960s, was regularly seen in front of the weather map in living rooms all over Western New York, with his forecasts sponsored by the Charles R. Turner Company. His segments were bookended with a memorable film clip showing trucks at the Turner’s company garages. At the beginning of the weather segment, the trucks headed out onto the street, and then after the weather forecast, the same film ran in reverse, with the trucks appearing to back into the garage.

Fenton became Ch.4’s Chief Announcer in 1967, and retired in 1975.

Harry Webb anchors a WBEN-TV newscast sponsored by Esso, and interviews Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy on a visit to Buffalo in 1958.


This page is an excerpt from  100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting by Steve Cichon

The full text of the book is now online.

The original 436-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York. 

©2020, 2021 Buffalo Stories LLC, staffannouncer.com, and Steve Cichon

Bennett High’s future star power, 1946 & around the radio dial

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


Bennett High School’s class officers in 1946 included John Otto (front row, leopard tie) and Sorrell Booke (standing, far right).

Buffalo Broadcasting legend John Otto was the 1946 Bennett High School Class President, but he was not the radio star of the class.

While he did appear on WGR as a ten-year-old accordion player on Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour in 1941, Otto didn’t become a familiar voice in the night (on the radio, on the telephone) until after serving in the Navy following graduation.

The class valedictorian Sorrell Booke had already been appearing in locally produced radio dramas for more than a decade, won a contest on WGR with his impersonation of Hitler, and was considered a regular actor on WEBR by the time he was a sophomore at Bennett.

Booke– the man who would ultimately be best known for playing Boss Hogg on TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard– was a classically trained actor who attended Yale by way of Bennett High School.

When Sorrell was 10, he began his radio career by hopping on a street car, heading downtown to the Rand Building and asking for an audition on WGR. He wound up with steady work as an actor in radio dramas through high school.

For most of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, Booke saw steady work as a character actor playing roles on more than 200 TV shows before landing the starring role on The Dukes, which he called “gravy after a long career.”

John Otto’s broadcasting career began as a disc jockey and newsman on WBNY Radio, before moving to WGR, where he spent most of the 1960s as a “jack-of-all-trades” on both WGR Radio and WGR-TV Ch.2.

Otto hosted children’s shows, was a TV weatherman, and hosted a local TV talk show, as well as the radio work that he’d be best known for, starting with a program called Extension 55 on WGR.

Bennett High grad Sorrell Booke as “Boss Hogg.”

Remembered for his brilliance, class, and unparalleled ability to put the English language to its best possible use on live radio, Otto died in 1999, still hosting his “nighttime conference call of all interested parties” as many as six nights a week.

After “The Dukes of Hazzard” ended its seven-year run in 1985, Booke continued to act in guest starring roles on shows like “Newhart” and “Full House,” while also becoming quite prolific as a voice actor on animated children’s shows.

For his part, he never let the fame get to his head. After seven years of playing Boss Hogg on TV, Booke once told a reporter, “I’m not a jet-set type. I’m just an ordinary guy from Buffalo.”

Bob Hope in Delaware Park

More than 175,000 people packed into the Delaware Park Meadow for a 1948 WBEN/Buffalo Evening News July 4th Celebration featuring Bob Hope, who presented a $6000 check to Moir Tanner of the Children’s Hospital Endowment fund from the News Charity Fund.

WBEN announcer Gordon Redding is joined by engineer Edward Czech at the Buffalo Water Intake pier, reporting on how Buffalo gets its drinking water.

WBEN announcers Ed Wegman, Gordon Redding, Les Barry, Budd Tesch, Fred Keller, Woody Magnuson

Harry Webb came to Buffalo from Schenectady as a classical music announcer on the new WBEN-FM, and wound up spending 24 years on TV. Webb was Ch.4’s first newscaster, when the broadcast days began at 12 noon, and involved reading the latest edition of the Buffalo Evening News to an audience of several hundred. By the time Webb retired from newscasting in 1972, he had seen and been a part of the change of television from an indulgence of a few wealthy families to a modern global apparatus and definitive of disseminator information. Here, with technician Ed Huber, he records a show at the Buffalo Zoo.

