Dialing for Dollars

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


“A lot of friendliness and little schmaltz seem to work just fine for ‘Dialing for Dollars’,” wrote Buffalo Evening News Critic Gary Deeb in 1971, by which time, the show had already been a mid-morning mainstay on Ch.7 for seven years.

Nolan Johannes came to WKBW-TV in May 1964 — and by the end of the year, was the permanent host of the brand new “Dialing for Dollars.” His first co-host was Liz Dribben, who left Ch.7, eventually joining CBS in New York as a writer and producer for such luminaries as Walter Cronkite, Mike Wallace, Charles Osgood and Dan Rather.

Lafayette High and UB grad Liz Dribben left Ch.7 in 1969 after being refused pay equity with her male counterparts at the station.

Aside from phone calls trying to give away money, the show was filled with interviews of the everyday women in the audience, twice-weekly exercise tips from UB’s Dr. Len Serfustini, syndicated features from “The Galloping Gourmet” Graham Kerr and “Fashions in Sewing” with Lucille Rivers.

Liz Dribben and Phyllis Diller, wearing Bills clothes and doing a workout routine on “Dialing for Dollars.”

The half-hour show grew to 90 minutes, and in 1969, weatherman and “Rocketship 7” host Dave Thomas joined Johannes as co-host.

And even decades after the show went off the air, most Buffalonians of a certain age will be able to recall without hesitation the names of the guys in the “Dialing for Dollars” band — Jimmy and Johnny.

In 1978, Thomas left Ch.7 for Philadelphia, and “Dialing for Dollars” was reformatted to become “AM Buffalo.” Johannes left Ch.7 in 1983 to become a news anchor in Scranton, Pa.

Jimmy Edwin, drums, and Johnny Banaszak, accordion, on the set of Dialing for Dollars. Banaszak was also one of the men who wore the Promo the Robot costume on Rocketship 7 through the years.

Nolan Johannes on the set of Dialing for Dollars, inside WKBW-TV s Main Street studios.


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

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

Buffalo’s third and final VHF station: WKBW-TV, Ch.7

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


The fight over who would get the license to operate Buffalo’s final VHF station was a protracted one, with several years of hostile exchanges between Dr. Clinton Churchill’s WKBW group, a group including the Courier-Express, and the owners of WWOL Radio.

Rev. Clinton Churchill’s start in broadcasting came in 1924 when he brought his church choir to perform on WGR Radio in 1924. “A bushel basket” full of mail came in, filled with letters asking for more religious programming— and the checks and cash needed to help make that happen. Churchill is shown here with Buffalo Mayor Frank Sedita.

Once the WKBW-TV group was granted the license, the four months it took them to begin broadcasting was the fastest a US TV station had ever gone from approval to programming.

On November 30, 1958, Buffalo once again became a three-station market after Ch. 59 and Ch.17 both stopped broadcasting, and Ch. 7 joined Ch.2 and Ch.4.

The brief sign-on ceremony was hosted by Rick Azar, who introduced Dr. Churchill and several area religious leaders, before introducing the film “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

Ch.2 had the elves and Ch.7 had “KB Bunny.”

An ABC affiliate from the moment the station signed on, Ch.7 went on the air with “a compact staff of three announcers.” Stan Barron moved over from WKBW Radio. Both Roger Lund and Rick Azar had been at WBUF-TV, which went dark only weeks before Ch.7 began broadcasting.

The sign-on of Ch.7 ushered in another new era in Buffalo TV. All three stations were now available on every television without the need for special equipment– and each of the broadcast networks now had a local station to air its programming.

“Competition Keen,” read the sub-headline in a piece by J. Don Schlaerth. “Now that three VHF television stations can be received in Buffalo, the keenest programming and advertising competition that has ever existed in this market will begin. It should mean better network and local services for area viewers.”

On November 30, 1958 Rick Azar was the announcer who signed on WKBW-TV. Six years later, he’d be joined by Irv Weinstein and Tom Jolls two years after that– to form the troika that would dominate Buffalo television until the turn of the century.

WKBW’s first newscaster, Roger Lund started in radio in 1935 as an actor at WGR, was chief announcer at WXRA from 1949-54, and after a year in TV in Elmira, joined WBUF-TV as a news anchor and weather man for two years until the station went dark. He served in the Marine Corps in World War II and Korea.

Stan Barron, WKBW-TV Sports Director, 1958

Stan Barron might best be remembered for his nightly “Free Form Sports” shows on WBEN, but that was the final act in a long career in sports and broadcasting in Buffalo. He came to Buffalo in 1952 and spent nine years at WKBW Radio and TV, working as 1520’s morning “Clock Watcher,” and Ch.7’s first sports director.

Through the years, he called the action for the Bills, the Griffs, and the hockey Bisons, but baseball was always his favorite. In 1956, he was instrumental in helping to bring community ownership to the Buffalo Bisons. Then in 1979, he was one of the leading voices to help bring professional baseball back to Buffalo after a ten-year absence.

Stan joined WBEN in 1967 and was a part of the Bills play-by-play team with Van Miller, Chuck Healy, and Dick Rifenburg. Barron was the “every man” of the group— not an accomplished athlete like Healy or Rife, not a polished, impeccably dressed announcer like Van. His gritty voice and common-sense opinions— always willing to tell you when he thought a team “looked like a bunch of donkeys”— felt like it could have just as easily come from the next bar stool than from the radio.

Stan Barron with Buffalo’s National Champion Cyclist Edith Ann Johnson.

Decades after the station first signed on, Bob Costello, Marty Stetter, Bill Hiller, Rick Azar, Norm Schultz, Jack Cook and Steve Zappia were all original employees still working at the station.

Shortly after first signing on, WKBW-TV’s “News Central” anchor team was Dave Thomas, weather; Bill Gregory, news; and Rick Azar, sports.

Irv Weinstein reports from South Buffalo’s Republic Steel.

Though his primary duties were as WKBW Radio News Director, Ch.7 viewers would catch occasional glimpses of Irv Weinstein’s reporting on Ch.7 before he moved over to TV full-time in 1964.

  Ch. 7’s Don Keller interviews Buffalo Schools Superintendent Dr. Joseph Manch. He signed on WNIA as the first Tommy Thomas in 1956, moving to KB as Dick Biondi’s newsman. As Don Keller, the Farm Feller, he delivered agricultural news on WKBW Radio and Ch.7. After being sent to his first fire with a wind-up camera and being told by News Director Hal Youngblood to “point it at the flames,” his role evolved into Buffalo’s first modern street reporter– gathering and presenting news and interviews. Later known by his real name Don Yearke, he went on to serve as Ch.4’s Chief Photographer through the 80s and 90s.    

Bow-tied Paul Thompson, like Yearke, was an early Ch.7 cameraman, who was often seen on-camera conducting interviews.


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

Eileen Buckley, Buffalo’s all-time award-winning radio journalist

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

In a career that’s spanned 34 years, Eileen Buckley is Buffalo’s all-time most award-winning radio reporter.

Given the level of excellence she brings to her work everyday and the fact that she’s done such high-caliber work across four different decades, Buckley leaves WBFO today having been honored more than anyone else ever when you add up time at WBFO, WGR, and WBEN.

Her reporting speaks for itself, but she’s also one of the great people I’ve met in broadcasting… a good friend to have out in the field, both personally and professionally.

I just hope I still recognize her in Dash’s on Hertel– that she’s not wearing big sunglasses and a floppy hat to keep her new TV fans at bay.Congrats Eileen on starting your television career at Eyewitness News!!

Eileen was a mentor when I started, and now, somehow, she’s younger than me. It’s strange how that works.

