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[Jingle] Hello, I'm Bruce Haines, general manager of WBOI.

89.1 FM, Fort Wayne's public radio station.

When we first thought about producing a program about Fort Wayne's broadcast history, we had trouble deciding whether the subject would be of interest to a broad audience or if it was only interesting to us who worked in the business.

So we went out and conducted an unofficial, unscientific poll, and it turns out that there's a whole lot of people out there that consider Bob Sievers their friend, even though they've never met him before.

A lot of people vividly remember Uncle Win showing off a great new toy or Engineer John holding up a picture they had actually colored.

A lot of people have sung along with the "Little Red Barn" for years, and a lot of people would recognize Hilliard Gates's voice anywhere.

Well, that's all we needed to hear.

The hard part was fitting nearly 70 years of history into a one hour program.

So forgive us if we spend most of the hour on the first 50 years.

Television and radio are an important part of our daily lives.

We depend on them for our news, information and entertainment.

We have a room in our home dedicated solely to television viewing.

Our cars all have radios in the beginning.

To own a radio or a TV was prestigious.

Now it's understood.

At the start, with their monstrous tubes and wires, both radios and televisions were marketed as pieces of furniture, electronic furniture.

Now you can wear them on your wrist.

We heard and watched a war being fought live.

We experienced the first man setting foot on the moon thanks to this incredible technology.

technology made possible by a group of talented, enthusiastic, curious people, a lot of them right here in Fort Wayne.

And many of these pioneers you grew up with.

And they're the ones that will tell the story of broadcasting in Fort Wayne.

So sit back, relax in your TV room, and let's visit with some old friends.

A man named Harold Blosser is credited with operating the first radio station in Fort Wayne in the 1920s out of his living room on South Wayne Avenue.

His five watt signal was heard around town and was identified as WHBJ.

During that time, Main Auto Supply, in downtown Fort Wayne not only sold auto parts and accessories, they also sold radio parts and a battery set with three dials and a separate loudspeaker called a day fan.

Salesmen found it difficult to sell the radios because the only stations with regular broadcasts were in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati.

And the reception was poor, especially during the day as a stunt to attract attention to Main Auto Supply.

The store sponsored a broadcast out of Harold Blossers living room on WHBJ.

The program consisted mainly of local musicians and singers, and it was an instant hit.

And that experiment convinced Maine Auto to build a radio station above the store so that whenever a salesman was demonstrating a radio, they could tune them in as opposed to Chicago and get a clear signal and make the sale.

In 1925, Main Auto Supply built WOWO radio the call letters some say stood for “Wayne offers wonderful opportunities.” Meanwhile, Harold Blosser took on some partners with his radio station and not too long after, sold his interest to Chester Keen, who in late 1925 dismantled WHBJ and build a new transmitter broadcasting under the call letters WCWK which in 1928 was sold to Fred Zieg, operator of WOWO.

He changed the call letters of WCWK to WGL, which some say stood for “what God loves.” WOWO and WGL continued to broadcast successfully.

Theyre credited with the first basketball game ever to be broadcast.

In 1936, Westinghouse purchased WOWO.

WGL was eventually sold to Fort Wayne Newspapers.

Westinghouse moved WOWO out of the Main Auto Building into new studios on South Harrison Street.

Well, I signed on WOWO at the Gospel Temple after my paper route.

I carried the Journal Gazette every morning.

I was about 13 or 14 years old.

I signed on WOWO, December 4th, 1932.

And I officially was hired by the station, August 1st, 1936.

I was 17 or 18.

Anyway, and I worked on WOWO from August 1st, 36 to August 1st, 86.

So I was on the station just exactly 50 years.

We had carbon microphones and condenser microphones.

Our carbon microphone was the same kind of a microphone that telephones have had down through the years.

If they weren't sensitive enough, you'd turn the mic off.

You spank them real hard with your hand and shake up the carbon granules and they'd work fine again for a while.

And we had the big condenser microphones where maybe 2 or 300 pounds.

In fact, one night one of my I give a talk my ten most embarrassing moments in radio, and one of those happened to be in church at the gospel table every Sunday night, the first Sunday night of each month.

We'd have we'd broadcast the baptismal service and the floor would raise.

And here was a big vat of water, you know, about four feet deep.

And it was my job in the background of the Jordan River.

It was my job to lower this huge condenser microphone down to the minister who was standing in the water to get the name of the lady being baptized one night with 3000 people in the audience and the organ playing softly.

I lowered the microphone off balance over to the minister and got off balance and fell with the microphone and everything right into the baptistery in front of 3000 people.

And it was a very solemn occasion, became a very humorous occasion, and everybody was laughing.

So I never forgot the night I was baptized and really hadn't planned on being baptized that night.

Every radio station Westinghouse owned had a woman named Jane Weston, who served as a home economist and hosted a cooking show with a live studio audience.

The idea, of course, was to advertise all of the fine appliances Westinghouse made.

WOWO went through several Jane s. Here's another one.

Sally Rand was a famous fan dancer, and she almost danced naked on the stage with feathers, you know.

And I was at that blushing stage anyway.

And so I interviewed Sally Rand.

And at the end of the program, I said, Well, Sally has been a real pleasure seeing you this afternoon.

She said, Bob, you must come over to the Palace Theater tonight and see more of me.

