Public Broadcasting comes to Buffalo

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


When the National Broadcasting Company gave up on its Buffalo UHF experiment and pulled the plug on WBUF-TV Ch.17, they sold off all the station’s assets but one—the license.

NBC donated the license to broadcast on Ch.17 to the Western New York Educational Television Association, which signed on WNED-TV on March 30, 1959 as New York State’s only public television station.

WNED-TV —which stands for Western New York Educational TV—began broadcasting with, what one station official described as “mismatched hand-me-down equipment held together by hope, dumb luck, and quite literally, masking tape… The ‘technical difficulties’ slide should have read ‘financial difficulties.’”

The station’s camera blew-out 30 seconds into the first broadcast.

A young John Zach operates a WNED-TV camera. Zach would go on to a career in radio news at WKBW, WGR, and WBEN that would span more than five decades.

Still, “The cultural appeal of the station was immediate,” reported Sturgis Hedrick in The News, as Buffalo’s Martha Graham Dancers were the first performers featured on the station.

It was touch and go for the first few years, with threats of programming cuts and layoffs of the already barebones staff, but over the station’s first decade on the air, WNED-TV saw “increased public support, state support and the greater recognition of public television’s role by the federal government.”

Starting in the old cinderblock building behind what is the Ch.4 studio today– WNED-TV moved to the penthouse of the Lafayette Hotel by the end of 1959.

Six local colleges joined with the station to create programming that would allow students to gain college credit through lessons learned on what could hardly be called “the boob tube” when tuned to Ch.17.

Board Chairman Laurence Goodyear reflected, “The services which Ch. 17 has provided to the community have been unique and distinctive.”

Bertha Hoffman teaches a French class on Ch.17.

Sister Jeanne, art professor at Rosary Hill College, teaches a class over WNED-TV.

Aside from grammar school, high school, and college credit programs, there were also typing classes, along with training for fire and police. Jack Call was the instructor on Ch.17’s “Train for Fire.”

Diane Sina was the host of “Type Right” on Ch.17.

For all the educational programming on WNED-TV, among the favorite and most watched programs was “Piano on a Terrace,” when announcer Matt Regan would play in the open air on the roof of the Lafayette Hotel.

Jack Paupst’s jolly shopkeeper Mr. Whatnot was the most popular show in the station’s early days.

Among WNED-TV’s original employees was publicity manager J. Michael Collins. He’d become the station’s manager, and in 50 years of creating a public broadcasting empire, he’d also become a familiar face during pledge breaks and events like “the Great TV Auction.”  He’s shown here with other staffers who survived the station’s first decade: Chief Engineer Gordon Knaier and Technical Operations Director G. Robert Bakaysa.

J. Michael Collins with two young WNED fundraisers.

WBFO-FM signed on in January, 1959, as a student-run, non-commercial, educational radio station at UB. “Classical music, poetry, symposiums and area college news” were on the schedule as the station only broadcast during the evening hours when first on the air.

Electrical engineering students built the studio in the Baird Music Building and a transmitting plant atop the Tower Dormitory.

“The student body benefits internally with the acquisition of broadcasting knowledge by the WBFO staff,” said Jack Mettauer, WBFO’s first program director, who was also a math student and a former WEBR engineer. “Externally, the wide variety of programs will stimulate

student interest in specific fields.”

Programming in October, 1959 included an hour of “pop tunes” each night—but “not to include Top-40 music,” followed by an hour of news from around the campus and around the world.

WBFO Chief Engineer Howie Barker at the controls, 1959

As the 60s wore on, WBFO found itself in the midst of the unrest on the UB campus, and became a pioneer in public radio as it’s known today.


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

The Relegated Role of Women, con’t.

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


Almost forty years into broadcasting in Buffalo, not much had changed in where one might expect to hear a woman’s voice. Speaking to women about women’s issues was about the extent of women’s roles. There were growing numbers of exceptions, but they were clearly exceptions.

World War II changed things briefly, but not a lot.

As many of WBEN’s announcers went to war, the station took the unprecedented step of (temporarily) hiring a woman as an announcer.

 Vera Holly, shortly after leaving WBEN signing on ABC, 1947.

But a 1943 memo from the station’s top brass told all emcees, telephone receptionists, and the publicity staff that she was not to be referred to while announcing, that she wouldn’t use her name while announcing, and that program hosts should refrain from mentioning her name or identity on the air.

Vera Holly was a very popular entertainer on the station for a decade. She was a singer and emcee on WBEN in the 1930s and 1940s, and had top billing on “International House Party,” but wasn’t allowed to identify herself for the nearly six months she was reading station breaks and newscasts on WBEN.

A CBS gig on “The Jerry Lester Show” landed her in front of the same microphone as the biggest star of 1943– Frank Sinatra.

“I had a great kick working on the same show as Frank,” Holly told The Buffalo Evening News. “Confidentially, he really is cute. And much nicer than I expected.”

When she was picked up for a network show in 1946, she was called “one of the most promising young stars of radio.” Holly went on to announce her own network programs on Mutual, CBS, and ABC.