The Kids Shows of Channel 7

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

This week we’re looking at some of the great kids shows we grew up with in Buffalo, and two great ones from Channel 7.

Rocketship 7

When Dave Thomas wasn’t hosting Dialing for Dollars with Nolan Johannes and Liz Dribben, he was palling around with Promo The Robot and Mr. Beeper.
Rocketship 7 was a must watch for many Buffalo kids through the 60s and 70s, before Dave Thomas blasted off for a new job in Philadelphia in 1978.

Dave Thomas and Promo the Robot on Rocketship 7

And Dave Thomas wasn’t the only Dialing for Dollars connection to Rocketship 7. It was relatively easy for Dave to change from his Rocketship 7 jumpsuit into his “count and amount” clothes, but it was a little more difficult for another cast member on both shows.

Dave Thomas, Banaszak, Nolan Johannes and Jimmy Edwin on Dialing For Dollars.

Johnny and Jimmy were the house band on Dialing for Dollars, and Johnny Banaszak had a quick change between his back-to-back gigs, too. He quickly had to shed the Promo the Robot suit and grab his accordion. He was not only the man inside the suit, but also the voice of Promo as well.

Commander Tom

Another salubrious kids show on Channel 7 starred All-American weatherman Tom Jolls as Commander Tom– who took to TV wearing the bright red jacket of a Canadian Mountie.

Commander Tom, Dust Mop, and the rest of the crew on the Commander Tom Show,.

He performed with his puppet pals which early on, were mostly made from his kids’ old stuffed animals.

Some of those puppets, which the Commander voiced himself, included Matty the Mod, a young and energetic, though not too bright alligator; Cecily Fripple, a sensitive and gentle thing of questionable age who tries to recapture her glorious past; and last but not least, Dustmop, the faithful watchdog of Central Command, who is spite of his old age and failing eyesight, is the brave protectorate of the entire cast.

 

Remembering a Buffalo Legend with Excerpts from “Irv! Buffalo’s Anchorman”

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The following is an excerpt from Irv! Buffalo’s Anchorman, which I wrote and published in 2010. It’s available at through the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library or for purchase here.

Irv Weinstein 1930-2017

Foreward

What an honor it is to write the story of Buffalo’s all-time most popular and acclaimed media personalities and news team.

About 6 years ago, I posted an ‘Irv, Rick, & Tom’ page on my Buffalo pop culture history website, staffannouncer.com (now hosted here at BuffaloStories.com). It remains one of the most popular pages on the site, and one of the stories I’m most proud to have put on the web.

I grew up in Buffalo and Western New York in the 1980s. Irv, Rick and Tom were a big part of that. While many fathers and sons bond watching sports, from the time I was very small, my dad and I watched the news together every night. Irv’s news.

Long before I could actually speak many important words coherently, my mother reports that I, as a toddler, gleefully talked about ‘Irv Tine-Tine’ and would run around the living room vocalizing the percussive Eyewitness News theme at 6pm. Around that time, I also began to realize that Commander Tom, wearing that red jacket with gold epaulets, was quite possibly the coolest guy on the planet wearing the greatest outfit I’d ever seen. And of course, it was a highlight of my young life to meet THE Rick Azar at the Broadway Market one Good Friday with my grandma.

One of my early thrills in working in media was as a 15 year old WBEN intern, taking a phone call from Irv each day to record a radio commercial for that night’s 6 o’clock news.  I also recall several years later, when I was working in a competing Buffalo TV newsroom, the euphoria the day it was announced Irv was retiring– euphoria because now we have a chance.

I could really talk about these guys all day, but before I get to embarrassing myself, I’ve limited my personal comments to one page. There’s not a lot of heavy lifting on the pages to follow; hopefully just cause for smiles and memories of the way things used to be, and the story of how Irv, Rick and Tom came to be Buffalo’s best ever.

Steve Cichon  August, 2011

Rick, Irv, and Tom toast 35 years of Channel 7. Martin Biniasz photo/Buffalo Stories archives

Chapter 1: Irv, Rick, & Tom.

Chuck Healy. John Corbett. Stephen Rowan. John Beard. Carol Jasen. Bob Koop. Kevin O’Connell. Rich Newberg. Don Postles. That’s just a partial list of the folks who appeared as a regular news anchor at 6 o’clock on Channel 4 during Irv Weinstein’s tremendous, nearly 30 year run at Number One on Channel 7. The list from Channel 2 is three times as long.

So what made Irv so special?  It’s not an easy question to answer. Irv is loganberry, The Broadway Market, Sahlen’s hot dogs, Crystal Beach, Mighty Taco, Jimmy Griffin, knowing how to pronounce Scajaquada, and knowing it connects to not “Route 33,” but “The 33,” all wrapped up into a single 5’7” newsman. Irv is the embodiment of Buffalo.

But really, what makes Irv so special?

A 1990 study of local newscasts scientifically asked several hundred Western New Yorkers a series of in-depth questions about television news in Buffalo.

Without prompting a name, Irv was the runaway favorite news anchor in Buffalo. He was the favorite of more than a third of those with a preference, and was more popular than the numbers 2, 3, and 4 combined.  He was the favorite newscaster of young and old, men and women, those making under $25,000, those making $25,000-50,000, and those making above $50,000.

He was the favorite newscaster of those of Polish descent, Italian ancestry, Irish, English, and African-American, too. Also in Buffalo, the Erie County suburbs, Niagara County, and Cattaraugus and Chautauqua Counties, Irv was on top. In every category that was analyzed, Irv Weinstein was a runaway pick as Buffalo’s favorite newsman.

One special thing about Irv; you had an opinion of him. He wasn’t just a haircut and a baritone reading the news. Of those who had a least favorite news anchor, Irv was named by 44%. He was the favorite, and the least favorite.

But now, more than a decade after leaving the Eyewitness News anchor desk, Irv has transcended completely the picayune tastes of Western New York’s television watching public.

Just like so many other Buffalo institutions of the past, the name Irv Weinstein conjures up different feelings and emotions in different contexts:

Like Bethlehem Steel, Irv reminds people of what a giant Buffalo once was.

Like Crystal Beach, Irv reminds people of the way things used to be– back when life was a little more fun.

Like AM&As or Marine Midland Bank, Irv reminds us that many of our once proud local institutions keep on keeping on, but never the way they once were.

Of course, Irv is only a third of the story.  It was the combination  of Irv, Rick Azar with Eyewitness Sports, and Tom Jolls with the Weather Outside that made Eyewitness News– and each man individually– wildly popular.

“IrvRickTom is what we called them,” said Phil Beuth, who was Channel 7’s General Manager in the 1970’s and 80’s before moving on to run ABC’s Good Morning America.

“For many years, that’s the way we considered them: IrvRickTom, one word, one person. We literally saw them as a seamless team. So close, so well knit so much an extension of one another.”

“It’s very hard to define chemistry,” Irv said when being inducted into the Buffalo Broadcasting Hall of Fame with Rick and Tom, “but we had it almost immediately, the three of us.”

In the beginning, Channel 7’s ratings were so low, Irv didn’t compete with Channels 2 & 4 at 6pm. Channel 7’s newscast ran at 7:20pm. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Viewers saw not only news, sports and weather, but also three guys enjoying each others’ company– kidding around a little bit between segments.

Each complimented the other perfectly. Paired with others, Irv may have been too brash. Rick might have seemed too slick and polished. Tom maybe a little too folksy.  But the honest human interaction between each of these men, as they came into our homes at dinner time and again at bed time was so obviously real and so obviously reflective of the people in our own lives, we accepted them as members of our family in a way that no other Buffalo television personalities had been accepted before, and none likely ever will again.

