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A Signal Achievement Fewer people cruise the AM side of the dial these days, but that's where you'll find it-on the high end of the band, set among the static and fizz that mark broadcasting's least glamorous medium. If you're anywhere near Manchester, spin your AM band tuner across the 1370 mark and a torrent of music will pour from your speakers, clear as a bell. It might be a syrupy strings-and-organ arrangement of a Henry Mancini tune. Or a number with a snappy Latin rhythm, followed by a commercial for, of all things, hearing aids. Or maybe the voice of Peter Marshall, host of the original "Hollywood Squares" game show, reminiscing about "Mama" Cass Elliot prior to airing her mid-1960s hit, "Dream a Little Dream of Me." Whatever it is, it's coming from WFEA-AM, a radio station that's been on the air longer than any other in New Hampshire. It signed on way back in 1932, and has been a part of the local broadcasting scene ever since. Formats have changed over the years, as has the station's ownership. It's been sold a total of 11 times-more than any other in the state. It's moved several times, too, from downtown Manchester out to the suburbs and then to its current studios in the city's millyard. Through it all, the call letters remained the same, and the WFEA signal has continued to beam forth from the station's transmitter in Merrimack. Even if you've never heard the station, you've probably seen the tower-it's the 350-foot tall orange and white antenna with the pointed bottom that rises near the Bedford tollbooths on the Everett Turnpike. Surprisingly, it's the original structure, erected in 1931 and still in working order, just like the station it carries. This Friday, March 1, WFEA will quietly reach a major milestone. At 8 p.m., the time of its original 1932 sign-on, the station will surpass 70 years of continuous service. In a business known for sudden changes, it's a remarkable record of longevity. And it's worth a look back at a Manchester radio institution that dates back to the waning days of the Herbert Hoover administration. If you peer behind WFEA's sedate curtain, you'll find a colorful history-one that includes the infamous CBS broadcast of "War of the Worlds" on Halloween 1938 that convinced many listeners that invaders from Mars were attacking New Jersey. Later, you'll find a station that provided a musical soundtrack for generations of Queen City residents, a role it continues to fulfill today. Keepers of the flame "I think in this day and age, anything that lasts 70 years is great," said Ed Brouder, WFEA's morning news reporter for the past decade. Brouder, author of "Granite and Ether: A Chronicle of New Hampshire Broadcasting," also acts as the station's unofficial historian; the dining room of his Orange Street apartment is crammed with archived recordings of WFEA and other broadcast outlets going back to the 1930s. But Brouder's respect for the station's storied history doesn't keep him from acknowledging that WFEA is now a small player in a market it once dominated. Though the station has found a profitable niche in delivering a "nostalgia" format, the audience for AM radio is steadily dwindling. All across the country, small market stations are having trouble or going dark. "The
trend is that AM stations are all struggling," Brouder said.
"Radio overall is pretty healthy as an industry. But we've raised
a generation that's not listening to AM." As a result, AM stations have been forced to retreat to what's sometimes called "narrow-casting," a term for limited formats aimed at a very specific group of listeners. News and talk programming have proved to be reliable AM refuges, but in Manchester relative newcomer WGIR-AM 610 (which started in 1941) got there first. So WFEA turned to another AM staple-non-rock music ranging from swing hits of the big band era to contemporary retro efforts, such as Toni Tenille belting out "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries." Like many smaller AM stations, economics have forced WFEA to turn to syndicated programming to fill the broadcast day. Until last year, WFEA still boasted its own morning man, Paul Belfay, who took calls from listeners and joshed on-air with Brouder. Today, with the exception of Brouder's local news reports, the programming is all automated and received via satellite. "Unfortunately today, we can't provide the truly local programming we used to do," said Ray Garon, president and general manager of Manchester Radio Group, a unit of Saga Communications, Inc., which has owned and operated WFEA since 1991. "It's just not economically feasible-the advertisers simply won't pay enough to support that." Still, WFEA isn't alone in the broadcast woods. Saga keeps the on-air product slick and professional, and the station draws a certain luster from its sister stations-WQLL-FM "Cool" 96.5, which broadcasts oldies from the 1950s to the 1970s, and local adult contemporary powerhouse WZID-FM 95.7, where Brouder doubles as morning traffic reporter. "I'm perfectly satisfied," Garon said. "WFEA is not making a lot of money, but it's profitable. I have no complaints. I'm not going to deny that it's not like it was 30 years ago. The 'FEA of 1965 and 1970 was a totally different operation. Back then, AM radio was really big." Rewinding the tape The story
