100 years over the waves: WTAG marks century as Worcester's flagship radio station
WORCESTER — Good morning! News Radio 580 and 94.9 FM WTAG Worcester is on the air and it has been for 100 years and counting.
If you’re a baby boomer who grew up in Central Massachusetts, you probably have fond memories of hearing the announcement that “all Worcester schools are canceled” due to the blizzard of ’78 reverberating from a portable radio plugged in the kitchen's wall socket or listening to Carlton Fisk hitting the winning home run in the 12th inning of Game 6 of the 1975 World Series on your little 9-volt transistor radio you probably bought at Spag’s, Zayre or Radio Shack.
Chances are, if you weren’t watching it on television, you probably heard it on WTAG AM 580 radio.
“Radio is with us everywhere. It is almost literally in the pockets of teenagers through transistors. It is in homes, trucks and cars,” Richard F. "Dick" Wright, who served as the news director, station manager and general manager during his time at WTAG, told the Sunday Telegram on Jan. 3, 1971. “Radio may be said to be a companion medium, supplementing newspapers and television. It places great emphasis on the local scene through news and talk-show broadcasts, an area in which television is weak.”
“Worcester's News, Traffic & Weather Station” for a century, WTAG-AM 580 kept us informed during the hurricane of ‘38, the World War II years, the Worcester tornado of ‘53, the John F. Kennedy assassination, the Northeast blackout of 1965, the “Impossible Dream” Red Sox in ‘67, the blizzard of ’78, the terrorists’ attack on Sept. 11, 2001, the “Reverse the Curse” Red Sox of 2004 and the ice storm of 2008.
Jim Polito, host of WTAG’s popular morning show, recalls the ice storm and his station’s continuous coverage after the devastating storm like it was yesterday.
“We received national recognition for what we did. And at the time, people were thinking that AM radio was dead,” Polito said this week. “Yet we, with the oldest broadcasting technology available, was the only lifeline available for so many people who were devastated by that ice storm.”
Although the ice storm was the last natural disaster that significantly bombarded Central Mass., News Radio 580 is ready if or when another debilitating event comes along.
“We have an expression. It looks like tomorrow’s ‘All hands on deck.’ And that means, we’re going to clear all the programming and we’re going to stay on,” Polito said. “We will still sleep in the building if we know there’s a bad snowstorm brewing, so we will be on the first thing in the morning.”
First broadcast in 1924 as WDBH
“The Voice of Central New England” started innocently enough on May 24, 1924, when WDBH (which stood for “We Do Business Honestly”) went on the air with 100 watts of power.
Owned by the former C.T. Sherer department store on Front Street, the radio station at first was nothing more than a sales promotion than anything else, with Worcester’s first radio studio a roped-off area in the furniture department.
In 1925, the call letters were changed from WDBH to WCTS, for C.T. Sherer, and the power increased to 500 watts.
On Sept. 23, 1925, Theodore Ellis, the then-owner of the Worcester Telegram and The Evening Gazette, bought the radio station and changed its call letters once again and for the last time to WTAG, for Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
The sale made front-page news, “C.T. SHERER CO. SELLS RADIO STATION TO TELEGRAM-GAZETTE.”
The purchase of Worcester’s only active broadcasting station made the Telegram and Gazette the first New England newspaper to own and operate its own radio plant.
And the matrimony of newspaper and radio was the perfect marriage — at least The Evening Gazette thought so at the time.
“For all time to come, the most important medium of transmitting information will be the printed word where the record is exact but there is also a good volume of material which may be more speedily transmitted through the ether and as a means of providing to everybody the best there is music, public addresses, worthwhile talks on important subjects and a limitless array of genuine service features the radio has demonstrated itself to be both effective and pleasing to the public.”
In December 1925, Ellis sold the newspapers and radio station to Harry Stoddard and George F. Booth. The Stoddard and Booth families would own the newspaper until the fall of 1986 and the radio station until the end of summer in 1987.
With only the Worcester Common to stand between them, a radio studio was constructed on the fourth floor of the newspaper building at 18 Franklin St., while the radio transmitter was still at Sherer’s on Front Street.
WTAG joins new NBC
On Nov. 15, 1926, WTAG became a charter member of the National Broadcasting Company Radio Network, making it the first Worcester station to air programs originating from a national network.
In the early ‘40s, to secure 5,000 watts of power for daytime and nighttime operations, two transmitting towers were added in Holden for a total of five. While the radio station’s towers survived the 1953 Worcester tornado, one was lost to Hurricane Carol in 1954 and was never replaced.
On June 21, 1941, Anthony “Tony” Randall received a Western Union telegram from the radio station that read “Reconsidered salary. Will start you $35 per week. Cannot grant two weeks August discussed. Report for duty not later than Tuesday June 24. Confirm immediately.”
Randall, best known for playing Felix Unger on ABC’s ‘70s sitcom “The Odd Couple,” took the job.
