Ralph Hubbell & Around the Dial

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


Ralph Hubbell, WBEN

As already mentioned, his first radio job was reading poetry over the brand new WBNY, where he also became the station’s sportscaster in 1936.

Ralph Hubbell started as WGR’s sports director and moved on to WBEN in 1948, becoming “The Dean of Buffalo Sportscasters” along the way, “displaying a quick wit, warm personality and mastery of language.”

Ralph Hubbell (right) at WGR’s news desk with chief announcer Jack Gelzer

In 1948, he was Buffalo’s first TV sports anchor, although the term hadn’t been invented yet. He was in the booth for the first few seasons of Bills football. Youngster Van Miller was on the play-by-play, but Buffalo’s good sports fans loved the steady observations of Hubb during the games.

Charley Bailey of WEBR, Jim Wells of WBEN, Sig Smith of WKBW, and Hubb were Buffalo’s top radio sportsmen of the 1940s.

When Hubbell retired after 58 years in Buffalo broadcasting in 1989, Buffalo News Sports Editor Larry Felser, a legend in his own right who grew up listening to Hubbell, remarked “those familiar vocal cords… always seemed to have been freshly dipped in motor oil.”

Typically, each 15-minute segment of Clint Buehlman’s daily broadcast was sponsored by a single business. In the earliest days, as outlined in this ad, “Your AM-MC” would not only talk conversationally about that sponsor and its services and products, but also sit at the piano and sing songs about sponsors, weather, news and just about anything else.

By the time Buehlman was forced into retirement at age 65 in 1977, his days of sitting at the piano were long gone — replaced by adult contemporary music that could be heard all over the AM dial in that era. But between records, Buehly still would mix weather, things you needed to know and a few words from his sponsor, just like he had for the previous four decades.


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

What It Looked Like Wednesday: Grocery wars of the ’50s spark deja vu on Hertel

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

North Buffalo and the neighborhoods around the Hertel strip are abuzz with excitement over what promises to be a revolution in grocery shopping in the very near future.

A&P and Loblaw’s fought grocery wars on Hertel Avenue in the 1950s from the same storefronts where the Lexington Co-Op and Dash’s will be vying for customers 60 years later. (Buffalo Stories archives)

The Lexington Co-Op is slated to open a new branch in what was most recently a CVS drug store on Hertel Avenue. Renovation and construction have been ongoing at the 10,000-square-foot store, which will boast a sidewalk café and meat and seafood counters.

Meanwhile, Dash’s Markets caused an uproar in 2013 when plans to close the current Hertel Avenue store and merge it with a larger facility on Kenmore Avenue were made public. Speculation has been rampant about plans for an enlarged Dash’s store in the footprint of buildings owned by the Dash family, taking up nearly the entire block from Starin to Voorhees avenues.

2017 rendering

If the speculation comes true and consumers soon have two gleaming modern supermarkets within a block of each other — it won’t be the first time that’s happened. It won’t even be the first time for the two buildings involved.

In the 1950s, the same North Buffalo neighborhood watched two grocery behemoths battle for their shopping patronage from the same exact locations.

While the building at 1678 Hertel Ave. has been known for the last several decades as a CVS drugstore, for several decades starting in the 1940s, the location was home to an A&P Supermarket.

1950 ad for the renovated A&P Market on Hertel Avenue. It’s expected that the Lexington Co-Op will open in the building sometime in 2017. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Renovations to the existing store in 1950 promised the ladies of North Buffalo modern shopping like none they’d ever experienced. “Step down the aisles,” the ad invites. “You’ll find them lined with new departments, sparkling new refrigerated cases and modern marketing equipment of every sort.”

The A&P lasted in the spot through the late 1970s.

Perhaps feeling the heat from the sparkling new A&P, in 1955, Loblaws closed its dated location at Hertel and Parkside (now the site of Walgreens) and opened a new store just up from Hertel and Starin.

1955 ad for the grand opening of the Loblaws supermarket on Hertel Avenue. The same building is now the home of Dash’s Markets. (Buffalo Stories archives)

In 1971, the store – which had also been known as Star Discount Market for a brief time – was sold to become a B-Kwik Market. It was operated as B-Kwik by the Dash family for decades, until a corporate sale mothballed the name B-Kwik and the store became Dash’s in 2003.

 

What It Looked Like Wednesday: Grocery shopping at Elmwood and Summer

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

A new shopping plaza on Elmwood Avenue brought the ease of modern supermarket shopping to the families of that part of 1960s Buffalo — and shoppers have been on a ride ever since.

