The Beginning and the end

A few years ago we traveled to Pittsburgh and traveled up the clog incline to the top of Mount Washington to get a view of the city. The joining of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers to form the Ohio River was a beautiful cite. A park, fountain and other amenities made it a must see destination.

Travel 981 miles down the river and the story is quite different. No lovely fountain. No beautifully maintained park, although a nice park was once at the intersection.

The birds flying in the picture were birds scared up from a viewing platform. There were hundreds of them. How long they had been there is for someone who understands the habits of the birds better than me to explain. My guess is they have been there for a while.

The park where the rivers meet is largely neglected and poorly maintained, i maintained at all.

Granted, the park seemed to have flooded recently, as standing water and muck covered much of the peninsula that made up the park. But the neglect clearly has gone on since long before the waters swept over the land in the recent past.

Notice the weeds that have grown up in the playground area near the swings. A picnic area was in the same condition.





Cairo, Illinois. Where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi. Two of the most important rivers in the nation. Yet the view is much different.

Where Pittsburgh has transformed largely from a steel town to something entirely new, Cairo has been on a decline since the civil rights era of the 1960's.

It seems the races simply couldn't find a way to get along. And now the city has been on a several decade decline.

Large stretches of the city are largely in decay or abandoned.

An assistant at the Illinois Welcome Center noted that the city had at one time been considered as important as Chicago in the world of commerce.

No longer.

First, Foremost and Factual

Your Little Buckeye Buddy

Along with Laverne down at the truck stop on Route 23 and Wirt* the WRFD Janitor, the Real Bob James in the Morning made mornings fun at WRFD for a little over a year.

Lot's of production, energy, fast talking, great jingles and Moooooosic, Bob created a winner at Mooooosic 88, WRFD.

The Real Bob is now Professor Bob at Middle Tennessee State in Murfeeboro, Tn.

I always wondered if Wirt was really Adam Stover brought back as a comedic artist.

Be Careful What You Portray Because It Can Come Back And Bite You

Probably one of the few newspaper articles that really impacted how I viewed things was printed on February 13, 1973. And a follow up piece just one week later.

It first was a puff piece on radio written by Sherry Woods of the Citizen Journal about WTVN radio. And when I say puff piece, I'm not suggesting it should have been written differently. There was simply nothing negative in the story. And for the most part, probably for good reason.

The headline read "WTVN radio has made its mark" with a sub headline of "A formula for success."

When I first read it, I beamed with pride as this was my favorite station. And I dreamed I would someday work on air there. With these hosts in place and be part of this team.

In a way, it was confirmation and justification of a seventeen year olds thought process.

Ms. Wood's story went on to tell about the success of the station and why it was at that time a ratings leader in Columbus.

One key to that success was the fact the station had a stable talent base, especially in key dayparts. These hosts knew their listeners and they knew Columbus.

Most had been on the station for many years. Two had been in there for longer than 10 years. Both Dave Logan and John Fraim had been with the station over 10 years. the same for news director Bill Patterson. Afternoon host Bob Conners was there just over 7, having joined in January, 1966. A solid bedrock situation.

Except all that was going to change and soon.

One week later, Sherry's column had the headline "Bob Conners joining WBNS Radio."



Readers learned that Bob Conners notified management at the end of his air shift the previous Saturday evening that he was leaving for cross dial rival WBNS and would begin hosting mornings on that station effective March 5th, 1973.

Two things happened with that second headline. The first and probably not so significant was I lost my favorite afternoon host to a station I seldom listened to, as the non daytime signal of WBNS simply couldn't be heard where I grew up.

But more importantly, it left me with the perception never to crow about your situation. In my mind, that article had WTVN bragging about the stability of their hosts which was a big factor in their success. In a weeks time, that bragging point withered away.

Radio is a constantly changeing business. Formats change and hosts come and go.

But since that time, I've always been gun shy about blowing my own horn as lifes situations change. And as that series of events demonstrated, something could and usually does change.

Good Morning Morning People

Nancy Bugbee was morning host on local radio station WDLR in Delaware for a short period of time in 1974.

She served a number of purposes. First, she was halfway decent on the air. Second, she had ties to nearby Marysville which had ad dollars available. And finally, a female disc jockey was something of an anomoly during that time.

She would often open with the line Good Morning Morning People.








An earlier attempt at wooing Marysville Business in July of 1964.

For a Time It was Ohio's Country Giant

New Years 1970.

A new decade and a new format for an old friend.

The week between Christmas and New Years day is sort of an awkward time. And it's also prime time for radio stations to change formats and the hosts behind the microphones.

