WSBA-TV control room, early 1960s
Dig that stone wall with the brushed-aluminum call letters
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WSBA-TV • York, Pa. (1967-78)
I spent many Saturday mornings in the control room of this small (17 full-time employees) UHF station in southern Pennsylvania, watching the CBS cartoon lineup. My aunt, Sonia Strohman, was the station’s program director (her official title read 'Girl Friday'); her longtime beau, 'uncle' Bob Stough, was the station manager. Although I made my on-camera debut at age 4 or 5 on the seasonal 'Santa Claus' show, I preferred hanging behind the scenes, and got an awfully good introduction to the broadcasting biz for a kid. I was pretty sure I would be president of CBS when I grew up. Susquehanna sold Channel 43 in 1983; it’s now Tegna’s WPMT-TV. Postscript: Sonia died in a York nursing home, June 18, 2004, minutes after I received my degree from Northwestern. She hung around long enough for all her nieces and nephews to graduate college. We'll miss you, Suz. |
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Brahms-Gerber Advertising • Baltimore, Md. (1966-72)
Douglas Sidney Graphic Design • Owings Mills, Md. (1972-date) Here's where I learned to set Prestype, shoot a photostat, cut Amberlith acetate film and paste up a mechanical. Where I discovered that light blue doesn't photograph ... that an oversized ampersand with lots of swashes is -- in itself -- a work of art ... and that if you give a client three layouts, he'll always pick the one you like least. Where I developed a lifelong appreciation for Helvetica Bold, lower case, packed tight. (In fact, the masthead of this website is an homage of sorts to the letterhead design of my father's fledgling freelance design business, circa 1969.) My dad spent six years as Art Director for a small Baltimore 'boutique' ad agency. I'd tag along whenever I could, filing tearsheets, reading back copies of Broadcasting magazine, and amusing myself for hours with Magic Markers. In 1972, when the partners of Brahms-Gerber went their separate ways, my father -- all of 30 years old -- struck out on his own as well, establishing a design studio on a shoestring. Somehow he immediately picked up the print work for the brand-new Maryland State Lottery. (Remember 'You gotta play to win'? Yep, that's my pop!) I hung around the shop through high school, doing light bookkeeping and the occasional paste-up. My father died in November 1997 at age 55 ... and I still miss him terribly. |
Summer 1979: Walter Cronkite, look out ...
WLPL air studio console, 1981
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WLPL-FM & WSID-AM • Baltimore, Md. (1979-80 & 1981)
My dad designed their new logo ... and asked if there were any summer jobs open for his kid. I wound up as a gofer for Baltimore’s low-budget but legendary top-40 FM and its sister 1000-watt AM daytimer. For $2.90 an hour, I scraped labels off carts, filed logs and hung around, making a productive nuisance of myself all summer. Then they needed a substitute news anchor on the AM ... and I became the sole caucasian voice on an all-black oldies station. I sucked as a newscaster. But that didn’t stop me from moving over to weekends on the FM ... where I also sucked as a jock. And that didn’t stop me from getting fired in March ‘80. Ultimately I wound up returning in the summer of ‘81, as part of the team that humanely euthanized WLPL and replaced it with adult contemporary '92 STAR'. But that’s further down the page. |
Radio Hanover, 1980s (that orange Pinto was always there)
Had I chosen Hopkins, how different life would've been!