WBEN announcers Don Cunningham, Ralph Hubbell, Jim Gardner, Harry Webb, Bill Weatherly

UB Roundtable, first presented on WBEN Radio and then on Ch.4, ran for nearly 40 years. This edition from the early 40s featured UB’s Dr. Earl McGrath, Dr. Harry Rockwell of the State Teachers College, Dr. Samuel Capen of UB, and Msgr. Timothy Coughlin of Canisius College.

After hosting “Listen While You Lunch” on WEBR right after the war, Tap Taplin was the host of WEBR’s early morning “T-N-T Show” in the early 50s. “Let him remind you about the time and temperature. There are news reports at 6, 7, 8, and 9 for information about the day’s events… and last, but not least, Tap plays your favorite recorded music.” Later, he spent time at WBNY.

Jack Eno first appeared at WEBR’s “Ye Olde Town Crier” in 1935. After some time at WGR-WKBW in the 40s, Eno returned to WEBR for a more-than 20-year run starting through the 50s into the 70s. In this shot, John Clark is playing the records for Eno in the control room.

WEBR’s daily Queen City Cinderella show, with announcer Gomer Lesch and emcee Clare Allen, awarding prizes to housewives and making one… Queen City Cinderella for the day.

Bob Wells came to WEBR in 1946 to create a music and dance show to help keep kids out of trouble. Hi-Teen became one of the most popular radio shows in Buffalo history, and Bob Wells one of the most beloved stars of radio and later TV.

WEBR morning man Chuck Cook enlists the help of Queen-O Beverages and a model to find “Buffalo’s Hottest Corner,” during a summer heat wave in 1949.

John Boothby was an announcer at WGR-WKBW in early 40s, and became WEBR’s wartime chief announcer while also working at the Curtiss-Wright plant.

Ed Little’s 62-year radio career included a stop at WBEN immediately following service in the war, and then a lengthy stay as one of WEBR’s top announcers, emcees, and disc jockeys.


This page is an excerpt from  100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting by Steve Cichon

The full text of the book is now online.

The original 436-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York. 

©2020, 2021 Buffalo Stories LLC, staffannouncer.com, and Steve Cichon

WBEN-TV signs-on, 1948

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


For the few thousand with TV sets that could pull in the new station, the wait was excruciating.

On February 27, 1948, WBEN-TV started telecasting daily—but only a test pattern for several hours a day.

Eleven weeks later, on May 14, 1948, Buffalo entered the television era with the sign-on of Ch.4, WBEN-TV. The station was among the first 25 to sign on in the country.

“Edward H. Butler, editor and publisher of The Buffalo Evening News, stepped before a WBEN-TV camera at Memorial Auditorium on May 14, 1948—and a new era in mass communications and home entertainment began on the Niagara Frontier,” read an announcement from the station.

The station’s first-day, four-hour lineup offered a taste of what television would be like over the next couple of years in Buffalo—a little bit of everything.

After the somber address by Mayor Dowd and Mr. Butler, there was a Town Casino Variety Show, including the Town Casino chorus, acrobatic dancer Dorothy Deering, and network singing star and emcee Mary Jane Dobb.

The Town Casino chorus—“The Adorables,” entertained on Ch.4’s first night of broadcasting. The high-kicking ladies were Barbara Stafford, Alice Noonan, Jerry MacPhee, Gini Ruth, Melhi Jestrab, and Lee Borger.

And the show that would be the station’s most popular for the next decade was also on Ch.4 that first night —There was wrestling live from Memorial Auditorium.

WBEN-TV cameras in Memorial Auditorium.

“The marceled master of mayhem, Gorgeous George, will take over the spotlight when the tele-cameras shift to the auditorium’s wrestling ring at 9:30,” read Buffalo’s first TV program guide.

Just as radio had been a truly pioneering experience 25 years earlier– with no one exactly sure what to do because no one had ever done it before, the first few years of programming at Ch.4 were an exciting and sometimes weird hodge-podge of adapting things that worked on radio for television mixed with completely new ideas for the completely new medium.