Something else was going on while radio was being established in Fort Wayne.

An Idaho High School student in 1922 showed a teacher his idea for an image dissector.

The beginning of the picture tube.

The boy was Philo Farnsworth, who many consider to be the father of television.

Vladimir Zworykin has been pushed as the father of television and even RCA admitted in 1975.

There's no one father of of anything, really.

It's hard to prove.

But Farnsworth, As far as I'm concerned, invented electronic television.

He had the idea when he was 14, he got the backing in 27, had it patented in 1930 and won the interference case, which is the key element.

But that's been buried in history by RCA and by encyclopedias and by people who write books and don't they don't know the truth.

And the truth is in the basement of Mrs. Farnsworth's home in Salt Lake City, with all the journals and all of the daily letters from 1926 to 1939.

There's a great story Mrs. Farnsworth tells.

It was their wedding night.

And Philo leaned over, whispered in his new bride's ear.

I have another woman in my life.

Her name is Television.

In the late 1920s, Fort Wayne became identified as a leader in the manufacturing of Wire, which attracted many electronics related companies, including Magnavox and the Capehart Company, maker of Fine Phonographs and known for its beautiful cabinetry.

And in 1938, Philo Farnsworth moved his Television and Radio Corporation to Fort Wayne and merged with Capehart.

In 1949, the company became known as International Telephone and Telegraph, or ITT as it's known today.

Eventually, the market just kind of passed them by.

They couldn't produce enough, is how I look at it.

And again, Fort Wayne is not a major metropolitan area and ITT International Telephone and Telegraph bought out the company and went into aerospace and went into military projection.

And I just think television wasn't meant to be in terms of marketing it for Farnsworth, you know, he created it and then he got into the next idea and the next idea, and they had over 400 patents.

Although televisions were manufactured in Fort Wayne in the late thirties, the city didn't see its first TV station until WKJG signed on in 1953.

I left WOWO in 1947 to build a radio station for the publisher of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, and his name was Bill Kunkle, and our station was WKJG.

That's a William Kunkle Journal Gazette.

And unfortunately, he died about nine months after we began operation, and the family had to dispose of the station.

And so it went through a few ownership changes and it settled down about 1950.

The new organization that that resulted from the death of Mr. Kunkle, they filed a petition for a FCC license for television, and that was in 1952.

There was some competition over who was going to get the license.

We had the hearings in Washington, and it was awarded to WKJG-TV, and we put the station on the air November 21st, 1953 only station, and remained the only station for about two and a half years.

And then we had some competition come in by way of Angola, Waterloo, Indiana and Fort Wayne, but they were on frequencies assigned to this area.

And then at then the ABC station followed thereafter.

In September of 1954, WINT signed on the air as the second television station in the city.

The call letters were soon changed to WANE TV.

In 1957 WPTA Channel 21 signed on the air.

This might be corny, but we were most proud of being first.

I mean, you can't believe the feeling I had when I sat at the desk in the studio.

Very austere, but we had live cameras.

I had broadcast the Indiana Purdue Notre Dame football game on our radio station that Saturday afternoon.

We had a private plane at the airport waiting for me.

We got in the air at quarter of five and I was here at about 6:00.

We were going to go on the air at 7:30 and I had written a short opening and I remember the first lines.

I said, Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

These are the first pictures from WKJG television and you are making history.

And we then proceeded to welcome everybody.

We had a live interview during the show.

We had several live interviews.

It went 30 minutes.

And I think there's a milestone, too.

The first commercial came at 8:00 after the half hour opening show, and the first commercial was for Peter Eckrich and Sons and Peter Eckrich and Sons had started advertising with our sports at home in 1940, and they were first in 1953 with television.

And I'm proud to say they're still sponsoring our sports broadcasts between WKJG, WANE, and WPTA.

Viewers could choose from a wealth of programing, much of which was locally produced.

We wanted to be simple.

We wanted to reflect the quality of our community.

We wanted to do as much public service as we could and immediately build a reputation in the community and provide service to the community.

We went into TV and it was logical in those days when we were just all kind of learning together to try new things, and we decided to put my show, which was called Here's Charlie on Television and we did in the afternoon, I think it was a half hour show to begin with.

I brought in outside talent like dance people, people who would dance, people who would sing, groups, school groups, and then as guests in the studio, we had like scouting groups, homemakers, different types of groups at different days of the week.

And it was it was kind of fun because we had an audience reaction plus talent.

Plus I played the piano, plus we sang, we did commercials live and dreamed them up as we went along with jingles.

In those days, you were so flexible, you could do so many things and get by with it.

Today you couldnt.

Well, my first television show was a half hour on a Thursday night on a did a show on corn.

I looked around.

Well, what's the most logical thing for farm broadcaster to talk about in Indiana?

Corn.

And so we did a half hour show on corn.

I just loved it because I really bugged that me, because I began to realize what a showplace a farm is.

A farm is a natural showplace.

There's lots of things, all kinds of things happening.

And the TV camera did a beautiful job showing things off.

And when I got to that show, I was real excited because I realized the possibilities of television and farm and it just kept growing.

And we had some nice facilities for me to use over at 33 because we had the imagined "Little Red Barn".

Had the red barn out there got animals in and just a big showplace, and I had lots of fun.

We had news, live news immediately.

Most of the television stations in markets smaller than Indianapolis did not do live news.

