Wavelength: Lynett-Haggerty family celebrates a century in radio
Nov. 27—In the early 20th century, the launch of broadcast radio lifted the written word from the printed page in warm, authoritative voices that soon became familiar as family. Newspapers no longer had a monopoly on news. Crackles, clicks and hisses announced a new technology that threatened to upend the dominion of tabloids and broadsheets. Some publishers wrote off the new platform as a passing fad. Others saw its potential and invested accordingly. The owner of The Scranton Times saw the value of giving the news a voice. In Northeast Pennsylvania, it was "The Voice of Anthracite."
E.J. Lynett purchased The Scranton Times on Oct. 10, 1895, and transformed the struggling newspaper into a leading voice for the common good and an essential vehicle for advertisers. On Nov. 29, 1922, the former breaker boy from Dunmore became the first newspaper publisher in the nation to secure a radio station license.
The rest is history — a century of radio owned and operated by the Lynett-Haggerty family. That history — which includes Northeast Pennsylvania's tallest Christmas "tree" — and the family behind it will be honored at the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters annual Gold Medal Dinner in Philadelphia on Dec. 15. The Lynett-Haggerty family will receive a PAB Spotlight award for more than 100 years of continuous ownership and operation of Times-Shamrock Communications.
See the complete 100 year timeline of WQAN, WEJL and Rock 107
At first, radio was seen as a supplement to the daily newspaper, said William R. Lynett, Times-Tribune publisher emeritus, part of a third generation of family management that included George V. Lynett and Edward J. Lynett Jr., each a Times-Tribune publisher emeritus.
The second generation, which included their late father, Edward J. Lynett, took its cues from the founder, William Lynett said.
"The first two generations that ran the company saw the radio as an extension of the newspaper," he said. "And I think that the publishers today view the internet pretty much the same way. ... (Radio) wasn't really treated as its own media. It was an extension of newspapers strictly used to get the news out to people."
Announcers read the newspaper on air and provided updates and school and work announcements, including which anthracite mines and collieries were operating on a given day.
"We used to list the big breakers in the area and announce whether they were working that day," William Lynett said. "People would know whether to go to work or not. There was a lot of really timely information and it did for newspapers what the internet is doing now. ... We add things online much as we would do breaking news on the radio stations."
Stage and sports
Dubbed "The Voice of Anthracite" at the suggestion of slogan contest winner Thomas Ventre of Old Forge, WQAN aired commercial-free from 1923 to 1950.
While programming was mostly confined to news, experiments with the new technology began broadening radio's local horizons from almost the beginning. WQAN did a groundbreaking broadcast from 400 feet underground in mines in Dunmore and Pine Brook. Times cartoonist Jim Walsh played the violin. The Anthracite Sextet performed standards, an opening act for scores of performers to come.
Bob Hope, George Burns, Gracie Allen and other vaudeville stars performed on WQAN. The station broadcast the welterweight championship fight between Pete Latzo and Mickey Walker live from the Watres Armory. Sports broadcasts became a staple of the station.
On Oct. 5, 1949, WQAN partnered with the Comerford Theaters to present the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers. This first-of-its-kind broadcast used a relay system built by the radio station's engineers.
The following year, construction of the radio tower atop the Times Building at 149 Penn Ave. was completed. The new fifth floor and its theater were initially intended as a television station, but Federal Communications Commission ownership regulations dashed that plan. Instead, the stage hosted stars like Tony Bennett for radio concerts.
On April 16, 1950, WQAN went commercial with a powerful AM signal (630) and a weaker FM frequency (92.3) broadcast from the 293-foot Times Tower 426 feet above the street.
In 1954, WQAN-FM changed its call letters to WEJL in honor of Times-Shamrock founder E.J. Lynett. The change ushered in an era of expansion lasting decades as the company acquired stations in Baltimore, Maryland; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Orlando, Florida; Austin, Texas; Reno, Nevada and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
On Nov. 23, 1960, the Times Tower was lit for the first time to herald in the holiday season. The tradition continues more than 60 years later.
Rock the boat
William Lynett said he "fell in love with radio" while working part time on the fifth floor. It became his focus for the rest of his career. Lynett made the pivotal decision to change the format of WEJL-FM to rock 'n' roll. What followed could've made a script for the classic '80s sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati," he said.
"People think 'WKRP' is a comedy," Lynett said with a chuckle. "It's a documentary."