“You had Tom, every mother’s son; the flag, and apple pie, and all of those things that make for a fine American,” says Irv. “That’s what you saw, that’s what you got. That’s what Tom was, that’s what Tom is.

“Rick was more of a broadcasting personality,” says Irv in analysis of his anchor desk compadres. “Solid professional, knowledgeable, debonair, good looking guy.  Very smooth, Mr. Smooth, the Latin Lover.“

So where does Irv fit in?

“Me? I’m an ethnic type,” says Irv. ”Definitely an ethnic type.  I felt very proud of the fact in a heavily Catholic, heavily Polish town, this Jewish kid was accepted.”

The mix of these three seemingly disparate characters, added to the humble beginnings of the team on WKBW-TV in the mid-60s, makes the fact that Irv, Rick and Tom are adored two decades after the team broke up even more improbable.

Irv likes to say when he started at WKBW-TV; it was the number 4 station in a three station market.  He often quips, “The ratings at Channel 7 were worse than the sign-off test patterns on Channels 4 and 2.”  That’s not that far from the truth.

Irv moved from WKBW Radio to WKBW-TV in April 1964. Rick Azar was already there. He was the announcer who literally signed the station on the air in 1958. Tom Jolls had been working at WBEN Radio and TV when Red Koch, the program director at 7, talked Tom into coming over to WKBW’s Main Street studios in 1965.

The rest of the story is one that is permanently woven into the fabric of our community.  But before we get to that story, let’s look at the experiences that lead  three men from different backgrounds entirely to come together to become the longest running anchor team in television history.

Buffalo State College Courier Express Collection/Buffalo Stories archives

 

 

The Eyewitness Newsgame

Buffalo’s own Irv-based board game hit store shelves in 1980, and was available at places like AM&A’s and Hengerer’s.

Buffalo Stories archives

Promos showed Irv, Rick, and Tom playing the game so intently, they almost missed the 11 o’clock news.

Buffalo Stories archives

The box reads:

Your chance to become a junior reporter for Eyewitness News! Be the first back to the station with all the facts and get your story on the air.

Proceeds from the sale of the game went to the Variety Club.

 

Chapter 2: Irwin Weinstein, Junior Announcer

“As Buffalonians, if we could be smart, we’d want to be smart like Irv,” Phil Beuth once said toasting Weinstein. “Smart enough to give us the news, but also using his brilliance to make everyone smile and to occasionally be a wise guy. He was the smart kid that always made the whole class… except the teacher… laugh.”

Irv, Tom, Rick, and Phil Beuth. (Buffalo Stories archives)

A high school teacher told Irv he’d wind up in jail or famous.

So begins a look back at the life of the man that Buffalo lovingly knows as just “Irv.”

Despite all the fame and success associated with Eyewitness News, Irv counts another era of his broadcasting career as the “most thrilling and glamorous.”

At a time before there was any such person as Irv Weinstein, Irwin B. Weinstein was a big man on campus at Ben Franklin High School in Rochester because of his regular appearances on the biggest radio station in town.

“I had actually started at WHAM radio in Rochester as a boy actor.  That was perhaps the most thrilling and glamorous part of my entire life in broadcasting. My gosh, I would see these announcers– who go into the booth once or twice an hour– dressed in a suit, shirt, and tie; and deliver  into the microphone the call letters of the station. And that’s pretty much all they did. And they were making tremendous salaries. It convinced me, at that time, that this was a profession that I would want to pursue. It wasn’t the money– I would have paid for the opportunity to be an announcer.”

WHAM was founded by Kodak’s founder George Eastman, and was later sold to Stromberg-Carlson, a dominant and wealthy player in the manufacture of radio and telephone equipment.

“WHAM was one of the most prestigious radio stations in the country,” remembers Irv. It was (and is) a powerful 50,000 watt station that can be heard all around eastern North America.

Buffalo State College Courier Express Collection/Buffalo Stories archives

“They had, in the mid-40s, a palatial station.  One studio could hold an audience of two or three hundred people, had a raised stage, a control room off of the stage, and room for a studio orchestra.”

After answering an ad in the newspaper looking for teenagers willing to act on the radio, the man who’d 25 years later be Buffalo’s top newsman became a kid playing bit parts in radio dramas– and loving every minute of it.

“In those days, they would call me up and say, ‘We have a part for you as a state trooper,’ in a series called True Stories of the New York State Police.  Because my vocal equipment was pretty much developed at 15 or 16, I would play adults—a state trooper, a bank robber, a farmer in Weedsport who was directing police to the scene of a crime.”

“I was getting $7 a show, which was pretty good money for a kid in the mid-1940s. Plus, I was a star at Ben Franklin High School.”

Young Irwin was one of The WHAM Junior Players as well, on a show that was mostly young people performing basic comedy skits.  “It was similar to the things you’d see on sitcoms today,” says Irv, “except they’d run 5 or 7 minutes instead of a half hour.”

Memories of those days– the raw thrill of scripts flying, last minute changes, and being a teen actor couldn’t be matched even as Irv became the most celebrated personality in the history of Buffalo television.

“Possibly the apogee of my career at WHAM was when they brought some of the network shows to Rochester. They had done some remodeling at the station, and one of the shows they brought to originate from Rochester was the Henry Aldrich Show.  It was a radio sitcom, and Henry Aldrich was supposed to be a 16 or 17 year old kid. The actor was, in actuality, a man about 40 years old named Ezra Stone.”

“My line was four words. I was the Ace Cleaners Boy. You heard the screen door open, and I scream up into the house, ‘Ace Cleaners, Mrs. Aldrich!’ and she yells back, ‘They’re in the closet, Harry.’

Irv onstage at “The Playhouse” with actress Tess Spangler, 1980. Irv and his wife Elaine co-owned the highly-acclaimed downtown Buffalo theatre with Bryna & Joe Weiss. Buffalo State College Courier Express Collection/Buffalo Stories archives

“This was pre-audio tape. They did two live shows, one for the east coast, one for the west coast. I was fine for the east coast, but for the west coast, 3 hours later, I blew one of the four words; which has embarrassed me my entire professional life. I don’t remember what word it was… maybe ‘cleaners.’ That would have been a difficult word for me at that stage. But I’ve never forgotten it. Those are the things that happen in your career that are of such an embarrassing level, that you just never forget it.”

“Nobody ever mentioned salary, and that was fine. I just thought they needed me for a bit part in this show– and that was fine. Now, about a month later, an NBC envelope arrives in the mail. The letter says, ‘Thank  you for taking part in the production of the Henry Aldrich Show,’ and with it, a check for $230. Again, if there was any doubt about what I wanted to do with my life, $230 for 4 words? It was pointed out to me years later, that Winston Churchill wasn’t making that much for his speeches around the same time. I just had a great time.”

This was the big time for a high school kid during the mid-1940s; as big, he thought, as it could possibly get. “There was a chief announcer at WHAM at the time, Bill Hanrahan, who was leaving for New York City and NBC.”

Hanrahan would go on to be an NBC staff announcer for the next 40 years, best known as the voice of the Huntley-Brinkley Report, and later NBC Nightly News.  His voice became synonymous with not only nightly news broadcasts, but with special news programs involving elections, political conventions, Watergate, and space and lunar exploration.

To young Irwin, however, Hanrahan couldn’t have done much better than the biggest station in the Lilac City.  “I can remember thinking to myself, ‘Guy must be crazy! How could he want to leave a great job like this to go to NBC?!?’ That was my serious thought.”

It was also his serious thought that the glamour of WHAM was the life for him.