They used to film and things like that.

But do I have news?

We did.

As I mentioned, a lot of sports.

We did not do the Piston basketball games on television.

We did them on our radio station.

We continueD to run our radio station.

We we did a remote from Wolf & Dessauer department store downtown in November of 1953.

We went on the air in November 1953, and we did a remote telecast from the Wolf & Dessauer store between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

And it featured interviews with youngsters by Santa Claus and that kind of stunned the industry to a station or size to have a daily remote from Wolf and Dessauer.

And it it really caught on.

We had a young lady who was Miss Indiana came to work with us, or her father was one of the stockholders in the station.

And she did a show called Carol and Corkie, which was a puppet show.

It was modeled after the very successful show that was done in Chicago on NBC.

And we did a cartoon show with a guy by the name of Engineer John, who was announcer that dressed up as an engineer and a train.

And he ran the cartoons out of the out of the engine of this train.

And we did a lot of live things early.

And and I think it was an excellent thing.

So all while I was at WINT, one of the biggest events that's ever been done by any TV station, it's never been done before that I know will never be done again.

It's too bad this didn't go nati we were just a little station up in Waterloo, because remember, we had offices in the top, the Lincoln Tower.

We had studios at Trailways garage in Waterloo, Indiana, and the engineers and the transmitter were on a farm south of Auburn.

So we're all strung out and but this thing really should have gone national.

This was really big when Jack Powell played Cactus Jack at that time.

No later became famous for Downstate, but he played Cactus Jack at that particular time.

I was a cowboy, played cartoons, and then he would talk to the kids and he would do commercials.

Well, this one day and this big thing that they pulled over says, I think we had all of two cameras.

They rolled one of them out onto the sidewalks of Waterloo and headed toward the train tracks because the train tracks were pretty close there.

Then he would give a running play to the guys outside and he'd say, Well, is the train coming in yet?

Or if not, we'll go back to the cartoons and Jack would go back and forth to them outside.

Finally, the call came.

They said, We hear a whistle, we hear the train coming.

And Jack said, We'll cut, cut the cartoon.

We'll go back outside.

And actually, this is true because I saw this happen.

They actually got the train going to Waterloo.

It went that, you know, I think back on that and how so that is.

But they did it.

And I'll tell you back then, I guess people were probably just happy if they could get a signal and there wasn't any snow at it.

So it didn't make too much difference, but they got there anyway.

That's how the train and Jack later had a thing called Dance Date, the same as a national thing.

All of this was a local thing or the local kids came and he had that for for a long, long time ever.

I still get lots of comments.

I went off there quite a few of that go to the I guess the biggest thing that the goat, the people liked the goat was that at the end of my show I read the weather and then hand the paper to the goat in the way she would eat It is what kind of weather we were going to have it.

She would eat it or how she attacked the weather was whether she believed it or not.

But it was a that was some of the exciting things with Goat.

I really came in at the end of of the kind of golden era of live television here where all the commercials were.

We were still doing live commercials in the 6:00 news when I came out.

We were kind of on the tail end of it.

And that course that was just fraught for all sorts of problems.

And I don't know if people have recounted these stories to you.

Well, I'm third hand here, but there's a wonderful story that Bill Foster tells where he was.

He did most of the commercials, live commercials here and and the one I always liked the best was he had some Formica top table that one of the virtues of it was stain proof.

And he did spill alcoholic beverages on it and all sorts things wouldn't stain and it kind of demonstrated its durability.

They had this deal where they sprinkle a little lighter fluid on it and would light it and it would burn and wipe it off and there'd be no no mark on it.

Well, of course it's going to be live.

So they practice it and practice it about three times and everything went well.

But when he was wiping it off, he always would take the same cloth and wipe it up.

And then.

Then he did it on the air.

Well, everything went fine till he went to wipe it.

And that cloth had gotten so saturated in the practices with the lighter fluid that it just and he oh my gosh, call the fire department and people all over town called the fire department.

And I mean, this is a whole lot of TV.

We just don't see that anymore.

The first pictures on our newscast in television in 1953 were Polaroid pictures, believe it or not.

And I remember going down to a photographic store in downtown Fort Wayne, Howards, that was the leading place in those days.

And the Howards were good friends of mine.

And I bought a Bowlex camera, a film camera.

And we had one film camera here for probably two years before we ever got two or three more.

We had our own film processing unit here.

You would have to go out, shoot the film, bring it back and process it, edit it and put it on the air with us today it's almost instantaneous.

And of course you have all the live facilities you have there outside of the building.

In those days, as I wish we could look at a newscast now, there are just none are in existence.

We didn't have taping and all that.

And I probably would be shocked because we thought we were doing a good job.

And I and I think we were is just the state of the art at that time compared to what we do now and the production values that we that are inherent in what we're doing.

It was very primitive.

We had one cameraman in those days and I'm talking about mid-sixties.

We shot film on a negative film.

It was a little processor and it came out negative.

So when you screen the film of what you're going to use, the black was white and the white was black.

Like you're looking at a snapshot negative, very hard, although you got used to it.

And then we would just reverse the polarity on the air.

But you know, I think we shot things with yo-yoed back and forth and there was a great expense involved in film.

So you were very measured as opposed to what we're doing on tape now.

You can shoot miles of tape and reuse it.