“Radio pays a lot more now,” Polito said. “I have a contract that I’m guarantees a 10 percent bump over Tony Randall’s contract.”
While Randall is the arguably the most famous alumnus of WTAG, the station has had its share of local celebrities and memorable staffers over the years, some of whom have gone to greener pastures.
Notable WTAG staffers of the past include Clyde G. Hess Jr., who served in the U.S. Information Agency and served 25 years in the Foreign Service; John Woods, president of Woods Communication Corp. in Oriskany, New York; Everett Aspinwall, owner of radio station WPBR in Palm Beach, Florida; Chris Condon, reporter and later anchor for KSD-TV in St. Louis; Mike Whorf, winner of a Peabody Award for his “Kaleidoscope” program on the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at WJR in Detroit; and Thomas Reardon, press secretary for former Massachusetts Gov. Francis Sargent.
“I’ve never really had the time to look back before, but as I do, the most fond remembrances are of the people I have worked with here,” Hebert L. Krueger, general manager of WTAG, said in a Jan. 14, 1975, article of The Evening Gazette. “You can work at a lot of ratty places and sometimes I have, but some awfully nice people have gone through these doors and it’s been a pleasure being associated with them.”
And while Unger, I mean Randall, is the biggest star to come out of WTAG, he was far from being the only star to enter the WTAG studios in downtown Worcester.
Show biz greats visit station
In the ‘40s, Alison Skipworth, the grande dame of many early movies; Jeffrey Lynn, the handsome Hollywood leading man from Auburn; Count Basie; the original “original” Ink Spots; the Mills Brothers; Ella Fitzgerald; Judy Canova; Henny Youngman; Cab Calloway; Jane Russell; George Jessel; Edward Everett Horton and Arthur Treacher all visited the station.All sorts of band leaders paraded through WTAG in the ‘40s and ‘50s, including Gray Gordon, Abe Lyman, Frankie Masters, Tommy Tucker, Sam Donahue, Charlie Barnet, Benny Meroff, Jimmie Lunceford, Johnny Long, Ray Kinney, Dave Apollon, Louis Jordan, Charlie Spivak and Tony Pastor.
Visiting dramatic talent — usually performing in summer theater at Lake Whalom in Lunenburg, the Little Theatre in Worcester or one of the Westborough theaters — also made stops at the radio station. These include Harold Huber, the French inspector in the Charlie Chan film series; Sterling Hayden; Richard Widmark; Joan Fontaine; Angela Lansbury; Jerome Hines and William Warfield.
Purely an entertainment medium in the prewar years, WTAG adapted to a changing world and changing needs.During World War II, WTAG was credited with raising millions of dollars through its promotion of war bond sales. Special broadcasts were arranged in which servicemen overseas broadcast messages to their families at home.
“The war actually gave radio a big boost as far as news coverage is concerned,” Krueger said in 1975. “People could turn on their radios and hear Edward R. Murrow report live on the bombing of London.”
On April 5, 1943, WTAG became the first station in Worcester to operate as an affiliate of the Columbia Broadcasting System after relinquishing its affiliation with NBC.
In 1944, WTAG won three prestigious national broadcasting awards — the Peabody Award, the DuPont Radio Award and the Variety Plaque for outstanding public service — all in one year, which was another radio station’s first.
Awards for news coverage
WTAG has won its share of first-place Associated Press Broadcast Awards over the years, including the Bay State Award and News Station of the Year, as well as plenty of awards for format reporting and sports reporting, in the category of medium-market stations in Massachusetts.
In addition to being a news leader for Central New England, WTAG was a sports leader.
In the fall of ’54, WTAG started carrying the play-by-play coverage of Holy Cross Crusaders basketball and football, and continued to do so for more than 60 years, only dropping the games recently. Thirteen years later, in 1967, WTAG began broadcasting Yaz and “The Impossible Dream” Red Sox and was Worcester’s home of the Boston Red Sox for 40 years, which includes 2004’s “Reverse the Curse” World Series Champions. Since 2022, WTAG has been the Worcester radio home of the New England Patriots.
On Dec. 31, 1958, WTAG announced that it would leave CBS Radio over the station’s opposition to the network’s Program Consolidation Plan.
On July 1, 1963, WTAG, after nearly five years of being an independent station, rejoined the NBC Radio Network.
From Nov. 22 to 26, 1963, WTAG suspended its regular programming, including commercials, to join the national networks coverage of President Kennedy’s assassination and resuming with regular program after JFK’s funeral coverage was over. Several years before, when JFK was a U.S. senator with aspirations for the White House, he was interviewed by the station.
On Nov. 9, 1965, WTAG was off the air for roughly 30 minutes when the Northeast experienced a blackout. Although it received almost immediate broadcasting power from its auxiliary transmitter in Holden, the station’s downtown Worcester studios were powerless.