Station Manager John Lawrence in the 98YCR studio, 1981
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WYCR-FM • York-Hanover, Pa. (1980 & 1982)
With my 16-year-old tail between my legs (and a rather cheesy aircheck in my pocket), I managed to swing a weekend gig at this equally-low-budget (but equally legendary) southern Pennsylvania top-40. 98YCR (and its AC/country AM, WHVR) were on the first floor of a drab concrete building on Radio Road(!) just outside of Hanover. The station and its towers sat surrounded by cornfields and cow pastures ... and the owner and his wife lived upstairs, right over the FM studio ('Keep the speakers turned down after 8:30 at night, son ...'). Boy, I still sucked. But here I was sucking with jingles and reverb! I left that fall to go to college ... and made a brief return in the summer of ‘82. After 30 years as a CHR, it flipped to classic rock The Peak 98.5 ... and was finally sold to Forever Media. Today, it's Rocky 98.5. But they’re still in the same cornfield. |
Always wiring up something in Production Studio C, 1982
1984: I'd get carded every time I tried to buy a soldering iron
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WNUR-FM • Evanston, Ill. (1980-84)
I’d been on campus at Northwestern University for about 7 hours ... and had already been hired as Traffic Director at the campus station. Disorder and disrepair were the watchwords ... but hell, who cared? I was on the Exec Board! I moved quickly through the operations and technical hierarchy (the music was that weird 'new wave' stuff I had no desire to program), and wound up as Operations Manager by the end of freshman year. We rewired, repainted and rebuilt WNUR’s reputation to national prominence. Personnel changes and the need for a paying job saw me leave 'The Big 89.3' in early ‘84. As a parting shot to my alma mater, I helped to start up a low-power AM station in the Communications Residential College, '640 WXLO'. In 1995 the McCoy Foundation pumped major bucks into the station, making it into the model of excellence 45 years’ worth of WNUR alums had dreamed of. |
My bud, Joe Edwards, in the original 92 STAR studio, 1982
Movin' on up: Sutton Place penthouse studios, 1983
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WYST-FM & AM • Baltimore, Md. (1981-83 & 1985-86)
Battered and beaten by Scripps-Howard’s B104, and running at reduced power half the year after a transmission-line fire, WLPL’s ratings dwindled to a 1.7. But the death of United Broadcasting’s founder, Richard Eaton, early in the summer of ‘81 gave company management the inspiration to try something completely different at 92.3. With a couple gallons of paint for the studio walls and 800 new carts, we put together an oldies-intensive AC format which scored a 4-share in the first book. Unfortunately, '92 STAR' spent the rest of the decade trying to repeat that success. I was a vacation-relief jock and an engineer (helping to install the stations’ new Sutton Place penthouse studios in ‘83). I returned briefly in ‘85 for overnights. United sold the stations to Radio One in the early '90s; today they’re urban 92Q & talk WOLB. |
DJ Greg Stephens in the WYEN air studio, 1979
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WYEN-FM • Des Plaines, Ill. (1983)
I needed a summer job. They needed an overnight jock. The result? Three months of commuting 2 hours each way on Chicago’s 'L' trains ... for $200 a week. The station was barely squeaking by, a vanity effort of Chicago radio vet Ed Walters and his family. The programming was a hodgepodge of AC and oldies. The equipment was a hodgepodge of working and non-working. Ed sold Y107 in the mid 80’s’; it became a Z-Rock affiliate, a new age outlet, a Christian AC ... and finally was transferred to Univision; it's now Amor 106.7. |
With weekend personality Leslie Harris, October 1984
Sleep-deprived in the US99 air studio, Fall 1986
Live broadcast from Six Flags Great America, Fall 1986
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WUSN-FM • Chicago, Ill. (1984-85 & 1986-87)
I’d developed a hankerin’ for country music in college ... and decided I wanted to work at my fav-o-rite radio station. So I walked in off Michigan Ave. and wound up as the swing-shift utility guy at the nation’s second-biggest country outlet. PD Lee Logan (who gets the credit for weaning me off liner cards) came off the air and I went full-time in middays ... until Gary Dee was hired for morning drive. Shift changes were looming, but I beat ‘em to the punch by resigning in April ‘85 and moving back to Baltimore. After my D.C.-to-New York odyssey (keep scrollin’ down ...), I returned to US99 for overnights in March ‘86. US99 continues to be Chicago’s country station, now owned by Audacy. |