of WFEA is nearly the story of radio itself. The station was a full-fledged
participant in the medium's golden age in the 1930s. From studios
in the Carpenter Hotel in downtown Manchester, it filled the grim
Depression years with a wide range of home-grown shows featuring local
talent, including children's programs, singing cowboys, and the music
of the WFEA Trio. Surprisingly, Manchester's city government also tried to get into the act. With call letters WCOM, for "City of Manchester," the municipal station signed on in 1926 to promote the city's business community. This early version of public radio didn't last long, either; federal regulators pulled its license the following year because the station wasn't broadcasting consistently. WFEA
came about when Henry Pritchard Rines, whose company managed the then-new
Carpenter Hotel, got into the radio business in Maine, where he owned
the Congress Square Hotel in Portland. He had established a successful
station in Portland, and Manchester looked like a good bet, even after
the 1929 stock market crash. This plan won approval, and in August 1931, Rines got a construction permit to erect the transmitter on 20 acres of land he'd purchased along Route 3, the main road linking Manchester and Nashua. News accounts of the day show that parts of the highway hadn't been paved yet; the tower, rising among the quiet fields and woodlands along the Merrimack River, must have seemed like a visitor from another planet. But radio was big news at the time. In its pre-television heyday, radio seemed nothing short of miraculous. Imagine hearing voices and music from New York or Hollywood or anywhere instantly, broadcast through thin air! With WFEA, Manchester was about to get its own connection to the Internet of its day. Kiddie shows and singing cowboys Newspapers abounded with coverage leading up to the sign-on, scheduled for March 1, 1932. "The studios and the power plant yesterday were thrown open to a preliminary inspection by newspapermen," reported The Manchester Union on February 24, 1932. "Located on the second floor of the Carpenter, the studios comprise a suite of three rooms, which have been converted into luxuriously appointed broadcasting headquarters." "Ordinary local programs, speaking and musical, will be broadcast from the main studio, which is large enough to house an eight- or nine-piece orchestra. Programs calling for ensembles larger than that will be put on the air from The Carpenter's main dining room, where the acoustics, for broadcasting purposes, are nearly perfect, according to station employees," the paper reported. As chronicled by Brouder's history, WFEA's inaugural broadcast went on the air March 1, 1932 at 8 p.m. with the singing of "Old New Hampshire" by local tenor Eugene Clough. The program, which lasted just over two hours, also included dance music by Felix Ferdinando and his orchestra and a live remote from the Franklin Street Congregational Church for some organ music. The event concluded with a CBS staff announcer welcoming the station to the network. The station immediately became a part of Manchester and the region, serving as a showcase for local talent. Programs originating from the Carpenter ranged from kiddie shows hosted by Alberta Sullivan to appearances by New Hampshire's own singing cowboy, Ken MacKenzie. Under the direction of program manager Donald Caswell, scripts were brought to life by the members of WFEA's Little Theater of the Air. To support the programs, the station boasted "The WFEA Trio," its own in-house combo of local musicians. One of the players, Gerry Kearney, became a staff announcer, hosting music programs such as "Merry-Go-Round" and "Theme Factory." He later went on to Channel 9 and became one of the area's first bona fide local media celebrities. It's
a challenge to pick highlights from the voluminous material Brouder
has assembled from the station's glory days. Among the treasures are
large, bound volumes of original scripts for dramatic programs aired
on WFEA in the 1930s that he obtained through a family member of one
of the cast members, who was ready to throw them out. It wasn't all entertainment. WFEA kept the city informed during the floods of 1936, staying on the air throughout the crisis. Later, it helped get out vital information following the infamous Hurricane of 1938, which devastated much of New Hampshire. From afar, it brought news of the events leading to World War II. During the war, it served as a vital source for news from around the world; Brouder has recordings of station broadcasts that are filled with the tension of the era. Post-war changes After the war, the station moved into its own building on Franklin Street, where chief engineer Reginald Schow and his family lived on the top floor. Queen City listeners found a WFEA that reflected the realities of the era. One of Brouder's recordings from 1946 includes announcer Chuck O'Neil introducing a new tune named "You're My Atomic Bomb." Sometimes vintage recordings aren't needed, as the titles say enough. Chuck O'Neil's program in the 1950s was called "The Chuck Wagon Show." Other shows included "The 1370 Streamliner" hosted by Jay Boivin and a morning show with Fay Gelinas called "Start the Day With Fay and Jay." The era was also marked by George Christie, whose no-holds-barred editorials on WFEA during the 1940s and 1950s earned him the nickname "The Old Crusader." In the some-things-never-change department, Brouder has a recording of a Christie editorial from the mid-1950s about-guess what?