The film, it was a budget item, so you didn't want to go too much in a go, cut a news conference.

You want to not not you want to be prudent on what you're going to get.

And consequently, you weren't always getting the best stuff, but a real budget problem, things like that made it pretty primitive.

We used Polaroid pictures for spot news at night that I'd go out and shoot and then bring them back.

And that was our news coverage at night.

Wasnt very good was it?

Although, you know, if you want to look at it purely as news value, it was there and it wasn't all glitz stuff.

Not to say what we do is bad now, but when when everyone went home in the evening, I was alone at night, I was it.

And in fact, this will be hard for you to believe the way I was hired in.

I also had to work one weekend night and I did news, weather and sports.

I was it.

It was 20 minutes initially and then a half hour.

But everything.

Now we have people working all day and everything.

I'm sure it wasn't very good.

We had to.

It was just pretty primitive in lots of ways.

We had to we only had one camera in the studio to use money saving there.

We were just getting by with one cameraperson and so we'd have to pre-tape some some scores off a board.

We put them up with a little magnetic device and then we'd videotape them and then I'd try to keep up with them as they panned down and all this thing.

We had no character generator.

And the things that we're so used to today.

So it was pretty primitive and but I don't apologize for it really, in lots of ways, because you, you know, we were delivering a service and it and it probably was more newsy than entertainment.

And I don't know that that was all bad.

In the sixties and seventies, Ann Colone treated homemakers to entertainment and information.

Every weekday at noon on WANE TV, Jane Weston, she wasn't.

Well when they first talked to me about it.

I said to them, I said, You know, I really don't know whether you've got the right person because I am not a home economist.

I like variety.

I you know, it's just not going to be a cooking show or everything that happens in a home will be on.

I'm just not that I understand these features are important, but not solely that.

So they said, No, we want you to do your own thing.

And I said, Well, okay.

And the first day I started, the individual who had been doing was rather disturbed, and I really can't blame her.

She wasn't told much of anything and she left.

So that very first day I went on the air not knowing what was going on, where the whole what, where the camera was, anything about lighting.

I was comfortable doing the interview, but that was about it.

And that was a few years ago.

When you were producing a program five days a week.

I to my way of thinking, you had to have variety and you had to get involved with the community and you had to help as many people as you possibly could.

But still trying to maintain the entertaining aspects of education with entertainment.

I don't I don't think you can beat it.

I really don't think you learn faster, You enjoy it more.

And that's what I attempted to do through the years, plus the celebrities and so forth and so on.

I loved when something happened that wasn't supposed to happen.

At the time it was a little hairy, but afterwards kind of funny, enjoyable.

That's what live television was all about.

Oh, one was at Christmas time and we had a boys choir on singing Christmas carols.

And just as the camera got too close, this one little boy, he decided he was going to give up his lunch.

And it was pretty colorful to say, Always poor little kid.

But anyway, afterwards, a funny at the time it really wasn't at all.

And then, you know, you always have the chimpanzees and the orangutan.

And once there were a couple of chimps on and I was in front of a side area and we were sitting on a stool high stool, I was sitting there and one of the chimps was sitting on the stool next to me.

The other was on the floor and his name was Elvis.

And that's all I can remember, except that Elvis got so jealous of my getting a little close to the other chimp on the stool that he pulled my cord and I went down on the floor.

The other chimp went down on the floor and it was just a headache.

But it was funny.

It was funny.

And of course, I spilled coffee on the desk and get it all over and things of that nature.

But that was fun.

I enjoyed.

Yeah.

As the television craze grew, radio evolved and Fort Wayne was no longer a city with just three radio stations.

The craze of television was so fantastic that when you broadcast on radio, when I would do my, my, my radio show, you wondered if we had anybody out there listening at all.

You know, you just actually felt like you were just sitting there broadcasting to dead air because you just knew.

All I knew my family was sitting at home watching that little that little screen.

So it took time for that transition to take place.

It's a funny thing, when I was at WGL, well, I really wanted to get in and the television, you know, I wanted to sell television, but I also thought at the time I thought, well, now, hey, the second television station is coming in to Fort Wayne.

What's going to happen to radio?

Well, that's how dumb I was, because, you know what's happened to radio.

We've got a lot more stations today than we had back then.

And and radio has just grown, you know, it didn't hurt.

And so when I started here, all three FM stations were playing Mantovani, you know, elevator music.

None of them were playing rock.

And you can see how that's drastically changed.

So really, Fort Wayne has grown up.

Now it's in radio.

In my opinion, this will be controversial, but in my opinion it's always been a couple of years behind the big cities.

As I say, when I got here in 73, all three of our FM stations were playing what we call canned elevator music.

Mantovani, Percy Faith, you know, just orchestra music that that's easy listening.

It's nice in an office, you know, in the background, but advertisers won't get near it because nobody listens to the commercial hits just on in the background.

It's soothing, you know?

Now you have rock and roll on FM, you know, and things have drastically changed and the number of stations has tripled.

So things have really changed here in the last ten years.

We...LYV and WOWO are probably two prominent stations in the market at that time.

It was kind of a constant battle for, for the ratings.

We were very powerful, influential.

Unfortunately, we didn't have a lot of power, so at night it was hard to pick us up on the south side of town.

Even so, that was one of our real really good because we reduced power at sunset and that was one of our real problems back then.

