Did you feel the Earthquake??

 Yesterday afternoon at about 1:55, I'm standing in WABC's Studio 17G talking to Engineer Su Ronneburger who was running the WABC side of the Rush Limbaugh Show, when my cell phone rings.  It's my wife Sue calling from our home on Long Island and the first thing she says when I answer is, "Oh My God…the house was just shaking!!"  I quickly walked into the Newsroom where the word was just coming in that the east coast had been hit by a 5.8 magnitude earthquake, and reassured her that the world was not ending, but that what she felt was an earthquake centered in Virginia!

Suddenly the building's fire alarms went off followed by an announcement from the building's Fire and Safety Director saying that everyone should remain calm as they were at the present time assessing why the building had been shaking (obviously they were not watching TV).  Then the personal stories started coming in…

Folks from the Sales Department came into the newsroom telling tales of how their cubicles had started to shake.  There were folks all over the TV who were telling how they felt their building, car, subway, etc. shaking, and knew something was up!  People from ESPN Radio walked through the newsroom telling us their experiences, and folks that I knew all over the east coast posted on Facebook about where they were and what they felt when the earthquake hit! 

Suddenly, I felt all alone.  Why?  Well, because I didn't feel a damn thing!  Then I discovered that I wasn't as alone as I thought.  I went back into 17G where I guess I'd been when it hit, and asked Su Ronneburger if she'd felt it, and she said she hadn't either.  I came out into the newsroom and afternoon news anchor Ken Duffy told me he'd felt nothing either!  Then Mark Levin producer, Rich Sementa, joined the group that felt nothing!  What the heck…were we the only 4 people on the 17^th floor of 2 Penn Plaza who felt nothing???

Nope…as the afternoon continued, more folks joined our group.  WABC/WPLJ President and General manager Steve Borneman felt nothing.  WABC/WPLJ Chief Engineer Alex Roman felt nothing (and he grew up in California so he should know what an earthquake feels like).  Then I saw WPLJ's Production Director Dan Kelly's Facebook post, "I didn't feel nottin!  Damn!"  Even Danny the security guard down in the lobby felt nothing!  What the heck was wrong with us???

Then this morning I find the group growing.  On WABC they're doing the Best of Imus and I hear Mark Simone say he slept through the earthquake…I guess that counts?  CJ Papa who's filling in today for Warner Wolf joined the group who felt nothing, and then morning news anchor Noam Ladden admitted he felt nothing too.  Now I felt a little better.  After getting a cup of tea this morning, I stopped into General Manager Steve Borneman's office and asked if he still was in the "Didn't Feel It" category.  He said he was, and then echoed what I was feeling when he said that he really wanted to feel an earthquake, and now he felt like he'd missed something.  In other words, We've Been Gypped!!!

I'm sure that folks will be talking about this for years to come (last night my wife Sue was thinking about first, the earthquake, and then all the talk about the path of hurricane Irene, and even came up last night with a name for a drink that sums up this week – a Hurriquake!), and every time the subject comes up I'll have nothing to contribute!   I think Rich Sementa's Facebook post from last night sums it all up, "I'll never forget where I was when I didn't feel the Earthquake of 2011".

