April 11, 1977 column: Turmoil at WBUF-FM

 

The fate of progressive album rock radio was a burning issue among Buffalo’s serious music lovers in the mid 1970s. For years hopes had centered on WYSL-FM/WPHD-FM and WGRQ-FM. By 1977, though, both those stations had taken a more commercial route and there was a new champion for new music – WBUF-FM. But now it was about to sell out, too.

 April 11, 1977

Waves of Change Are in the Air

For WBUF and Hard-Rock Format

           It got so that program director Cal Brady wouldn’t answer the question when callers asked if on the Town Crier, WBUF-FM’s 10 a.m. weekday talk show.

          “They wanted to know if we’re going Top 40,” he says. “I just hung up on them.”

          Brady ducked it because he doesn’t know the answer. Nobody does. The situation, as they say, is fluid.

          This reporter sought to get to the bottom of what’s provoking all those calls to Brady – namely, the impending sale of WBUF.

* * *

WBUF’s FATE depends on two variables. The first is ratings.

          In two years of progressive rock, WBUF has cultivated a loyal audience of nearly 60,000 according to the most recent Arbitron (ARB) survey.

          ARB found that WBUF has more 18-to-35-year-old male listeners per average quarter hour than any other station in town, with only WKBW topping it from 6 to 10 a.m. and 3 to 7 p.m.

          Where WBUF rates weakly, ARB reports, is with women. Women account for 17,000 of the listeners, but they tune in and out a lot, the survey indicates. Average listenership between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. is 4,000 men and 1,000 women, says the ARB.

          To round out its ratings, Brady believes that WBUF should soften the more intimidating aspects of progressive rock and move closer to the middle of the road, where the audience is.

* * *

THE OTHER variable is more complicated. It involves two federal agencies – the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

          Two proceedings started by the announcers at WBUF came before the NLRB in its West Huron Street offices last Wednesday.

          One involved announcer and salesman Bob Allen, the mercurial proprietor of the Town Crier show until his dismissal March 23.

          Allen staged a six-month campaign in late 1974 and early 1975 to convince owner Al Wertheimer to scrap Muzak and get into an FM album format.

          Allen and another ex-announcer, Jeff Jensen, have filed charges of unfair labor practices against Wertheimer because of their dismissals.

          The union – the National Association of Broadcasting Employees and Technicians (NABET) – met with the NLRB and Wertheimer Wednesday.

* * *

WBUF EMPLOYEES have asked NABET to become their bargaining agent and have requested a representation vote. The NLRB has reserved decision on who should cast ballots and when the vote will be held.

          Decision is reserved in the cases of Allen and Jensen also.

          The other scenario the announcers set in motion is unfolding in the offices of the FCC’s Transfer Branch in Washington, D.C.

          The result of three months of public service announcements on WBUF on how to protest the sale have generated a lot of reading for the FCC attorney reviewing WBUF’s transfer from Wertheimer’s Functional Broadcasting Division of Amalgamated Music Enterprises to Robert C. Liggett’s Tri-Media Inc. of Bay City, Mich.

          FCC attorney Stuart Bedell says there appears to be about 1,100 letters and about 4,000 signatures on petitions, but he’s not certain how it will affect the timing of the sale.

* * *

“DEPENDING ON what we find, it probably won’t be slowed up to any great extent,” Bedell reckons. “At worst, we’ll designate the application for a hearing. Again, it varies. A lot of times it depends on how complete the application is.”

          Normal processing time is 60 to 90 days, which would mean a turnover by July. Some applications, Bedell reports, are delayed as long as six months, however.

          Prospective owner Liggett wants a free hand to reorganize the station, but feels he can live with a union if NABET wins the NLRB election.

          Liggett, a 34-year-old attorney and owner of five other radio stations in Michigan, looks at WBUF in investment terms. He says he will seek local stockholders.

          Genial over the phone from his East Lansing, Mich., home, he says only a highly restrictive union contract would sour him on the deal.

* * *

THOUGH HE belonged to another broadcast union – AFTRA – when he worked at Detroit’s WJR (his father was an AFTRA organizer), Liggett says he would prefer a non-union operation.

          “My other stations were built from nothing into something,” he says. “I feel if people take a positive attitude and give something, then they’ll get something in return.

          “I don’t go into anything without expecting to be big at it,” he continues. “I want to see the station be a major factor in the city and have people desire to listen to it. But it seems like so many people have been burned by other people, they don’t give me a chance.”

          Liggett sees WBUF remaining a stepping stone for announcers on their way up. He intends to modernize the station’s balky transmitter and install fresh electronics. After that, he says, he’ll look at programming. He notes that there are three formats, successful elsewhere, that aren’t used her.

* * *

SO WHAT happens to WBUF? New ownership by July or so, though complications could drag it out until Christmas or possibly scotch the deal.

          As for format, look for more melodies and fewer far-out instrumentals, at least until the first rating period after the sale (probably the fall ratings).

          Free-form will reign at night, but program director Brady would like to structure the days to forge a bigger audience.

          As a result, WBUF is likely to evolve into a brighter, poppier, album-oriented sound this summer, perhaps along the lines of the New York City area’s album-oriented successes – WNEW-FM and WLIR-FM. Whatever the outcome, progressive rock is on probation for the next six to 12 months.

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Cal Brady.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: By June 1977, Cal Brady had a classified ad in Broadcasting magazine looking for a job as a production or operations director in “a nice pleasant warm community.” Like so many Buffalonians in music in that era, he eventually found his way to L.A. By the early 2000s, he had founded CalComm Stations Oregon, which operated KQCB 94.9 FM in Seaside, Ore.

          Brady maintained homes in L.A. and Astoria, Ore., and his obituary in 2013 noted: “After the Great Coastal Gale of 2007, he took it upon himself to get the station up and running … He went out and bought a generator and provided information to the community when no one else could.”

          As for Bob Allen, the prickly provocateur who converted WBUF to album rock and then set off the uproar over its sale, he went on to transform two other stations to the freeform format – a Grand Island-based signal which became WZIR-FM 98.5 and WUWU-FM 107.7. He was kicked out of both of them, as well.

          He also went West, to Colorado, where his fondness for teenage boys got him into trouble with the law. He died sometime in the 1990s.

          Meanwhile, WBUF underwent many transformations. In 1980, it began a two-year run as WFXZ "Foxy 93," then went back to its old call letters with oldies and adult contemporary music. The 1990s saw it become Mix 92.9; WSJZ, Smooth Jazz 92.9; and WLCE "Alice." The name has remained WBUF again since 1999, with a format that keeps changing.  

          This was one of my occasional guest appearances in the Radio-TV column. A few years earlier, this account of radio rumblings might have shown up on feature page of the TV Topics Pause section, where all of my music articles landed, but by this point that page was devoted mainly to record reviews.