On the radio

Competition dominated the airwaves in the '60s and '70s

By Walt Frank, wfrank@altoonamirror.com
Go back in time to the 1960s and 1970s. Two popular Altoona radio stations went all out trying to attract listeners, with competition fierce at times.

Today, the stations are part of the same family.

In those days, AM stations WFBG and WVAM played Top 40 music. In the battle for listeners, perhaps the most heated competition surfaced when Johnstown native Denny Bixler and Randy Birdsall, who met while students at Bucknell University, bought WVAM in 1967 and challenged WFBG, which had been the top-rated station.

‘‘WFBG wasn’t prepared for that kind of competition. They went crazy. You could feel the tide changing to WVAM,’’ said Dick DiAndrea, who left WFBG to join Bixler and WVAM in 1971. ‘‘The world changed with Denny Bixler. He brought in out-of-town talent that no one had heard of.’’

DiAndrea, the morning co-host with Roger Corey on WALY, said promotions were Bixler’s strong suit. The combination of promotions, contests and announcers made the station ‘‘the talk of the town,’’ he said.

‘‘Denny lit a fire in town. He captured the imagination of this whole place with his talk show,’’said Dick Richards, an on-air personality at WFBG in the 1960s.

He recalled the intense competition between the two stations.

‘‘It was almost a hate relationship. They didn’t like us, and we didn’t like them. We were the top dog, and that stuck in their craw,’’ Richards said.

Ed Giller, who was hired to manage WFBG in 1968, said his station had been recognized as the community leader before Bixler and his partners turned WVAM into a modern rock ’n’ roll station.

‘‘We became very aggressive. We had local news, lots of promotions — one promotion after another,’’ Giller said.

Corey, a 38-year radio veteran, remembers a particular event.

‘‘When I was at WVAM, the folks at WVAM laid a black wreath on the WFBG show wagon (a mobile studio) when it was towed to the junkyard,’’ Corey said. ‘‘It was more intense between the sales departments, but what the listeners heard was intense.’’

Cary Simpson owns six stations and is president of five others in the Allegheny Mountain Radio Network, which includes stations in Blair, Centre, Franklin, Fulton, Tioga, Potter, McKean and Elk counties. Simpson had a view from the outside while running WTRN in Tyrone.

‘‘It wasn’t cutthroat, but it was extremely flamboyant. It was no more contentious than a game between Bishop Guilfoyle and Hollidaysburg. You want to win but you don’t want to kill the other team,’’ Simpson said.

‘‘WTRN was very active. We put a billboard in downtown Altoona that said ‘The Gleep’ is coming to WTRN. It was nothing; it was [just] intended to drive the other two crazy. They were trying to figure out what The Gleep was.’’

Simpson later told the Altoona stations The Gleep was a hoax.

‘‘It was just to yank their chain,’’ Simpson said.

WFBG and WVAM had well-known air personalities: among them, Sean McKay.

McKay was an on-air personality at WFBG from 1972-98.

‘‘When he partnered with Patty Gross, ‘The Good Morning Show with Sean and Patty’ was among the highest-rated morning shows in the country at the time,’’ said Steve Kelsey, air personality at WFGY. ‘‘He had the ability to be off-the-wall and unpredictable.’’

McKay recently returned to Altoona for a one-week reunion with Patty Gross, now known as Patty Mock, on WBXQ, WRTA and WBRX, stations owned by Altoona businessman David Barger. Barger and McKay have been discussing a permanent return to the local airwaves.

WVAM countered with well-known personalities of its own such as Don Girard, Commander Tim Burns and Tom Foolery.

‘‘They had a real schtick. They made radio fun,’’ said Corey, who knew all three.

The third Altoona AM station, WRTA, played middle-of-the-road music — artists like Tony Bennett and Andy Williams — before turning to a talk show format in the 1980s. The station kept a low profile while WFBG and WVAM battled it out.

‘‘They were Top 40 pop radio stations. They all played the same thing. By default, we won a lot of time slots. We had more listeners in the morning hours. For a few years we were the big dog in the morning,’’ said Tom Casey, morning air personality at WRTA from the late 1960s to 1980 and later well known as a weatherman on WTAJ-TV. ‘‘Our deal was to do what we did better and not worry about the other guys. We were successful at it.’’

Charlie Weston, who is morning co-host with Steve Clark on WFBG, agrees. He worked at WRTA from 1981 to 2005.

‘‘We were still able to punch out a living. We were competitive on the street,’’ he said.

Before the mid-1990s, the Federal Communications Commission allowed an owner to have only one AM and one FM station in each market. In 1995 laws were changed to allow owners to own more than one frequency in the market. That led to major changes in the Altoona radio market.

Forever Broadcasting, then known as Logan Broadcasting, entered the local market in 1991 with the purchase of WFBG-AM and WFBG-FM, now WFGY, from Empire Radio Partners LP, which had purchased the stations from Giller.

Today, Forever owns six Altoona stations housed under one roof off Route 36 between Hollidaysburg and Altoona.

Radio stations which once were fierce competitors are now part of the same company.

Giller said he never would have imagined that would happen.

‘‘That was so far beyond the realm of possibility, I never even thought about it. I would never have dreamed it,’’ he said.

Carol Logan, president of Forever Broadcasting, said her stations do not really compete against each other.

‘‘Each of our stations has its own format. We target a group of listeners for each format,’’ Logan said. ‘‘We took people who were fierce competitors on the air and put them in the same building. It is amazing how they got along, how they help each other. The programming staffs help each other learn, grow and they support each other.’’

Corey said the employees for different stations share ideas with each other, making everyone stronger.

Despite multiple ownerships, competition still exists today but not like it was years ago.

‘‘It is not the same any more. Competition is very good but is stymied,’’ DiAndrea said. ‘‘You need a competitive edge to stay sharp. Everyone does their own thing. They are good at what they do and are comfortable with that. You need to have a little hatred to be better than the other guy.’’

Instead of competing for the same listeners like years ago, stations today cater to different audiences.

‘‘Radio today is like the magazine industry — they specialize in super-serving an age and sex and affinity group — like sports, conservative talk, nostalgic music, quiet background music for work, oldies,’’ Simpson said. ‘‘You can’t do it like we did years ago.’’

As local radio moves forward in the 21st century, it faces new competition — satellite radio and devices such as the iPod.

‘‘The teen audience is going away from radio. My kids grew up with a transistor radio. My grandchildren don’t have any loyalty to radio,’’ Simpson said.

Barger agreed, adding that it’s local personality and local content that will draw in listeners.

‘‘If you just want music, you can get all you want by plugging it into your iPod. You can get what you want when you want it and not depend on a DJ and there are no commercials,’’ he said. ‘‘If all we are delivering is music, we have competitors that are much more efficient.’’