-downtown parking. Christie was enough of an influence to raise the hackles of William Loeb, then the relatively new publisher of The Union Leader. In June 1954, The Union Leader asked the Federal Communications Commission to revoke WFEA's license because Christie was using the public's airwaves to push his own agenda. Christie "does not serve the community generally but serves only the private interests, whims, and caprices of said Christie," stated the newspaper's petition, which Brouder unearthed. WFEA said it gave Loeb the opportunity for equal time; FCC told The Union Leader to take a hike and dismissed the case. As technology advanced and the marketplace changed, WFEA made efforts to keep up. The station's management considered getting into the new-fangled technology of television in the 1950s, but nothing came of it. Plans were also made for an FM station, but then abandoned. Later, the station considered broadcasting in AM stereo, but opted against it. Today, the station remains as it began-a small market 5,000-watt AM station, with a signal that covers a good chunk of the Merrimack Valley from Concord to Nashua. After television killed network radio, WFEA moved out of downtown to studios at the Merrimack transmitter site, and turned its attention to music. For a time in the 1960s, it was the area's pop powerhouse, cranking out the latest hits and making local celebrities out of DJs who graced the air with playful pseudonyms such as Hap Hazard, Johnny Tripp and Juicy Brucie. Personalities "In those days, 'FEA ruled the roost in Manchester. It had a cult status," recalled Juicy Brucie, otherwise known as Al Sprague, a WFEA veteran and today president of the New Hampshire Association of Broadcasters. Sprague got a job spinning records at the station in 1964 when he was in high school, and the experience caused him to "fall in love with the industry." Sprague remembered the station's now-abandoned studios out at the Merrimack transmitter site on Route 3 as "a complete party place" in the 1960s. "But it was never drugs or anything like that- it was girls," he said. "Male disc jockeys did very well in those days." Any details? "Let's just say LPs (long-playing records) were invented for a reason," Sprague offered. In the decades it relied on local programming, literally hundreds of broadcasters did duty at WFEA, either as DJs, news staffers, or salespeople. Many stayed in the business and went on to bigger markets, among them Fox News political reporter Carl Cameron and, more locally, Susan Wornick of WCVB-TV Channel 5 in Boston. Other personalities stayed in the area, but switched to more sedate occupations. Sprague started an ad agency. "Rockin' " Red Robidas served as the Manchester Police Department's public relations officer for many years, and today is security director for Manchester's city government. Tom "Johnny Tripp" Coughlin is now a local CPA and self-published author. Dick Stonner owns a "Sir Speedy" printing franchise on lower Elm Street and has just completed 12 years of service on the Bedford Town Council. And still others continued on the air, becoming fixtures of the broadcast landscape. Among those is Gene Maltais, whose local French language program was heard on WFEA and other local stations for nearly five decades until Maltais hung up his microphone and retired in 1995. Like Maltais himself, WFEA's steadfastness is even more remarkable when viewed in the context of Manchester's ever-changing media landscape. Archrival WGIR-AM 610 dates from 1941, but originally signed on as WMUR-AM, forming the corporate ancestor of what later became WMUR-TV, today's Channel 9. WKBR-AM 1250 joined the fray in 1946, followed the next year by WKBR-FM 95.7, which eventually went on to become today's WZID. Channel 9 television signed on the air in 1954, while WGIR-FM 101.1 dates from 1963. When a relative newcomer like New Hampshire Public Radio (WEVO-FM 89.1) began operations in 1981, WFEA already had nearly a half-century of broadcasting under its belt. Yesterday's music, today's radio Though today's format is called "nostalgia," it's not limited to Frank Sinatra songs. Though ol' Blue Eyes is part of the line up, the station plays a surprising grab bag of past pop culture. Listen
for a stretch, and you'll never know what's going to come next-show
tune arrangements compete with torch songs and big band classics,
and an occasional yodeling cowboy is heard. Doris Day singing an introspective
"Love Me or Leave Me" might be followed by Sammy Davis Jr.