A decade later, the advent of TV doubled the number of announcing jobs, but not for women— except for a very particular announcing job at the weather map.

Joy Wilson, WBUF-TV “Weather Girl,” 1956

As a genre, the “Weather Girl” made its debut on WBUF-TV in 1956 “in what is billed as an amusing and novel presentation of the temperature readings and weather conditions.”

The Courier-Express reported that “an attractive young brunette” would be joining Roger Lund at the weather map on WBUF-TV.

“Beauty and the barometer will meet Monday evening on Ch. 17 when Joy Wilson of Kenmore becomes Buffalo’s first TV weather girl on a new five-minute program telecast weekdays at 6:45.” Wilson worked in the station’s office.

Around the same time, Janice Okun was the Milk for Health spokeswoman during WBUF-TV’s newscasts, bringing television experience from her time as the second host of Ch.4’s “Plain and Fancy Cooking.”

Janice Okun

She later appeared for the Dairy Council on Ch.7’s “Farm & Home” before moving to The Buffalo Evening News as Food Editor.

It was another woman, however, who combined being the Milk for Health “milkmaid” along with delivering the weather forecast.

Without the benefit of doppler radars or advanced computer imagery, Paula Drew would read the same information provided by the Weather Bureau like any other (male) announcer, and follow the forecast with a live commercial for Western New York’s dairy farmers.

At various times through the 1950s, her reports as “The Milk for Heath Milkmaid” were seen on Chs. 2 and 4.

In 1959, dressed in a fur stole and a pill box hat, Drew was received at the White House, bearing a gift for President Eisenhower from the Niagara Frontier’s milk producers. The 8-day-old Holstein came from the Genesee County dairy farm of Clarence Johncox.

The elegant Paula Drew also made regular appearances at the Fort Erie Race Track through the 1950s, always wearing pearls and mink, even in the barns.

Drew was also part of a New York State dairy contingent that toured European dairy farming and production facilities. In reporting back to Chautauqua County’s dairymen, she told the group that she “drinks at least three glasses of milk per day … although she likes coffee, tea and an occasional highball when on a date.”

Paula Drew on an AM&A’s remote, Ch.2

An accomplished opera singer, Drew attended Juilliard School of Music, training as a coloratura soprano. While attending Juilliard, she was signed to a Universal Pictures contract.

In post-war 1940s Hollywood, she made movies with Red Skelton and Hugh Beaumont — better known later for his role as Ward Cleaver.

After working in Buffalo for most of the 1950s, Drew moved onto other corporate public relations work in Toronto. Her last regular gig in Buffalo was as the voice of Tops Friendly Markets through the 1970s until 1983.

Doris Jones modelling Buffalo’s own Birge Wallpaper.

Though she broke into TV as model and women’s host, Doris Jones was eventually Buffalo’s first woman staff announcer.

Doris Jones hosted a radio show on WHLD starting in 1957.

Jones was still in high school when she started modelling on Ch.4 and later was short-lived WBES-TV’s “All Weather Gal” sponsored by Phoenix Beer.

As Ch.7 signed on the air, she was “femcee” of the station’s daily audience participation show For the Ladies, “a pleasant half-hour planned for the housewife,” reported the Courier-Express as the show debuted in 1959. “It includes interesting fashion news, a fair sample of live music and assorted singing and dancing. Blonde Doris Jones is the charming hostess.”

 In 1965, she was hired as a “weathergal” at Ch.2, but union rules dictated she become a full-time staff announcer—making her Buffalo’s first woman in that role.  She wound up doing weather during the 6pm news, anchoring local newscasts during the Today Show, emceeing a Fantasy Island kids show, giving skiing and boating reports, and hosting “TV’s first card game,” Pay Cards.


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

Jack Sharpe and WEBR’s Trafficopter

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


After attending Nichols and serving in World War II, Jack Sharpe returned home to start a career in journalism as a Buffalo Evening News copyboy in 1948.

Jack Sharpe behind the wheel of WEBR’s mobile transmitter

He joined WEBR Radio in 1952. Seven years later, he combined his love for on-the-scene reporting with Buffalo’s place at the center of the aviation industry by initiating Buffalo’s first airborne traffic reports in the WEBR Traffic Copter. He became Buffalo’s “flamboyant, outspoken eye in the sky.”

Jack Sharpe (right) with Jack Prior of Prior Aviation. Buffalo was the second city in the country to carry airborne traffic reports on the radio. 

Sharpe (right) with WNY Safety Conference President Gordon Trank, kicking off Buffalo Safety Week 1962.

Sharpe would scold motorists and highway planners while reporting breakdowns and delays. After one big snowstorm, he saw that instead of attacking the road conditions– a half-a-dozen city plows were parked outside a restaurant.

“If you’re wondering why your streets aren’t plowed,” he said in a live traffic report, “it’s because all the plows are parked at Your Host!”

He kept the helicopter hovering so he could watch the drivers scurry away from their grilled bow ties and back out onto the road.

Sharpe spent 14 years flying over Buffalo’s highways until he ran for office in 1973. He’d spent five terms as Supervisor of the Town of Amherst, overseeing that community’s continued transformation from a farming community to a suburban population center.


