Posted by Fred Woskoff (posted by Jerry Klein) on May 11, 1999 at 21:55:30:
In Reply to: Hello, Fred posted by Jerry Klein on May 11, 1999 at 21:52:28:
Hi from Albuquerque! Thanks for your note. I did surf around on the WRTI
pages and found myself. Also sent some e-mails to some old friends, so many
thanks to you and the folks who have worked so hard to put together a
wonderful bunch of memories!
Over the years I've kept in touch with a few folks. Steve Medoff is one who
I get together with occasionally. Another fellow you might not remember is
Dennis Fisher. Denny did "color" with Steve, Bob Sigovich, and I during the
1968 football season, and the 68-69 Basketball season, including the NIT
Championship.
Dennis is now the Sports Editor of the "Lancaster New Era", in Lancaster, PA.
He lives in Mt. Joy.
Another name from the past in sports is Dick Weiss. Dick did color for WRTI
for the '67 football season, as well as other shows. Dick is now one of the
premiere, if not the premiere basketball writer for the New York Daily News.
Since I was one of the last people to work at WRTI who had started in Thomas
Hall, I thought you might be interested in a couple of stories. First, how
WRTI managed to go "all Jazz". One day during late spring in 1969, Bob
Kassi, the Station Manager (Grad Assistant guy), got a call from one of the
local radio station (might have been WIBF) asking "what did you guys have on
Saturday nights". Evidently we showed up with a nice rating on Saturday.
Kassi immediatly told the guy we had "jazz", which was scheduled. Only
trouble was, all during the rating book we had basketball games on Saturday,
usually double headers (we did over 60 games that year), including the final
night of the February book, when we had the only coverage, radio or TV, of
the Temple vs. St. Joseph's ECC Championship game. So, Kassi decides we
ought to go all Jazz, not bothering to check on things. What a dope he was.
The other one was a couple of years ago. I went to some advertising media
event in Philadelphia, and WRTI had a booth display. They were celebrating
the "whatever" anniversary of "all Jazz" on WRTI". Only trouble was athe
celebration was the wrong year. I told the guy, I was there when the station
went all Jazz, and it was during the summer of 1969, so it couldn't be the
anniversary they said it was. Of course he sluffed me off, but having lived
through it.
Oh well.
Anyway, hope all is well with you. I'm having fun out here in the west. Get
to travel quite a bit, as we have several stations in New Mexico, as well as
up in Colorado and down in El Paso. Not as green as my stint in Alaska or
Montana (where I owned KRBN-AM for some time, until I had finally managed to
burn enough money), but beautiful never the less. I also spend at least a
couple of weeks each year in the Caribbean. I'm trying to figure out a way
to get a media job in "St. Somewhere", so I can "retire" down island!
Well, again thanks for a super job on the WRTI pages, and give my regards to
the "old gang".
Best wishes,
Fred Woskoff