• My Account
  • Your Profile
  • Member Archives
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
Cart / $0.00

No products in the cart.

Fybush.com
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links
No Result
View All Result
Fybush.com
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links

No products in the cart.

No Result
View All Result
Fybush.com
No Result
View All Result

Site of the Week 7/18/2014: Erie, PA (part I)

Scott Fybush by Scott Fybush
July 23, 2014
in Free Content, Pennsylvania, Tower Site Calendar, Tower Site of the Week
0

Text and photos by SCOTT FYBUSH

For more than two decades now, your editor has been plowing back and forth on I-90 several times a year between home base in upstate New York and the in-laws in Indiana. All those hours of driving often make us reluctant to add to the trip by stopping along the way to take in some of the sights (or sites, as the case may be!)

WPSE's transmitter shed
WPSE’s transmitter shed
WPSE's studio
WPSE’s studio

So it was a delight, back in September 2012, to plan an overnight trip that didn’t go all that way down I-90 – just the three hours or so it takes to get from Rochester to the fine small market of Erie, Pennsylvania.

This is a city whose radio legacy is way out of proportion to its size. A lot of great radio people got their start in Erie, and a surprising number made entire careers here. And whether they stayed or left, Erie radio folk are passionate about their city’s radio history, which made it especially nice to be able to spend some time checking out the latest incarnation of some of those historic stations.

WPSE 1450
WPSE 1450

We started late in the evening, out in an industrial area along East 12th Street southeast of downtown, at what’s actually the newest AM site in town, though it belongs to the market’s oldest station. WLEU started out on 1420 back in 1935, moving to 1450 in the NARBA shuffle of 1941. And there it remained for decades, with studios and offices in the Commerce Building downtown and a tower up on the roof of the ten-story building. It spawned an FM sister, WWGO, on 103.7, then shuffled the WWGO calls to the AM signal when the FM became top-40 WCCK, “K104.”

With the Commerce Building targeted for demolition in the 1980s, the AM station picked up its tower off the roof and moved it right out here to 12th Street, and here it has remained even as 1450 has gone through lots of changes. It was standards as WEYZ for most of the 1980s, until then-owner Burbach Broadcasting saw a chance to upgrade. The WEYZ calls and format slid down the dial to the 5,000-watt signal on 1330 (we’ll see more on it in a moment), and 1450 was donated to the Penn State University Behrend campus in Erie, which has operated it ever since with commercial business talk as WPSE.

WPSE’s studios are in a small prefab building on the Behrend campus, where they occupy a simple two-studio suite with a few rooms for offices across the hall. The transmitter shed on 12th Street is pretty simple, too: relatively new Nautel transmitters power both the AM signal and its FM translator on 107.1.

BVZ Radio
BVZ Radio

Behrend's TV studio
Behrend’s TV studio

WPSE isn’t the only radio operation on the Behrend campus: over in the student center building, that slick studio above is the home of “BVZ,” the streaming operation that students here launched in 2011 (on 11/11/11, in fact!). There’s a student TV studio down the hall, too, and that set shown above had been a recent donation from one of the commercial TV stations in town when we visited.

Gannon's WERG
Gannon’s WERG

In the WERG studio
In the WERG studio

While the Behrend students on the east side of town don’t get to go on the airwaves of Erie, there’s a long history of over-the-air student broadcasts downtown at Gannon University. WERG started out as a 10-watter on 89.1 back in 1972, moved to 89.9 in the early 1980s, and in 2005 relocated to its current dial position at 90.5 from a new tower site up at the WQLN public radio/TV facility south of town. (We’ll see more of that next week.)

WERG has produced plenty of professional broadcasters over its history (documented in great detail on the station’s website), and it’s nicely visible downtown at 7th and Peach, where it has storefront studios in the Walker Building, with production and office space stretching off behind it.

Around the corner at the Boston Store
Around the corner at the Boston Store

Inside the Boston Store
Inside the Boston Store

The WERG building backs up to the historic Boston Store department store building, which has been home for the last decade or so to the cluster of stations that now belongs to Connoisseur. Before Jeff Warshaw’s group had these stations, they belonged to local radio entrepreneur Rick Rambaldo, and it was after he’d put the cluster together under the NextMedia banner that they all moved into this nifty storefront setup that takes up most of the north side of the building along its State Street frontage and bends around to line one side of the corridor that cuts through the building (now “Boston Store Place”) to Peach Street.

Outside the studios, inside
Outside the studios, inside

WRKT 100.9
WRKT 100.9

The two most established FMs in the cluster get pride of place out front along State Street: WRTS (“Star 104”) is the latest incarnation of what used to be WCCK, the FM sister of 1450. After the Commerce Building was vacated, K104 moved to a studio along 26th Street in Erie, then relocated under Rambaldo to a studio in the town of North East, about 20 miles east of Erie. That’s where Rambaldo’s original station in the market was licensed: he bought the quirky WHYP (1530)/WHYP-FM (100.9) from the even quirkier James Brownyard, who’d run the stations as a one-man operation, and relaunched the FM as WRKT, “Rocket 101,” now a rock institution in the market.