My Mom

My Mom was born on March 9, 1916 in Aberdeen, Scotland, the oldest child of William and Jean Sim.  Like so many immigrants, when she was six her parents brought the young family (she had a 4 year old and a 2 year old brother) to the United States for a better life and made a new home in Chicago, Illinois.  Always interested in music, one of the first purchases my grandparents made was a piano so that my Mom could further her musical education.  In those early years in the US she fell in love with singing and spent the rest of her life as a singer.  During her teenage years and into her early 20s she entered and won many singing competitions throughout the Midwest.  She sang on the radio and in front of 90,000 people at Soldiers Field in Chicago, and entertained at USO Shows around the Chicago area.  She eventually took a position as a chorister at the Chicago Lyric Opera Company and stayed there for several years while still performing all over the area.  In early 1945 she moved to New York in order to take her career to the next level.  She auditioned for, and won a position in the chorus of New York's Metropolitan Opera, America's premier opera company.  My Mom and Dad 9/20/47  In October of 1945 she started rehearsals for the Met's 1945 opera season.   This also happened to be when my Dad came home from four years in the US Army and resumed his career with the Metropolitan's chorus.   From the way my Mom told the story, she hated my Dad in the beginning.  He was a brash Italian New Yorker, who after spending four years traveling the world with Irving Berlin's all soldier show, This is the Army, must have been a handful in his first months back in civilian life.  Whatever the problem was, it obviously didn't last long, because less than two years later, on September 20, 1947, my Mom and Dad were married.  Mom and Me  On January 2, 1950 I came along and I always like to tell folks the story of what my Mom's work schedule was around the time I was born.  New Year's Eve, 1949, fell on a Saturday, and as was usual on a Saturday at the Met, there was both a matinee and an evening show, and my Mom did both shows.  I was born at 9PM on Monday night, so that means that less that 48 hours before I was born, and fully nine months pregnant, my Mom did two opera performances! Perhaps befitting someone who left everything she knew and traveled across the ocean at the age of six to a whole new world, my Mom loved to travel and experience new places.  Every spring, the Met toured North America; first by train, and then by plane for eight weeks.  The tour took them to places like Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Atlanta, Dallas, Minneapolis, Memphis, and even Toronto and Montreal in Canada.  I still have memories of being a little kid and being on tour with them to various cities and opera houses, and memories of traveling the country by train.  In later years they even went to Japan with the Met.    Mom and Dad on the beach in Ocean City  In those days the Met's season was relatively short, and as there was little other work an opera singer could get, most summers were spent collecting New York State Unemployment Insurance.  In 1955 we went to Ocean City, New Jersey for the first time, at the insistence of another married couple at the Met.  Walter and Kathy Hemerley were originally from Philadelphia, and his family had a house in the 3100 block of Asbury, and got us a room in a rooming house right next door.  For the next five years, we spent 6+ weeks of every summer in Ocean City on Asbury, right across the street from Campbell's Sea Food.  It was great way to spend a summer, and became a real way of life.  Every Tuesday morning, my Dad would take the Public Service Bus (what is now NJ Transit) from 9th Street, back to New York to sign for his unemployment check.  He'd be back Tuesday afternoon, and then on Wednesday, it would be Mom's turn to make the trip.  I think they got $50 a week, and I guess we weren't rolling in money, but we had five great summers!  Mom, Dad, and me in Cincinnatti In 1960 my Mom and Dad got invited to be a part of the Cincinnati Summer Opera, and so our summers were spent in Cincinnati and not New Jersey.  They did that for five years, and that was always followed by a car trip.  In 1960 we went to California, and in subsequent years, Florida.  As the Met season grew in length, their ability to do outside work diminished, and eventually the job at the Met became year round, and their only one.  Still, my Mom and Dad would travel.  One year it might be Europe, and the next Hawaii.  I'm sure that she figured that would be their life after they retired from the Met, which they did after 40 years of service (my Dad a couple of years before my Mom).  But my Dad, never a lover of travel on the same level of my Mom, had some health problems which precluded extensive travel. In 1983 my Dad, at the age of 73 died suddenly one evening after turning down my Mom's bed.  She'd seen him slowing down, and had been doing more and more things that he'd done over the years, because she knew she would probably be alone.  It was hard for my Mom, because not only had they been married for 37 years at that point, but for all their years at the Met, they'd spent 24 hours of each day together!  But my Mom was tough and bounced back, and still had a lot of living to do!  Number one on her list was singing.  She started doing extra chorus work at the Met.  She would work the nights of productions that needed the regular chorus to be augmented.  Many of these operas were new to the Met's repertoire, so not only was she still singing at the Met late into her 60s, but she was also learning new music.  She also joined our Church Choir, as well as two neighborhood choirs in her area.  She had spent her life singing and wasn't about to stop.  She also wasn't about to stop traveling!  She started spending winters out in Palm Desert, California with her youngest brother, and the two of them traveled back home to Scotland on almost a yearly basis.  They also traveled to Australia and New Zealand, but her travels weren't exclusively with my Uncle Jack.  Over the next 25 years, she and various friends and groups traveled to Russia, China, and Greece.  She also made several solo trips to Scotland to visit with her Cousin Jack and his wife Chrissy, as well as various trips around the United States.  When our kids were little, she planned a trip for all of us to California and Oregon, and the next year to England and Scotland.  The only thing that slowed her down was when her health started to cause her problems in her late 80s!  At the age of 86 she had a valve replaced in her heart and it took her almost a year to fully recover from the surgery.  For the first months after the surgery, she was sorry she'd had it done because the recovery was hard for her.  But as she started feeling better, she resumed all her activities, including singing and traveling.  In the end, she was very happy that she'd done it, but at 91, when the doctor told her that another valve was leaking, she realized another surgery was more than she could take, and she'd live with it.  She continued to do as much as she could, including singing, but this lady who had rarely even taken an aspirin was now on a number of prescriptions daily.  She was still driving, but now it had been discovered that she also had pulmonary hypertension.  This is a degenerative disease that causes shortness of breath, and along with the leaky heart value made her medical condition very difficult.  The number of daily pills increased and she slowed down greatly.  The start of 2009 found her having more and more trouble, and in February of that year she went into the hospital.  This was a month long stay, and at the time we thought it was the end, but she did bounce back some, and after a four week stay in rehab, she returned home.  Her life now though, was very different.  My Mom with a younger  Kenny, Krissi and Billy  The first major change was that she gave up driving, and gave her car to our daughter Krissi.  Her eyesight was getting worse (she'd had a stroke in one eye several years earlier and only had vision in one eye), her ability to walk was diminished, and her stamina was much lower.  She was still stubbornly independent, and continued to live alone in her house, but her life was very different.  Compared to the active life she'd lived just months before, this was really more existing, than living.  Her days were made up of reading or watching television, and her nights were often sleepless.  We now needed to visit her 3-4 times a week, have food delivered, and Susie needed to set up her large daily medication regime.  The only time she got out was when she went to one of the many Doctor's appointments she now had, or when she was at our house.  She didn't feel up to Thanksgiving 2010, and we brought food to her.  When she said she was feeling better at Christmas, we made sure that she was at our house.  She was there for our traditional Christmas Eve lobster meal, and she ate everything that was edible on her lobster and enjoyed every bite.  She spent the night in Krissi's bed (even though it was hard for her to get upstairs to her room), and was there on Christmas morning to watch her three grandchildren open their presents, as she has been every Christmas morning since my Dad died in 1983.  She said that she wanted to go home before Susie's family arrived Christmas afternoon, but I said no, they want to see you too.  I'm glad I didn't yield to her desire, because later she thanked me for not taking her home, and that she enjoyed every minute of the day! Then the snows came!  On December 26th it started, and for the next month we got snow storm after snow storm.  With the cold temperatures, the snow and ice everywhere, there was no way she could get out of the house even for Doctor's apportionments!  She started having pain and swelling in her legs, and as stubborn as she was, in February she couldn't take it any longer, and agreed to have us call an ambulance to take her to North Shore Hospital. The next seven weeks were hard for her, and hard for us.  She was back and forth between the hospital, the rehab facility and the hospital, and her condition kept deteriorating.  She was ready to go, and often wondered why she was still here.  On March 9th, 2011 she celebrated her 95th birthday at North Shore Rehab.  Krissi, Kenny, Susie and I spent about an hour with her that night, and I think she put on a good show for two of her three beloved grandchildren.  She tried hard that night, and did a good job of pulling it off.  On a Friday in the end of March, her breathing became labored, and they sent her back to North Shore Hospital.  Over the next two weeks her condition rapidly deteriorated, and early on Friday morning April 8th, 2011, we got the call that her suffering was over. Back at the end of 2010, she and I were sitting in her den, and she said to me that one of the biggest regrets of her life was that we would all remember her as this poor, helpless, homebound woman.  As I've said, she was proud, and this thought really bothered her.  I promised her that day, that when she left us, we'd remember the lady that would go out with the "girls" for lunch after church on Sunday, and who'd then stop at out house several hours later because she needed to use the bathroom before she drove home.  We'd remember the gutsy woman who loved life, who lived it to the fullest, who lived her dreams, and who lived long enough to see her grandchildren grow to be successful adults….and we will!  As was said alot around the days of her funeral, 95 is a good run, but if the truth be known, I think my Mom would have been happier to go at 93, and leave on her terms! She was a great lady, a great friend, a wonderful Gramma, a heck of a Mom and a great roll model of how to live a full life.  She had an amazing life and really, what more can one ask. Krissi and her Gramma