And we were a pipsqueak.

WOWO had no competition, none whatsoever.

Over the years, at least in the sixties, WGL had a fellow by the name of Al Russell.

I think they played top 40 music over there and had about the time I came and maybe still was there for a while in the in the mid sixties and I'm sure he did well.

And if you talk to people now that remembered him, they'd say, sure, they listened to him, but that was the only outlet that they had for top 40 at that time.

Speaking of anybody, because WOWO.

Although they played a lot of top 40 music, still kind of middle of the road and had strong numbers, but really didn't have anybody that really gave them a lot of competition.

Well, we come on with that tight top 40 format on WLYV and gave them a run for the money and it was a David and Goliath situation.

I mean, here they are, 50,000.

WOWO.

Been in town forever.

Here's WLYV, small wattage upstart radio station and I think we caught WOWO off guard really, to be honest about it, because nobody took a serious they didn't take a serious and if you heard the station and the signal obviously it was understandable why they wouldn't.

But in 1969 and the April May ARB they took a serious because we beat them and I think it was one of the really great things that ever happened in radio in this city and something that got national attention through Billboard, a number of the other broadcast magazines and what have you, because here's this little station that did not only happened once because, you know, when you knock the giant down, you don't necessarily kill him.

You know, it's the old you may have won the battle, but not the war.

And they came back and turn things on and turn it around a little bit.

And then for the time being gained ground and did well.

We were never overall number one again, although on some dayparts we were number one.

But and of course shortly after that then came WMEE in 1971.

And you know what happens?

It fragments the market a little bit.

You have another top 40 station.

So it not only creates a little more competition, but you're getting numbers from what WLYV had some numbers from WOWO and there you are.

And that leads it up to the way it is now, where there's just so many radio stations that it's just so competitive here.

It's not two or three stations anymore.

It's a lot of stations and a lot of good stations.

We had a guy come in, got the fact Jay Walker and I were talking about this the other day.

We just reminded each other about a fellow that had come in and was hired to work the night shift.

Was hired off a resume and off a tape, and he came in for an interview.

Nice fella.

Okay, we'll start tonight, 8:00, We'll see you in the station, 8:00 you do your show.

Great.

Fired up.

Looking forward to working here.

And he his earphones with his name on them in the control room to come back and work at 8:00.

The guy never showed up.

To this day, we don't have a clue where the fella is.

When that station moved from the Anthony Wayne Bank building up to Maplecrest, they probably took those headsets with him, but that was not infrequent.

That kind of I mean, it's a migratory sort of transitory business, you know, sort of reasonably well paid hobos that drift in and out of markets and stay for a year or six months or even a week and then go off somewhere else.

There are a lot of people that came in and out of this market just that way.

By being on WOWO early in the morning when the radio waves skip out farther, I would have missionaries who were born and raised up here in Elkhart would hear me every morning in Africa loud and clear, and I would get about 50 letters every winter up until I just retired a few years ago from farmers in Norway and Sweden.

And they didn't tune in for me.

But WOWO was the only stateside station they got consistently over there.

They tuned in to get the price of corn and soybeans in the morning.

One day a guy called from Miami, he said, Ron, you'll never guess where I'm listening in Boca Raton or it was Boca Raton.

And I said, Well, I'm glad you're called.

I'm honored that you're listening all the way down there in Florida.

So, by the way, I'm answering a postcard to a guy in Sweden right now.

I followed Jack Underwood's show for 12 years every day.

And, you know, as you might expect, when when you know, when you see a person every day, six days a week for 12 years, you get to know a lot about each other's families and so forth.

And as far as Bob Sievers was concerned, before he retired, I worked with Bob for about about 14 years.

All in all, on an everyday basis.

When I came to town here, when I first came to town at 22 years old, I thought, Well, these guys aren't going to teach me anything about rock and roll being a rock and roll disc jockey.

And little did I realize when I came to town at 22 years old that these guys were the guys who were doing it right.

I was the guy who wasn't doing it right.

And I used to wonder how it was that that that this radio station had those big ratings when they didn't seem to play just the right rock and roll songs at just the right time, followed by just the right jingles and just the right.

And I never realized that what people want to hear on the radio is what those guys were doing and what those guys are doing as being real people.

They are being an actor or a plastic person who isn't what he or she says they are.

When Bob Sievers was emotional, you could hear it in his voice.

I mean, if something touched him, you could tell on the air.

And the same with Jack Underwood.

You know, if if he was honestly moved by something, you could tell either way, whether it was humorous or not.

And, you know, the listeners develop the relationship with those people right through the airwaves because they heard exactly who they were and they were just the person next door, quite literally.

And so when I realized that, I started thinking, you know, these guys have got something on the ball here.

I don't have to be somebody who I think sounds good.

All I have to do is be me.

And if the audience likes me, then I got it made.

If they don't, then I guess I ought to find another business to be in.

So that's what I learned from from those two guys who, you know, are pros in the business bar none.

I think with Bob Sievers, first of all, you could learn over and above anything else, Bob was a nice man, a good guy, been around for a long time.

Bob worked hard, put in a lot of time.

You know, Bob just didn't show up 5 minutes before we went on the air and would leave the radio station 5 minutes after Bob was dedicated to this business.

And I think if anybody ever had a role model in radio, Bob Sievers would be the guy that you would want to you would want to follow in his footsteps.

