WREB Theme Shows

I found out yesterday from a man, Jeff Miller, that WREB radio in Holyoke went on the air in Holyoke in 1950, so I guess it is conceivable that there are still a few former announcers still out there who broadcast on the 930 AM frequency. I am aware of eight of them..
It would be fantastic to find out if some of the first broadcasts exist somewhere, or who the first people on the air were. I know of one who was there, Bob Berger. He was the sales manager of WSPR for a while, I worked with him, and just recently found out he was at WREB at the beginning. Bob passed recently, and with him went all of that information. I never got to ask him about it because I didn't know he was even there.
I don't know what the first format was, but I imagine it was 1950 music, town news, and special features, geared to the people of Holyoke.
In those days, every town or city had their own station, geared to the news of that particular town, so if you wanted to hear the local news, you tuned in your local station, and the news guy would expound on the fender bender at the corner of High and Dwight Streets, or the Mayor dedicating a fern at the local park.
I had heard that at some point in WREB's history, the station played country music. I don't know when, but it seems an odd format choice. In the early sixties, they played rock and roll, and one show I listened to there was hosted by an area D.J. named Dick Robinson. Dick started a little enterprise several years back and called it The Connecticut School of Broadcasting. The school is going strong still, and Dick lives in Palm Beach, Florida when he's not doing his weekly radio show, American Standards By The Sea, on his yacht, heard around the planet . Dick did OK for a WREB kid. I spoke with him about a year and a half ago, on the air, and I honestly have to say, he's still a nut case.
Sometime in the late 60's or early 70's, Joe Alfano bought the station, and it went to a talk format. I missed most of those years as I had to go play war in Vietnam.. When I finally got involved in the station, I was doing a couple of segments on a program called Odyssee, a childrens show airing Saturday nights on WWLP TV in Springfield. This was 1979, and I was looking for area people to talk with for the show. I thought of Willard Womack doing talk on REB, so I contacted him, but it never came to fruition for some reason.Willard had me as a guest a couple of times to talk about the TV show, and had me fill in for him one day when he was sick, and I was kind of in the door. I also listened to Barbara Heissler. She had a "theme" show on every Friday, and all it was , was trivia. Trivia back then was golden on the radio. Everybody listened to see how smart they were. I once recorded sound bytes from a bunch of old albums I still have, brought them into Barbaras show, and thus was born the first "audio" trivia show on the airwaves.
Shortly thereafter, I found myself doing the afternoon slot there, and with longer summer hours, someone was needed for those extra three hours or so, so Richard did the 5 o'clock addition to the 12:30 extention of the 8:05 news, and I was volunteered, by Joe, to close the place down. No extra pay, just more time on the air. Thanks, Joe.
The first week was a disaster. When people get used to changing the dial at 4:45 PM when we signed off in the winter, they continue to change the station when we are still on the air in Spring and Summer. Nobody called. By Wednesday of that week I had told my whole life story. Thursday I said I would give away a free album to the first person to identify the artist. I played the song. It was Frank Sinatra. Nobody called. I thought this might be a problem....HHMMM..AHA! How about theme shows? Something for everyone. It's an audience limiter, but any port in a storm.
Theme shows never work that well. If it's a cooking show, and you couldn't care less about cooking, you're turning the dial. Due to the disasterous first week, I decided to have Linda come in with me for some of these. Mondays: Helpful hints. We all need them.. Could be for anything. Call now....lines are open. Helpful hints....Nothing. Swell.
Tuesdays: ASK Linda & George. We'll talk about anything, with anybody, just Ask Linda & George. Nothing. I might add here that these two shows did pick up later in the Summer, but not by much.
Wednesday: The Tradeo Show. Buy, sell, swap and/ or trade. Call now....lines are open..just pick up the phone...nobody wanted to buy sell or trade anything. When they did call, it was for wierd things. One woman had a big pile of rocks. No charge. Free rocks, just come get them.. Another woman had a washing machine she wanted to sell. I thought, finally, this is good. She then said the following: "hardly ever used, because it hardly ever worked." I still have her voice on tape saying that. A regular caller, Joe Golen, better known as Joe from Chicopee, tried for weeks to sell a social security metal stamper to make metal cards. I think he still owns that thing. Joe always bailed me out on these theme shows. When the phones were dead, he'd call. He spent a LOT of time on the air with me.
I don't even remember what was on Thursdays, might have been trivia, but then came Friday night. Management thought the first four shows were ok to waste time on the air, but when I informed them I was going to do a talent show on the radio, they retired to Sweeney's Cafe for the duration. A talent show?? Are you nuts?
Friday : Talent Show, you're on the air. The phones lit up. This was bizzare. I would take as many calls as I could, and when time was running out, I would open the phones up to vote for your favorite of the evening. That days winner went into the finals at the end of the summer. Every week, the winner received a WREB Double R Record. What they didn't know was that the Double R stood for really rotten. Albums in the back room like the greatest hits of Charlie Weaver, or Margaret Whiting sings Tex Ritter songs. Not real popular, but the show was.
This thing took off like a rocket. With everything from jokes, songs, impressions, and poems to a lady who put the phone on her kitchen floor and tap danced to Hello Dolly. She had no music, so I sang the song while she danced. I wonder, to this day, if her husband had come home from work at that time, around supper, and saw her with the pasta cooking on the stove, the phone on the floor, and her in the tap shoes she hasn't had on for 20 years, tapping away with no music. He would have joined the others at Sweeney's cafe.
This show was so stupid, but Lordy it was so funny. I looked forward to this night all week . I shut the studio lights off, lit the place with candles and let the phones ring. I taped all of this stuff, of course, and the final show was all the weekly winners from the shows run back to back, and the audience voted. Joe from Chicopee won the season, doing, of all things, a heartfelt reading of something he wrote about his grandmother. There wasn't a dry eye in Hampden County. He was the first, and only WREB Idol, and for his efforts I amassed the most rediculous prizes from the station, including 10 records from the Double R archives, the actual plans for a parking lot that was to be built somewhere in Holyoke. I found them in the record room.. He also got a trophy I picked out, inscribed with his name, and talent of the year. It was the back end of a horse.
During the following winter months, I was pushed up to the morning show, so I never did late afternoons again, and I never did a theme show again.
Most times it's like a dream that I was involved with doing things like that on the air. At times I listen to those days on my old tube type Akai tape recorder and wonder how it changed from those days of wacked out radio to the same old things every day on radio. Todays talk radio is actually one big theme show. Proof of that was Anna Nicole Smith. A couple of years ago, Michael Jackson. Monica Lewinski. One world wide theme show at a time, so very little to laugh about, so far away from, "Talent Show, You're On The Air!"