The WTTG-TV & WASH building, 5151 Wisconsin Ave. NW
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WASH-FM • Washington, D.C. (1985)
Some former WLPL colleagues were now running the show for Metromedia at the palatial WASH-FM in northwest D.C. A brief flirtation with dance-CHR and Miami’s Bill Tanner at the helm had tarnished some of the station’s luster ... and we were the team charged with returning WASH to AC greatness. Things got off to a good start. The station was showing ratings growth. I began just before Memorial Day as swing-shift talent ... and was promoted to Production Director and Assistant Chief Engineer in August. Then by the end of October most of the staff was gone, owing to 'philosophical differences' with the general manager. Darkness preceded the light. A succession of PD’s struggled to keep the nose up ... and the station was transferred and sold a few times before coming to rest with iHeartMedia. Today, WASH-FM remains the mainstream AC in D.C. |
Casa de KDM, Paterson Plank Rd., on the swamps of Jersey
La cabina de radiodifusión principal
Los grandes transmisores (con bubble gum y baling wire)
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WKDM-AM • New York, N.Y. (1986)
Most folks will always remember where they were when they heard the space shuttle Challenger had blown up. Me, I was shoveling snow in the parking lot of WKDM, across from the Meadowlands Arena in northern New Jersey. After I’d left WASH, I’d returned to Baltimore for overnights and a 50% pay cut at 92 STAR. Then the VP of United called me at home one morning after I’d just gotten to sleep ... and asked me how soon I could be in New York to take over as Chief Engineer of their Spanish-contemporary AM. I spoke no Spanish ... knew nobody in Jersey (except for Grandma) ... and had no clue how to run a 5-kW, 3-tower directional array. But I hung in for two months (learning how to say 'Mas musica KDM ... con un ganador cada dos horas') until I decided to chuck the engineering career track and went back to US99. United sold WKDM in the early '90s; currently, it's a Mandarin-Chinese outlet. |
Sometimes you make the wrong move for the right reasons
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KWLN-FM • Osceola, Ark.-Memphis, Tenn. (1987)
Leaving US99 the second time was difficult. I’d developed some close relationships in Chicago ... but the allure of morning drive and Assistant PD responsibilities was too tantalizing. Never mind the fact that I hadn’t actually seen the station. Or that it was temporarily based in Osceola, Ark. (pop. 8,880) until the new Memphis studios were ready. Or that I was only going to make $22,500 a year. Or .... Well, you get the picture. For seven weeks I lived out of a suitcase in the Blytheville, Ark. Holiday Inn, working 14-hour days and lunching for $2.50 at the Osceola Tastee Grill (home of the 16-inch slow-pitch mashed potatoes). I realized I wanted more than tractors and one traffic light; I packed up my truck and moved to Miami. ROCK 98 did move to Memphis ... was sold for $5.2 mil ... changed formats, call letters, cities of license ... and is once again playing rock, as 98.1 The Max, WXMX. |
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WNGS-FM • West Palm Beach, Fla. (1987-88)
After two weeks jobless in Miami, I answered a classified ad for a production director in West Palm, 90 miles to the north. I got the gig (negotiating a $20 a week trade account with the gas station down the street) ... and began nine months of commuting up and down I-95. Three hours after the owner forced me to sign a non-compete clause, I got the call I’d waited for from WAXY-FM in Ft. Lauderdale. Although I was granted a waiver to work weekends at WAXY, I spent the next six months trying to get out of my Lite 92 contract. Once the GM realized I was serious about leaving, I trained my replacement ... and I was off to the overnight shift on the beach! Lite 92 tried jazz for awhile ... then was sold to Fairbanks in the early '90s; they flipped to easy listening and soft AC as WRLX; then to Clear Channel with rhythmic oldies and alternative and jazz, back to soft AC, then Spanish AC as Mia 92.1, and now talk-formatted Real Radio 92.1. |
1988: My first official head shot (retouching and all!)