“When I got out of school, I thought that the natural thing was, I had worked two or three years at WHAM, and maybe there might be a job for me there.  The chief announcer interviewed me, and he advised me that radio probably wasn’t the best vehicle for any future career for me.  He just didn’t think I had it.”

At 18, it was the first of many professional let-downs for Weinstein.

Hollywood!

Right after graduating from Rochester’s Ben Franklin High School, with no promise of a radio career on the horizon, teenager Weinstein hopped a train to Hollywood, with the idea of breaking into the movies.

“It was a two and a half day trip by train. Rochester to Chicago on the Empire State Limited, and then changed to the Santa Fe Railroad for the rest of the trip,” Irv recalls. He says it was trip that might have gone by faster with a little company.  That’s the way it was planned, but it didn’t work out that way.

“I had a high school buddy who was going to take the trip with me, but he had chickened out at the last minute, so I was alone.  I’d never been away from home. I had $400, which I had strenuously saved for this trip.”

He wasn’t sure how he was going to break in, but thought it might be easier than it actually turned out to be. “I didn’t think I would just walk in and they would sign me up to a long term contract, but I thought if I got an audition, maybe… I just had no idea, I didn’t have a clue.”

It was true in the 1940s just as it’s true today. Just about everyone in Los Angeles is an actor, writer, producer or director– even if they are shampooing your carpets or rolling you a burrito between jobs “in the business.”

Buffalo Stories archives

 

Irv discovered this when the man who kept him from becoming a literal “starving artist” delivered him his greatest brush with Hollywood greatness.

“Now I wasn’t drinking that young, but I met a bartender, whose bar was near the place where I had a room. They served food, which was free. If you bought a drink; you got a sandwich. So I’d have a ginger ale, and have lunch.”

“I struck up a friendship with this bartender, who had told me that he was once an assistant director at Columbia Pictures. And, as young and unsophisticated as I was, I thought to myself, ‘Yeah right, and the moon is made of green cheese.’”

“One day he calls me up and says, ‘Irwin,’ -which is what my name was at the time, before I changed it professionally to Irv- ‘Irwin,  how would you like to go to the studio?’”

“I said, ‘Sure,’ I put on my bar mitzvah suit, and we went out to Columbia Pictures.  The whole time, I’m thinking this guy is pulling my chain. We go to the gate, the guy says, ‘Hey Art, how ya doin?’”

“Holy Mackerel, I thought to myself, this guy really did work here.  We go into the studio, and go to a sound stage, where they’re shooting a Tarzan movie, with Lex Barker and Denise Darcel.  Cheetah was on Lex Barker’s shoulder, and, well, did a doo-doo, so they had to stop the scene.”

“I’m just glowing with pride.  He introduced me to Lex Barker, and Denise Darcel, and then he said, I think Bob Mitchum is shooting a film at another sound stage.”

“So we go to that sound stage, and there’s Mitchum, and Janet Leigh, shooting a scene from a movie called Holiday Affair.  I was stunned. They had recreated a part of Central Park for this scene.  “Art says to me, ‘When they break this scene, we’ll go to Bob’s trailer and I’ll introduce you.’  You can imagine what this is for an 18 year old kid from Rochester, NY.  The scene breaks, we go to the trailer, and Mitchum says, ‘Hey Art!’ and he says, ‘Mitch, I’d like to introduce you to a young friend of mine, Irwin Weinstein, who’s out here trying to get into the business.’

“Now, Mitchum was probably about 6-foot-5, and I pull myself up to my complete 5-foot-7, maybe 5-7-and-a-half in heels. He sticks out his hand, ‘Good to meet you, Irwin,’ ‘Thanks, Bob.’  Then he asks, ‘How ‘bout a drink?’”

Irv Weinstein Collection/Buffalo Stories archives

“Well, sure, I said, thinking, ‘I always have a drink at 9 in the morning to hold myself together.’  He pours me a gin, vodka, I don’t know what it was. But I was drinking it very slowly, believe me.”

“Finally, I’m thinking to myself, this is the opportunity of my life to talk to a professional and get a real answer. My voice raised several octaves when I asked, ‘Well, Bob, how do you get into this business?’ and he looked down at me and said, ‘To tell you the truth, I can’t tell ya. I’m having a hell of a time staying in the business. There’s always somebody climbing up the grease pole behind you.’”

“I thought to myself, well, he’s just kind of mentally patting me on the head.  I wasn’t angry or anything, it’s just what I thought.  This is great; at least I’ll have some great stories to tell my family.”

“Years later, when I really got into broadcasting, and I met some people in the business, and I had a greater variety of life experiences, I realized that he was being absolutely straight with me.”

“You are never, no matter how big you are, in the movies, in radio, in television, secure. There’s always somebody climbing up that grease pole behind you. You never have total security. From that time on, Mitchum, not just as an actor, has been one of my idols.”

In the end, he spent a year and a half in California, with nary a sniff at the silver screen; working instead at a shirt factory, department store warehouse, and meat packing plant.

“The closest I got to being in the movies, was at the Pantages Movie Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard watching Kirk Douglas up on the screen in the movie Champion.”

Leaving Hollywood, Irv was left with figuring out what to do next.

“At the point that it became obvious that the world was not waiting for a short, facially challenged kid for a starring role in an MGM musical, I had to change direction.”

A decade before the Queen City sat enraptured as he informed us of spectacular blazes, and careening cars, Irv was a furniture store salesman working odd jobs, and kept his hand in the business as a part-time vacation fill-in disc jockey.

“I was into my 20s, when I went to the School of Radio and Television Technique in New York City. I thought to myself, growing up in a middle class Jewish home, that maybe I should be doing something more practical than acting.”

Television, Take 1

The impudent child taking in this story might be asking, “Is this where Irv becomes a big TV star?”

The answer, with a grandfatherly chuckle is, no, not yet. After learning the finer points of television production, Weinstein broke into the nascent medium not as an anchorman– but as a director. That is, the man who calls the camera shots and runs a broadcast from a technical standpoint.

It was another difficult and humble beginning.

Irv as Technical Director. (Buffalo Stories archives)

“My first TV job was in Waterloo, Iowa. I took a bus out there for the interview. I didn’t even have a job offer, and I took a bus.  I sent out about 2,000 resumes, and I got 3 replies.  One was at KWWL-TV in Waterloo, another was at a station in Missoula, Montana, and I don’t remember the third.”

It was an inauspicious beginning to the now-celebrated Irv Weinstein television career.

“I went out to Waterloo, and I got a job as a director.  I wasn’t a very good director.”

After only 90 days of working in television, Irv was once again on the outside looking in.

“Basically, directing in television is hitting the right button and thinking very quickly,” Irv explained. “I lacked the digital facility.  So, three months later, I was fired.”

There was little else to do but look for another job.

“I was married by that time, and Elaine and I took a barnstorming tour across the country, from Waterloo, Iowa, to my in-law’s home in Miami Beach. I have to say, my wife ‘the saint’ was very supportive during this difficult time.  I hit every station, big market, small market, medium market, nothing.

“I have a memory of changing my pants on a road outside of St. Louis for an interview with a big station there, nothing.”

There were no television jobs to be had, but there was the comfort of home.

“We wound up in Miami Beach, and sponged off my in-laws for three months, and decided that wasn’t working.  So we moved back to Rochester and sponged off my parents.”

During this rough patch, Irv Weinstein, later to be known as a peerless purveyor of staccato alliteration, tried to “go straight.”

“I had a couple of jobs.  One was as a paint salesman for Sears Roebuck. After about a month, the supervisor said to me, ‘Irwin, you don’t seem to have the Sears spirit.’ I said, ’You know what, you’re absolutely right,’ and I can’t tell you how happy I was to get out of there.”