Oh No…another remote???

My blog on remotes got a lot of reaction from my fellow broadcast engineers.  Mike Maimone from the Rush Limbaugh show reminisced about some of the stupid things he did on remotes, including the years that he did Yankee and Jets games at WABC.  His list included, "risking broken fingers by putting in my own patches in the phone room at Giants Stadium, breaking into my booth every weekend by walking outside the press box on the ledge, punching a hole through the wall in a brand spanking new stadium (I believe it was Joe Robbie in Miami...) to get my broadcast line,....and that dopey bus." Jack Maldonado, Operations Director at WABC Radio, and I were talking about remotes the other day, and agreed that the one thing all remotes have in common is that you come home from them with at least one story!  One of his favorites was the NBA Finals game he worked when the Lakers matched up with the New Jersey Nets, and that "during every timeout, Shaquille O Neal would sit right in front of my equipment, and his sweat would drip all over." Former WABC Radio Engineer Laurie Kline remembered the year she "got assigned to the Pace Car for the NY City Marathon, since I was the shortest engineer available and wouldn't take up that much room!"  Laurie also commented, "What a trip down memory lane! Loved Bob Deitch's Pina Coladas…"  So, since Laurie brought up the subject, here's the story of the WPLJ Dr. Pepper Concert Series remotes, including Bob's Pina Coladas! In 1977, Dr. Pepper took over sponsorship of the Central Park Wollman Skating Rink concert series from Schaffer Beer, and that lasted till the series moved from Central Park after the 1980 season.  Each year, WPLJ Broadcast a number of these concerts live on the radio.  In fact, if you search the web for the Dr. Pepper Concert Series, you will find many "bootleg" copies of these concerts that were recorded from the WPLJ broadcasts.  There was an incredible array of singers and groups that participated, but this isn't really about what happened on stage.  No, if you want to know about the performers at the series, then I'd suggest a Google search, however, if you are interested in knowing what happened backstage during those broadcasts, read on… For every concert that they broadcast, WPLJ would rent a bus from a Boston company.  The front of the bus contained a lounge and bathroom, and the back of the bus was basically a mobile recording studio with a 32 channel mixing board.  Every concert was under the direction of WPLJ Chief Engineer Bob Deitch, and while the Boston company would supply a couple of people with the bus, the WPLJ crew was made up of WPLJ's production engineer Jon Black (who would mix the concert), WABC/WPLJ's maintenance supervisor George Berger, and 5 other NABET engineers from the WABC/WPLJ Engineering Department.  This was a choice assignment, and a group that most of us on the 8th floor wanted to be a part of, for several reasons. This was in the day of tight union control, not only at ABC, but also all around NYC and the stage at the Wollman Rink was IATSE jurisdiction (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees).  That meant that only their union people could do work on that stage.  This caused a problem for WPLJ, because under the terms of the NABET/ABC Master Agreement, we had to do all work associated with a WPLJ broadcast.  One would think that this might preclude the broadcast from happening, but this was also the era when cost was no object and a deal was worked out.  In compensation for not being able to set up the stage, each NABET engineer who worked on the remote was given an additional six hours of overtime.  The days were by nature, long, so this six hours was often on top of a real five or six hours of OT, so this made for a very profitable work assignment! Our equipment had to be set up before the usual early afternoon sound check, so we'd roll in with the bus early in the morning.  There were some Saturday mornings when we found some interesting things waiting for us…like the day the obviously chemically impaired gentleman was busy rolling the biggest joint we'd ever seen (looked more like a burrito), or the day when our arrival woke up a group of cross dressers who were sleeping in the park, and who looked like they'd had a hell of a Friday night!  Once the bus was in position, we'd start pulling out microphone snakes, microphones, stands and the like.  We'd deliver them to our IATSE brothers for set up on stage.  Then we'd make sure all the cables were buttoned down and plugged into the bus, do our own mic check, and be ready for the band's sound check.   One of the provisions of WPLJ having permission to work these concerts, was that our presence had to be transparent.  To live up to this, we had to be set up and out of the way before anyone from the band or their sound folks were even on scene.  So by early most afternoons, we were done with all the work we'd have to do till after the concert.  This meant we had 8-10 hours of nothing to do before we had to work again.  So what does a group of radio engineers do for 8-10 hours in Central Park? Well, one thing we'd do was eat.  ABC would buy us lunch, so on a rotating basis a couple of us would trek to a deli outside the park, place a huge lunch order and schlep it back.  We'd also drink!  I know…shocking!  While Jimmy McGuire might have a cooler of beer to share, the real afternoon attraction was Bob Deitch's Pina Coladas!   As I said before, this was an era of tight union control at ABC, and as management, Bob couldn't handle any of the equipment.  But, as a former NABET member, Bob needed a task, and so it was decided that since it wasn't ABC equipment, Bob could run the blender! You might say that Bob's Pina Coladas were the fuel that ran the WPLJ Dr. Pepper Concerts! Needless to say, it was a happy group as the afternoon wore on, and the concert goers started to show up.  We'd be happily (some of us more so than others) sitting on the grass by the bus as the concert started, and spend a lovely night under the stars listening, talking, and yes, sometimes snoozing!  Once the concert was over, it was time for us to break down the stage - the IATSE folks' tight control seemed to weaken after the concert when they just wanted to get home.  To be honest, many of us were somewhat drunk at this time, so it was always an adventure!  I remember that after my first concert I decided that as good as Bob's drinks tasted, I needed to practice some control because I just couldn't go through the whole night snookered!  But we were not the only ones! In an era of peace, love and drugs, there were always a bunch of folks from the audience who were stoned, drunk or otherwise chemically altered, and most seemed to show up after the concert!  One night, while Kiki Hooper and I climbed the scafolding of the stage to get down a crowd mic, we also had to dodge beer bottles.  Seems that someone had taken up a position outside the rink where they could see the stage, and spent the night enjoying the acts with a large stash of Heineken beer.  I guess that they decided that Kiki and I looked like good targets, and green bottle after green bottle smashed just feet away from us on the stage.  Thankfully, they were all empties, and I think the fact that they'd consumed the contents, made for their bad aim! Every night as the bus drove away from the rink, a large group of us would have to walk in front of it almost in a police line to make sure some passed out concert goer wasn't killed as we drove over of their comatose body.   Then there were the young ladies who wanted to hitch a ride with us on the bus, or who thought that the bus was that night's group leaving, and thought they might be looking for some groupies.  They were quite a crowd at those outdoor concerts, and they were a great remote…even if now I have no idea who's show we were broadcasting! So thanks Laurie…there you have the story of Bob Deitch's World Famous Pina Coladas, and the WPLJ Dr. Pepper Concert remotes!