And so it was for WRFD radio.

Although the news of the day in one edition of that weeks Citizen Journal was that WNCI, WRFD's sister FM station was going to make the switch, that wasn't the real story.

That was corrected the following day, although WNCI was also going to get a formatic face-lift too! But that's a story for another day.

So in the new year and new decade of 1970, WRFD made the transition from standards and MOR music to Country and Western music. No longer would Herb Alpert, Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Doris Day flow through the speakers of Columbus radio at 880 on the dial. At least for the next 6 years.

And no longer would Columbus wake up to Johnny Martin and drive home with Spook Beckman, at least at 880 on the dial. Johnny would later explain in a letter to the CJ that he was joining Lew Davis, former WRFD farm director at a financial services company and Spook Beckman asked to return to selling air time.

Instead the twang of Buck Owens and the voices of Uncle Tom George, Bill Preston and Jack Bartley among others would now be the daily diet of audio on the frequency.

George had recently come over from WMNI who themselves had made the move to country in 1965. I'm not sure about Bartley and Preston. Maybe someone will be able to fill me in.

So why the change? I'm not really sure. My guess is station or corporate leadership felt that with WRFD's extensive farm programming, it was a natural fit. Or that WRFD's still popular MOR/Standards blend was waning in popularity and a change was needed.

But maybe Country wasn't the right choice. By the spring of 1972, the station was in transition again. This time away from slide guitars and to the do wops of oldies. Len Anthony, brought in from Cleveland/Akron during the country years, was now in charge of the transition to oldies with the help of sister station WGAR.

Len was part of the team who hired me in May of 1973 to spin the church tapes and mow the front lawn. By time I was on board, Len was gone to Denver.

I just found that Len later migrated from Denver through South Dakota and finally landed in Atlanta where he had a successful career as one of the cities radio entertainers (he hated the term disc jockey). But a career that was cut short by a heart attack at the age of 52 in 1999.

In the years beyond that, WRFD left the oldies format in 1977 and returned to adult standards with it's Unrock format. With that format, Spook Beckman returned to the airwaves. His midday show along with the farm revenue began to make things look up at the station.

But Spook was wooed to bigger things at WCOL and WRFD once again returned to trying to find it's place among the radio listening and more importantly advertising audience. (My Sunday show wasn't strong enough to save the day.)



The Unrock format died without ceremony and for a time an adult contemporary format was in place. There was even talk for a while of returning to county as it believed that done right, WMNI was vulnerable.

But that was not to be.

Enter Salem Media of Ohio who purchased the station in the early 80's with a rapid switch to religious programming. It's true. Not only can God save souls; it appears that with WRFD's current success, He can save radio stations.

Bill Smith Says Goodbye Columbus

WTVN radio has brought me the best of times and the worst of times.

The best of times for some of the great programming that I so wanted to be a part of growing up.

The worst of times in two instances. The first was when I was let go by the station after having only worked there a little over a year. And mostly through my own actions. (ok, so I wasn't grown up at the time.) The second was when they let Bill Smith slip through their fingers.

Anyone who follows this blog knows that I am a huge fan on Bill Smith. I remember listening to the station during the summer of 1974 and Smith wasn't on the air. Mid July and no Bill Smith. A day, then two and then a week went by and no Smith holding down the evening shift. I was needing a fix. And it wasn't coming.

On July 18th, I knew why.

David Drake of the old Citizen Journal wrote in his morning column that Bill and station management couldn't come to an agreement on salary. Bill had quit. Drake had noted that WTVN's ratings were at their highest in that time period with Bill at the helm.

But that was to be no more. That summer turned out to be one of the longest summers ever.

About a month later, Drake again in the CJ told central Ohio listeners that Smith had landed a part time gig at WBZ in Boston. A station even more of a legend that WTVN.

But it meant that I could only hear Bill when the sun went down in the winter months and you could hear the waning moments of his Sunday show or when he filled in for someone in a late shift. I remember more than once listening to him on the way home from a shift at WBBY as he was filling in for weekend overnighter Robin Young or some of the periodic Sunday shows during early sundown. It was almost as good as the old days.

Then things got worse. Well maybe not for Bill but for me. Bill began working for FM stations in the Boston market. No more sky wave hit skip from a 50kw flame thrower to bring great tunes and a master spinning them my way. For almost 35 years, no Bill Smith drifting through the night skies entertaining us.

In recent days I've been exchanging emails with Bill. He's shared some of how he began his broadcast career and other insights.

He's one of the best!