These are my memories of a time period from
1967 to 1972.
I was originally with
WSAZ TV, anchoring the Charleston side of the 11pm news from 1967 to 1968. I only mention WSAZ TV because thats where I was discovered. I had been doing news on
WFMJ TV in Youngstown Ohio and was very restricted. WFMJ at the time (and
maybe still is) was owned by Frank Maag Jr (hence the call letters) who in
turn owned the only daily newspaper, The Youngstown Vindicator. I wasn't
there too long before my news director, Ed Barron informed me that "Mr.
Maag doesn't like the sound of your voice when he's eating breakfast." I
was gone. But..I was hired by Boz Johnson who was the venerable news
director at WSAZ TV.
I anchored the 11pm weekday news
from the Kanawha Valley,
opposite Jim Mitchell who was at the main WSAZ-TV Huntington studio.
WSAZ microwaved the telecasts between the two cities. I always closed my
portion of the cast with a humorous story. One night, the GM of WKAZ
Radio saw the newscast, liked the funny story, and Harvey Guenther called
me and pitched the news director's job to me.
He either had just fired Larry Gibson or
was going to. I'm fuzzy on this.
Of course, I told him no. I was a TV
star, even having my picture in the local TV Guide. Guenther asked me how
much I was making. I told him. He doubled it. I was off to radio land
again.
My only contact up to this point at WKAZ
was Jay Jarrell. The radio station had been owned by WSAZ and shared the
building. I was picked up at the airport by Mike White who was a director
and took me to the station. Jay was only the air. I'll never forget the
song he was playing ... 'Pata Pata' by Miriam McKeeba. It never
was a
big hit, but Papa Jay, as he was affectionally known to scores of
listeners, liked to present new music. He had this button he pushed which
emitted a "boingy" sound effect that he used whenever he wanted listeners
to give him a call on the "ding-wa"
A short time later, WKAZ moved to the
Heart O' Town Motor Inn on the roof in penthouse studios and I moved over
as well. Here are the cast of characters that I worked with to the best
of my knowledge:
- Harvey Guenther - General
Manager
- Bob Turley - Operations Manager
- Phil Schwinfurth - Sales
Manager (who later went on to the legendary WAMS in Wilmington Delaware)
- Lester Lovejoy - Chief
Engineer
- Bic Scott, Bob Knightstepp, and
Jim Nine were the sales people.
- Harvey's secretary was Kay Jarrell
(no relation to Jay)
- Mike Hammer, who was really
Mike Kapral (he once confided to me that he really wanted to be a long
haul tractor trailer driver)
- Bill Blake (who had the same
name as my later enemy, the editor of weekly Kanawha Valley Leader,
Nitro's Newspaper)
- Jim Little
- Jim Byard
- Lovell Webb
- Amy Johns (Loveable Sam)
- Jay Jarrell
- Bob Casto - News (formerly of
WCAW who we stole much to Harvey's glee)
- Jack Greene - News (real name
Carroll Greene).
I used my real name, Tom Reagan
when doing news, but later when I did a Sunday Night Music show called
"Underground, Overground" I went by the name Jack Shack, and when
filling in at night, went by Randy Tolliver.
Funny, no one made the connection.
At least I don't think they did.
Over the
years, I've come to conclusion Harvey Guenther was probably one of the
best managers I ever worked for, and I've been at quite a few stations
from Alaska to Atlantic City. Harvey was affectionately (for the most
part) was known as "Heartless Harve" mostly for his gruff demeanor,
developed as an ex navy skipper. At least he claimed he was an ex
skipper. We never really knew.
Working for
Harvey was an experience. One thing I learned, if you got in a jam, and I
was in a jam often with the news we carried, if you told him the truth
even though you might be wrong, he would stand behind you. If you were
right but still lied to him, he'd make you walk the plank.
When I was
looking at some issue to put us on the map, at least give some credibility
to our news, I started to dig up the corruption in the city of Nitro and
its mayor W.W. Alexander who had been in office since the time of the
Romans. Alexander's crony was the editor of the local weakly newspaper,
the Kanawha Valley Leader, Bill Blake (no relation to WKAZ's Bill Blake)
We exchanged a
ton of editorials between KZ and the newspaper. I even got slapped by
Blake's wife who was their business manager. It went to a Justice of the
Peace trail before Magistrate John Bess of St. Albans. I think the
outcome was she was found guilty of assault and fined. Alexander was
eventually voted out of office and his longtime nemisis Bill Gibson took
his place.
Blake
editorialized that WKAZ should mind its own Charleston affairs and Harvey
was so incensed that he did a supporting editorial asking Blake how to
stop KZ's signal at the Nitro city limits. Blake was clearly a nut.
While Adjutant General for the state national guard, he rolled up to the
downtown offices of the Charleston Gazette/Daily mail in a tank and
threatened to level the building. He didn't like them either. This put
our news department on the map.
But the
pressure on me was tremendous to say the least. The mayor was owner of a
notorious Nitro bar called "The Four Horseman" that had all kind of
violations but Alexander was well connected to the state and the liquor
control board wouldn't take action and the local police had their hands
tied, so we got into that tussle as well.
The WKAZ
mobile unit was called "Roving Big Red" and was a highly marked Red 1968
Ford Station Wagon from Bert Wolfe Ford. I always held my breath when
driving thru Nitro but didn't worry a lot as the Police Department was
anti city hall anyway.
Another
distinct feature of WKAZ news was the format. As we came out of music,
I'd hit a sound bite that would tease the lead story. Each news story
would have a piece of sound with it ... either an actuality or a feed from
another station somewhere around the state.
I had a
regular group of stations that exchanged feeds with us including but not
limited to: Nat Saffle of WAJR Morgantown, Charlie Stuchell of WAJR
Morgantown, Ross Elliott of WRFD Worthington/Columbus Ohio, WCIR Beckley,
Jim Mitchell WLOG Logan and WSAZ Huntington, John Potts and Ralph Allen of
WKYG Parkersburg, Clarksburg, Bluefield, Wheeling.
WKAZ had
become a regional source for news. The intros at the start of every story
from another station was unique in that the source started each story with
a teaser before going into their name and location. There would be no tag
at the end of the story. It would just end.
Example:
"100 coal miners are still trapped in Farmington coal mine #9. I'm Nat
Saffle, WKAZ News, Morgantown". (Then, into the body of the story)
We kept the
length of the stories to between :30 and :45 seconds going for volume
which was unheard of at that time. At first, the jocks started the sound
and the reports in the main control room, then Bob Turley had mercy on us
and got authorization from the skipper to have cart machines put into the
newsroom so we were self contained. We had only 5 minutes for a
newscast. Most of the jocks didn't care if we went over except Mike
Hammer. When the 5 was over, he cut off the mike and sometimes we were
left in mid sentence.