Fate almost landed Irv a life as a civil servant– until Mrs. Weinstein stepped in.

“I was offered a job as a permanent at the Post Office. I had been working there as a temporary. I came home and told Elaine, ‘Hey, I could make a hundred and a quarter a week, steady, very secure.’  She said, ‘That’s very nice, but I didn’t marry you because I wanted to be married to a Post Office worker.’”

Reinforced and re-energized in trying to make it in the world of show business, Irv went back to work, making contacts, sending out resumes, and finally landing work.

“I got a job at a UHF station, WTAP in Parkersburg, West Virginia.  Elaine at this time was 7 months pregnant. It was a terrible station then, and I was again hired as a director.”

“Again, three months later, I was fired; only this time there was a complication:  In the interim, Elaine had given birth to our son, Marc.  I’m thinking, ‘this is awful.’ Maybe I’m in the wrong business. Maybe I’ll go back to Rochester, and my mother will have some hot soup and some comforting words.”

But once again, it was because of the love and support of Elaine Weinstein that the Irv Weinstein story continues.

Irv and his young family. Irv Weinstein Collection/Buffalo Stories archives

She encouraged Irv to go knock on the door of a radio station and ask for a job. It was to be the easiest job he’d ever received.

“I wound up at WCEF Radio. C-E-F stood for Clarence E. Franklin, who was the station owner, general manager, sales manager, chief engineer, and he had a show on the air called the ‘Friendly Frank Show.’”

“I asked him if he had any openings, he said, ‘When can you start?’ I asked, ‘Don’t you want to audition me?’ to which he replied, ‘Nah, I know an announcer when I see one.’ So, there I was, at WCEF.”

It was there, in the mountains of West Virginia, that Irv took on what he considers the “watershed job of his career.”  For $60 a week, for the first time ever, he was a newscaster, but he wasn’t yet Irv Weinstein.

Borrowing the name of his infant son Marc Robert, Irwin Weinstein became Mark Roberts on the air.

Before he was Irv Weinstein on the radio, he was Mark Roberts. Irv Weinstein Collection/Buffalo Stories archives

“I was about 27 years old the first time I did news. It was interesting, the station was a daytimer. I did news from 9 in the morning, for about 6 hours.”

“But then late in the afternoon, I hosted a music show called, Candlelight and Gold. Now this was a rock and roll station, but I really loved doing the news.”

After a week or so as the station’s only news anchor, he was named news director, even though, says Irv, “I was the only one doing news at the station; I was essentially director over myself.”

“I was there about a year, and continued to send out resumes, when I got a call from WBOY-TV in Clarksburg. I got the job there, and I found myself directing again.  Not doing very well at it, but directing none the less.”

But Irv wasn’t going to spend too much more time as a TV director, and his family wasn’t going to spend too much more time in West Virginia.

Buffalo State College Courier Express Collection/Buffalo Stories archives

WKBW Futursonic Radio

So it’s 1958, and Irv Weinstein is finally a newsman. But he’s not Irv Weinstein yet: On the air, he’s known as Mark Roberts. But he’s also in the coal mining country of Clarksburg, West Virginia, a situation he was looking to change.

“I got a call from a good friend of mine, a deejay, Russ Syracuse. Well, Russ ‘The Moose’ Syracuse had gotten a job at KB Radio. He told me there was an opening in the newsroom. I told him I didn’t have much experience, but he told me to send in a tape.”

“The Program Director, Dick Lawrence, got my tape, we exchanged a few calls, and I was very anxious to get out of West Virginia. There was no way we were going to raise our son in the Mountain State, and Buffalo was an ideal market, close to family in Rochester.”

Young TV director Irwin Weinstein and his bride, Elaine, on their wedding day. Flanked by Irv’s mom (left), and Elaine’s grandmother (right). (Irv Weinstein collection/Buffalo Stories archives)

Thus began Irv’s news career in Buffalo. But once again, it almost didn’t happen.

As Irv told Sandy Beach on Majic 102 in 1988, “I drove into the parking lot of KB Radio in a beat up DeSoto. Dick Lawrence called me in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and he told me I got the job.”

“So we loaded up the DeSoto, all of our furniture, Elaine and Marc (their son), and we drove up to Buffalo. We get to Buffalo, and I pull into the parking lot, go in and tell the receptionist that I’m here to see Mr. Lawrence. She says, ‘well, Mr. Lawrence is no longer with us.’

It was another of those moments you just can’t make up.

“My whole life began to pass in front of my eyes. Elaine is out in the parking lot with our infant son, all of our possessions are in the car, and I’m thinking to myself I’m out of a job. I quit this great job, making $75 a week in Clarksburg, and here I am; out of a job, again.”

“I seriously may have been hyperventilating when Clint Churchill, Junior, the son of the owner, walked out into the hall, wanting to know ‘what’s happening here.’ I explained the situation, and he said to me, ‘Don’t worry, you’ve got a job.’”

“Whew, I thought, catching my breath. ‘Can you do the next newscast?,’ he asked. ‘Certainly,’ I said, though maybe I wasn’t quite so certain. I was wearing jeans, I really wasn’t prepared.”

“But 10, 15 minutes later, I did the next newscast, and the rest of the newscasts; apparently someone had just left. At that time, KB Radio had newscasters and news writers, people who wrote the newscasts. That day, the person who was writing the casts was Art Wander. That’s enough to make a guy nervous right there, the Tiny Tot of the Kilowatt.”

“He wrote one of these wild stories about an accident, where the victim was killed. He wrote that she was whiplashed to death. Well, at that point, I didn’t even know my name. Whiplashed to death?!? Well, I read it, what was I going to do? I didn’t even have a chance to pre-read the copy.”

“So I get off the air, and Churchill called me into his office. He said to me, ‘I heard your newscast.’ He said it was ok. He said, ‘This is a top 40 station, and you sound too much like Walter Cronkite.‘  I’m thinking, ‘and that’s a bad thing?’”

“My whole terrible broadcast career passed before my eyes, but luckily it worked out.”

That early boss may have tossed the name Walter Cronkite his way, but it was another famous radio host who made an impression on Irv.

Buffalo Stories archives

“In terms of style, I was sometimes asked who my idol was in radio, and that was an easy one: Paul Harvey. Paul Harvey was not fast paced, but he had a pace of delivering the news that was compelling. I like to think I was Paul Harvey only a lot faster.”

Faster… with flagrant, more outrageous writing.  It might be hard to believe for those who don’t remember, but in the early rock ’n’ roll days of KB Radio and Pulsebeat News, the pace and the shocking pointed style of news writing and delivery made Irv’s later Eyewitness News persona seem comatose.

It took some time to develop that sound, though. Irv readily admits, when he first arrived at KB, he sounded different. “My style was upbeat, but not the on-air style that I developed; which was basically, a Top 40 news guy; fast paced.”

Irv Weinstein, WKBW Radio (Buffalo Stories archives)

It was in its fetal stage, but it was early development of the personality Buffalo would come to cherish over the next 50 years. It was also at KB Radio that Irwin first unwrapped a sleeker sounding version of his first name, and became forever more Irv.

“Over time I developed a writing style that had sizzle and alliteration, and the type of thing to grab the audience. I learned along the way, that before you can get people to listen to you, you have to catch their attention. One way to do that is in your writing– make it compelling. Sometimes it was overboard, frankly, but it was ok. It did the job.“

It was the perfect co-mingling of man and circumstance that put Irv in the position to really invent the style of newscasting he made famous in Buffalo; one that was copied around the country.

