In this week’s issue… Buffalo remembers Beach – Bauerle out at WBEN – Keeler out in Utica – Saga flips NH formats – AM surrenders in CT, PA, ME – Remembering Butler’s Malarkey
By SCOTT FYBUSH
(Program note: We didn’t intend to take a week off last week, but a pinched nerve in the back had other ideas, leaving your editor laid up in intense pain for most of the week. The good news is that things are getting back to normal-ish, and we’re back with a double column this week and hoping to stay on schedule going forward if things cooperate.)
*Two of the most famous radio voices in western NEW YORK were in the headlines within days of each other, one being mourned, the other deposed from his longtime talk radio perch.
Sandy Beach, who died August 17 at 86, and Tom Bauerle, whose ouster from Audacy’s WBEN (930) was officially announced Friday, had both been colleagues at WBEN for a while, though it’s hard to imagine two more different radio personalities.
Beach, whose real name was Don Pesola, came to WBEN in 1993 after an immensely successful career in top-40 radio that started way back in his native New England, where he worked at Springfield’s WSPR and then Hartford’s WDRC before Buffalo beckoned in 1968.
At WKBW, Beach worked every shift except morning drive over a career that took him back and forth from Buffalo to gigs in Texas (WBAP), San Francisco (KYUU), Erie (WJET) and Milwaukee (WZTI), but he always gravitated back to western New York, becoming WKBW’s PD in the 1980s, doing mornings at WNYS/WHTT and WMJQ and venturing into talk at WGR.
“Bigger than life and twice as loud,” Beach took to talk radio in afternoons at WBEN with vigor and a conservative political side that hadn’t appeared in his top-40 era. Aside from one more return to oldies during a brief revival of WWKB, Beach’s final act in radio tracked the increasing politicization of talk radio and WBEN, but always with a dash of his top-40 smile and entertaining personality.
Moved to mid-mornings in 2014, Beach was let go by WBEN in 2020, ending a 60-year career in radio that included induction to the Buffalo Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2003, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for DJs in 2013 and the New York State Broadcasters Hall of Fame four years later.
*If Beach brought a top-40 entertainer’s sensibility to his talk show on WBEN, Tom Bauerle delivered something else entirely. A conspiracy theorist whose personal troubles often made local headlines, Bauerle’s afternoon show tended to be the most polarizing hours on a station that was once the voice of all of Buffalo.
With his contract up for renewal, it’s worth noting that for the first time in his 24-year WBEN career, Bauerle didn’t have longtime station manager Tim Wenger there. Was that the deciding factor, or was it simply Audacy’s overall cuts of expensive talent?
We’ll never know, but we do have Bauerle’s caps-heavy social media posts in the days after his wife inadvertently leaked the news of his non-renewal.
“This was the life I chose, and no matter how loyal ANYONE is to ANY employer, EVERY ONE gets popped eventually. MY SITUATION IS NO DIFFERENT THAN OR MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYONE ELSE’S!,” Bauerle wrote, saying he intends to return on a platform where he can’t be controlled.
Could there be another radio chapter for Bauerle, whose career also included a long run in mornings at WGR when that station was a competitor to WBEN? Were he to end up at Buffalo’s upstart new talker, WUSW (1270), he’d be reunited with owner Buddy Shula, who did sales at WBEN for years, and he’d certainly bring a built-in audience.
But anywhere Bauerle goes at this point, he brings baggage, too. His legal battles with his siblings over their mother’s inheritance have been the subject of ongoing local headlines, as were his mental health issues, including an incident where he was found in his backyard claiming he was being spied on by agents of then-governor Andrew Cuomo.
Is that a risk any other station will take? We’ll be listening – and waiting, too, for word on WBEN’s next move in afternoons.
In this week’s issue… Ed Levine to retire - Family Life adds in Pittsburgh - Cumulus layoffs hit PA, Scripps makes news cuts - Penn State officlally sells WPSU - Remembering Canada's Lloyd Robertson
In this week’s double issue… Audacy, SXM join forces - Bell swaps Kitchener signals - Ford to DC, Baltimore - ESPN cuts hit NYC's 880 - Philly hall of famers named - Tynan out at WPVI
In this week’s issue… Bills extend new radio network - New leader at NYSBA - RI morning team plans retirement - WSUC alumni gather - Cuts at Corus in Canada
In this week’s issue… After Kitchener and Halifax, what will Rogers eliminate next? - Family Life makes a bigger PA buy - Saga vs. LPFM - More NY AMs fade away