South Buffalo’s Fred Keller, who first joined WBEN as an announcer in 1942, was the creative spirit behind many of the shows on Ch.4.

Mary Jane Dobb was the emcee and Dorothy Deering performed acrobatic dancing on a Town Casino Variety Show on Ch.4’s first night on the air. Behind the camera is Program Director Fred Keller, who was also a writer and announcer that evening. “Radio Mirror” called him “one of the top television idea-men in the East.” Among his credits was the creation of Ch.4’s beloved Santa Claus show.
Because sponsors meant more than format, Chuck Healy’s “Iroquois Sports Spotlight” show hosted Buffalo Zoo Director Joseph Abgott and his monkey friend “Mike” visited when the zoo opened the Iroquois Monkey Island.

Remembered as a sportscaster from the day WBEN-TV signed on in 1948 through 1977, Chuck Healy was also Buffalo’s most watched TV news anchor on Ch.4 through the ’60s.

The versatile announcer was also a versatile athlete as a boxing and football star at Syracuse University.

“Clowns and tigers” sounds more like a bad dream than a TV show. There was no caption attached to this photo, but based on the cameras without WBEN-TV stenciling, it was probably taken in early 1948, well-before the station signed on with a regular schedule.
At 9:30 on Wednesday mornings, the Czurles family hosted “Woodland Crafts, as a part of the “Live and Learn” summer series on Ch.4. Dr. Stanley Czurles was the Director of Art education at Buffalo State Teachers College.
Another of Ch.4’s most popular early shows The TV Barn Dance, sponsored by Hal Casey’s South Park Chevrolet. At various times, the show featured country musicians who were also known as around Buffalo as disc jockeys– Art Young, who was heard on WXRA and WKBW, performed with his group the Borderliners. Lee Forster, who hosted shows on WEBR, WKBW and WWOL, performed on the program—and also met his wife on the Ch.4 sound stage.
Ailing veterans gather around a brand-new television set in the recreation lounge of the VA Hospital in Batavia in 1949.
Ed Reimers interviews singer and bandleader Vaughn Monroe on Ch.4, early in 1948, while the station was still experimenting and not yet broadcasting a full schedule.
Ch.4 live truck downtown.
“Studio D,” on the Statler’s 18th floor as Ch.4 presents “The Clue,” perhaps the best remembered of Ch.4’s live, locally produced dramas.

Television’s first ever cop drama, “The Clue” was written and directed by Buffalo theater icon Fred A. Keller, and starred Evening News Radio-TV columnist Jim Trantor as Private Eye Steve Malice. It was as an actor on “The Clue” that Canadian radio announcer Lorne Greene—later famous as Ben Cartwright on Bonanza—made his first television appearance.

Stuart Roth and Jim Mohr recreate a scene in Ch.4’s “The Law & You.”
Brothers Jim (above) and Don Trantor lit up 1920s Buffalo radio with their piano act “the 20 Fingers of Melody.” Don was later the TV and Radio critic for the Courier-Express, while Jim was the promotions director for the WBEN stations. As shown above, he also played “Steve Malice, Private Eye,” starring in Ch.4’s “The Clue.”
It took a cast and crew of 22 to put on a 15-minute episode of “The Clue,” including Director Keller, Writer Wander, Ass’t Director Baldwin and announcer Bob Nelson. Actress Nadine Fitzpatrick is flanked by Trantor, Conrad Schuck, Charles Dempsey and Keith Hopkins. The technicians include Neil O’Donnell, Frank Holliday, Arthur Graff, John Knoerl, Gordon Pels, Gee Klumpp, Chet Pardee, Doug McLarty, James Kane, John Hagmman, Donald Stilwell, and William Noble.
Jim Trantor was also one of Ch.4’s early news men. He was the host of the weekly Iroquois Illustrated Press, which took a longer look at the week’s top news stories.
Harry Webb (above) and Ed Dinsmore (below) were Ch.4’s most seen news anchors during the station’s first decade on the air.
Celebrating Ch.4’s fourth anniversary in 1952 were Harry Webb, Bill Peters (who played Santa Claus from 1954-72 as well as “Norman Oklahoma”), and “Uncle” Jerry Brick, who was a Ch.4 floor director when he wasn’t hosting a kid’s variety show.
Chuck Healy’s easy and professional manner was a Ch.4 mainstay from the day the station signed on until 1977. Strictly a sportsman in the early days, Healy would be Buffalo’s most watched news anchor in the 1960s.
Director Gertrude Noble and Floor Manager William Noble look on as Victor’s Amateur Hour emcee James Trantor rehearses a commercial with producer James Christensen.
Woody Magnuson was another of the hosts on WBEN-TV’s Amateur Hour, this time sponsored by North Park Furniture. He was also the host of a longtime WEBR kids show as “Uncle Bill.”


