Radio Christmas Memories

This week’s Christmas celebration has me thinking about my radio years. Being in media, it was an expectation that one would have to work on Christmas Day. Fortunately during my nearly 45 years as a radio professional, I was never forced to do so. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t.

My first job was at WMNS in Olean. Thanks to sympathetic management and colleagues, I was not assigned to a Christmas Day shift during my four years there. My colleagues who lived in Olean agreed to cover my shifts so I could travel home to West Seneca to be with my family. I’m forever grateful. I can’t imagine what it would have been like for me to be alone in my apartment away from my family on Christmas. Yet, that was the reality for many broadcasters working in radio then.

On my last Christmas in Olean, I remember buying a special gift for my family, even though I wasn’t making much money. My parents, for whatever reason, still didn’t have a color TV, even though it was 1980. So, I remedied that. I went to AM&As at the Olean Center Mall and plopped down $200 for a color TV. I loaded it into the backseat of my extremely unreliable 1973 Chevy Nova and headed to West Seneca. It was a wintry Christmas Eve as I made my way up a slippery Route 16. I made it home without incident. Needless to say, my sisters were especially thrilled with the gift!

Upon arriving at WBFO in 1981, I didn’t have to work on Christmas. I was management, I guess. Covering airshifts was left to part-timers who eagerly accepted a Christmas Day shift for the chance to be on the radio. I remember cringing in the early ‘90s as I listened to a fill-in with little to no experience botch our presentation of NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

By 1995, WBFO was starting to be a player as a news radio station in Buffalo. I no longer wanted to put our flagship program in the hands of inexperienced board operators. So, I decided to work my first Christmas. And to bring my family with me. Yes, I put Mary Lou and then nine-year-old son Anthony on the air with me during the local breaks of “Morning Edition.” Anthony even played a Christmas carol on his piano keyboard. I’m sure some listeners found it sweet. But many others likely groaned. I never did that again.

By the late ‘90s, WBFO installed its first computerized system called Audio Vault. That allowed us to automate on Christmas, which meant our holiday programming would run without a glitch. Well, that was the theory anyway. Being a computer, it would malfunction. The most likely cause was incorrect data being entered. I always kept a radio on during automated holiday shifts. Living in Snyder so close to our Allen Hall studios on UB’s South Campus, I would make the quick trip in to fix things. A few times, I ran into our program director David Benders, who heard the same glitch and rushed to the station.

In 2001, a lake effect storm dumped two feet of snow on Christmas Eve. That night as I was struggling to install one of those radios that attach to the bottom of a kitchen cupboard (I’ve never been very handy), the phone rang just before 11pm. It was NPR’s news desk. They wanted a spot about the storm. So, I typed out a 40 second script and phoned it in from my house. I’ll tell you this. It never got old saying, “For NPR News, I’m Mark Scott in Buffalo.”

On Christmas morning, I couldn’t in good conscience just let the automation run the station. There was a major storm. Our listeners needed information. So, I went in. Good thing I did. The satellite dish that brought us NPR was filled with snow. The signal began deteriorating. So, I trudged through the snow, dragging a ladder and our scraping device from Allen Hall to the satellite farm just outside Kimball Tower to remove the snow. Merry Christmas, I thought! I filed two more stories with NPR and headed home so we could attend Christmas Mass. 

We were just about to leave for my family’s Christmas celebration when NPR called again. They wanted two more stories. They agreed I’d file one then and the other when we got home from the party. The next morning, I was awakened by a ringing phone. The NPR news desk again. I pleaded that there was nothing new. Just a dusting fell on Christmas. But the editor said it’s the day after Christmas. There was little domestic news. So, I reluctantly went to my computer and wrote my sixth storm story in two days.

I was taking a few days off after Christmas, leaving the newsroom in the capable hands of my colleagues Eileen Buckley and Joyce Kryszak. The lake effect came back with a vengeance. Before it ended, some 83 inches of snow, nearly seven feet, had fallen that Christmas week. The three of us had prepared and delivered 23 spots for NPR News by New Year’s Eve. My good friend, Jim Ranney of WNED-AM, produced a three minute feature that aired on NPR’s “Weekend Edition.”

By the mid 2000s, I started going in on Christmas morning for less than an hour to record news updates and weather spots that the automation would drop in at the appropriate times. By 2009, I was able to do that from home. I was a quick learner of our new Media Touch audio system. So, even though it wasn’t in my job description, I took on the painstaking work of prepping the automation for the holidays. Still, the occasional mistake would happen. I remember furiously trying to fix things at my home computer one Christmas Eve, while family was arriving for our party.

After I retired from full-time work in 2010, I continued to prep the holiday automation until WNED acquired WBFO in early 2012. I was finally freed from being tethered to the radio and having to fix glitches. In fact, one Christmas morning a couple of years later I was listening to WBFO when there was dead air. I turned off the radio, smiled and said, “Not my problem.”

Today, only the biggest radio stations in the country are staffed on Christmas Day. NPR, of course, is fully operational. Many public stations continue to have a live host for Christmas broadcasts of “Morning Edition.” In Buffalo, I’m quite sure all the stations here are automated. But back in the day, Christmas was just another day when live talent was playing the hits off 45rpm records and delivering the latest news and information. 

To those who celebrate, Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays to everyone else. Thank you so much for reading my Substack!