Lynett said the station's previous format was too stale to attract new listeners and advertisers. Something had to change.
"We had done 'beautiful music' for a couple of years, and we were just going nowhere with it," Lynett said. "It was on in doctors' offices and the folks up at the country club talked about how nice it was, which is really great, but nobody wanted to advertise.
"We had done rock in Orlando and been extremely successful with it. I thought, 'Why not here?' No one was doing rock here. So we went rock (and) we billed more (advertisers) in the first two months we were a rock station than we had billed in the previous 18 months as a beautiful music station."
Like some listeners of the fictional "WKRP," not everyone was happy with the change. The launch of Rock 107 mirrored its fictional counterpart. On Feb. 20, 1980, Rush's "Spirit of Radio" shook up the airwaves and rattled the nerves of some longtime listeners.
State Rep. Thom Welby, D-113, Scranton, a WEJL veteran who was FM 107's program director at the time, remembered the public backlash aimed at Lynett and then-Operations Manager Joe Silva.
"People said they were possessed by Satan, the devil," Welby said. "They got seriously beat up by a lot of influential business people in the market to knock it off and flip back to the way it was, but they stuck with it."
Promotions in motion
Stuck with the call letters WEZX during its easy listening period, Rock 107 targeted its early promotions to a younger audience excited to have a local rock station.
"We were very innovative, as radio stations were and are today, in our promotions," Welby said. "When we first put the station on the air, we had a little contest to come up with a logo for FM 107. We had two parts of the contest. One was an award — a pretty substantial sound system — for the most creative logo. And then we had a second prize, which was a dirt bike for the largest logo that anyone could present somewhere.
"After a little while, we got a notification from PennDOT to cease and desist. They were (painting logos) in the rock ledges along 81 and on houses up in South Scranton where they did one on a side of the house. It was terrific. It was a lot of fun."
The winning logo submission was printed on bumper stickers, which disc jockeys and staffers used for what Welby called "guerilla marketing."
"We would take turns driving around and the promo on the air was if we spot your vehicle with the FM 107 logo, we would have T-shirts or records or whatever for you," Welby said. "And we were pulling people over all over Scranton and Lackawanna County... And sometimes, when you're beeping at somebody and trying to pull them over, they don't know you have a T-shirt or a record for them."
If WEJL was a version of "WKRP," Joe Middleton was its "Dr. Johnny Fever." Like his colleague Welby, Middleton worked as a WEJL news reporter and on-air personality by day and a popular DJ in clubs at night. It was a time of excess and excitement, Middleton said.
"We had side gigs at night, playing records in clubs," he said. "Welby was on the strip on Lackawanna Avenue, I was down in my bailiwick in the Wilkes-Barre area doing clubs so we'd be out until two o'clock at night and on weekends...
"For a while, I did morning drive on Saturday and Sunday, so you'd be leaving (Wilkes-Barre) and coming up here making sure you got here on time, got the transmitter warmed up for the a.m. and go on the air and do your thing."
The King is dead
Middleton enjoyed his dual roles as reporter and disc jockey. Sometimes, they overlapped, like on Aug. 16, 1977, before the change to a rock format.
"I was on the air playing disc jockey and not newsman when Elvis Presley died, and I thought it was a lot of malarkey," he said, changing his mind and his tune after an ABC News bulletin aired. "It was true. And I opened the mic after the bulletin, and those phones lit up like a Christmas tree. And it was just like, I knew we had listeners to this station."
Among the most infamous episodes in "WKRP's" four-season run is "Turkey Drop," when a Thanksgiving promotion turns disastrous due to the misconception that turkeys can fly. Chris Norton, senior vice president of community engagement at WVIA Public Radio and Television, had a turkey (and ham) story from his early career at WEJL.
"We had a regular annual Turkey giveaway at Thanksgiving, and a ham giveaway at Easter and these things operated the same way," he said. "If a sponsor got involved, he or she became a location where you could register to win your Easter ham or your Christmas or Thanksgiving turkey. And if your name was called on the air and you called back you're going to get a free ham or turkey. The trick was you had to go back to the sponsor to pick up your ham or turkey and there was like a 24-hour window to pick it up."
Radio staff were responsible for delivering the goods to sponsors, Norton explained.
