Radio Stories - Part 1 WHN

Over the past 39 years that I've worked in New York Radio, I've been fortunate to work with some incredibly talented people at some legendary radio stations.  I had an email exchange recently with a friend I have known since I started working at 1050 WHN in April, 1972.  Corinne Baldassano is today a VP of Programming and Marketing at a California Media Company, but back in 1972, she was a News Assistant at WHN.  She said of our days at WHN, "I think of it being a slightly less glamorous version of Mad Men."   I countered back, "It was a crazy place…I think perhaps more like WKRP than Man Men."  WHN was a historic New York radio station, having had multiple incarnations over the years as both WHN and WMGM.  In the early 70s, it was a watered -down version of WNEW, playing a middle of the road mix of music, and was staffed by an interesting mix of grizzled veterans and kids new to the business.    I graduated college in the spring or 1971, spent six months at Announcer's Training Studio in their FCC First Class License prep class, had taken and passed the tests required and gotten my First Class License, and started at WHN on April 17, 1972. April 17, 1972 was also the day I met Jack Spector.  I spent the morning watching what was going on in a control room that was very dated and much more like the 50s and 60s, rather than the 70s.  They had an old RCA board and several very large turntables that were left over from the electrical transcription days before they used carts.  The cart machines in the air studio were basically an afterthought, not built in at all, but rather stacked on top of each other on either side of the board.  After watching my trainer Lou Periano for several hours, he told me it was time for me to try it, and suddenly I was engineering.  About 30 minutes into my first try at running the board, this tall guy came in, introduced himself to me as Jack Spector, handed me a Music Sheet and said, "This is my first day so can you tell me if this is the way you do these sheets?", to which I replied, "Beats the shit out of me…it's my first day too!"    Jack laughed, wondered what kind of a radio station he had signed on to work at, and we were fast friends after that.  Jack was a great guy, an incredible storyteller, and a man I learned a lot from in the four years we worked together. I eventually became Jack's engineer, and we worked together everyday and had some great conversations.  He would try anything, and his opinion of other's criticism of him, "Spit balls at a battleship" he use to tell me!  Jack was one of a kind!  WHN's studios at that time were located at 400 Park Avenue @ 54th Street.  Just a couple of blocks down the street from the ABC Building and WABC, where several of my friends worked.  Close in distance, but so far away in concept!  WHN had moved there in 1958, and the physical plant showed it's age.  I worked there for four years, and every summer the air conditioning broke down.  There is nothing better than working in a closed radio studio in the middle of July when the air conditioning isn't blowing!  Corinne remembered a WHN DJ telling her "it's hot in the studio" and then lifting his toupee to air it out.  This must have been during one of those non-air cooled summers!  One lack of AC weekend, I was working with a man who had been in the business for years, Lonnie Starr.  Lonnie was a really nice man who had worked in radio since before my folks probably knew each other, and in his career he'd worked in New York at WNEW and WINS, in addition to WHN.  It was July and hot as hell, and they had brought a big floor stand-oscillating fan into the studio (can not even imagine what that sounded like on the air!!)   Every time the fan oscillated back and forth, the back of Lonnie's toupee would blow up and then flop back down on his head!  Business as usual at the Nifty 1050! One of the mid-day guys in WHN's MOR days was Bob Fitzsimmons.  Fitz was a staple in the NY Radio market for years, and in fact I worked with him again years later when WABC went talk.  When I first got to WHN, the morning man was Herb Oscar Anderson, and Herb only worked a 5-day week.  The Saturday morning show fell to Bob Fitzsimmons, but there was a small problem.  Bob was a guy who liked to party on the weekends, and that included Friday night.  There were some Saturday mornings when Bob was, well shall we, a bit "under the weather" when the show started at 6AM.  His engineer for that first hour was our overnight engineer Julius, who started his shift at midnight, and was ready to go home.  Bob, some days, was a bit beyond selecting music for the show, and over and over made the mistake of telling Julius to, "play whatever you want."  You would have thought Bob would have learned his lesson, but never did.  Without fail, whenever Bob said those words, Julius grabbed one cart exclusively and the listeners heard Don Ho's rendition of Tiny Bubbles! The General Manager of WHN at that time was an old-time radio salesman from the days of the three martini lunch, a trend that was on it's way out even then, but not in the WHN Executive Suite!  If you wanted anything from the GM, better get to him before noon, because after that, he was either "at lunch" or asleep at his desk!  WHN also had several spots teams on the station at that time.  We were the flagship station of the Mets, Nets and Islanders, and said GM was very hot that sports should be prominently featured in the newscasts.  In fact, his edict was that sports scores had to lead every newscast, regardless of what the important stories were at the time!  That's why on the morning after the death of President Lyndon Johnson, you heard the WHN newscast start with the words, "Islander lose, Nets win and LBJ is dead"…or something like that!  WHN was also the home of the "Feminine Forum" when I started working there.  This was an early talk show that was aimed at women, and that exclusively took women callers.  Each day they'd have a topic that was of interest to women, and all through the day women would call and comment on that topic.  As a call in show, it was done on delay, but the delay systems of the early 70s were nothing like the digital delays that are used today.   This was a real jury rigged system that was made in house, and involved a couple of old Ampex tape machines, a cart machine, a couple of switches and a speaker.  The procedure was that if something was said by a caller that the host didn't want to air, he would say the word CUT.  The engineer would then punch a button that would play a jingle and take the delay machine off the air.  He would then have to turn up a speaker and listen to the output of the tape, and when he heard the objectionable word, he'd hit another button that would switch back to the tape and put the delay back on the air.  Sounds like fun, right? Well, one day my friend Joe Ellis is engineering the show while host Bruce Bradley is on the air.  Joe was a real entrepreneur in those days, running a dog walking service, doing TV repairs and had several other irons in the fire besides working in the WHN Engineering Department.  The topic on that day's Feminine Forum is, "What Animal Does Your Man Remind You Of?"   Joe, as usual for him, was sitting back with his feet up, talking on the phone while he "engineered" the show.  Everything was going along fine till Bruce took a call about halfway through the show from a woman who said that her man was a tiger, and she was his little pussy!  Remember now that this was 1972, and that was definitely not a word that could be said on the air.  Bruce heard it and yelled, "CUT, CUT CUT, CUT!"  Joe heard it, and in his haste to get to the control board, fell on the floor.  Bruce later reported that he looked into the Control Room and only saw Joe's hand pawing at the buttons trying to get the delay off the air from his position on the floor. On the air you heard the jingle playing "WHN New York, New York" followed by "pussy...CUT, CUT, CUT, CUT!"   It was a long time till we let Joe live that down…. More to come!