Tribute to 1510 WRAN, Dover NJ
My first love
It was a different time when radio stations broadcast with live and local talent. I was lucky to be part of this once-great industry, when a kid with only college radio experience could actually earn a living (all right, not a great one) as a disc-jockey. WRAN was my first and favorite of the jobs I got as I moved "town to town up and down the dial." More important, I made lifelong friends, one of whom got me into a job in Boston (as a staff engineer) which would change my life.
This was the WRAN studio and office, just off Route 10 in Randolph, New Jersey.
Beginnings: Lion Broadcasting 1964-1968(?)
Welcome to my website
Ellen wrote to say "I was sad to see that the radio station no longer exists. My dad, Fred Parry was the engineer that was working there when the station was built in 1964. He only worked there for about a year. One of the announcers was Al Wunder. I'm attaching a photo - the bump half way up the antenna is my dad."
Randall Howard wrote us: From about 1964 to about 1969 I was Chief Engineer for WRAN. I was involved in the proof for the 10 kW installation as well as the assembly and installation of the CCA 10 kW transmitter. Jules Cohen & Associates were the consultants at that time, and Bernie Segal did the tune-up. The array never worked well, and with good reason. It didn't belong where it was. It had been moved three times to different locations before it was actually built, and had not been re-engineered for the 'new' location, on Millbrook Ave. @ N.J. 10, in Randolph Twp. Nighttime it barely made the required signal over the Post Office in Dover, the City Of License, and there was always WLAC in Nashville, who complained that we overlapped them 30 miles out to sea at Norfolk, Va, and somewhere in Canada. They ware always griping at the FCC. In an attempt to civilize that array we de-tuned 6 power distribution towers to our west and south, several ground wires on poles to the north, and removed WDHA's aux. tower, and installed their Aux. antenna on our Tower 3. (re-radiation to the north and east was bad because of WMEX in Boston, also at 1510.)
When I started, Sam Karvetz was station manager and partner in Lion Broadcasting. Sam's wife was the receptionist. Sam went with a cable TV outfit when WRAN was sold to Media Horizons. The building, which housed the studios, transmitters and offices, was a nice Colonial - styled place. The only problem was, that in order to get financing, the original owners had to design the building such that, if the radio station didn't make a go of it, the building could easily be turned into a house.
We parted company when I refused to punch holes in my personal automobile to permit a moving remote which had been planed some time in advance. The company 'News Cruiser' , a '64 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, was outfitted with a Marti which could be used in a two-way configuration when needed. However, the timing chain failed in the Olds 2 weeks before the remote, and the manager refused to get it repaired. He wanted ME to volunteer my car instead.
The station had mostly Collins equipment when it began. Collins 1 kW transmitter, Collins main console, Collins cart machines, QRK turntables (remember turntables?) with a Collins nameplate on them, Gray Research tonearms and Shure pickups. We had an Ampex 351, and a PR-10. PR-10 was the worlds worst. Ran hot, stopped in mid-play, full of tubes, as was everything else at the time. The news and production room tape machines could be operated from the news booth or the control room, and the news room machine could also be operated from the production room.We had the worlds worst air conditioning system. It seemed to work OK the first year, but never again thereafter. It was a chilled water system, but never truly chilled anything! For heating, we had resistive baseboard units, which kept the power company well, but didn't heat much of anything. Storm windows would have helped!
Media Horizons (1969 - 1974)
From Craig: I was fascinated to come across the web site on WRAN's history. I was a resident of Randolph and graduated high school in '74. Back in the later '60s I would pedal my bike up to the station in the dark when it would open and play in the production studio. I was also known to start a record or two when the morning DJ was in the production studio working.
What got me going to the station was DJ Ted Radio (pronounced Ray dough). He started the Little People's Club. I was the treasurer and the dues were one jelly bean a year. It created a little people following for the station. There was a station ID jingle that used me. Great fun for a kid.
From WNBC jock Tony Russomanno: My spotty run at WRAN began around 1969. It was the week after Woodstock, whenever that was. I was working at WDHA on alternate shifts with some other dj who went to the festival and never returned, forcing me to work without relief. Pete Arnow and Bob Linder were out of town for several days and could not be reached. No other employee was available. I got fed up, quit, and signed the station off in the middle of the afternoon. DHA's morning dj, who happened to drop in to loot the record library in the absence of management, reluctantly put the station back on about an hour later. By that time, I was already on the air at WRAN. ... I was back at WRAN the next summer but no air shifts were available. Instead, Al Wunder hired me to paint the building. At some later point, probably in 71 or 72, Wunder fired me for playing an unauthorized song. He called me at home to tell me my services would no longer be required. I refused to accept that and immediately drove to the station to argue with him. He ended up offering me my job back... He agreed, ... probably out of the realization that he'd have to go back on the air himself to fill my shift.