In August 1966, the Massachusetts Association for Mental Health Inc. requested that WTAG not to play a new record, “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” by Napoleon XIV (Jerry Samuels). In response, WTAG’s then-program director A.J. Brissette reassured the association, “We don’t play it and we wouldn’t play it.”
On Jan. 24, 1969, WTAG received a special citation by the United Press Broadcasters Association of Massachusetts for the station’s coverage of the Worcester Expressway bridge collapse on April 16, 1968, on Southbridge Street. Three persons died and several were hospitalized in the collapse.
'Metric Monday' misfire
On Oct. 17, 1977, WTAG had its first “Metric Monday” (temperature readings in Celsius only, no Fahrenheit) and, according to then-general manager Dick Wright, “the roof fell in.” On its first outing, the station received nearly 100 phone calls protesting the idea, while one letter-writer went so far to say, “I’m not going to listen to a station which doesn’t give temperature in American.”
On Jan. 1, 1979, WTAG began round-the-clock broadcasting with the addition of “The Larry King Show,” a live five-and-a-half-hour talk show Monday through Saturday nights. Prior to this, WTAG had been signing off after the NBC news at 1 a.m. and signing back on at 5 a.m.
On Jan. 21, 1985, WTAG started to broadcast in AM stereo. It took almost a year to convert a segment of the WTAG studio at 20 Franklin St. and the transmitter off Shrewsbury Street in Holden to AM stereo at a cost of about $70,000.
On Aug. 28, 1987, WTAG 580 AM was sold to Knight Quality Stations, who paid about $2.8 million for the station. In mid-November, the radio station moved from the Telegram & Gazette building at 20 Franklin St. to the WSRS-FM studio, which had been sold by the Telegram & Gazette to Knight Quality in 1963, in Paxton.
On Feb. 19, 1992, Worcester Mayor Jordan Levy made his radio debut with “The Mayor’s Forum.”
Three years later, on April 3, 1995, Levy, then a member of the Governor’s Council and former four-term Worcester mayor, started “The Jordan Levy Show" four nights of week (later to five) on WTAG. And with that, a local radio legend was born, one that would rule the airwaves for nearly 30 years.
"I'm going to give it a whirl," Levy said in a March 30, 1995, T&G article. "I really like radio. It's all current events, not just local stuff. Each day is a new news day. I'm not shy. I've been somewhat controversial in my views.”
Levy’s death on Oct. 5, 2023, marked an end of an era, Polito said.
“Jordan is Worcester. WTAG is Worcester. And together, there was nothing better,” Polito said. “He was a treasure. I’m proud that I knew him as a kid and I’m so honored that I knew him as a friend.”
On Jan. 2, Worcester native Danny Ferrantino took over the old Levy time slot of 3 to 6 p.m. weekdays.
“Trying to fill the shoes of a legend was never going to be easy but especially the shoes of somebody who meant so much to Worcester made things incredible hard,” Ferrantino said this week. “But the reception that I got from everybody has been great so far."
Station changes hands
In April 1997, Knight Quality Stations announced the sale of WTAG and WSRS radio stations to Capstar Broadcasting Partners. In July 1999, Capstar and Chancellor Media merged as AMFM Inc. In August 2000, Clear Channel Communications, forerunner to iHeartMedia, which now owns WTAG AM, acquired AMFM in a deal.In the fall of 1999, Hank Stolz became the station’s news director, as well as the anchor for WTAG's morning-drive news program, replacing Paul Tuthill. New England radio veteran Sherman Whitman joined the WTAG staff in the wake of Stolz's promotion and the popular Hank and Sherman morning team was born.
In February 2007, NewsTalk 580 WTAG radio, which rejoined CBS in 1993, ended its 14-year affiliation with the network and began broadcasting Fox News on its newscasts.
On April 28, 2007, a week after celebrating his 10th anniversary with WTAG, Stolz left the station and started broadcasting on WCRN AM 830.
In May 2008, Polito, a Worcester native, joined the WTAG staff as the host of its morning news show.
“It's a home run to be back in my hometown on the station I grew up listening to," Polito told the T&G 16 years ago.
“That’s true,” Polito said this week. “That’s still true today. It’s huge.”
Today, Polito’s popular morning show on WTAG is regionally syndicated on WHYN in Springfield, WHJJ in Providence, WXKS in Boston and WXTK on Cape Cod, and worldwide on the iHeartRadio app.
“I wouldn’t trade this now for anything,” Polito said. “I love it.”
As WTAG embarks on its next 100 years, Ferrantino and Polito pondered why it is important to have local voices on a local radio station.
“To understand the history of Worcester and where we’ve gotten to and how we gotten to the point that we’re at, to have somebody else from outside the area come in and try to understand that, I think that would be difficult,” Ferrantino said.
“If you look at marketing and sales, the best recommendations come from a neighbor or friend. News is no different," Polito said. "It might be the same news that could have been produced by a national organization but that’s a stranger. That’s not a local. And that’s the advantage we have.”
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: WTAG makes 100th year as Worcester's top news radio station