Irv wins a Lancaster Speedway Demolition Derby. Danny Neaverth (in a hat), and Fred Klestine (middle) cheer him on. Danny Neaverth Collection/ Buffalo Stories archives

“My theatre background had a lot to do with it. I understood what they wanted. They wanted the listeners to barely discern the difference between Russ The Moose Syracuse and Irv Weinstein in terms of basic sound; the pace. And that was fine with me.”

News was still serious; different from the disc jockeys. But the KB newsmen, and Irv in particular, would leave that line blurred.

“Russ Syracuse would try to break me up during the news; he’d walk by the studio window doing an imitation of a fish. I must have had a death wish, because we had a cough switch, but I never hit it; I’d just laugh on the air. We used to get requests at the station, people wondering when I was going to laugh.”

Were it just his delivery, reading scripts written for him by Art Wander and others, Irv would still be remembered today.  But it’s that unparalleled ability to turn a phrase while churning out news copy that was to become synonymous with Irv Weinstein over the next four decades of informing Buffalo.

“Again, I discerned what they wanted; and I gave them that, plus. I’ve often been quoted with lines like ‘Pistol packing punks pounded a Polish plumber into the pavement.’ I never, ever said anything like that.  Close, but that phrase, ‘pistol packing punks….’ We did some outrageous things on radio.”

“I think the news was an integral part of KB Radio’s enormous success. There were a lot of rock stations around, but I think what really defines a station, what gives it some personality, some credibility, is the news. People hear the news, they trust the newscaster. KB knocked off WBEN Radio, and it took a while, with people like Clint Buehlman so entrenched, but we knocked off the other stations.“

KB was ‘number one’ across the board, one of the most successful radio stations in the country. Without question; Syracuse, Dan Neaverth, Tom Shannon, Joey Reynolds, Stan Roberts, and all the KB disc jockeys are due much of the credit for that success.

But it would be shortsighted to not also heap credit on Irv, Henry Brach, Jim Fagan, John Zach and all of the Pulsebeat Newsmen who gave the gravitas needed to bump off some long established Buffalo legends like Buehlman and newscaster Jack Ogilvie at WBEN among numerous others.

Buffalo Stories archives

Remember, at this point, Irv Weinstein was a radio newsman. He could go shopping at the A&P or grab a coffee at a Deco lunch counter without fans mobbing him. His voice was familiar; his face, not so much.

Early on, after having listened to Irv and his big voice, people were surprised whenever he made public appearances. People heard that booming authoritative voice come through the radio; meeting the diminutive Irv in person didn’t always quite seem analogous.

“A Rabbi sent me a note after meeting me for the first time,” Irv recalls. “He wrote, ‘You know, you’re a very talented young man, because after listening to you for so many years, I’ve always pictured you as a tall, blonde Gentile.’ I wrote him back a similarly funny note.”

Soon, all of Buffalo would know exactly what Irv looked like.

Da-di-Da… IRV!

 

 

Part of the experience of going to a Bisons game at North AmeriCare Park in the late 1990s was the 7th inning stretch presentation of Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll (Part 2), where it was understood instead of yelling “Hey!” for the refrain, the ballpark yelled “Irv!” in unison, as a pixilated image of Buffalo’s favorite newsman flashed on the scoreboard. It was all part of one of the last great promotional campaigns for Irv and Eyewitness News.

From a 1977 Eyewitness News Promo

Irv: Do you have this in blue?

Salesman 1: FanTAStic!

Salesman 2: Its…. its….

Salesman 1: Right! Would you mind repeating that again?

Irv: Do you have this in blue?

Salesman 2: No one’s ever said it like that before!

Salesmen: (singing)…. And that’s why we say…

Irv Weinstein, you’re really a pro…You got all the news, that we want to know…   You tell it like it is, and never throw us a curve, Nobody says it Like Irv…. Eyewitness News!

Chapter 7: Beyond the News

It’s tough to imagine Buffalo of the 70s, 80s, and 90s without Irv Weinstein, just like it’s tough to imagine Irv without Rick and Tom.

When Irv and his young family arrived in Buffalo in that old DeSoto back in 1958, he couldn’t have known that 3 decades later he’d be a part of the fabric of the community.

“From the standpoint of where I was, Buffalo was the glowing city on the hill, a real toddlin’ town. Things were really happening in Buffalo.”

As a young man growing up in Rochester, Irv had some experience with Buffalo, enjoying the city’s shows and restaurants. But after spending some time working in Buffalo, he found the area’s greatest asset was something no economic downturn or political misman-agement could scuttle: The spirit of the people.

“One of the things that makes the Buffalo market a delight to work in, is that your audience is really tuned into what you’re saying, or what you’re showing. Because the city is buried under snow, or at the very least, extreme cold, for about 9 months of the year, they’re not going outside to play tennis, or jog down the street. They’re listening to radio. They’re watching television.”

“The day after a story ran, I’d have people say back to me, word for word, what was on the air the night before.  So I knew that they were with us.”

Though it’s an overused expression, Irv, Rick, and Tom, over the decades they came into our homes, really did become like family.

“When I talk to people,” says Irv, “when I receive correspondence from people, they talk about that they had dinner with me, every night; that I was a friend, and I’m glad.”

“I think that is the highest compliment someone in broadcasting can ever get,” says Irv, “that your audience thought that you were a part of the family. “

Buffalo State College Courier-Express Collection/ Buffalo Stories archives

 

It’s a feeling that continues for each Irv, Rick, and Tom to this day.

“When I come back to Western New York after over a decade of retirement,” says Irv, ”one of the things I love is that it’s a great ego booster. I walk into a grocery store or a restaurant, and it’s like I never left. ‘Hey Irv, how ya doin?’ Some people think I never left. Some people tell me they watch me all the time, and I haven’t been on in a decade.”

It’s something these working men had to come to grips with, a little bit anyway. Right after his retirement, Rick was having dinner at a diner in Amherst, and really didn’t know how to take it when a waiter became almost inconsolable, gushing about the effect that he, Rick, had had on this waiter’s life.

“It was hard for me to deal with; I had to ask him to stop. I was just a guy on TV. I had no idea that people would have these kinds of feelings about us,” says Rick.

“That’s when Irv and I started to talk about this kind of stuff, and try to understand this kind of thing. We think about that now, after the fact. I think it’s one of the reasons we were so successful, because we didn’t think about it then. It’s who we are. It always has been. We’re just who we are.”

But unlike some Hollywood types or big name athletes, Irv would be disappointed if he knew you thought about saying ‘hi’ but didn’t.

“I thrived on that, communicating with people,” says Tom. “Looking back, I think about how lucky I was. Not just to do it all for a while, but to do it for close to 40 years; very, very fortunate.

“I’ve never shunned that part of the business, people saying hi, or wanting to chat. I knew it was going to part of the business, and I had to be gracious to these people, because that’s what mattered: the people who were watching. If you weren’t nice to them, then you aren’t doing your whole job,” says Tom, who loved meeting people at the Erie County Fair so much that they named the park from which he broadcast there “Tom Jolls Park.”

Still to this day, Commander Tom loves when someone says hi or offers a kind word.

“It never fails to amaze me, and I always try to say to them, thank you for remembering. It’s just so ingrained in people that they didn’t forget. And that’s just so nice.”

Buffalo Stories archives

It gets a little complicated for the Commander occasionally.

“The funny thing for me is, nowadays, you never know if someone is going to remember you or not. Some people don’t always say something right at the beginning. I went through a big project with a salesman a few weeks ago, I asked a lot of questions, and he was very helpful. Just before we parted and signed the deal, he made some off the cuff comment like, ‘So how does it feel not to have to stand outside anymore?'”