Here's more from Randy, who was Chief Engineer of WRAN during the Lion Broadcasting days and, as he indicates below, briefly for Media Horizons...
I lasted about a year or a little more after the change. I think Media bought in '68 or '69. Dave Homlund was there under both. If he's still with us and anyone knows where, he could help. Art Lewis also was there at the transition. Is he still around?
Noticing the studio pix... When I left we had turned the console 90 degrees to the left so that the operator could see (a) the news booth, (b) the transmitter room, and (c) out into the lobby so nobody could sneak up on him. It was that way for at least a couple of years before I left. Evidently someone turned it back.
I note the utility box with the rotary switches on it under the cart machines. I built that for the 'phone system. It was just after Carterphone, and we wanted to be able to air 'phone calls without the horrendous BEEEP that had been required up until then. Each switch was on one 'phone line, for a total of 5, as the 'phone system was a five line 1-A-2. The switch would do exactly the things that picking up the handset would do, but it put a resistor across the line to keep it off hook, and a couple of (large) capacitors fed an input on the board. No Mix-Minus, no mic to 'phone line either! The op. used the handset for two-way conversations. It was primative, but it worked.
One day the man from the 'phone company came and saw it, and immediately began tearing it out. I spoke thw word "Carterphone", he turned beet red and put it all back! A very early victory for broadcasting.
The pix also show the Tapecaster cart machines. I specified them. The Collins machines were no end of trouble, and were costing money with lost spots and poor sounding spots. The Tapecasters were cheap, simple, and they WORKED! At the same time we bought a Tapecaster delay machine. It was in the production room, where the record library stayed. Was that still there too? It could record regular carts if you didn't tell it to do delay, which would erase the beginning of the spot as well as the stop tone. I note a Senheizer mic. Originally there was an RCA 77DX. Do we know who got that? There was also a condenser mic, complete with power supply, etc. Nobody liked it, and so it stayed in the shop, in its box. Even had a spare tube for it.
Enough! I've rained enough. I even rain a bit on myself when I realize the potential the station had and how it was never exploited in a manner that actually was useful to the community. Too many Get Rich Quick, and I Know What's Best managerial people, ane too few real broadcaters with a feel for North Jersey as a place near to, but separate and apart from New York City. The metropolitan atmosphere, but with a semi rural flavor. It could still be there, had some people with vision had the money and insight to capitalize on it.
The Dick Bailey era (1974-1980)
Harold worked at WRAN during the early 1970s, and wrote the following a few years ago which was passed along to us...
Glenn Pollock's late wife Ann Williams worked as a news person at the station with Jeff Ofgang and, later, with me. Glenn was on the air at WRAN doing fill-in work when the regular jocks were on vacation, etc. Ann passed away in Chicago in 1985 after working in radio in that city. Glenn moved to Utah and returned to New Jersey about 12 years ago. He says that his WRAN stuff is buried in boxes in his folks' basement. I volunteered to help him find it. He knows he has memorabilia as well as air checks.
In talking with Glenn last night we brought up several more names. There's Dick Bailey, of course, who managed the station in the 1970s. And Gracie Utter, who still lives in Wharton. John Baumgarden sold time as did Cal, whose last name I can't recall. There was Barry Shandalow and "Krazy Kat," whose real job was as a supermarket butcher. One-time New Jersey Herald reporter Vic Berardelli did an advice-for-the-lovelorn show on the station late at night when the signal coverage struggled to get to the K-Mart on Route 10. Oh so many memories.
Program Director Mike Ofsanka (air name: Paul Michaels). I was delighted to connect with Paul to thank him for hiring me for my very first fulltime job, a the night jock in 1978.
News Director Frank Scafidi (a.k.a. Frank Anthony, on the air.)
Rich Phoenix in the production studio. A voice so deep he could drill for oil. A grizzled veteran of many years in broadcasting, he says the best thing to come out of his years at WRAN was meeting his wife, the Lady Carla
Ann Williams (news director) and Barry Shandalow (mornings and my room mate during my time at WRAN)
Jackie Rose, who later became PD for a while
The 1979 air staff: Steve Table (afternoons), Frank Anthony (news), David (nights), Kenny Lee (mornings), Kevin Bowland (mid-days), Bob Bober (news)
If this 23 year-old looks happy it's because he had wanted, since an early age, to be on the radio. Starting on the night shift I eventually was handed morning drive - the most important shift on any station. Getting up at five in the morning wasn't fun, but being on the air sure was.