I mean, idea of the guy made an impression on me.

But I listen to Bob, you know, I think Bob would enjoy hearing this when I when I was growing up in Ohio.

I listen to Bob do the countdown every Saturday morning.

And, you know, I was getting into radio at the time, thought, gee, I kind of like to do this.

And I'm listening to him do the countdown.

Always before I ever met him, he just came on as a pretty nice, caring kind of guy And that's the way it was.

And it was his work effort, his work ethics and all the contributions he made to radio.

And Bob, I don't think sometimes realizes what he did, but but just him being there was a contribution to this business.

In terms of radio, I have to tell you that one of the best radio stations in this country back in that period is WOWO.

I grew up in upstate New York and there were a couple of radio stations as I developed this interest in being in broadcasting that I listened to and WOW was one of them, I mean, I remember Bob Sievers, I remember all of those guys, John Cigna you know, all of those folks.

Don Chevillet All the names go on.

And those those were there.

Oh, they were awfully good at what they did.

They had a format that allowed them to create and build and not just play music one after another.

They could talk a little bit and, you know, have a little fun and play some games and do some do some things.

And it was really, really neat.

Virtually anybody at war with that time period is memorable.

Bob Sievers, a legend, You know, Jay Gould and Bob Chase and Dugan Fry and Art Saltsberg and all of those folks, just like the camera doesn't lie.

Neither does the microphone.

And it'll come through.

If you're sincere about it, it'll come through and it'll work for you.

The great example is Bob Sievers, who everybody considers their grandfather a family member.

You know, he's honest and he's dependable and credible, and those are the key words in it.

And then, of course, all the tradition gathers around that, and I hope he goes on forever.

I really do.

If a little elderly lady called me and maybe she lived alone and had no children and her only dog was missing, well, this would be like her child, you know?

And the boss didn't want me to put lost dog announcers on the air.

But I thought I couldn't live with myself if I couldn't at least drop a little hint.

So finally, one program director said, No more dog announcements.

And here I got another one of these calls.

And I said, You know, folks, as of today, I can no longer use a dog announcement, cat announcement on the air and here's a little elderly lady who lives on the south side of Fort Wayne.

She's lost a little brown dog, but I can't talk about it.

But I was so I said, I'm going to stuff her dog, her telephone number of my search party.

And if any of you see this dog, why you call me when I get off the air and Jay Gould would kid me and come to work in the morning.

I said, Well, Sievers, have you got any cats or dogs stuffed in your shirt pocket this morning?

But, you know, when you think of it, how much bigger a favor can you do for somebody than to help find their dog or their pet or whoever that's gotten away?

And one day I heard Bob Sievers.

I was driving in here on Saturday morning to go on the air after him, and I heard him say, and our friends, there's a little lost dog in South Fort Wayne on Calhoun Street that needs medication and and gosh, they can't find him.

And everybody's out looking.

And when I get off the air here in 20 minutes, I'm going to get out and help look.

And and I remember that comment because I thought, now there's a real guy.

He doesn't care what it sounds like.

He's going to do what he thinks is right.

A year later, a lady said to me, she said, well, I never used to listen to Bob Sievers.

She said, But I do now.

And I said, Why?

She says, Well, by accident I was running across your station on a Saturday morning.

I heard him say he was going to go down and help look for a lost dog.

I like dogs so much.

I thought, that's the guy I want to listen to.

And that was what made that lady listen.

And he had little things like that that were really him that touched everybody, whether it was a chili supper or a lost dog.

I mean, you know, he communicated directly 1 to 1 of the people.

I had a lady one time me and say, Bob, and she lived the 2000 block of Broadway here in Fort Wayne.

She said, I hear you every day in my gas stove.

And I thought, she hears me in her gas stove.

So I said, Well, I'll stop out on the way home.

So I went out, got my air down to the burner, and sure enough, I could hear the thing playing music.

Then I began to wonder if I was all right.

And at one time later, the farmer who had a big farm barn right near our big transmitter out by Roanoke.

WOWO.

He complained that his tin roof was playing WOWO so loud at night that it was causing his cows to lose milk production.

And WOWO, Westinghouse tore off his tin roof and put on a wooden shingle roof.

So his his roof wouldn't play music.

I don't I don't know of another station that I've ever worked at.

Certainly.

This is my 13th one by the way.

I don't know of another station that I've ever worked at where where they all grind the place to a to a seeming halt to, you know, to to help somebody out And the station does it.

It may not sound like it.

I guess the beauty part of it is that is that you want to be able to do that kind of stuff without making it sound like that, because obviously you can't, you know, bring a company to a standstill for one or two individual people.

But if you can figure out a way to do it without letting anybody else know you're doing it, you know, for example, somebody says, yeah, I'm calling long distance and I and I have to have the weather forecast for Indianapolis.

And I don't have you know, I put my last quarter in the phone and I hang up.

Listen, the radio, I'll get it for you.

And then and what you do then, rather than saying I got a guy who's on his last quarter and and he could listen on the phone, he just go on and say, say here's WOWO weather, you know 33 outdoor meteorologist Greg Shoup says and you give the forecast for him and you say, by the way, if you happen to be heading to Indianapolis, it's going to be sunny down there with a high of 43 and you've done that person a favor.

So those are the things we try to do here with everybody who works here as a human being.