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

Western Connections

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


For 20 years, Sunday nights in many households across the country meant an episode of “Gunsmoke” before the late local news. For 19 of those years, a woman who attended Hamburg Junior High and Amherst Central was one of the stars of the show.

Long before Amanda Blake played Miss Kitty, the saloon-owning love interest of Marshall Matt Dillon from 1955-74, she grew up in Western New York.

Born at Millard Fillmore Hospital on Delaware Avenue, the young “Miss Kitty” began her elementary schooling at Kenmore’s Lindbergh Elementary, also living in Hamburg and Amherst until 1946, when her father’s job at Curtiss-Wright took the family to California.

A 1960 promotional trip was the actress’s first trip back to Western New York since moving out west—but it wasn’t her last. She stayed in regular contact with old friends and relatives, and visited several times—including to attend her 40th high school reunion– before her death in 1989.

Amanda Blake surrounded by her Gunsmoke co-stars, including a young Burt Reynolds, who played Deputy Quint Asper on the show for three seasons. Blake was on Gunsmoke for all but the final season of the show’s 20-year run.

Gene Barry starred as Bat Masterson for three years on NBC and Ch.2. On a promotional visit to Buffalo, he was interviewed by Helen Neville on WGR-TV and Dan Neaverth on WGR Radio.


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

Dick Lawrence brings Top-40 to Buffalo

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


A young program director with a big mouth, big ideas, and a big appetite for promotion rock ‘n’ rolled his way into Buffalo in 1957, and Dick Lawrence permanently etched his taste for music and in-your-face radio into the taste and expectations of Buffalonians.

Even if they came along kicking and screaming. Buffalo’s newspaper radio critics reflected the feelings of most Western New Yorkers past the age of 16, with regards to the new sounds coming out of their radios.

Dick Lawrence

Sturgis Hedrick of the Buffalo Evening News recalled Lawrence on the pages of the paper as “the energetic young man who brought the raucous, jangling—and alas, moderately successful—sound of ‘modern radio’ to Buffalo.”

 The original WBNY Top-40 line-up included Lawrence, who appeared on the air as Felix with his pet parrot Fernando.

“A sound of hoopla and noisy disc jockeys went into full swing night and day,” said the Courier-Express’ Jack Allen. “Most 15-minute newscasts, a tradition at the station, were dropped and Gene Korzelius’ sportscasts were reduced. The fast-paced schedule eventually also did away with the Grosvenor Library Classical Music Show…The top-40 format with the rock ‘n’ roll beat was in to stay.”

The theme is pretty clear. It was also echoed by J. Don Schlaerth.

“Station WBNY, described as ‘the friendly voice of Buffalo’ seems to have given in to the noisy bounce of rock ‘n’ roll and Elvis Presley to ‘keep up with 1957 musical tastes.’ Not long ago semi-classical music and standard favorites predominated on WBNY. Then there was no room for an Elvis.”

Henry Brach was a newsman and deejay at WBNY and as ‘BNY’s news director, gave Danny Neaverth his first job in Buffalo radio. He moved over to KB and spent more than 20 years there as the station’s gruff uncle and the butt of the jokes of untold numbers of disc jockeys.

If you tuned to WBNY in the late 50s, you were likely to hear the voice of Daffy Dan Neaverth, Fred Klestine and Henry Brach. At WBNY, Neaverth would pull a rooftop like event similar to Guy King’s, throwing candy out to passersby. Neaverth, perhaps with his boyish good looks and demeanor, evaded arrest for his stunt.

Daffy Dan Neaverth, WBNY. Neaverth left WBNY for WKBW, inspiring the rath of Dick Lawrence—who made firing Neaverth one of his first acts when he became boss at KB. Neaverth went to work at WGR until returning to 1520 for a 26-year run at the station.

It was fast tempo music, fast tempo talk, fast tempo musical station IDs. It was also the only programming on the station. Rock ‘n’ roll could be heard elsewhere on the dial, but nowhere else was it the only music a station played.

Love it or hate it, the tiny 250-watt station– which could barely be heard outside of the city’s boundaries– was the talk of Western New York.

Other radio stations hated more than radio critics and parents of teens combined.

Four months into Dick Lawrence’s reign at WBNY, WGR announced that it is no longer in the rock ‘n’ roll business.

“Radio station WGR, after taking an impartial music survey among local housewives, has decided to go off the ‘hot’ music path into the relaxing realm of ‘good music,’” reported The Courier-Express. “It will let other Buffalo stations divide the rock ‘n roll spoils.”

The survey named Perry Como as favorite male vocalist followed by Pat Boone and Bing Crosby.

The next day, the paper printed reactions from local radio programmers and called Lawrence’s response “violent.”

“I’ve seen this policy tried before,” Lawrence said. “It doesn’t work and I’ll be a pallbearer at their funeral.”

WGR went to the extreme, but most other stations had some rock music at some point during the day. The only station that didn’t, was WBEN.

“The changing styles in music have never affected the WBEN program policy of providing music, news, drama and public service for all members of the family,” a station official told the Courier-Express.