“I wasn’t sure that he had any inkling. After 10 years, a lot didn’t watch, and a lot of people don’t remember.  People remembering makes it all worthwhile.”

Irv says, “People ask, doesn’t it bother you when people come up to you in a restaurant, or in line somewhere, and I say, ‘Bother me?!?  I love it!’  Yes, the ratings are nice, but when people want to come over and talk to you, and feel that they can, it makes you feel like you must be doing something right. The satisfaction of having done a pretty good job; you can’t buy that.”

Part of the satisfaction for Irv was that it was such a varied group of people who would come up to him over the years.

“I knew that Buffalo was and is a very ethnic conscious community. Just look at the festivals and parades. Irish, Polish, Italian, Greek, and on and on.  Generally, the people in those ethnic-type communities enjoy an individual who does something out of the box.  And in a town where ethnicity is important, with a name like Irv Weinstein, I’m immediately identified as an ethnic person. And not necessarily Jewish, either. I was sort of like the universal guy, a universal anchor, everybody’s anchor.  Both from a philosophical stand point and a factual stand point.”

And that was true; the numbers bore out, for not just the blue collar guys down at the plant.

“The Eyewitness News audience was everybody. People would say to me, ‘Yeah, Irv, you’re alright, you have the guys at Bethlehem Steel,’ but that’s bull.  Lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists.”

People from all walks of life couldn’t get enough of Irv, Rick, and Tom.

“You talk about ratings, and at one point, we had higher ratings than the other two stations combined. That’s phenomenal.”

And again, that is not something that is lost on Irv.

“In the days before the remote control, people actually had to get up out of their chairs to change the station, and fine tune it, move the hanger on top of the set to get better reception.  So viewers really had to want to see you at a specific time to get up and change the channel.”

“It wasn’t, ‘Boy, look at us, guys…’ We never felt like stars,” says Rick. “We never realized until after we left, after the fact, the impact we were making in our community.”

And it wasn’t just Buffalo. An entire generation of Torontonians made their assumptions about Buffalo, Western New York, and even the United States as a whole based on Eyewitness News.

WIVB-TV reporter Rich Newberg discussed it with Irv during an interview.

“People sometimes equate Buffalo with Irv Weinstein,” admitted Newberg who spent some time in direct competition with Irv when he anchored Channel 4’s 6 o’clock newscasts.

“People in Toronto would sometime mock the newscasts, and the city,” Newberg continued, ”wondering if there was a Western New York town left that hadn’t burned, or if there was a person walking around who hadn’t been shot at least once…”

Irv responded with a laugh, “I would tell these Torontonians, and I have, don’t be so snotty!  It was just a roll of the dice that Buffalo had such a high number of wood frame constructions. Toronto had a huge fire years ago (The Great Toronto Fire of 1904) which burned much of the city’s downtown.  Buffalo actually sent fire fighting apparatus to help put out the blaze. To their credit, in Toronto, after that fire, an ordinance was passed limiting the amount of wood allowed in new structures in the city.”

But it’s not all acrimony from Canada. Just as the stars of local Toronto and Hamilton televisions had and have a cult following in Western New York; Irv, too, is well loved on both sides of the border. Irv remembers a Toronto radio promotion ran on the basis of his popularity here and there.

“CHUM Radio ran a promotion in 1988, at a time when the US Presidential election and the Canadian Parliamentary election coincided. They decided to run a contest and run me for either President of the United States or Prime Minister of Canada. It was a lot of fun, spending a day on the media circuit in Toronto.”

Irv fully admits that Toronto wasn’t the only outside market that came calling for his services when Eyewitness News was one of the most highly rated newscasts in the country.

“Over the years, I had some opportunities to leave for a lot more money. I learned something from my experiences in Waterloo, Iowa; and Parkersburg, West Virginia, and also the brief times I worked in Portland, Oregon and San Diego.  What you learn is, when you have a good professional situation, that leaves you fulfilled and satisfied professionally, you can’t buy that.”

“There were anchor people making more money than me in the Buffalo market, even though I was number one in the ratings. Did it bother me?  Yeah, but not enough to really make any difference.”

It was a wonderful professional situation. But it was also that Buffalo provided a great place to raise a family. What was it like to call Irv Weinstein ‘dad?’

Irv talked about his family, and his family about him, in an early 1980’s broadcast of PM Magazine, at the time hosted in Buffalo by Debbie Stamp.

“If you compare me with Robert Young from Father Knows Best ,  I probably don’t do too well,” Irv said, “because early on in my career, when the children were small, I did not have a great deal of time to spend with them. And to be perfectly honest, on my days off, I wasn’t the kind of dad who went out in the street and played ball.  I have guilt feelings about the time I didn’t spend with the children when they were small, and when I was trying to make it in this business.”

As Debbie Stamp put it, “The Weinsteins lived not in a mansion, but in a typical house, in a typical neighborhood in Kenmore.”  Irv really is the typical guy we’d expect him to be watching him on television.

“I think my wife and I have an unusually good relationship.  She has a very even disposition, as opposed to myself.  I tend to be a little more volatile. Not as volatile as I used to be.”

“She thinks I’m the funniest guy in the world.  I broke her up from the moment we met, she just laughs and laughs, and when you’re laughing, it’s difficult to become angry.”

“He’s got a great sense of humor, and he’s fun to live with,” said Mrs. Weinstein of her husband. “I know his image is very often very businesslike and dignified, and he is that too, but, I was originally attracted to his sense of humor.”

Cannoli on the Weather Outside Set (Irv Weinstein Collection/Buffalo Stories archives)

The time since Irv, Rick and Tom sat together in our living rooms every night can now be measured in decades.

Rick Azar was the first to leave in 1989, making 25 years the mark to beat as the longest running anchor team in history. He’d been at Channel 7 since that first broadcast, 31 years before. Tom Jolls was the last to leave, a few months after Irv did in 1999.

On New Year’s Eve 1998, Irv Weinstein ended his 34 year run at the helm of Eyewitness News with a heartfelt final sign off:

Finally…  Yes, finally. Is there anyone in the western world who doesn’t know that I’m retiring? Well apparently, there is.  This e-mail arrived on our station manager’s computer a couple of days ago. It reads, quote, ‘I noticed on the TV tonight, on your channel logo saying Remembering Irv. I went to your internet page and there is no mention of your passing. Can you send me information on this?’ End quote.

Well, sir, if you’re watching, you’ll notice that I appear to be alive, in a manner of speaking, anyway.  Things have been a bit hectic, recently.

Now then, for the rest of you, I’d like to answer some questions that I’ve been getting since I announced that I’m retiring. Am I planning to move?  No. Am I going to write a book?  No.  What am I going to do with myself? Well, I’m going to kick off my shoes and goof off.  Read books, go to the movies weekday afternoons, watch lots of television news, spend lots of quality time with our children and grandchildren, and drive my wife crazy. The usual stuff.

Seriously though, friends, even though I’ll no longer have a day job, I suspect that I’ll pop up from time to time on television and radio, and I plan to continue to take an active role in the life of our community.

Now, it’s time to thank some of the people without whom I would not have had the broadcast career that I had.

At the top of the list are my wife and children. Their unwavering love, support, encouragement, and honest criticism have always been there during the good times, and the not so good times.

And a big thank you to a couple of TV station managers, who hired me at the dawn of my career.  If it wasn’t for them, I might now be directing a cooking show in Waterloo, Iowa, or live wresting in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

I’m grateful to all the Buffalo and Canadian newspaper columnists, and radio and TV personalities, who, in the last few weeks, have showered me with the kind of accolades normally reserved for people who break sports records or walk on the moon.

