It All Began At A Little 1,000 Watt Radio Station in Western New York

• Owner, operator, and Panamanian Strongman of Ingersoll et al Communications, an esteemed ad agency that numbered Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, Xerox and LaserMax as primary clients during its 10-year existence
  

• Multiple Addy excellence citations for Ad Council of Rochester programs, along with a few Aurora Awards and other ad biz praise along those lines
  

• Winner of Gold 2009 MarCom award for production of healthcare radio commercial
  

• Entrepreneur magazine award for advertising excellence
  

• Author of 121 Great Sales Meeting Themes and I Can Go Anywhere, a book for children who need to self-catheterize

Jim McGrath, Chuck Ingersoll, and Derrick Lucas of Jazz 90.1 at the Rochester International Jazz Festival.

Career Highlights and Such

Tales and Anecdotes From Radio Back In The Day

My time at WCMF (morning show host and Program Director, album rock) and WSAY (midday host and Program Director, MOR) was back in the day when radio was fun and filled with personality. There was no automation, and we even played vinyl. Many of these memories are actually true. Others may me slightly addled by time, but the gist of what Stephen Colbert calls "the ring of truthiness" is there.

WCMF

We used to do downstairs live concerts at a small stage in the basement of our building. They aired live at 10:15 pm. One was scheduled with John Valby, noted for his bawdy parody songs and his nickname, "Dr. Dirty". John assured me he had "clean versions" of all his songs. I listened at home and 15 minutes into it, had to pull the plug. He tried, but he just couldn't help being obscene. Amusingly so, but still "Dr. Dirty" obscene.

Jerry Garcia, John Kahn, Donna Godchaux of the Grateful Dead were being interviewed by Ted Edwards and Gary Whipple prior to their show that night in Rochester. The GM/owner bursts into the studio, alerted by all the snorting sounds. "You've gotta get those people out of there! They're doing cocaine on the air!!!!" I explain to him that Jerry Garcia is as big as John Lennon and almost as famous as God. The GM ponders, then says, "Well, fine, but the minute the interview is over, I want them out of here!. That interview became rather famous and you can hear it here by clicking below:

WSAY

This was "The New WSAY," a WHAM clone owned by Lew Dickey, Sr., not the previous Gordon Brown-owned album rocking WSAY. Gordon Brown was a famed inventor and owned stations in Buffalo and Rochester. Both featured DJs named Tom Thomas, Jerry Jack, and Mike Melody. No matter who was the DJ, the DJ names stayed the same as Mr. Brown noted, "So the listener remains loyal to the station, not the announcer." Brown was known for his thriftiness, once berating an employee for using a 40-watt bulb when a 25-watt would certainly do. In Rochester, WSAY featured a free form album rock format and played a lot of music you truly could not hear anywhere else on the radio.

Lew Dickey Sr., owner of a station in Toledo, purchased WSAY from the Brown estate after the previous owner's passing. He later came to regret this decision. We began broadcasting from a townhouse across the street from the station building, while this was being remodeled. I remember how if the downstairs door to the townhouse was slammed, the needle would jump off the record on the turntable. Things began poorly, as the DJs wanted a stand-up studio. Before too long, our new sit-down studio was in place.

Dickey hired a bunch of people from Rochester's top-rated station, WHAM (50,000 watts, clear channel) including Jack Slattery and George Haefner, Chet Walker, and newsmen Mike Morgan, Mark Giardina, Dean Close and others. I did middays after Jack and George.

At one point Lew Dickey decided he'd spent enough money and refused to buy chairs. I remember we all brought in lawn chairs and Jack Slattery said to me, "This isn't a good sign, is it?"

Due to lack of advertising, promotion, and awareness and a weird signal (great north and south, not so great east and west) the station did not take off. At one point, some guys showed up and repossessed the station news car. To top this, the outfit that had supplied the turf for the front lawn showed up with a loader and a flatbed truck and "repossessed' the lawn. Quite impressive, actually.

At one point, Dickey offered anyone $50 to climb a tower and replace a bulb. He had no takers, and certainly not any of the engineers. Or even the jocks. We were dumb, but we weren't stupid.

We did have some delightful characters at The New WSAY." One spunky receptionist finished off her time at the station delightfully when she'd had it with one of the salesman. She yelled out, "Call for you Frank!" Frank shouted, "Who is it?" She replied, "Why don't you pick up the fu*kin' phone and find out for yourself!?" She ended her employment at WSAY later that day.

The station went through a number of formats including talk and country without much success, and was eventually sold to the WXXI public broadcasting group where it became a news and NPR talk outlet.

We were giving away Jefferson Starship picture discs. I was doing my last break and said, "And stick around for Bill Martin, he'll have more Jefferson Starship picture dicks to give away." Once I recovered, I tried to say it right, but again said, "picture dicks." Lost it, then answered the first listener call from a guy, miming a stereotypical "gay" accent, who wanted to know whose picture was on the dick.

One year, in a surreal moment right out of WKRP, our Christmas bonus was a turkey. We were allowed to visit the roof turkey gallery where we could select the frozen bird of our choice.

There was a very balky reel-to-reel tape deck. GM Jim Trayhearn said we could replace it only when it "really broke." After a few months of frustration, someone took it to the second story window and dumped it out into the parking lot below. He (I don't recall who) then went into Trayhearn's office and said, "Well, that tape deck finally gave it up...."

Newsman Blaine Schwartz used to really go out and dig for news in investigative reporter-like fashion. I recall one scoop where he found that a local car dealer was "bugging" the sales offices, so that when the salesman went to "talk it over with his manager," they could listen in on the conversation amongst the potential buyers. BUSTED!

Unkle Roger McCall did the morning show at one point, but enjoyed overnights more. I would be driving in listening to him and he'd say it was 3:14 am when it was really 5:14, but as in Vegas, that didn't really matter overnights. When I arrived about 5:30 am, I never knew who would greet me along with Unk. He befriended a lot of musicians and interesting characters and tirelessly advocated for local bands. He was a beautiful soul with a huge heart. One morning we were "cross-talking" and I asked why he had such a large stick with him. He told me he was walking home and would use it to "beat off dogs." A good deal of actual LOL'ing ensued.

Although I don't remeber it ('70s, ya know) apparently, after a downstairs concert at WCMF in 1979 I interviewed the late Peppi and othermembers of the Good Rats, a band with a huge Rochester following. Here's the recording of an interview I would not call a rousing success. Click below and turn up your volume to hear it.