Other radio stations might not have embraced the music, but after six months, they were beginning to lose revenue. 50,000-watt WKBW Radio was losing to a 250-watt station.

WKBW General Manager Al Anscombe told the Courier-Express that the sound being put out by Dick Lawrence was “slightly wacky” – but the trends were there. KB could die on the vine, or go all in.

And did KB go all in. The station owned by a preacher with call letters standing for “Well-Known Bible Witness” hired away the young programmer and promoter who sent a donkey around downtown Buffalo wearing a sign that said, “Everybody is listening to the new WBNY but me, and you know what I am!”

Lawrence christened KB as Futursonic Radio, rock ‘n’ roll had a new home on Buffalo’s radio dial, and KB would begin a dominance that would last a generation.

Within a year of the change to a Top-40 format on July 4, 1958, WKBW Radio was taking out full-page ads in Buffalo’s newspapers touting their status as Buffalo’s most listened to radio station.

One of the most famous disc jockeys to spin tunes on WBNY only lasted about a month at the station– but would go on to a legendary career in syndicated radio and voice work.

Before he became the voice of “American Top 40” and Shaggy on “Scooby-Doo,” Casey Kasem was “Casey at the Mic” on WBNY in 1960. Shortly before his arrival, he set a record at WJW in Cleveland for what he called “world’s longest on-air kiss,” after laying an 85-second smooch on starlet Diana Trask.

Much later, Kasem would admit to “screwing around too much” during his short time in Buffalo. He’d land in San Francisco, and was well on his way to forever having his feet in the ground while reaching for the stars.

Early group shot of The Even Newer WKBW Futursonic disc jockeys, including Jim Taylor, Ted Hackett, Tom Shannon, Don Keller, Dick Braun, Gene Nelson, Bob Diamond, and Russ Syracuse.

Dick Biondi at a record hop in 1960, just before leaving KB for Chicago.

Dick Biondi was the first nighttime voice of the rock ‘n’ roll era on WKBW.

He referred to himself as “a screamer,” and often told the story about how he was fired from KB because he was too loud. He also claimed to have been fired from KB because he played an Elvis song that wasn’t approved.

What really happened: he told listeners that one of KB’s managers was driving down Main Street in an Impala convertible. “If you see him,” he said, “Throw a rock!”

Someone did—through the boss’ windshield. Maybe he was too loud.

Dan Neaverth, WKBW

Irv Weinstein joined the WKBW Radio news staff in 1958, ultimately becoming the station’s news director. He was responsible for creating a news sound that reflected the music and personalities on the station. He walked across the parking lot to become Ch.7’s news anchor in 1964.

When WNIA officially signed on in 1956, the station was promised to be “as revolutionary to radio as color was to television.”

More than just Top-40, the record library at the Genesee Street studios boasted more than 10-thousand recordings.

But there was still plenty of room for rock ‘n’ roll. From early on, 1230am was “a home for top tunes” as J. Don Schlaerth put it in the pages of the Courier-Express, who wrote, “as a new station with lots of peppy music, the ratings began to jiggle.”

In 1957, Gordon Brown, owner, WNIA, told The Courier-Express, “We play the top 100 tunes half of the time and the old standards the other half of the time. I think people like the sweet popular music as well as rock ‘n’ roll. We’ve had terrific results in the popular music field. We also like to play some soft music to help the housewife work around the house.”

WNIA signed-on in 1956, and doubled its power in 1962.

While the power changed, what didn’t was the disc jockey’s names. For more than two decades, when you turned on the radio in the morning, the deejay identified himself as Tommy Thomas— even though it might have been a different guy with a different voice calling himself Tommy Thomas the day before.

Just like with Guy King at WWOL, station founder Gordon Brown insisted that the disc jockeys at the radio stations he owned use those on-air handles instead of their own.

He felt the stock jock names gave a more consistent sound even as the DJs changed rapidly, it was always Mike Melody and Jerry Jack.

WNIA saw itself as a more staid (and cheaper!) version of WKBW. KB wasn’t mentioned by name in one 1963 ad, but anyone reading it would have known what was being implied.

“As far as wild banshee, screaming announcers, wild nonsense gimmicks and promos… NEVER on WNIA.”

At 1080am, WINE was perhaps the least remembered of the handful of radio stations which tried to break in on the Rhythm music scene in late 1950s Buffalo.

“WXRA has changed their call letters along with their programming,” wrote Danny McBride in his column in the Blasdell Herald in 1957. “The new call is WINE, along with crazy sounds like the new WBNY.”

The WINE call letters didn’t last very long. In 1960, WINE became WYSL at 1080am.

1080am was then sold to WUFO, and the WYSL call letters moved to 1400am, displacing the old WBNY.

Before WXRA became WINE, Tommy Shannon had his first radio job there.

Hernando was the morning man at WXRA, and stayed on at WINE. The mic flag in this photo was edited from saying WXRA to WINE.

Hernando went on to do the all-night show on WGR, after the station “gave up” on giving up rock ‘n’ roll.