Remotes

Over the years I've been in radio, I've been involved in hundreds of remotes.   They've run the gamut from me being alone with a Shure mixer and two radio lines in an office buried in the bowels of Yankee Stadium (meeting the need to NABETize the Network World Series radio coverage one year when WABC was the Yankee Flagship station), to multi-borough location (including the Goodyear Blimp) remotes involving most of the station's personnel (The NY Marathon when WABC did wall-to-wall coverage).  The one thing that all remotes have in common is that being out of the radio station, you're out of your comfort zone. And where you go from there is often not within your power! One of the earliest remotes I remember doing at WHN was the night of the 1972 Presidential election when Richard Nixon was re-elected over Democratic Senator George McGovern.  Nixon won with over 60% of the popular vote and an incredible 520 electoral votes, so it was an early night. But that's not what I remember most.  What I remember most is being sent down to the Roosevelt Hotel, being assigned my position in "Radio Row," and setting up for the night while I waited for WHN reporter Joe Bragg to join me.  My first problem was that I was sent with little in the way of equipment.  My second problem was that I was assigned a position next to an older gentleman from WOR Radio who had more remote equipment with him than I even knew existed!   Getting the radio line connected to the mixer was easy enough (but my WOR friend had a state-of-the-art Shure remote mixer while I had some old Collins mixer that looked more like a portable typewriter). And when it came time to hook into the pool audio distribution box, I had another problem.  The box was set up with Hubble connectors which I'd never seen before or since. They were for audio distribution which, of course, I didn't have.  So I had to call back to the station, they had to get a Hubble connecter and make a cord and then get it down to me.  And what did my WOR friend do?  Well, while I sat there waiting, he just opened up a small black suitcase that was FILLED with every type of adaptor known to man!   It was truly a beautiful sight to behold. Each adaptor was securely fastened in its place, ready to be retrieved and used on a moment's notice.  Oh, and what did I use to call back to WHN to tell them I needed the adaptor?  Well, in the early 70s, when even the idea of a cell phone was high science fiction, and when the man from WOR had a nice dial phone, I had a box that I needed to crank in order to create the current which would buzz a buzzer back at the studio!  Can you say cheap?  But wait, there's more, and the biggest embarrassment is yet to come.    Despite my relative young age and lack of experience, I was 22 at the time and in my 6th month of working in professional radio, and despite my lack of equipment compared to some of the engineers from other New York radio stations, I was doing my best to look like I belonged.  All that went out the window when I reached into the remote case, and took out the AM radio I was to use to monitor the station for Joe's reports.  Rather than have a radio in stock or go out and buy one for the coverage of the Presidential Election returns, the ever-cheap Engineering Department at WHN went to the Promotions Department to get a radio.  So what did I get?  Well, I reached into that case and took out a screaming yellow Panasonic Toot-A-Loop radio, and instantly any hope of appearing to be a professional went right out the window!   I think I'll remember that radio and the look on my WOR friend's face for the rest of my life! At WABC, I've done more remotes than I can even count and I'd have to say that I was always better equipped than I was at that WHN remote.  Many of the remotes over the years had a common element. That's the story I'd like to tell here.  It's the story of the WABC Remote Bus! During our early talk years here at WABC, we seemed to do remotes all the time.  It could have been our big time coverage of the NY Marathon, our annual St. Patrick's Day Parade coverage, broadcasting the Art Rust Jr. Sportstalk Show live from Jets' training camp at Hofstra University, participating in Queens Day festivities at Flushing Meadows Park, or Bob Grant's show live from City Hall Park during a huge demonstration.  The thing all these remotes had in common was the WABC remote bus. The idea was simple.  Since we do all these remotes, so let's have a vehicle built that's ready at a moment's notice and equipped with exactly what we need.  Contact was made with an RV builder in the Midwest, and a contract was drawn up.  Plans were made, and drawings of custom furniture and walls were passed back and forth.  It was going to be a great facility with a "studio" across the back of the bus, separated from a "control room" in the middle of the bus with a soundproof wall with a big glass window.  The floor was to be elevated for running cables, the roof would be raised for added ceiling height, and there would be a viewing platform on the roof that could be used for a different perspective of events.  It was to be equipped with multiple cell phones, a built-in PA system, great logos on the outside, and a bathroom, fridge and lots of other comfort features for use during long remotes.  On paper it looked like an ideal tool.   On paper!    One of the first things we noticed when the bus got delivered to WABC, was that the floor did get raised to facilitate studio wiring, but the roof didn't get raised to match.  We never figured out if it was a miscommunication or a drawing that was changed during the design process and never noticed. Perhaps it was the need to trim some items when the project went over budget, but the reality was a lack of headroom in the back studio.   Hard with taller hosts, production folks and guests…great for engineers like Mike Maimone and me!  