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WAXY-FM • Ft. Lauderdale-Miami, Fla. (1987-90)
This was radio! A historic company (RKO General), a market icon as PD (Rick Shaw), and an AFTRA-style shop (37.5-hour workweeks). All the crap I’d endured to that point had been worth it. Every WAXY jock had a producer 24 hours a day; 3:00 in the morning ... and there’s a board-op and newscaster sitting across the glass from me! Tugs from stations inside and outside the market allowed me to negotiate a move to mornings as News Director in ‘89. Unfortunately some good things come to a crashing, nauseous, bloody end. Such was the case at WAXY. To pay for its bygone corporate sins, RKO was forced to sell off its properties; in March ‘90, WAXY went to Ackerley Communications. The new owners promptly pointed the nose toward the ground and opened the throttle full. I was reassigned as Music Director ... and afternoon traffic reporter. After six months the GM and PD decided everybody would be happier if I continued my career elsewhere. I couldn’t have agreed more. I’d been in discussions to join Jefferson-Pilot’s easy-listening behemoth, WLYF. So on the afternoon of September 17, 1990, I left the lobby vowing to wipe up Brickell Ave. with WAXY and Ackerley Communications. Ackerley’s 'Mix 105.9' set new ratings lows for the frequency ... and they wound up unloading the station at a fire-sale price to Metroplex. A revival of WAXY 106 in the oldies format failed; today it’s iHeartMedia's classic rock Big 105.9, WBGG. |
'Three Men and a Lady'(!): the Today's Life lineup, 1992
The most beautiful air studio I've ever worked in, 2001
Even after 15 years, that room held up quite well
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WLYF-FM & WLYF-HD2 • Miami, Fla. (1990-2017)
Absolutely the finest station I’ve ever worked for. And for the first quarter-century, the finest organization. I was hired as Music Director and midday host ... and immediately began to wonder if I’d made a colossal mistake. Here was a radio station playing Nat 'King' Cole back-to-back with Genesis and ABBA’s 'Dancing Queen'. Within two weeks, I’d been asked to move to morning drive, where I remained till August ‘92. It was like watching the glaciers melt, but 'Today’s Life' slowly morphed into soft AC 'Lite 101.5' and then in ‘96 emerged as '101.5 LITE FM', riding a crest of ratings success. Along the way I became Assistant PD ... and then Program Director in the summer of ‘93. In mid-1999, my contributions were acknowledged with the title 'Director of Programming and Operations' for LITE FM and its digital brand, LiteMiami.com. After several iterations as an all-holiday-music service and companion to the main channel, WLYF-HD2 was officially launched as a separate brand in January 2015, reprising the 'Today's Life' moniker and the stylish MOR/supersoft AC format. Streisand, Manilow and Diamond, yes; whiplash segues from ABBA to Nat, not so much. Lesson learned. Following a 2006 merger of parent Jefferson-Pilot (an insurance company by trade) with Lincoln Financial, the heritage radio properties continued to operate under relatively luxe conditions -- considering the economic struggles the broadcast industry was facing. Ultimately, Lincoln realized radio wasn't a core discipline ... and by mid-2015 made a deal to offload its final four markets at a bargain price, to Philadelphia-based Entercom Communications (now known as Audacy). Entercom's operating philosophy contrasted greatly with the atmosphere we legacy Jeff-Pilot folks had grown accustomed to. Internal consolidation, increased standardization and management churn made it clear that I wasn't part of the future of LITE FM. As the end of my Lincoln contract appeared on the horizon, we parted ways in December 2017. Everyone should aspire to have a 'career station'. WLYF was mine. As I say elsewhere, it was the product of an unending, unrelenting, passionate quest for Excellence -- the work of a team of diverse individuals sharing common values. What we accomplished together at LITE FM will endure -- unrivaled -- as the most consistently successful adult music radio brand in South Florida history.       |
Getting Delta Country ready to hit the air, March 1992
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WDTL-FM & Delta Radio, Inc. • Cleveland, Miss. (1992-98)
'How would you like to own a radio station?' So began the call from a long-time friend of mine -- the same guy who convinced me to move to Osceola, Ark. -- so that should have been my first red flag. A broadcast engineering consultant had found a dark 3-kW FM and 1-kW AM daytimer in the middle of the Mississippi Delta. He bought it for a few bucks, and was looking for major-market programming and operations folk to earn their ownership through sweat equity. We signed on 'Delta Country' in early ‘92. I handled programming and station imaging from Miami and FedEx’ed the product to Cleveland every week. After two years I had earned my 5% stake ... and the company had added a second FM. By 1998, with my duties increasing in Miami, I chose to offer my share in the company to another partner. In November 2003, the President/GM, Larry Fuss, sold the entire cluster (by then five FM's and an AM) for a delightful multiple. (D'oh!) Update: Under its new ownership, the original Delta Radio cluster fell into disrepair and finally went dark. On Christmas Day 2008, in support of the old bromide 'The more things change ...', Larry moved an FM signal from nearby Clarksdale back into Cleveland -- and is repeating country radio history as 'KIX 92.1'. |