Greyt Scott appeared on other Buffalo stations as Charlie Griggs. Tap Taplin had been a regular on WEBR for at least a decade before moving to WINE, and Jimmy Lyons was Buffalo’s first full-time, regularly featured African-American deejay.

The WINE mobile unit—a Volkswagen van—always turning heads.

Disc jockeys joined forces to raise money for charity at a game at the Bishop Timon gym in 1959. Standing: Charlie Griggs (Greyt Scott) WINE, Rog Christian WBNY, Tom Shannon WKBW, Terry Mann WWOL, Dan Neaverth WGR, Danny McBride WEBR, Jack Kelly WKBW, Rick Bennett WWOL. Sitting: Bud Stiker (Jerry Jack) WNIA, Dick Carr WBNY, and Don Fortune WBNY.


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

Guy King ushers in bad boy Rock ‘n’ Roll

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


It was the moment that ushered in Buffalo’s rock ‘n’ roll era; the craziest radio prank to date in Buffalo and Tom Clay– who was one of many men who used the air name “Guy King” on WWOL Radio– kicked it off in style… and with a visit from the cops.

July 3, 1955 saw a broadcast event that wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow 65 years later, but caused fire trucks to be dispatched and a disc jockey arrested in the heart of Downtown Buffalo.

Leading into the Independence Day holiday, “wearing Bermuda shorts and waving a microphone,” wrote Buffalo News radio critic Anthony Violanti years later, Guy King “climbed out the window of WWOL and sat atop a billboard, 75 feet above Shelton Square in downtown Buffalo,” yelling to the cars below to blow their horns while he played Bill Haley & The Comets’ “Rock Around The Clock” over and over.

Tom Clay was arrested after spending time perched atop the WWOL billboard in Shelton Square. Traffic was snarled for hours in what was then considered “Buffalo’s Times Square” because of the lights and action. Today, the area little more than MetroRail tracks in front of the Main Place Mall.

Buffalo Police and Buffalo Fire didn’t appreciate the prank, and Clay spent part of the night in the clink, but not before Clay turned the mic on and broadcast a scuffle with police—who had earlier promised he wouldn’t be arrested if he climbed down.

Despite having done a similar event a few months earlier to raise money for polio research with the blessing of police, this time Clay was charged with two penal code violations: disorderly conduct and creating a disturbance. He was released into the custody of  WWOL owner Leon Wyszatycki, but when Clay left the station in the days following his arrest, he was re-arrested and couldn’t post the $500 bond. He spent two more nights in jail.

From The Buffalo Evening News

“I didn’t intend to disturb the peace, I sincerely believed I was doing something to entertain my listeners,” Clay told the judge as he pleaded guilty and was fined $25.

“I am not going to punish you very much but this should serve as a warning to others,” said Judge Casimer T. Partyka in handing down the sentence.

It should be noted that 16 years earlier on WGR, an upstart disc jockey named Clinton Buehlman would hang out of the window of the Rand Building, and encourage motorists to drive by and honk.

At the time, the Courier-Express reported lightheartedly on Buehlman’s exploits.

“Clinton Buehlman is not bothered by fear of high places; he recently perched on the ledge of the eighteenth floor parapet of the Rand Building while his picture was being taken.”

Meanwhile, The Buffalo Evening News summed up Clay’s time at WWOL as having “created near riots with car parades, worked his audience into a frenzy by playing the same R & R number for long periods of time and… def(ying) police.”

Tom Clay in 1959, as he was fired from a Detroit radio station after admitting to accepting payola. Trouble followed him, as he was also run out of town after asking listeners to send a dollar to join a Beatles Fan Club. 80,000 kids sent a buck—most got nothing back.

Clay is best remembered, however, for his 1971 song “What the World Needs Now Is Love”/”Abraham, Martin and John,” featuring a blend of the two songs interspersed with audio actualities featuring John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Once Clay left the station, immediately there was a new “Guy King” on WWOL. The name was the “house name” for the afternoon drive host on the station, and several men used the name on the air.

WWOL, 1956 ad, featuring Fred Klestine, Vic Bell—who’d later broadcast at WKBW as Jack Kelly, and Frank Ward as Guy King.

Guy King #3, Frank Ward, was the man who replaced Clay. He was also known to climb out on billboards— but by the time he was doing it in 1957, law enforcement didn’t seem to mind.

Ward and and his fellow WWOL deejay Fred Klestine would climb on top of the Aero Drive-In movie screen during appearances at the Union Road, Cheektowaga location.

Before he was known as Guy King, Frank Ward was popular on WKBW.

WGR-TV, Buffalo’s Ch.2

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


From a full-page ad on Ch.2’s first day of broadcasting in 1954, showing the hosts of some of the new station’s featured live audience programs:

1. Breakfast for Two with Helen Neville, Monday-Friday at 9am.

2. Cookin’ Cues with Charlotte McWhorter, weekdays, 1pm.

3. For M’Lady with Mari and Gilbert Bass from The Park Lane, Tue & Thur at 2:30pm

4. Mary Lawton as Mother Goose, Saturdays at 11am

5. Outdoors Inn with Ollie Howard, Tuesdays at 7pm

6. Dollar Derby with Bill Keaton, Wednesdays at 2:30pm

Even with UHF stations coming and going, there were no fewer than four competing interests who had applied to the FCC for the license to operate Ch.2.  Several of those interests combined to form a new WGR Corporation, which was awarded the license in 1954.