This page is an excerpt from  100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting by Steve Cichon

The full text of the book is now online.

The original 436-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York. 

©2020, 2021 Buffalo Stories LLC, staffannouncer.com, and Steve Cichon

Buffalo Broadcast Pioneers: 7th Annual Hall of Fame Inductions

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

This article was published in Living Prime Time Magazine.

may03Every May for the past six years, the Buffalo Broadcast Pioneers gather to celebrate the history and future of Buffalo Broadcasting.

We honor the great broadcasters of the past… Those for whom we have the fondest memories, and the mere mention of their names help us hearken back to a place where time has helped to round the harsh edges. They are the faces and voices that brought us news of wars beginning and ending, plants opening and closing, people being born and dying, and, all the music and sounds associated with those events in our minds.

It’s also our mission to celebrate those in television and radio today who keep the spirit of the media alive. It takes a special person to shine above the numerous television, radio, and internet choices of this day and age, and those who shine today are tomorrow’s fond memories.

The broadcasters who bring and have brought sounds and pictures into our living rooms, into our cars, and under our pillows (when we should have been sleeping!) are really just as much a part of events as the memories themselves. The following are this year’s best of the best… The 2003 Buffalo Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame inductees.

 

beach.jpg (10242 bytes)Sandy BEACH

Beach has made a career of straddling the line of the conservative tastes of Buffalo, and has never let office or city hall politics get in the way of a good show. It’s that desire for great radio, no matter the cost, that has allowed Sandy to be a Buffalo radio fixture for 35 years with only a few interruptions.

Sandy came to WKBW from Hartford in 1968. Within 6 years, according to a 1972 interview, 2002 BBP Hall of Famer Jeff Kaye said that Sandy had “worked every shift on KB except morning drive, and improved the ratings in each part.”

His quick wit and infectious laugh have been a part of Western New York ever since at KB, WNYS, Majic 102, and now afternoon drive on WBEN.

A native of Lunenberg, Massachusetts (hence his long time sign off, “Good Night Lunenberg….Wherever you are”), Sandy’s made his impact for over a third of a century in Buffalo radio as a jock, in programming, and now in as a talker, and always as a wise-guy friend just a dial twist away.

 

Tim Russert headshotTim RUSSERT

2003 Buffalo Bob Smith Award

Buffalo Bob Smith began his broadcasting career in his hometown of Buffalo, but of course gained worldwide fame as the human friend of America’s favorite puppet, Howdy Doody. Despite his international celebrity, Bob never forgot his hometown, and even adopted it as a part of his name. Each year The Buffalo Broadcast Pioneers honor a broadcaster who has made his or her mark away from the Niagara Frontier, but is a Buffalonian at heart.

This year we honor the host of Meet the Press, NBC’s Senior Vice President and Washington Bureau Chief, and South Buffalo native Tim Russert. A lawyer by trade, the Canisius High School grad worked in the Senate and in Governor Mario Cuomo’s office before joining NBC as a producer in 1984. He joined the NBC News air staff in 1990, and has been a fixture ever since. As one of the nation’s leading political analysts, Russert has been the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, and we celebrate him because through it all, he’s never forgotten the Queen City.