Shiny balls and snowflakes? I just can't help myself
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WFEZ-FM • Miami, Fla. (2018-20)
Sometimes, even if you can beat 'em ... join 'em. Once my non-compete clause expired, I was free to sit behind a microphone again. What better place to do that, than at WLYF's direct competitor, EASY 93.1? By this time, EASY had gained the upper hand in the ratings, occupying WLYF's former musical footprint and commanding many of the brand images and strengths WLYF had worked so hard to build through more than two decades. (How quickly an unmanned ship can drift ...) My original assignment was a couple weekend shows and vacation relief. As time went on, I began working with the Program Director on refining the music-scheduling process, writing and producing EASY's promos, and contributing to the website, social media and other digital platforms. Cox Enterprises spun off its radio and TV properties in late 2019 as CMG/Cox Media Group. In June '20, after a great deal of thought, I elected to leave EASY 93.1 and wrap up 33 years in South Florida radio. |
Aloha! Prepping STAR 94.3 for its sign-on, June 2018
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KHKU-FM • Lihue, Hawaii (2018-22)
Just as I was leaving WLYF, my ownership partner from Mississippi in the '90s threw out the net -- seeking investors in a new standalone station on the northernmost island of Kaua'i. Larry's team spent most of 2018 working to establish a foothold for adult-contemporary STAR 94.3. I was the format architect and day-to-day program director, albeit from 5,000 miles away. In fact, I've only visited the island once, about two weeks before the station actually hit the air. For a short time, I was even hosting the morning show via the Internet. The product was slick ... and despite having a rather minimal local presence, STAR managed to dent several of Kaua'i's established, heritage radio brands almost immediately. As my responsibilities at WFEZ grew, I stepped away from active involvement in STAR 94.3 -- and ultimately sold my share in the company to another partner. I continue to root for the station's success. |
Full circle: Stone wall with brushed-aluminum call letters
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WQRK-FM & WPHZ-FM • Bloomington, Ind. (2018-23)
After (literally) half my life programming WLYF, I was in search of something different ... and it drew me to a couple radio stations in the small town of Bedford, Indiana -- halfway between Indianapolis and Louisville. Here was a level of passion, urgency and commitment I'd missed for several years. A referral put me in touch with the president of the cluster, seeking to overhaul her lagging classic hits station. On April 1, 2018, we relaunched Super Oldies 105.5 with a focused music library, tightened architecture and vibrant imaging. Ultimately, the brand evolved to a rock-centered presentation as 105.5 WQRK. By Thanksgiving, we'd decided to move their active-rock property toward a more saleable target audience with a seasonal flip to Christmas music -- followed by the New Year's debut of a mainstream AC format as 102.5 LITE FM. Today, both stations are more successful than ever. I'd rarely worked with a team exhibiting such spirit. And I always cherished the opportunity to visit -- because the vibe inside that vintage building with the brushed-aluminum call letters out front reminded me of why I wanted to be in broadcasting in the first place. |
And to think we used to do all this with four Tapecaster 700P's
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WideOrbit • San Francisco, Calif. & Dallas, Tex. (2022-date)
Following two years semi-retired -- and my brain beginning to resemble oatmeal -- I got a call from that same long-time friend who'd convinced me to move to Arkansas ... and to buy in to a radio station in the Mississippi Delta. As they say, though, 'Third time's a charm.' It was a welcome invitation to join WideOrbit's radio automation division in a newly-created internal support and customer service role. The neat thing: I could work remotely from Florida. I immediately found WideOrbit full of bright people on their game. And likened it to being one of the sharpest kids in your small rural high school -- then going to college and discovering everybody's just as sharp as (or sharper than) you. This opportunity is allowing me to leverage an extensive background in operations management and my 'passion for the process.' At WideOrbit, I'm back to helping the radio business I love navigate the path ahead. |
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rob [at] robsidney.com
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