 “A bright new channel of television service and entertainment opens up for Buffalo and Western New York today as WGR-TV takes to the air on Channel 2,” reported the Evening News on August 14, 1954, with the sign-on of Buffalo’s second UHF station.

“Televiewing,” reported The Buffalo Evening News,” was now a “staple fare” in most homes along the Niagara Frontier. The cost of television sets had dropped precipitously since Ch.4’s 1948 sign-on, and having a second reliable station to watch was enough to make many holdouts into television owners.

Longtime Buffalo radio personality Billy Keaton welcomed viewers to the new station—which unlike the other two stations that had signed on the year before, every single one of the 430,000 TV sets in the Buffalo area could watch Ch.2 without a UHF converter box.

Longtime WGR Radio veteran Billy Keaton emceed the opening broadcast ceremonies on WGR-TV, Ch.2.

From a full-page ad that ran in the Courier-Express and The Evening News on the day Ch.2 signed on. Newsmen Roy Kerns and Pat Fagan as well as sportscasters Roger Baker and Bill Mazer were in the spotlight on nightly news and sports programs, and Ollie Howard brought his outdoors show from radio to TV as well.

Authoritative. Respected. Those were the types of adjectives thrown around when describing Roy Kerns, the anchor of Ch.2’s early newscasts for most of the station’s first decade on the air. “Mr. Kern’s polished presentation… is the enjoyable habit of many thousand Niagara Frontier viewers,” said a 1956 ad. Kerns left Buffalo for his native Oklahoma City in 1967.

 NBC’s Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were a heavily marketed part of WGR-TV’s news team, so much so that Brinkley visited Ch.2’s Barton Street studios to help dedicate a new set in 1964. Here, he’s joined by Chuck Poth.

Pat Fagan was a Ch.2 news anchor, as seen here in the early 60s, but he was also the host of the station’s Teen Dance Party. Fagan left Buffalo in the mid-60s for an ABC-TV staff announcer position. He began his career at WBNY in 1948. He also worked at WEBR and made appearances as an actor in Ch.4’s dramatic series “The Clue.”

Checkers & Can-Can was a kid’s show produced by Ch.2, airing mornings at 9:30. The actors behind the clown and the “tin-can man” were Philadelphia TV veterans Ed McDonnell, who had been Philly’s “Flying Sorcerer,” and Joe Earley who had played “Mr. Rivets” on WPTZ-TV Ch.3.

Fantasy Island General Manager Clyde Farnan played Buckskin Joe on a TV version of the park’s Wild West Show. He was joined by Marshall Rick, Annie Oakley, Little Bo Peep, and bad guys like Cactus Pete and Black Bart– played by Fantasy Island’s business manager Harvey Benatovich.

Bob Lawrence was one of the original cast of announcers when Ch.2 first signed on—his primary job until he left the station 13 years later was as a weatherman.

From the very beginning, however, he was one of the station’s kiddie show hosts, first as Captain Atom during the local breaks on the Colonel Bleep cartoon show, and then as Captain Bob during Popeye cartoons and The Mickey Mouse Club.

When the station first signed on, Ch.2’s signal was weak into the Southern Tier—so the station’s programming was also broadcast on Ch.6 in Jamestown. The problem was later fixed when Ch.2 moved its transmitter facility from Buffalo to the Town of Wales in southern Erie County.

Aside from entertaining the kids and hosting cartoons, Bob Lawrence was Ch.2’s lead weather personality through most of the station’s first decade.

From 1954 to 1968, Jack Mahl—with his pleasantly deep voice—was another of Ch.2’s weathermen. He would go on to anchor radio newscasts on WYSL, WEBR, and WBUF through the 70s and 80s. His rhyming TV sign-off became famous, as he said, “That’s all from Mahl” with a salute.

WGR-TV Atlantic Weatherman John Lascalles.

Helen Neville stands in the background as Polish dancers get ready to perform outside the Ch.2 studios on Barton Street.

“Bill Mazer is as good as there is in his chosen profession of reporting interestingly and enthusiastically, sports of all sorts.”

After a hitch in the army at the end of World War II, Mazer came to Buffalo in 1947, working first at WKBW and then WGR. During his 16 years in Buffalo, Mazer is best remembered in Buffalo for his long association with the baseball Bisons at Offermann Stadium, but he also called the action for the hockey Bisons and Canisius College basketball from the Aud, as well as Buffalo Bills football from the Rockpile during the All-America Football Conference days in the late 40s.

Along with Roger Baker, he was one of the WGR-TV’s original stable of sportscasters when the station signed on in 1954.  In 1955, he also hosted the “Watch the Birdie” program, sponsored by Kaufman’s Rye Bread on Ch.2. As “Uncle Bill,” he made phone calls to kids, giving way prizes between Woody the Woodpecker cartoons.