Everybody who's on the air is a human being.

And we've all learned through, you know, through the people that we've been trained by over the years to to take the skill that we've learned as being a real person on the radio and pass it on a fellow who was so close to me and I still see every Wednesday was Jack Underwood.

I was on the air from five till nine or ten, and Jack will be on the air, say, from ten till three followed me and Jack has Alzheimer's disease.

It's no secret there.

He does.

And believe me, I can almost consider myself a specialist in seeing what Alzheimer's does.

But Jack and I for years would go out every Wednesday to lunch, and his wife, Pat, and my wife would go out to lunch to a different restaurant and so when Jack became so ill that we couldn't go to dinner anymore, I still go out to the nursing home to see him.

But his voice, his ability, ability to adlib and to M.C., it just doesn't seem possible to me that he's incapacitated now.

But certainly a wonderful guy.

And and I want to tell the radio audience and, you know, his son Chris, is on the air all night long now from midnight to 5:30.

And Chris told me the other day would be the happiest thing in his life if his father just knew that he was on the air.

So every Wednesday when I go out to see Jack, I get down to his ear and and tell him that Chris Underwood is on the air.

I don't know if it gets through or not, but it's just shocking what tricks life plays.

And to see a man like like Jack that going through what he is.

But certainly I have the greatest respect for him.

And the other one is Jay Gould, who came as our farm director and the old songsmith.

And I have all kinds of memories with Jay at Belle Lea Acres, how he built his place out there.

And my father died when I was a little boy, nine years old, and I was about 17 when Jay came to work at World War II.

I'd worked there several years before he came, but through the years he has been my teacher.

He would say, Sievers, don't use your voice.

17.

Be yourself.

I would try to say it now.

The style, the music.

And you know, he'd say, Knock that off and be yourself.

So Jay was my teacher.

But in addition to being my teacher down through the years, Jay was also like my father because I didn't have a father.

And I would go to him with any problems I had.

And so I gave a great deal of my credit to Jay Gould.

In 1975, our own WFWA TV 39 went on the air, repeating the signal of the PBS station in Bowling Green, Ohio.

And in 1977, WFFT, an independent TV station, signed on the air.

The Independent was a brand new.

It had been on for years in other markets.

But for Fort Wayne, this was a big event.

There had not been a new station in the market in over 20 years.

The affiliates had been on.

This was a real challenge for the market and at that time cable penetration was 5.7% with Citizens cable.

So there was a big void in the market at that time for another choice.

That's what WFFT offered and Ontario Corporation out of Muncie put the building together and built it in about four months on Hilligas Road, and we signed on on December 21st of 1977 with an independent station.

And it was exciting.

The reaction was very positive.

You know, it was funny because as you know, here on Hilligas Road, we have a tower that has these blinking strobe lights.

They're very bright and they really flash bright.

And on a dusk evening when it's very early in the evening, especially if there's a fog cover when those lights come on, it sort of illuminates the whole landscape.

It's almost like a UFO or something.

You know, I'll never forget one of the first nights when we signed the tower rods and in fact, the night we turn on the power, we had calls to the county sheriff into the city, thinking that they had that there was some UFO in the sky because the whole city was just flashing, because these strobe lights were so powerful.

And it was just a very unusual sight for the people of Fort Wayne.

Through the years, the weather sets have changed.

We've graduated.

When I first started doing whether it was a magic marker and Plexiglas a flexible board and you just draw on that, the budget was like, maybe, you know, how many magic markers can you use in a year?

So and then we graduated to the sliding magnetic boards and went through that phase.

And then finally we've got the computer ized type of imagery and presentation, which is much better, of course, much better.

And I think I was one of the first in Fort Wayne to do Chroma Key as far as weather was concerned.

Back we use the old satellite pictures for chroma cane and go from one side of the room to the other side of the room.

It was fun.

It was fun.

I think, you know, if if you're in on the ground floor of anything and as time evolves, the earlier days are always much more fun because technology takes over after a while.

I think anybody who hasn't done radio has done themselves a grave disservice because what that is taught me most of all is how to work quickly.

We have a lot of people now in this market that have never worked radio, and I think they they're going to self-report.

They're going to laugh at me and say, what's a 42 year old geezer know about this?

But the thing is, we have enough people who are in radio who can appreciate what I'm saying is that radio is instantaneous.

You have to have that done hour by hour, not just six and 11.

And it taught me how to work fast and it taught me how to get it right, get it quick, get it done.

And I think that's the only way, if anybody's ever getting into this business and that's the way to go.

And also, I would not poopoo anybody only from newspapers into this business.

I think that's another place where you get to do a lot more in-depth looking into your story than you get with time in TV.

TV, you just don't get a lot of time to do things.

And there is a superficial thing that is that is tagged to it and we try to get away from that, but you can't get away from it all the other, you know, I don't think any of us had the realization it wouldn't get that big.

I honestly don't.

When you think of audience numbers and actually the power it can render in education, in in entertainment in many fields, and I didn't think any of us thought it would be that much, but it has.

And thankfully it has been wonderful.

Well, I'm the luckiest guy in the world.

I mean, the things I've been able to do and people have let me do and given us the opportunity of doing an it's been an incredible time.

I I'm awed by it.

Every time I think about it.

I look around this office and see something that reminds me, you something good.