Not only did the roof not get raised, but the viewing platform really didn't come to pass either.  Oh sure, there was a ladder up the back, but when you got to the roof, there was a roof!   Now that we had a new toy, the powers that be were hot to roll it out and to show it off at a remote.  This was great, but upon delivery, none of the "radio" equipment was yet installed.  Rush orders were placed for equipment, and emergency overtime was authorized to get the radio part of the bus built.  Because of the rushed nature of this work, not a lot of flexibly was built into the engineering areas.  The bus was basically built for the first remote we did with it.  The by-product of this was that every time we tried doing something different with the bus, the only way to change what it did was to re-wire. There were lots of those early remotes that I remember engineering with the consol opened up, and WABC Transmitter Engineer Larry Mussman inside with soldering iron in hand! One huge problem with the bus was the fact that it was much longer than the chassis that underpinned it.  That meant that the back end was about 10 feet behind the rear wheels, which caused the rear to make a huge swing in the opposite direction the front was going every time it was turned.  An early remote we did with the bus was broadcasting WABC all morning from opening day at Yankee Stadium.  The location of the broadcast was right across the street from the Stadium in the Players' parking lot.  I don't know if you have ever been to opening day at the old Yankee Stadium, but having been to several during WABC's tenure as the Yankee Flag Ship station, I can tell you that they are crazy, busy days, with loads of fans, press, and virtually everyone who knows anyone in the Yankee organization in attendance.   We were scheduled to go on the air at 6AM and the bus was parked in an Players' empty lot several hours before that.  Our remote broadcast was to last till the Yankee pre-game show and the lot was very full by the time we broke down the remote.  Parking the bus in an empty lot at 3 AM had been no problem, but all morning players, members of the press, and VIP guests had parked around the bus making the job of getting it out difficult.   There was lots of back and forth maneuvering and adjustments to mirrors. There were folks running all around checking various clearances, kind of like a scene from the 50's Lucy and Desi movie, "The Long, Long Trailer!"  After 10 or 15 minutes of maneuvering, it looked like it was free.  I'm not going to mention the driver's name (no…it wasn't me), but lets just say that he forgot about the huge swing the back end made.  Suffice it to say, the freeing of the WABC Remote Bus from the Yankee Stadium Players' Parking Lot was not without cost.  The cost was the front bumper of one of the player's cars the back end ripped off as the bus turned to the right and the back end pivoted to the left!  After that episode, a mandatory driver training course was instituted for all who might drive the beast! Then there were the 3 installed cell phones that were part of the telecommunications equipment on the bus.  This was back in the 80s, when unlike today, everyone didn't have a smart phone in their back pocket.  A cell phone was kind of an unusual item back then, and these phones saw their share of private calls as well as business calls made during a remote.  Problem was, although the bus did have a generator and the ability to be powered by land lines, the phones were wired directly across the vehicle battery.  I remember one Queens Day remote when, after a day of broadcasting, Mike Maimone, Jimmy McGuire, Al Gold and I had packed up our equipment and were prepared to leave the park, only to find that the bus had a dead battery.  It wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't to be the last time the bus left us high and dry! Here I am a long time ago engineering  a remote in the bus. Note the 2 Shure outboard mixers stacked on top of the ITC Cart Machine As the years went on and management changed, the remote fever diminished at WABC and the Remote Bus was relegated to more of a PR role.  One of its last tasks was as part of a VIP entertainment area for clients at home football games when we broadcast the Jets.  Mike Maimone would drive out to the WABC transmitter in Lodi, pick up the bus and drive it to the Meadowlands on his way to engineering the Jets broadcast.  Eventually it was decided that the bus had outlived it usefulness and Chief Engineer Bill Krause was tasked with finding it a new home.  I believe the ownership was transferred to one of the ABC west coast stations and they sent someone to New York to drive the bus to its new home.  Frankly, the bus had led a checkered life at WABC, and Bill was happy to be getting rid of the responsibility.  He met the driver at the airport, drove him to the transmitter, gave him the lowdown on the bus, and sent him on his way.  But even that was not to be the last we'd hear of the bus.  The next morning, Bill told us that the previous evening, from somewhere in mid Ohio, he had gotten a call from the driver.  No, it hadn't broken down, rather the driver was asking Bill's help as he was locked in the bus and couldn't get the door open!  Try as he might, he just couldn't get out and wondered if there was a trick to it!  There were lots more remotes over the years at WABC and WPLJ, and perhaps I'll revisit this topic in the future.  Just off the top of my head, I can remember the WPLJ Dr. Pepper remotes at Waldman Skating Rink in Central Park, when Chief Engineer Bob Deitch's main role was running the blender to make pina coladas.   Or the remote that Kevin Plumb and I did at the New York Auto Show where we got locked in the Javits Center after the show closed.  Or remotes with Art Rust Jr., Curtis Sliwa, Bob Grant, Sonny Block, Joy Behar, and many more all over the tri-state area, and the stories that go along with most!