Born in Ukraine, Mazer grew up in Brooklyn—and returned home to become a beloved New York City sports broadcasting fixture starting in 1964. He was also seen on network broadcasts for CBS and Fox, and played a role as a reporter in the epic 1980 film ‘Raging Bull.’

After leaving WEBR, Bob Wells joined the staff at WGR-TV to emcee a handful of popular shows. While Frank Dill was the orginal host of Pic A Polka, Wells hosted with bandleader Frank Wojnorowski for most of the show’s run.

 Bob Wells also was the original host of Yankee Doodle Time when the show premiered on WGR-TV in 1961. It was the only television show hosted live five days a week in a Buffalo department store. 

Jack Tapson was an editor and photographer, who knew– as it was unfolding– that he was watching something important unfolding in front of him daily.

He started at Ch.4  as a lover of photography and teen technician in the 1940s and moved onto Ch.2 where he started the news film department in the mid-1950s.

For decades, these jobs put him on the front lines of some of the really amazing things that were happening in what was then America’s 15th largest city, as well as behind the scenes at Buffalo’s big TV stations.

Over the period of several years, he shared his memories and photos with next-generation storytellers Marty Biniasz and Steve Cichon.

While The Buffalo Evening News did a tremendous job capturing the story of the WBEN stations in photos, Jack’s behind the scenes candid shots from the first 15 years of WGR-TV offer a look at the station which would have otherwise been lost to history. You’re enjoying many of these photos in this book because he cared enough to take pictures… and then cared enough to share them.

The WGR-TV mascots were a pair of mischievous elves named Iris and Earis, according to research done by Marty Biniasz for Forgotten Buffalo’s website. He reports they were first drawn by Ch.2  art director Frank Wahl as the station signed on.


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

Legacy of the Seneca-Babcock Boys’ Club

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


For many kids and teens of the Eisenhower era, the different kinds of sounds coming out of radios gave them something of their own to listen to while doing their homework or on a transistor radio snuck under a pillow after bedtime.

There are also those who listened to deejays like The Hound and Lucky Pierre and were inspired to spend the next 60 years entertaining the world.

For example, Buffalo radio legends Sandy Beach and Jefferson Kaye, both of whom grew up in Massachusetts, listened to the Hound over KB’s powerful signal as youngsters and cited him as an inspiration.

But right here in Buffalo, a handful of the boys who’d be the broadcast Pied Pipers of their generation got their radio start in an old brick building in South Buffalo’s Seneca-Babcock neighborhood.

A group of friends from St. Monica’s grammar school on Orlando Street spent most of the rest of their free time at the Boys’ Club a couple blocks away on Babcock Street.

The club’s organized activities, mostly sports, weren’t exactly what these boys were after. “They weren’t much for boxing,” activities director Jimmy Coyle would say for years after, “they were more for talking.”

Past members of the Babcock Boys’ Club, from the Courier-Express, 1964

Danny Neaverth, Joe Pinto (who’d later become Joey Reynolds on the radio), Bill Masters (who spent 20 years on WEBR and WBEN), Danny McBride (whose local broadcasting career spanned 60 years) were all major players starting a closed-circuit radio station for the club.

Joey Pinto, center, brought his home record player to the Boys’ Club when the one in the club broke. That’s Joe Marszalak and Richard Quinn with him in a photo that ran in the Buffalo Evening News in 1956.      

The boys convinced Boys’ Club manager Gurney Jenkins to get rid of an old jukebox that played 78 rpm records for Monday night dances and replace it with a modern record player and a microphone. Once they got the green light, all the boys went to work.

WBCB could only be heard inside the Babcock Boys’ Club, but offered Buffalo the first taste of what would fill the airwaves for decades to come.

Joe Pinto sent letters to record promoters and radio stations asking for old, about to be discarded, or greatly discounted records. He walked all over the city to collect the 45s which offered a more modern beat for the Boys’ Club dances.

Neaverth and McBride wired the whole building for sound, and now the set-up was more than just for dances in the gym. There was music, news, and even commercials on a regular schedule. They boys eventually started doing play-by-play of the sporting events at the club.

And a decade before their KB Radio cross-talk between Neaverth’s afternoon show and Reynolds’ evening show became the talk of Buffalo, the same two kids became the talk of South Buffalo with their “pretend” radio station at the Boys’ Club.

While Danny and Joey were at The Boys’ Club and Bishop Timon, Tom Shannon was at Bishop Ryan High, getting one of his first on air gigs leading the school in the rosary as Fr. Rufus looked on.

Boys’ Club veteran Danny McBride serves Pepsi-Cola and hot dogs at a WEBR Record Hop.

WEBR deejays Tap Taplin, Bob Wells, Bernie Sandler, and Jack Eno prepare to broadcast live for a full week from the newest Your Host restaurant in the Sheridan Drive Plaza, Sheridan at Niagara Falls Blvd. in 1953.


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

Beginnings of a Teenage Revolution: The Hound, Lucky Pierre, & Hernando

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


The Hound Dog made a permanent mark on the pop culture history of America with his nightly show on WKBW from 1954-58. Starting in the late 40s, George Lorenz was known as “the Ol’man,” “Ol’Dad Lorenz,” and “Daddy Dog” before “The Hound Dog” stuck as a nickname.