"People who were low on the totem pole at WEJL ... (would) go driving around all the counties of Northeast Pennsylvania with a Jeep full of frozen turkeys," he said. "There was nothing dishonest at all about 'WKRP.' Everything they talked about happened at dozens and dozens of radio stations up and down the dial and all across the country."
Flip of the switch
On-air personalities give local radio its color, but engineers provide the power. Chief Engineer Kevin Fitzgerald started as an overnight disc jockey, but became boss of the station's infrastructure. Trade secret: The street-level switch that lights the Times Tower is ceremonial. Fitzgerald illuminates the tree from the roof of the Times Building.
"One of the things that I had to learn was the Christmas lights," Fitzgerald said. "It's not as easy as it might seem to light up all those lights, because WEJL uses the tower to broadcast. The entire tower is electrified, so getting the Christmas lights to work without ruining the radio signal is a tricky, tricky job."
So is building an audience. Over the past century, WEJL listeners came to see familiar voices as family. DJs such as Paul McNamara, Jack Griswold and Bill Pierce paved the way for Welby, Norton and Middleton. The next generation grew up with D.C. Day, Mad Dog and Daniels & Webster.
Day, whose legal name was Denise Lenchak, was a local pioneer for women in rock radio. She died in 2017. Jay Daniels, who ruled morning radio for 25 years with partner John Webster, died in 2015. Webster declined to comment for this story.
These local voices inspired some devoted listeners to aspire to careers in radio. Eric Logan, better known as "Prospector," was 13 when he won a contest to appear on air.
"Coincidentally, Kevin (Fitzgerald) was running the board for me ... and I and two of my best friends came in on a Sunday morning and did an hour's worth of crap," he said. "I walked out thinking, 'I can see myself doing that.' Then I went to Marywood for a while and learned a lot of stuff and was working (at Rock 107) part time. By the time I was getting ready to graduate from Marywood, I thought, 'They're paying me to do what I'm paying to learn.' "
Vocally local
Mark Hoover started at WEJL in 1998, producing Yankees broadcasts. He worked his way up to promotions director and became program director in 2019. He is on air afternoons on Rock 107. He said the local connection is what keeps commercial radio a player in the marketplace despite challenges from new technology.
"I grew up on this station," he said. "I had an older brother and an older cousin next door and he had the super radio, you know, with the big 12-inch woofers in his room and he was a huge (Led) Zeppelin and AC/DC fan. I really got into the harder rock in the early days, so I always had Rock 107 on.
"I still have my original Tech stereo that I saved up for in the late '80s, and the original glass doors still have a Rock 107 static sticker on the glass."
Hoover said his past in promotions and location appearances put a public face on his radio voice. Listeners know him and aren't shy about saying hello.
"Sometimes it's funny, like when people start a conversation with me, and I'm like, I have no idea who this person is," he said. "They'll ask me how my dogs are or how my wife is. When my wife is with me, she'll ask, 'Do you know who that person is?' And I'm like, 'I have no idea, and I don't know why they know me.' And my wife will say, 'You're on the radio, dummy."
"People ask about my wife and she'll say, 'How do they know who I am?' " Logan said. "I say, 'because you're on the radio, too.' "
Local personalities, content and family ownership set Times-Shamrock Communications apart, Hoover and others said. In 2000, WEJL dropped the oldies and became Northeast PA's ESPN Radio. The station is home to the Philadelphia Eagles and Phillies and Notre Dame football, but also broadcast area high school football and basketball games.
That WEJL and the Times-Shamrock stations that followed it remain locally owned after a century on the air is "miraculous," said Jim Loftus, who served as chief operating officer of Times-Shamrock Radio from 1996 through 2005.
He currently oversees 152 stations in Pennsylvania, New York and smaller markets as COO of State College-based Seven Mountains Media. A past chairman of the board of the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters, Loftus said the Lynett-Haggerty family defines the qualities celebrated by the PAB Spotlight award.
"Maybe the idea was, we'll build the radio station and sell more newspapers, but (Times-Shamrock) was a multimedia company before the word media existed, which is really innovative," he said. "And the part that is unique here is that for 100 years, it's been the same family that owns these radio stations.
"There are over 10,000 commercial radio stations in the United States. A couple dozen of them have made it to 100 years, but not one of those has had a celebration of the same owners for those 100 years. Not one."
Except the station a former breaker boy from Dunmore made "the Voice of Anthracite."
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