To the Federal Communications Commission, I’m pretty sure that formally shutting down a tiny AM radio station in New Jersey last week – for apparently falling a couple of years behind on its fees – was a small bureaucratic formality.
But here was a time when WKMB, 1070 AM in Passaic Township, New Jersey, was one of the coolest radio stations I ever heard or saw.
If I were reincarnated as a radio host, which would be one of my top choices if I get a say, I’d want to work at a place exactly like the old “Stirling Country,” 1390 Valley Road in the Gillette section of Passaic Township.
Over 20 years covering radio for the New York Daily News, I saw a lot of radio stations. I liked ‘em all, especially because when you were actually inside a radio station, you saw where people still mattered and that it hadn’t all become a slick, high-tech robotic machine.
That’s what always set radio apart for me, back to the days when I listened to Ron Landry playing Del Shannon’s “Runaway” as a current hit on WDRC (1360 AM) in Hartford.
Then, as consolidation became the watchword of the radio game, elements of corporate regimentation became increasingly unavoidable.
Yes, commercial radio always sold a product. It also sold a good time and the musical soundtrack of our lives. Consolidation sometimes seemed to turn radio’s focus more toward the product part.
Stirling Country was the flip side of that disheartening trend.
It’s not that the station didn’t use its music to sell advertising. It’s just that everything about it felt like it was a radio station in a glorious time warp.
Let me set the scene. WKMB’s offices and studios were on the second floor of a strip mall. It was a little bigger than a nail salon, but not much. The whole staff, which was not a large crowd, was close enough to borrow each other’s Sweet & Low.
In the middle was a not terribly large studio, the centerpiece of which was a couple of turntables and an old-fashioned board with a lot of dials I didn’t understand.
The host sat in front of the board with his headphones on and spoke into the microphone that dropped down on a movable arm.
The first time I went there, Bob Hunt was the host. He ended up being, for all practical purposes, the signature voice of the station. He was an actor who appeared in many local productions and he had a clear affection for community radio. He also had a marvelous actor’s voice, the golden currency for radio.
I’m guessing it wasn’t a high-paying gig. It was convenient and steady, which in the radio game is not to be undervalued.
WKMB signed on the air in February 1972 as an easy listening station, then switched to country in 1979. In 2003, after the last original owner Herb Michels died, his kids sold the station to the King Temple Ministry in Plainfield, which switched the format to gospel and aired programming for church members who couldn’t get to the Temple.
When the format changed, Bob Hunt stayed. Radio pros do that.
I can’t say I’ve listened to the station’s gospel incarnation all that much. I can say that Stirling Country, “The Best Little Country Station This Side of Texas,” remains one of my finest radio memories.
As a listener, I loved that the station would play a couple of current hits, then spin an old Loretta Lynn or Webb Pierce track. It seemed to have an appreciation for country music in the broader and deeper sense, which is not a hallmark of country radio in general.
When I got to the station, I saw how that worked. On the floor all along the walls of the studio were rows of country music albums. They didn’t seem to be in any particular order, though maybe they were.
It looked like the dorm room of a college station DJ, with hundreds and hundreds of records that at some point needed to be played. It doesn’t get better than that.
Hunt explained that while the station wasn’t freeform, it did give the hosts latitude to pick out some of the classics, which they did.
Hank Williams on the radio, at the Grand Ol’ Opry.
On New Year’s Eve, WKMB got FCC permission to go beyond its normal daytime-only operating hours and play a whole evening of Hank Williams.
Hank was not only the best country music artist ever. He also died on New Year’s Eve 1953.
Someone at WKMB understood all that and shared it with the listeners. Radio doesn’t get better than that.
Radio has always had a side that thinks big, which is why it turns some stations like the old WABC or a Z-100 into institutions. It also turns personalities into brands, from Martin Block and Arthur Godfrey up to Scott Shannon, Elvis Duran, Don Imus, Howard Stern, Wendy Williams, Angie Martinez and the talk crew. And that’s fine. They earn it, and and it’s good for radio.
But nothing has ever seemed like more fun to me about radio than working at a station where you can sometimes pick your next song from a pile of albums on the studio floor.
WKMB probably isn’t a good modern radio business model. I don’t care. It was all the things I love about radio.
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