The 17th Floor

WABCRADIO.com has started a new blog called, The 17th Floor". What's different about this blog is that the contributors are the folks behind the scenes on the 17th Floor that keep WABC on the air. As our Program Director Laurie Cantillo says, "While you already know our larger-than-life personalities, "The 17th Floor" will acquaint you with the very talented people who work BEHIND the scenes.....You'll discover that *news flash* not everyone who works at 77 WABC is conservative, which makes for lively debate in the newsroom....They have tough jobs; they work for demanding (some would say "lunatic") hosts, they work strange hours, but they're creative and they/we have fun. It's a rare day when I don't laugh so hard, I cry....My hope is that you'll grow to know and love the characters of 77 WABC as much as I do. Welcome to the 17th floor!"


Here's the link to the blog, why not give it a try: http://www.wabcradio.com/blog.asp?id=40377


Among the initial contribution is my story about how WABC Radio almost cost Indian Point Nucear Power Plant it's operating license! For those of you who have asked for more WABC stories, this is right up your alley!







Hope you take a look and leav a comment if you like what you see.

Radio Stories – You Can’t make this stuff up!

Over the years I have heard, seen and participated in some incredible things in or near a radio station.  Some were great fun, some were memorable, some were odd, and some just made you shake your head.  Today's blog will be a collection of some events that fall into the last category. There's the newsman I was working with at WHN recording a public service show in the back production studio (remember back in the days when the FCC required every radio station to carry a certain amount of public service programming?).  His guests this day were several members from a New York area dental association.  Everything was going along fine until he asked them, "Why do black people have such white teeth?"  What happened next was the definition of dead air, as the three dentists in the studio just stared back at him with dumb-founded looks on their faces! This same newsman was working one morning during one of those summer periods at WHN when the A/C would die and it was hot as hell in the studios.  When that happened, fans were brought in, studio doors were left opened and the mode of dress was decidedly casual.  For a reason that none of us could understand, the "On Air" light for the news studio had a pigtail and an AC plug coming out of it that was powered whenever the mic was turned on.   On this particular morning, I guess we were bored.  When we discovered that the cleaning lady had left her vacuum out in the hall, we strung an extension cord and plugged it into that pigtail.  For every newscast, whenever his mic was turned on, the vacuum also came on.  When he closed his mic to play an actuality the vacuum went off.  When he opened it again, sure enough, the vacuum started up.  This went on for several newscasts and we were on the verge of getting hysterical in the control room because he had no idea how this was happening.  To my knowledge he never figured out what we were doing, but did comment after the 3rd or 4th time it happened, "Why does she always start vacuuming just as my mic goes on?" A staple of Christmas Eve programming at WABC for many years was the Midnight Mass from St Patrick's Cathedral in New York.   This was a huge yearly production for the Engineering Department under the direction of Assistant Chief Engineer Bob Deitch.  There were several planning sessions, site surveys every year, a full day of set-up at the Cathedral, and then the live broadcast at midnight.  Back in those days, at the ABC Building at 1330 6th Avenue, there was always a minimum of three engineers on duty at WABC and WPLJ, and the folks back at the studio decided to share in some holiday festivities this particular year.  Because of the importance of the broadcast, some of the people who worked the 4-midnight shift that year were also kept over, so there were a number of food and drink donations that were brought in and set up in Studio 8C, from which  the show emanated.  Now, as background, WABC's Studio 8C had just been re-built as a state of the art audio production studio with a huge custom board built by Rupert Neve in England.  As 8C was mainly a production studio, this board had an incredible array of faders, inputs, outputs, equalizers, and a complexity that our regular air boards didn't have.  On more than one occasion I'd seen an engineer sit down at this board and stare at it with a look on his face akin to what he might have were he sitting in a 747's cockpit, and being asked to land the plane! Ok, so back to our story.  The Mass got on the air as it was supposed to, and the folks at the studios continued their festivities.  One of the engineers had brought in a crock-pot and had food heating for several hours.  About halfway through the lengthy mass, the Cardinal was doing his homily and one of the things he said was, "and in life, God speaks to us all in strange and mysterious ways".   This was, unfortunately, the point that the engineer on the board decided to ask a fellow engineer on the other side of the glass to turn off the crock-pot.  He meant to punch down the intercom button to talk to the studio, but he missed.  Remember, I talked about how complicated this board was, and right next to the intercom button was the slate button which opened the microphone in the program channel.  Rather than push down the intercom button and ask WABC Engineer Bill Mozer to turn off the crock-pot, he pushed down the slate button and the entire New York Metropolitan listening area heard his request.  The folks who were listening to WABC early that Christmas morning may have been confused, or perhaps they mistakenly thought they had truly heard the voice of God, when they heard the Cardinal say, "and in life, God speaks to us all in strange and mysterious ways…(and then heard) Bill, Bill…would you turn the crock-pot off?"