I just can't believe that all this has happened.

I have a reputation of saying that those good old days were a lot more fun than they than they are today.

It seems like they were.

I'm sure we had frustrations and problems and and we wondered at times whether it was fun.

But as I look back on it, I really think it was a little more folksy, a little more relaxed then than it is today with all of the electronic marvels that exist in this in this business.

In broadcasting, you really, as you know, you enjoy what you're doing.

You know, it's it's a lot of fun.

I look forward to it every day and I'll keep doing it til I drop.

Bob Sievers is still with us.

He's in his seventies now, and you know, it's still going strong.

If you enjoy your work, it's fun.

It isn't work.

And I can't imagine anything worse than going through life.

And and not really enjoying what you're doing.

Every once in a while.

I think back and I've been in this industry now for almost 30 years, 20 some years, it's hard to believe I've wasted all that time.

How much fun can one person in?

There's so many wonderful stories and people that contributed to Fort Wayne's broadcast history.

We've only scratched the surface since the mid seventies.

Several new radio stations have signed on the air, including public radio station WBNI and a couple of old radio stations have changed their call letters and we've had a new TV station come and go and come back again, which sounds like another documentary to make the broadcast stations in this community have enriched our lives and continue to improve the quality of life in Fort Wayne.

But conversely, it's the people of this community, people like you, that support us, encourage us, listen to us, watch us On behalf of all the radio and television stations in Fort Wayne.

We thank you.

I'm Bruce Haines.

Years ago, when I was a kid, there was an elderly lady who was a movie actress.

Her name was Marie Dressler and Frank's Dry Goods Store had a special that particular week on Marie Dressler dresses.

And my copy said, these Marie Dressler dresses are designed for middle aged ladies with enlarged hips and busts.

And here's Bob Wilson, our newscaster, over in the corner of the studio going like this.

You know, And I talk about the large hips and bust.

I broke up in the left all the way through it and Ward Durell, iur manager called up and was going to fire me right now for laughing on the air.

And he said, Well, if I. I won't fire you.

If I dock you two weeks salary will help to keep you from laughing.

The next time I said, Well, it'll go a long way toward it.

I know that.

So anyway, the next day, Mr. Frank of Frank's Dry Goods store came over to.

What did Bob Sievers do to our announcement last?

Mr. Durell apologized and he said, Well, don't apologize.

He said The ladies all came in to buy the dresses Bob Sievers laughed about and we sold out more dresses than any day in the history of the store.

But I still lost my two weeks salary.

I just dreamed up a really swell idea for a Christmas present.

Probably the ladies could work this out mighty well.

Now, here's what you do.

You stop in at Kramer Furniture, just a half block north of the courthouse in Fort Wayne, and then tell Fred and Irene that you want a Wolf Silcon mattress delivered.

Prices start as low as $39.50.

That's the Wolf Silkon Lura mattress.

And then there's the new wolf silk on at $49.50.

That's the Wolf Silcon Neda at $59.50.

And for extra support in your mattress, you might want the Wolf Selection Deluxe at $69.50.

But friends, whichever you choose, you know, it will be good.

And last four years without saying tell Fred what when you want it delivered and then come Christmas.

Now Dad has no present under the tree.

And you, Mom, you just keep mum.

Then you trundle off to bed and whammo.

Dad will suddenly wake up to the fact that.

That you did get him a present.

Wow.

Oh, this Rod Ross.

I tell you.

Well, anyway, folks that will fall asleep so quickly that he won't even thank you for the present to make.

But it is a wonderful gift, so be sure.

Oh, I don't know.

There must be an easier way to make a living.

Folks, when you go into Fred and Irene, you tell them what you said in Georgia.

Don't you dare just to have block north of the courthouse in downtown Fort Wayne.

It's 18 past high noon here at WOWO and gals, you see, you haven't a thing to wear well actually At the House of Eve in North Manchester, some of their lingerie items on special sale are next to nothing, both in weight and in price.

Well, you just listen to this.

Let me tell you about Eve's leaves.

Now, these are bikini panties that were a dollar, but now they're two pairs for $1.

Now, these are the panties you can toss or wash. You can wear a pair or carry a spare.

It makes no difference.

They're made of two made of 2.5 x, You're going to believe.

Are you there?

Sure.

I read your face.

I know that.

Tough act to follow.

I tell you that the act is moving yet chairs on the floor.

Hang on just a second.

No, we'll be right with you.

We want to find out about the weather.

But in the meantime, where was I was talking to you about Eve's leaves.

What?

Jake cut that off.

Okay, let me simmer down here because you get two pairs for a dollar at the House of Eve, and that ain't all.

I'll tell you about it later.

Oh, dear.

Jay, they're having a sale.

This is what it amounts to.

And there's two pairs for the price of one.

And you buy one item at the regular price that includes bras and girdles and slips and half slips and fold slips and jewelry.

And you get another one for a dollar.

And on top of that, you get $7 scarves for $2 now and 5 to $10 blouses just, $2 each and dresses are greatly reduced and 5 to $14 sweaters are just $2.

Slacks are half price.

Now, this special sale is this week only at the House of Eve at 127 East Main Street, North Manchester, Indiana.

Be sure you stop in.

You know that takes a steamer.

I'm out of here, you know.

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The people of Essex invite you to join them in the support of quality television.