And now, at the risk of my remaining dignity, is a link to a (mercifully) brief telescoped aircheck from my morning drive shift in 1979.
As Rich Phoenix likes to say, WRAN was the REAL WKRP. No, we never dropped turkeys from a helicopter, but probably only because Dick Bailey couldn't get a 'copter "on trade."
A classic contest. Gee, how coincidental that advertisers were always winning...
Any jock who claims not to have gotten a thrill the first time they saw their name in an advert for their station is lying
At 10,000 watts WRAN could lay claim to be "New Jersey's most powerful AM radio station" But the truth was the radials for the ground system (critical for any station) had long rusted away, resulting in a sketchy pattern which never delivered the benefits of all that power.
Like many small stations, WRAN thrived on "trade" advertising, basically getting goods and services in exchange for commercials. This picture was taken the night we held a celebration for the new wallpaper, acquired via trade. That's owner and GM Dick Baily in the suit and tie.
With all due respect, it's hard to imagine WRAN ever made any money under Dick's reign. On Fridays we would race to the bank to cash our checks before the money in the station account ran out, which it sometimes did.
So what was it like working for Dick Bailey? Perhaps this story will help. See the brown shirt upon which Nick Sullivan (the Program Director from 1977 to 1979) is laying? It was a sleeveless shirt that so enraged Dick Bailey that he fired Nick when he refused to go home and return in "proper business attire." Nick ended up on the air in Philadelphia. No word if he still owns the shirt.
Steve, Frank Anthony, salesman Steve Jorlett (thank you, Frank Scafidi for the ID), part-timer Johnny Randolph, David, and a high schooler named Dan Taravella who did sports on the weekends.
Another classic WKRP - I mean WRAN moment. It is January 1979 and I was now doing morning drive. A blizzard hit New Jersey and we calls came in from principals cancelling school. I loved mornings like this, not only for the bustle and excitement of real radio, but because more radios than usual were tuned to WRAN, thanks to kids and parents waiting to hear their school named. I knew I was a hero when we announced Randolph schools were closed.
Except they weren't.
Whoever took the call did not confirm it was authentic by asking for the secret code.
Credit to the local paper for a headline worthy of the New York Post.
Kevin Bowland was doing mid-days but after he passed his First Class ticket a girlfriend (the station's intern who was wokring at WROR in Boston) helped him get a job a staff engineer. Kev, in turn, got me an interview to be an engineer... a job that would change my life. Miss you, Kev.
After my misspent youth in broadcasting I ended up in public relations and marketing. I mention this because NOTHING I ever did matches the genius of this stunt (no, it wasn't my idea, damn it!) Of COURSE Dick Bailey didn't have the $1510 dollars to give away but the odds of a piece of Skylab winding up in the hands of someone who read the Dover Daily Record were, well... astronomical. (yes, I went there)
Me and WRAN and Johnny Carson
I started as the night DJ at WRAN in October, 1978. By January, 1980, I had rocketed to radio success and the morning drive shift. As part of my daily routine I would check the wire (an old Model 15 teletype machine) for stories I could use on the air. On this particular morning was the news of Bert Parks being fired after 25 years hosting the Miss America pageant, a New Jersey tradition. PERFECT! A local story I could use to rally listeners to a cause: BRING BACK BERT! So I spent many of the breaks in between songs exhorting my listeners to get behind the campaign. The phones did not stop ringing off the hook. I am only 23 at the time, with little over a year's experience on the air but I knew I had hit gold. To promote the station (and, admittedly, myself) I asked the newsman to call the Associated Press and tell them about our campaign, which he did. An AP reporter called me back and before I knew it, the story had "hit the wires."
Johnny who?
But not before Johnny Carson got into the act. That evening he took to his bully pulpit and started his own campaign to "Bring Back Bert" which, thanks to our call to the AP earlier the same day, resulted in my name being mentioned in the same article as the King of Late Night - albeit as a tag line ("...David Kruh, a disc jockey at WRAN in Randolph, New Jersey, also urged a letter writing campaig
Now, the following will not surprise anyone who knows me: when I saw from the next morning's newspaper that Carson had taken a public stand, I contacted the Tonight Show. I know this sounds crazy but I imagined them inviting me to Burbank to appear on the Tonight Show to talk with Carson about our campaign. (Hey, it's like I used to say to my daughter as I put her to bed when she was younger: "always dream, and dream big.") Again, remember I'm just 23 years old and I'm seeing my name alongside Carson's in articles like this one.