WHN Is Pictures!

The two photos that I posted with my last WHN Blog were just two of many that I collected during my time at The Nifty 1050.  Before I move on, thought I might post a few more from the collection.



The "Brookyn Cowboy" Jack Spector meets the Grand Old Opry



Contry singer Bill Anderson and WHN GM Chuck Renwick at the WHN 1050 Country Picnic

Del Demontreaux, Dan Daniel and Stan Martin at the pickle booth
at the WHN 1050 County Picnic



Jack Spector, Bruce Bradley, Johnny Cash, Stan Martin, Del
Demontreaux and Dan Daniel on stage at WHN Country
Concert at C.W. Post College



Dan Daniel front and center with backups Lee Arnold,
Bruce Bradley and Jack Spector

WHN DJs Del Demontreaux, Lee Arnold, Stan Martin,
Jack Spector, Bruce Bradley, Steve Warren, Dan Daniel
and country star Bill Anderson

Jack Spector started on WHN doing afternoon  drive.  Before
he left WHN he'd be doing the morning show

The Brice Bradley Morning Machine followed Bruce's
successful run on WHN's mid day Femine Forum

I first worked with Fitz at WHN in the early 70s and
then again at WABC in the early talk days where he voiced
spots and was a fill in host.  He left WABC to
do a morning TV show at channel 5. 
The show lasted for years, but Bob's participation didn't