None of the last four decades would have happened for me without the owners, managers, and staff at WKBW Radio and Television, who were, and are, the best in the business.

But you, you the viewers were the key element whatever success I’ve achieved. We connected, on and off the air, you and me. I can never thank you enough.  You made all of my dreams come true.  May all of yours come true as well. Good night.

I once asked Irv about his legacy.

“You don’t think about everything you do, every single day. It’s a compilation of weeks, and months, and years of work that you hope has had some impact on people.  And when it appears that it does, and that it has, it’s a very rewarding thing.”

One of Irv’s legacies: Raising money for kids with the Variety Club Telethon, singing “I’m a Little Teapot” every year to get the phones ringing. (Buffalo Stories archives)

“I was the original Irv Weinstein, that’s all I was really.  Each person represents a particular talent, a particular ability. The impact I had in the market, may have set a fairly high watermark in the marketplace.

“For that, I am very grateful.”

Tom’s final words on the weather outside: “May all your days be salubrious.” A wonderful thought and one he meant from the bottom of his heart.

In many respects, it was a unique relationship Irv, Rick, and Tom shared, one not too different from brotherhood. One that continues to this day.

“We now keep in contact constantly over e-mail,” says Tom. “We were all together last summer, at Chef’s. It was the first time were together, all of us, in 14 years. We’ve seen each other separately of course, 14 years since we’d all been together. It was great, and it was like we’d never been apart. It was the same relationship there, and it will never go away.”

“We laugh, we cry. I can still make him cry at the drop of a hat,” Rick says of Irv. “Like a bag of mush. He comes on like this tough news guy, but he’s a mush. We’re in touch every day.”

Irv, Rick, and Tom. They really love each other. And we love them.

Groundbreaking for ‘the House That Irv Built.’ Congressman John LaFalce, County Executive Ned Regan, Mayor Stanley Makowski, and WKBW GM Phil Beuth at the future home of Channel 7. 1977. (Buffalo State College Courier Express Collection/ Buffalo Stories archives)

More Irv Weinstein from Buffalo Stories:

Irv, Rick & Tom and the sights and sounds of Eyewitness News

Irv in ’88 (and 2016!)

Rediscovered: Irv Weinstein on PM Magazine… 1979, WIVB-TV

Buffalo in the ’70s: Irv and other TV news favorites on the stage

Buffalo in the ’60s: Irv Weinstein and Gov. Nelson Rockefeller

Buffalo in the 50’s: Before there was Irv..

Buffalo’s 1520 WKBW Radio: WNY’s great contribution to 20th century pop culture

The scary sounds of Halloween on WKBW: 5 hours worth of K-Big talent on display

Anchorman Buffalo Style

Some of the best of 80’s Buffalo

Buffalo in the 70’s: Buffalo Anchorman

Thanks, Irv….

Buffalo in the ’70s: Nolan Johannes and ‘Dialing for Dollars’

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Nolan Johannes asking some lucky viewer at home, “Do you know the count and the amount?” (Buffalo Stories archives)

“A lot of friendliness and little schmaltz seem to work just fine for ‘Dialing for Dollars’,” wrote News Critic Gary Deeb in 1971, by which time, the show had already been a midmorning mainstay on Channel 7 for seven years.

Nolan Johannes on the set of Dialing for Dollars, inside WKBW-TVs Main Street studios. (Buffalo Stories archives)
Nolan Johannes on the set of “Dialing for Dollars,” inside WKBW-TV’s Main Street studios. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Nolan Johannes came to WKBW-TV in May 1964 — and by the end of the year, was the permanent host of the brand new “Dialing for Dollars.” His first co-host was Liz Dribben, who left Channel 7 to eventually join CBS in New York as a writer for such luminaries as Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace.

Liz Dribben and Nolan Johannes sitting on the hood of a car offering a word from our sponsors.
Liz Dribben and Nolan Johannes sitting on the hood of a car offering a word from our sponsors.

The half-hour show grew to 90 minutes, and in 1969, weatherman and “Rocketship 7” host Dave Thomas joined Johannes as co-host.

Nolan Johannes and Dave Thomas
Nolan Johannes and Dave Thomas (Buffalo Stories archives)

Aside from phone calls trying to give away money, the show was filled with interviews of the everyday women in the audience, twice-weekly exercise tips from UB’s Dr. Len Serfustini, syndicated features from “The Galloping Gourmet” Graham Kerr and “Fashions in Sewing” with Lucille Rivers.

And even nearly 40 years after the show went off the air, most Buffalonians of a certain age will be able to recall without hesitation the names of the guys in the “Dialing for Dollars” band — Jimmy and Johnny.

Jimmy Edwin, drums, and Johnny Banaszak, accordion, on the set of Dialing for Dollars. Banaszak was also the man inside the Promo the Robot costume on Rocketship 7.
Jimmy Edwin, drums, and Johnny Banaszak, accordion, on the set of Dialing for Dollars. Banaszak was also the man inside the Promo the Robot costume on Rocketship 7. (Buffalko Stories archives)

In 1978, Thomas left Channel 7 for Philadelphia, and “Dialing for Dollars” was reformatted to become “AM Buffalo.” Johannes left Channel 7 in 1983 to become a news anchor in Scranton, Pa. Johannes died in 2015 at the age of 81.

In September, 2016, Thomas returned to his hometown for Johannes’ posthumous induction in to the Buffalo Broadcasting Hall of Fame. Thomas was inducted in 2001.

Buffalo in the ’60s: Irv Weinstein and Gov. Nelson Rockefeller

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

During a mid-’60s visit to Buffalo, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller stopped by the Main Street studios of WKBW-TV for an interview with now-legendary Channel 7 newsman Irv Weinstein.

Buffalo News archives

At the time, however, Channel 7 was, as pejoratively described by Irv himself, “the fourth station in a three-station market.”

Channel 7 signed on in 1958, 10 years after Channel 4, and four years after Channel 2. The offerings of the ABC network didn’t help endear WKBW-TV to Buffalo viewers: Weinstein likes to remind people of quality network programming such as “My Mother the Car.”

When Weinstein left WKBW Radio to join Channel 7 alongside Rick Azar in 1964, the evening newscast went on the air at 7:20 p.m. to avoid competition from the other stations’ 6 p.m. newscasts.

irv720pm

Buffalo Stories archives

A few years later, Tom Jolls joined the crew, and the Irv, Rick and Tom team that dominated Buffalo TV news in the ’70s and ’80s was complete.

The three men, plus addition of more local newsfilm, better tight writing and a display of personality and human interaction unseen before on local TV made Channel 7 — and Irv Weinstein — No. 1 in the market, virtually uninterrupted, from the late 1960s through Irv’s retirement in 1998.

Nelson Rockefeller was governor of New York from 1958 to 1973 and was appointed vice president by Gerald Ford. He served from 1974 to 1977 and died in 1979.

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GALLERY: Remembering Irv, Rick and Tom

Buffalo in the 70s: Meet Snoopy and Dave Thomas at Hengerer’s

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

All the youngsters were invited to Hengerer’s to meet Rocketship 7’s Dave Thomas and Snoopy to promote the upcoming Peanuts film “A Boy Named Charlie Brown.”

No word on whether the Sweetlys, Mr. Beeper or Promo the Robot would be attending.

Buffalo in the ’70s: The Azar– The Oldsmobile named after Rick Azar

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

In 1975 Buffalo, very few people were more hip than the Eyewitness News anchor team of Irv Weinstein, Rick Azar and Tom Jolls.

Promotion of their top rated newscasts on WKBW-TV Channel 7 was everywhere: buses, billboards, television promos, print ads — and a driveway near you?