This is how I imagined it would happen: The Tonight Show would fly me out to the Coast. I would appear on the couch and Johnny and I would bond over our common cause. Afterwards, offers from major market stations would pour in! Yep... just waiting for the call... Should be any minute now...
The call never came.
Disappointed, but undaunted, I still saw the campaign had life. I boldly announced on the air I would deliver the "hundreds of letters of support" (okay, so maybe it was only dozens) Bert had received and bring them to the pageant committee in Atlantic City.
Now... the Punchline (as could only happen at WRAN)
A few days after I began my "Save Bert Parks" campaign, the station owner's sister, Rose (who did some bookkeeping among other duties) asked to speak with me.
"Dick wants you to stop talking about Bert Parks," she said.
"But why?" I protested. "We're getting so much great publicity!"
"Dick has friends on the pageant committee."
Of course he did. Probably explains why a few years earlier when New Jersey was holding a referendum on casino gambling in AC he wouldn't sell airtime to a group opposed to gambling in the state. And so ended my great crusade for Bert Parks. I gathered the hundreds (okay, okay... dozens) of letters and sent them to him, along with a letter describing my attempt to get his job back (something that eventually happened in 1990.) In response, I got this note which, I have to say, put a nice Coda on the whole affair.
After Bailey...
Murrow's audacious plan, in the summer of 1980, was to ring NYC with a network of stations fed by satellite,
Leading up to his big premiere ads were run in the local paper saying ""In a matter of days New Jersey is going to get its first real radio station." So... what did that mean? Well, one of the first things new ownership did was remove most local content, inclduing Sunday morning "God Squad" programs. Anyway, we did find a jingle package which we post here.
Oh... so THIS is what they mean by a REAL radio station.
So how did that satellite "all Brucie all the time" idea work out?
WRAN was bought and rebranded as an oldies station. Ziggy wrote the following:
"WMHQ was a brief stop for me (I think maybe a year) I was out of work and knew the GM Rich Rapiti. I came on board as the Operations/Program Director 1987 and did Afternoon Drive. We were live Mornings and Afternoons and Transtar(?) Satellite the rest of the day. We also had Devils Hockey and Giants Football. Frank Truate(?) and Fran Harris(AP News Washington DC) (Frank & Fran) Mornings Ziggie (CBS-FM) and Jean Swann (WINS) afternoon. Weekends Steve Michaels, Capt. Jack (both now on the Breezy) Our GM was Rich Rapiti ( Westwood One). Chief Engineer Gerry Toro (Somewhere in CA)." Happy to report we have a really clean version of the jingle package here.
They gave it a shot. Credit where credit is due - they tried with LOCAL programming, not someone on a satellite.
Of WMHQ's demise, Ziggy wrote: "When I think back to all the stuff that was thrown out at WMHQ. The local Fire Marshall come out to the station and we had to empty the attic. I remember that summer we hired a bunch of high school kids to throw everything into a huge dumpster. Pictures, 45's, LP's, tapes, equipment, turntables, reel to reels, racks, I remember Mike Gettings who ran the company (Atlantic Morris) wanted everything out. Unbelievable."
1510 lives!
There IS a station on the air today at 1510 in Northern New Jersey. As they explain on their website, the station started at 1000 on the AM dial and then, "...in 1992, Norman Worth was awarded an FM license on 107.1 FM. That station became WRNJ-FM and... in 1996, WRNJ was granted a 24 hour license on 1510 AM. They then would sell AM 1000 to Westinghouse (freeing them to boost the power of their New York City AM station WINS). That year WRNJ would move off AM 1000 and onto 1510... In 1997, it was determined that their current towers could not transmit the correct night-time patterns. Therefore WRNJ reverted to daytime only on AM 1510." (It should also be pointed out that Mr. Worth didn't cling to the egotistical notion that he needed 10,000 watts to be successful. WRNJ is a modest, but profitable, 1100W.)
Relive the glory days of WRAN
Led by former staffer Barry Howard, a number of WRAN alums have brought back The Big 1510. Listen to TheBig1510.com for great music, original jingles, commercials as well as airchecks from some of WRAN's personalities back in the 1960s and 1970s.
Final thought... When Cousin Satellite was about to take over. I was not-so-subtly told there was no place for me on the air, so I moved on. I loved my two-and-a-half years at WRAN. How could I not? I was being paid to do what I had wanted to do since I was a kid listening to the world's greatest DJs on powerhouse NYC stations. Like thousands who came before and after me I dreamed of joining them the big time, Never made it. But I wouldn't trade a minute of my time here, especially because it led to so many great things in my life.
I still say one of the best days of my life was when I got my job at WRAN, and one of my other best days was when I left.