The WRKT and WRTS studios look out to State Street, and look inward to an open area with bleachers that can be used for live musical performances.

WRTS 103.7
WRTS 103.7

WJET 1400
WJET 1400

The third station with a State Street window is the news-talker in the cluster, WJET (1400), once the big top-40 in town under the ownership of legendary manager Myron Jones and engineer John Kanzius. Jones and Kanzius eventually moved WJET from its longtime home at 1635 Ash Street into the WJET-TV (Channel 24) studios on Peach Street south of I-90, and by the late 1980s they’d transitioned the WJET calls and format from the AM signal over to 102.3 FM. The AM spent some time as WLKK before returning to the WJET calls in 2001.

WXBB 94.7
WXBB 94.7

WTWF 93.9
WTWF 93.9
WJET 1400
WJET 1400

Three more stations lining the inside corridor of the Boston Store building round out this cluster: WXBB (94.7) started out as “Froggy” WFGO, a 1990s drop-in sister to WJET-FM (102.3), before joining the NextMedia/Connoisseur family as “Bob FM.” (102.3 ended up in the hands of the competition, as we’ll see next week.) WTWF (93.9 Fairview) was another late drop-in addition to the market, signing on in 2001 as “Planet” WRPL.

And a small studio, not shown here, is home to WFNN (1330), the sports “Fan” that is the descendant of the old WIKK/WICU/WRIE radio that signed on back in 1947. (It was WRIE 1330 that fell into Burbach’s hands in 1989, becoming the new home of WEYZ for a few years before ending up as WFNN. The WEYZ calls went out to North East on 1530 for a while, and we’ll pick up that thread in next week’s installment, as well as seeing where the WRIE calls went.)

We didn’t make it all the way south down US 19 to the AM 1330 array, the southernmost in the market, but we did get to that famous address of 1635 Ash Street to see what’s become of WJET’s longtime home. The AM 1400 transmitter is still here, atop a warehouse building behind the little brick building that was the WJET radio studios and offices and is now a small church. It’s come a long way from 1951, when Myron Jones put WJET on from here as a little daytimer on 1570.

(Jones, incidentally, is still alive and now in his late 80s; one day soon, we hope to get together with him and hear more about his story, which includes not only WJET but sister station WHOT in Youngstown, Ohio. And did we mention he was also instrumental in Behrend’s acquisition of 1450 and the launch of WPSE?)

Want to see some TV, the other big commercial cluster in town, and another neat college station? Of course you do – and we’ll show them to you in next week’s Erie installment!

Thanks to Mike Kobylka for the tours!

CALENDARS ON CLEARANCE

If you don’t have your 2023 Tower Site Calendar yet, now is the perfect time to get it. Because we have lowered the price to just $14.

The calendar has great photos of broadcast sites near and far (everywhere from Navajo Nation on the cover to Boston to Toronto to Texas, and beyond), plus a lovely “centerfold” you can keep on your wall for 2024.

It’s still shipping regularly, and you can have yours in just a couple of days!

Order your copy and you’ll see what we mean.

If you have already ordered your calendar, make sure you check out the other items in the store, too!


And don’t miss a big batch of Erie IDs next Wednesday, over at our sister site, TopHour.com!

Next week: More Erie!

Share this:

  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Pocket
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Facebook
Tags: Radio BVZWERGWFNNWJETWPSEWRKTWRTSWTWFWXBB
Previous Post

NERW 7/14/2014: The Death of Big D

Next Post

NERW 7/21/2014: Albany’s “BobFather” Remembered

Scott Fybush

Scott Fybush

Editor/Publisher, NorthEast Radio Watch and Tower Site of the Week

Related Posts

NorthEast Radio Watch 1/30/2023: FCC Picks Noncomm FM Winners
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 3/20/2023: FCC Imposes New PIRATE Fines

In this week’s issue… FCC imposes hefty fine on NYC pirate - Audacy sells transmitter sites - Michael Kay sticks around - FLN, Calvary swap signals - PA AMs find new owner - New format on the border - Remembering...

by Scott Fybush
March 20, 2023
The radio building
Free Content

Site of the Week 3/17/2023: Bell Media, Toronto

Inside one of the most historic broadcast facilities in Toronto

by Scott Fybush
March 17, 2023
NorthEast Radio Watch 3/13/2023: Remembering Alex Langer
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 3/13/2023: Remembering Alex Langer

In this week’s issue… Boston AM entrepreneur dies - WHYY sells NJ FM - Axe axed in Syracuse - WBEE seeks new morning team - 7 Mountains shuffles Poconos formats - Remembering WKTV's Worden

by Scott Fybush
March 19, 2023
CBLA and CJBC-FM
Free Content

Site of the Week 3/10/2023: Toronto’s First Canadian Place

Atop Toronto's second-tallest building

by Scott Fybush
March 10, 2023
Next Post
NERW 7/21/2014: Albany’s “BobFather” Remembered

NERW 7/21/2014: Albany's "BobFather" Remembered

Log In


Join Now | Lost Password?

Get Fybush.com Updates

Get Fybush.com updates emailed directly to your inbox!

Fybush.com Twitter List

My Tweets

© 2023 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links

© 2023 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.