Known for his hep records and jive talk, he refused to give the time and temperature on the air. When he did commercials for Mother Goldstein’s wine, he’d sample it on the air.

After spending time at a few smaller stations, in the mid-50s, The Hound took his rhythm and blues program– featuring the music which would soon be known as rock ‘n’ roll– to 50,000-watt WKBW Radio.

The powerful signal allowed “The Hound” to introduce the evolving music genre to the entire northeastern United States. “The Hound” was the Godfather of rock ‘n’ roll radio, not just in Buffalo but around the country.

The Hound with Bill Haley and His Comets.

As a teenager working at a gas station, his first radio job came as an actor in dramas in the late 1930s. He got the job “because of his ability in imitating various dialects,” the Courier-Express reported, adding that he’d “often been cast in the role of the slicker in the racketbusting plays.”

A decade later, he was doing his Hound Dog routine on Niagara Falls’ WJJL. By the mid 50’s, Lorenz’s hip daddy style, and the fact that he was spinning soulful records from the original black artists — not the sanitized crooner re-sings heard elsewhere on the radio — made him an institution.

An unlikely hero of Buffalo teenagers, “The Hound” made it about the music and bringing rhythm and blues to a wider audience. It went beyond the records. Events promoted by Lorenz usually included black and white artists playing together at a time in the mid-50s when that wasn’t always the case. Those audiences were also mixed racially.

A Hound Dog record hop at the Hadji Temple, 118 E. Utica Street, with both black and white teens in attendance. The Hound’s secretary, Betty Shampoe, is to the left on the stage. This photo is from her collection.

When his voice came through the speaker on your radio, you knew you were hearing something you weren’t going to hear anywhere else. He was rock ‘n’ roll even before the phrase rock ‘n’ roll existed.

Ironically, the man who introduced Elvis at Memorial Auditorium was out at KB when the station went rock ‘n’ roll full-time in 1958. Lorenz wanted nothing to do with a Top-40 format, and was known to give the time and temperature at the beginning of his show, and told listeners to “set their clocks and thermometers, because that was the last time they were going to hear that for the next four hours.”

Elvis Presley and George “Hound Dog” Lorenz, Memorial Auditorium.

While inspiring many of the changes that came to KB and many other stations around the country, the Hound stayed true to his style and founded WBLK Radio, where he continued to uncover and spotlight new rhythm and blues artists in Buffalo and to a syndicated audience around the country.

Hernando’s Hideaway hit Buffalo radios in 1954 from the studios of WXRA, which was licensed to Kenmore, but broadcast from studios on Niagara Falls Boulevard, in a spot that was later the long-time home of Swiss Chalet (and today is a vacant lot in front of Outback Steakhouse.)

With a Spanish accent, it was Phil Todaro behind what The Buffalo Evening News called “Hernando’s delightfully fanciful nonsense.”

His show ran evenings every day but Saturday, and from the rhythm and blues music he played, to outings at Crystal Beach and serving bottles of Canada Dry and Oscar pop at his remote broadcasts, the program was clearly geared to the burgeoning teen demographic.

After making offerings on the air, Hernando received more than 3000 mailed requests in two weeks for his “Slang Slogans” dictionary of teen-age vernacular.

The one day he was off in the evening, “Hernando on Campus” was heard Saturday mornings, where “the popular DJ spotlights top tunes determined by survey of the local high schools and colleges and includes a calendar of their upcoming social events.”

He eventually made his way to evenings on WGR Radio before leaving radio for music full time. Among his musical offerings most memorable to Western New Yorkers came as co-writer of Wild Weekend with Tom Shannon. The Rockin’ Rebels hit was an instrumental version Shannon’s radio theme song.

Lucky Pierre, the back of this card says, was born in Paris in 1934, and goes on to say his “rapid rise to popularity, accomplished in the few short years since his arrival in Buffalo, is a result of his rare combination of old-world charm and modern effervescence. His refreshingly different qualities have captured the imaginations of young and old alike.”

After coming to Western New York radio in 1954 at WWOL, where he was not only a disc jockey—but as an amateur boxer and semi-pro football player was named sports director as well.

He moved on to WHLD briefly before heading to WEBR in 1955, and then WBNY before leaving town for Los Angeles, where he’d spent most of the next 60 years on the radio and pioneering the disco and dancing format in the market, as well as hosting a TV cooking show for housewives in the early 60s.

His most adoring fans were the girls and women who were spellbound by his accent and accompanying smooth style.

“Though he’s not very handsome, and he’s not very strong… in a cabin in the blizzard he’s the one you bring along!” chanted his opening song on WBNY, which continued, “I’m the man of the hour, I’m the man of the year… I’m the man that every living husband has the right to fear…. I’m Lucky Pierre!!”

1955 ad shows Lucky Pierre and a young Rick Azar before he headed to WBUF-TV. Nan Cooper spent more than two decades offering household tips on WBEN, including for the full run of “Newsday at Noon,” 1978-96.


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