 

carolCarol JASEN

She’s the smart, beautiful, authoritative and street savvy woman all women would love to be… and all men would love to marry. Combined with the sense and skill of a good newswoman, her career as a news anchor was a homerun. Voted Buffalo’s Sexiest Woman too many years in a row to count, Carol transcended both television and news to become the unofficial Queen of Buffalo while anchoring the news on Channel 4 for 23 years. Her appeal as a newscaster and person is on many different levels…

Carol Crissey came to Buffalo from Harrisburg, PA in 1979, originally paired with John Beard at the anchor desk. Carol anchored the news at noon, 5, 6, and 11, with the likes of Beard, Bob Koop, Rich Newberg, and Kevin O’Connell until she “retired” to New Mexico last year.

 

webbHarry WEBB

2003 Golden Age Award

The Buffalo Broadcast Pioneers was founded in 1995, and we still have a lot of catching up to do. The Golden Age Award is reserved for the pioneers in the truest sense of the word: Those who did it first, the people who had no pattern to follow, no lead blocker. These folks blazed the trail, and set an example for future generations to follow.
Harry Webb came to Buffalo from Schenectady as a classic music announcer on the new WBEN-FM. At the same time, the Evening News was starting a television station. Webb was Channel 4’s first newscaster, when the broadcast days began at 12 noon, and involved reading the latest edition of the Buffalo Evening News to an audience of several hundred.

By the time Webb retired from newscasting in 1972, he had seen and been a part of the change of television from an avant garde indulgence of a few wealthy families to the modern global apparatus and definitive of disseminator information it is today. Webb recently passed away after several years of retirement in East Aurora.

 

leviteLarry LEVITE

2003 Goodyear Award

The Goodyear Award is named in honor of George Goodyear, the Buffalo philanthropist who co-founded WGR-TV, and is awarded each year to those in Broadcasting’s front office who have made a career of advancing the ideals of the BBP.

Larry Levite spent the 1970’s moving up and down Buffalo’s radio dial breathing new life (and ratings!) into stations like WYSL, WPHD, and WEBR.

When, in 1978, federal regulations forced the Buffalo Evening News to sell off its radio and television stations, Levite formed Algonquin Broadcasting to fill the void, and purchased WBEN AM/FM. Larry continued the tradition of the News stations by bringing in top quality talent in all facets of broadcasting, and did so through the deregulation of the broadcasting industry, until selling the stations in the mid 90s.

whalenTom WHALEN

2003 Behind the Scenes Award

It takes more than just a pretty face or golden voice to put on a radio or television program, and with the Behind the Scenes Award, the BBP celebrates the folks who are the guts of any broadcast: The directors, producers, photographers, writers, engineers… All the often nameless, faceless people on “the other side of the glass.”

For nearly thirty years, Tom Whalen was the man playing the records and turning the dials for “Yours truly Buehly” on WBEN Radio. Whalen served in the Army Air Corps during World War II on the communications staff, and joined WBEN in 1947.

Soon after, he grew into Clint Buehlman’s right hand man, and remained there until Clint’s retirement in 1977. Part of the reason Buehlman’s show sounded like he was talking to each person individually, is because he was talking to Tom individually about the weather, Tom’s kids… Your AM-MC said often that Tom “was the nicest man he knew,” and it came across in Clint’s warm chats with Tom. Whalen retired in 1983 leaving a 36 year legacy as one of radio’s nice guys, making one of Buffalo’s greatest radio personalities comfortable, and thereby making you comfortable every morning.

 

We always welcome new members to the BBP. It’s our mission to preserve and promote Western New York’s rich TV and radio history, and to salute and bring attention to quality broadcasting of today. Membership is $25, and anyone with a passion for broadcasting can join as a member. It’s just as easy to join us in celebrating this year’s honorees. Tickets to our Hall of Fame event are available for to general public at $40 per person. Send your ticket order or membership request with payment to: The Buffalo Broadcast Pioneers; 5672 Main Street; Williamsville, New York 14221.