Buffalo News archives

Now a Price Rite Market, the store first opened as Loblaws in 1961. It became Bells in the 1970s, then Quality Markets when the Bells chain was sold in 1993. Quality closed 10 years later, and Latina’s opened and closed within a decade. Price Rite opened there in 2008.

“Ladylike” solutions to unmentionable necessities at Loblaws, 1965

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Today’s marketing of tissues and toilet paper focuses mostly on the comfort and effectiveness of the products in question.

Fifty years ago this week, in September, 1965, the only marketing message the ladies of Western New York were getting about Loblaw’s bathroom and facial tissue is that it’s not quite as embarrassing as the other brands.

“Lady like” tissue — the Loblaw’s store brand — was on sale in both white and in colors, from the days when we were all a little less ladylike in our concern over what toilet paper dyes might be doing to our environment and water supply.

In 1966, the Buffalo City Directory lists four Star Markets in Buffalo, including the building that houses Dash’s on Hertel Avenue today.  There were 10 Loblaw’s locations, among them the current Panera Bread location on Elmwood Avenue, and the Valu Home Centers location on Kenmore Avenue near Englewood.

WBEN 1973- Clint Buehlman, The Buffalo Braves, and more….

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo


Originally Posted: February, 2008

Just unearthed! Recordings of entire days of WBEN Radio… Unheard since the days they were broadcast over 35 years ago! Names like Clint Buehlman, Van Miller and the NBA Buffalo Braves! Read on!

WBEN AM/FM/TV, 1960

So where did these tapes come from? In 1995, Lin Television performed a massive cleanout of the 2077 Elmwood Avenue building they had just purchased as a part of their buying WIVB-TV.

Among the “treasures” I found dumpster diving, was a box of Reel-to-Rel tapes that appeared to be WBEN Radio Logger tapes from the early 70s. Many of the reels were blank… But even those with the audio intact were nearly useless… The tapes were recorded at 15/32 IPS. That is very slow, and at the time the tapes were rescued, the only way to hear the tapes properly involved about 4 hours of work for an hour of final product. For 13 years, I’ve been trying to figure out how to play these tapes back… And now… thanks to a new reel deck.. and some new digital audio editing programs, viola!

The audio quality is not the best… Its warbly sometimes… And it jumps quite a bit… And These logger tapes were in the Engineering Shop because there were problems with the recording…. But what is really amazing. Imagine your grandparents listening to WBEN all day… That’s what you get here. Things were slow to change at WBEN. Clint Buehlman’s Show in 1973 was not really all that different from the show in 1953. Van Miller is in great voice and cadence calling Buffalo Braves basketball. As far as I know, these are the only complete recordings of Braves basketball in tact.

Below, you’ll find exactly what and who is on these tapes… and some brief cuts from each.

Clint Buehlman

One of the most often asked questions to this website is, “What was the name of Clint Buehlman’s theme song?” The answer is, there were dozens of light airy instrumentals that were used to open each hour of the Buehlman show, after newsman Jack Ogilvie introduced Your AM-MC after each newscast. Listen below for several such opens, along with other snippets from the Buehly.

 

Newsman Jack Ogilvie (right) and AM-MC Clint Buehlman spent mornings together for over a quarter of a century starting in 1951 and ending in 1977.


Buffalo Braves Basketball

As Van Miller’s one time producer in both radio and TV, I can tell you I don’t know that he ever sounded better than behind the mic courtside at the Aud during Braves games, as shown to the left with Dr Jack Ramsey, standing.

Another of those popular questions is Do you have any Braves Games? Apparently, the answer has been yes for quite a long time… only they’ve been stuck on tapes I couldn’t play. But now, I have at least three Braves games in their entirety.

Braves vs Lakers: December 19, 1973
Kareem Abdul Jabbar visits Memorial Auditorium

Braves vs Bucks: February 2, 1973
Wilt Chamberlain visits Memorial Auditorium

 

Van Miller interviews Fred Hilton and Randy Smith in the WBEN studios circa 1972.

 


Some Highlights from WBEN Friday December 28, 1973

WBEN’s Al Fox interviews a cow.

Dick Rifenburg (l) and Clint Buehlman (r) receive an Award for Ski Coverage.

Ward Fenton

Dick Rifenburg

Jack Ogilvie

Ken Philips

Lou Douglas

Lou Douglas in Studio A

Stan Barron showing some kids around the studio.


Some Highlights from WBEN March 15, 1973

 

 


Random Highlights from WBEN 1973

 

Ed Tucholka at the WBEN-FM automation center.

Virgil Booth on the Channel 4 set.

Marty Gleason at the Editors Desk.

Reformatted & Updated pages from staffannouncer.com finding a new home at buffalostories.com
Reformatted & Updated pages from staffannouncer.com finding a new home at buffalostories.com