wailing out a brassy arrangement of "I Gotta Be Me," which
somehow sounds exactly right for the AM band. The station's syndicated output is currently promoted as "the music of your life," and as you'd expect, the target audience isn't exactly the youth crowd. "Our niche is older listeners," said Ray Garon, the general manager. "We know very well that this is a senior-based radio station. In our area, there's only one station for them, and it's 'FEA." With higher incomes and more leisure time, you'd think WFEA's audience would be an attractive niche for advertisers. Think again. Though clients such as local retirement homes and daily newspapers continue to use the station, most big advertisers such as banks and car dealers won't go near it. "I will be honest with you," Garon said. "It's unfortunate that more advertisers - large and small, national and local - don't want to reach people over 55 years old. These folks are entirely forgotten by modern-day marketers. It's too bad, and we've lost a lot of advertisers because of it. It's a 25-to-54 world today, and if you're not part of it, Madison Avenue wants nothing to do with you." But everything old is new again. Taken on its own terms, the station today has something of an edge. In an age of marketing-driven pop entertainment, WFEA has a retro "cocktail music" quality that can be refreshing. And even if the programming is packaged by a syndicate, it's still a diverse mix of material that remains genuine and unhomogenized. Though the songs are timeless, there's more to it than the music. Of several national nostalgia packages available via satellite, Garon said WFEA was careful to select one that emphasizes personalities along with the tunes. As a result, the old DJ tradition is being carried on today by the familiar voices of broadcasting and entertainment veterans such as Peter Marshall, Wink Martindale and Gary Owens. "These are major names that a lot of people in that age group know," Garon said. "So the bad news is that we can't give you a locally grown product. But the other side of it is that we can give you something that's professional." At its best, the programming takes on the aura of a sort of history channel of pop culture. In a recent broadcast, midday host Wink Martindale marked the anniversary of Jack Paar walking out as Tonight Show host in 1961 by playing Paul Anka's famous theme song for Paar's successor, Johnny Carson. The birthday of Patty Andrews, the sole surviving Andrews sister, prompted a full-blown tribute that included the group's breakthrough 1937 hit, "Bei Mir Bist du Schön." (Roughly translated, that's Yiddish for "To Me, You're Beautiful.") One odd quirk that keeps WFEA's profile high, at least in the Manchester area, is that it's one of the few stations with a signal that can be heard inside certain kinds of modern steel-framed structures. Thus the station has a captive audience in buildings all around the Queen City, among them the production plant of The Union Leader, where employees in some departments keep the station on all day long. A quiet milestone As the
station approaches its 70th anniversary, there are no plans to mark
the occasion, on-air or otherwise. On Friday, March 1, Brouder will
cut in with the local morning news each half hour until 9 a.m., as
he does every weekday, after which the station will revert to syndicated
programming via satellite for the remainder of the day. The next
threat looming on the horizon: satellite radio. Marketed as "XM
Radio," the technology promises subscribers hundreds of commercial-free
choices that can be received anywhere in the nation, including nostalgia
programs grouped by decade starting from the 1940s. Commercial radio is still a business, after all, and there's little room for sentiment, even if the business happens to be sentimental entertainment. Still, Garon would like the station to sponsor an event later this year to mark the milestone-say, a big band concert at the Palace Theatre. But so far there are no firm plans. But the station will continue broadcasting, which is perhaps the most fitting tribute of all to the hard work and dedication that kept WFEA on the air for seven decades-to the broadcasters, the engineers, and the salespeople. What's more, it's an ongoing party that anyone can join. Just tune your radio to 1370 AM. If Brouder is right and current trends continue, there may come a day when WFEA does indeed "go dark," as they say in the business. The music and commercials will cease, the transmitter will be shut down, and in Manchester nothing will be heard at 1370 on the AM band but the pop and crackle of static and perhaps the faint signal of some far-away station broadcasting on the same frequency. So check it out. Take a cue from one of the station's promotional slogans-if you like what you hear, tell a friend. For, in the words of one of the songs that WFEA must have aired many times in its day, you don't know what you've got until it's gone. Jeff Rapsis can be reached at jrapsis@hippopress.com. "Granite and Ether: A Chronicle of New Hampshire Broadcasting" by Ed Brouder is available from the New Hampshire Association of Broadcasters. |
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