Ruth Meyer

  Ruth Meyer, Jack Spector and Barbara Mandrell at a WHN 1050 Country station event   Ruth Meyer was already a legendary figure in New York radio when we first met her at WHN.  Born in Kansas City, when her dream of writing for a newspaper didn't pan out, Ruth turned to radio, getting a job as a copywriter at KCKN.  Even back then, her enthusiasm for radio was evident and she quickly ended up at WHB working for legendary Top 40 innovator, Todd Storz.  Ruth was a quick study, learning Storz Top 40 lessons, and in 1958 she moved to NYC and WMGM.  Unfortunately, the management at WMGM wasn't able to grasp the way Top 40 worked, and after just three months, a frustrated Ruth quit.  It wasn't long before Ruth was hired at WMCA, and as they say, the rest is history!  Early in my time at WHN, Ruth was hired as the Program Director.  Legendary WMCA Good Guy Jack Spector was already at the station (see my blog WMCA Good Guys http://fd3qa.blogspot.com/2010/09/wmca-good-guys.html), and knowing Jack, he probably had something to do with Ruth's hiring.  Ruth came into the halls of 400 Park Avenue like a tornado blowing through the Kansas plains!  She realized that radio was supposed to be fun, and she wanted that for everyone who worked for her!  She tried to enthuse many of the WHN veterans to see radio her way, but frankly, some of the older folks were very set in their ways and resisted her overture as just another management tactic to hoodwink them into something.  She was much more successful with those of us who were new to the business and still in awe of working in radio. Fellow C.W. Post College and radio station WCWP alumni, Joe Honnerkamp, remembered Ruth this way during his stay with the WHN Engineering  Department. "Ruth was the best PD I ever worked for. She would light up any room in that dreary place. She even tried to include our rag-tag engineering dept. in the team effort at the time. Her memos to the airstaff always started "To: All Airmen...From Ruth Meyer" The former Good Guy members were a bonus....even Joe O'Brien. She would always suggest a better way of doing things. Never any threats of "my way or the highway nonsense" so common with other radio management." As Joe mentioned, along with Ruth came not only the style she'd developed at WMCA, but most of the Good Guy air staff as well!  Jack was soon joined on the air by Dan Daniels, Joe O'Brien, Dean Anthony, Ed Baer and even newsman Steve Powers.  It was great to watch them all interact and almost seamlessly pick up where they left off.  Ruth and WHN were also making a huge change at this point too - - changing the format and bringing country music to New York City! That was a real change for all of us who worked at WHN.  When Jack Spector played the first country song in late February, 1973, the world seemed to slip off its axis just a little bit!  WHN had a new General Manager, Chuck Renwick, who was a Storer Broadcasting veteran, and had a lot of history with country music.  He also was someone who came from the Programming side, and that was a real change for many of us.  He was about the only one on the floor who really knew anything about country music - - but we were all about to learn! One of the first things we learned was that country records were a lot shorter than the MOR cuts we'd been playing.  In fact, they seemed more akin to the 50s and early 60s top 40 hits in length.  We were constantly being caught as a record would end around the 2 minute mark and we'd be grabbing the next element or getting the DJ off the phone!  It was also hard in the beginning to be playing music that we had absolutely zero familiarity with.  We'd never heard of any of the current songs, the vast majority of the oldies or most of the artists we were playing.  It must be like working at a foreign language station when you don't speak that language!  Be that as it may, Ruth immediately opened her bag of tricks, and we were doing all we could as a station to become a part of our listeners' lives.  There were dinner and concert venues in Manhattan that contest winners were invited to (with the concert starring a young Barbara Mandrell), a huge concert out on the campus of C.W. Post College that featured not only country acts (like Johnny Cash), but the WHN DJs in a very a "Good Guy Style" presentation, and a huge WHN Country Picnic that first summer.    The picnic was held on the Queens campus of St. John's which was the "Super Secret Location" that was only revealed to contest winners.  This was a huge affair staring Bill Anderson as well as several other country groups, and featuring the WHN DJs front and center!  There were all kinds of food and events beside the concert, and in typical Ruth style, the DJs were at the heart of it all.  Ruth's philosophy was simple...become a part of the listeners life and touch them in a way that made them a real part of the station's success.   Getting the listener to do something for this involvement was a major part of the equation.  She told me once about a contest she'd done early on at WMCA, where the listeners had to send in a postcard.  She said that the station got listener response and thousands of postcards, which was capitalized on by the sales department, as they sold clients on how involved their listeners were with what was happening on the air!  She was a great lady, and as Joe said, she tried to involve the staff in every way she could.  Those of us who were not resistive of her efforts were rewarded by being a part of all the events that happened, which was great for our moral and only made us want to do more for the station.  It was a lesson that I think alot of folks in radio station management I've worked with since could really learn, as so many of them seem to not have the same sense that including your staff only makes them work harder.  For me, inclusive is always better than exclusive, but then I learned that lesson a long time ago from a true motivational genius. One thing that most who worked at WHN in those days will remember about Ruth, was that she was never separated from her can of Tab.  If she was in the station, she probably had a can of Tab within reach.  What many may not know, is that most days after lunch, there was about a 50-50 chance that the can was filled with Tab, or with white wine!  This was a lesson that Chuck Renwick learned late one day when they were sitting next to each other in a meeting, and he started to choke and grabbed her can of Tab.  He got a huge surprise when instead of a slug of Tab, got a slug of wine!  Ruth and Chuck had a great working relationship, and the station was a real fun place to work when the two of them were at the helm.   I remember a Christmas party that was a hell of a lot of fun and a real change from what we'd had the year before.   The first year I worked at WHN, we had an incredible Christmas party at a fancy East Side restaurant, The Sign of the Dove.  We all got a bonus from the company, and a Seiko watch as a gift!  There was a rather dramatic change the next year when the party was in the General Manager's office, the food was Oscar Meyer liverwurst on a Ritz cracker, and the gift was sticking your hand in a grab bag (I got a $3 bottle of lady's perfume).   Although money was still tight at 400 Park Avenue the next year, they managed to get a trade deal with an Italian restaurant on the upper west side, and once again have a real party.  I remember that the day of the party was cold and snowy, and that getting to the location off Central Park West was a real pain that evening.  It seemed like everyone was of the same mind that night; a nice drink now that we were in from the cold would be just the ticket.  Unfortunately, the bartender had a heavy hand, and with that first drink, the majority of the staff was blotto!  I remember having a conversation with Chuck Renwick that made no sense, and little else of the night.  The one memory I do clearly have was of leaving the restaurant in a group that included our Production Director Allan Kaltor.  Allan got outside the restaurant, raised his hand to hail a cab, and just kept going face first into a snow bank.  Yes, it was just that kind of party!  Ruth was gone from WHN before I moved on to WABC, and we kept in touch and would go out for lunch every couple of months.  I learned quickly that it was best to not make plans for the rest of the day, if you could help it.  We'd meet at her eastside apartment around noon, go to one of her favorite restaurants (usually French), and start lunch and the first bottle of white wine.  We'd talk, she'd tell wonderful stories, and before we knew it, we'd be the only ones in the restaurant. It would be 3 PM and we'd have consumed not only that first bottle, but two more bottles of wine!  Lunches with Ruth were incredible, but they were not something that you could fit into a busy day!  A number of years later I worked with Guy Ludwig at WABC who had also worked with Ruth in a past job.  One day (this is when Ruth was working at the ABC Radio Networks), we got the bright idea to schedule a lunch with Ruth.   I remember we went to the Russian Tea Room for the lunch, but little else about that day.  That's just the way lunches with Ruth Meyer went!  She was a great lady and I was very sad to hear that she had died this past January, but very thankful for the lessons I learned, and the experiences she shared with me.  She is but just one of the radio folks I have been lucky enough to work with along the way who shaped my knowledge and my perception of how radio is supposed to work.



Bruce Bradley, Del Demontreux, Stan Martin, Johnny Cash
and Dan Daniels at WHN concert at C.W. Post