WCHP AM 650 Radio

WCHP was a student operated AM carrier current radio station playing the hits to CMU students. I was listening one day in 1973 and I heard the DJ talk about living in Bloomfield Hills. The DJ, Jay Bond, and I went to East Hills Jr. High School together back in the 8th grade. I called him and asked if I could come down to the radio station and see him. I watched him do his radio show and then asked him how I could be on the station. He helped me make an audition tape which was submitted to the program director Jim Johnson (JJ). JJ started me out with a 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. shift on a Thursday. I did the graveyard shift for awhile and then moved to Friday, Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m.-noon. I caught the broadcasting bug, changed my major to Broadcast and Cinematic Arts, ended up being the Sports Director with a sports talk show on Sunday nights (Sportsbeat) and a daily sports report, then selected to be the Sales Manager supervising a sales staff of five which produced over $50K in revenues for the station. JJ is still in radio btw having been on numerous stations in the Detroit market. Thanks Jay! Thanks JJ!

In the main studio of WCHP. Besides being a DJ on WCHP, I also did play-by-play of basketball games aired on the other student station, WMHW-FM. I also was involved with the Thorpe Hall radio station WINO, doing one air shift at week, Wednesday 8-10 p.m.

Calendar on the wall says it’s 1975. As WCHP Sales Manager, my job was to sell airtime to local Mt. Pleasant businesses so I was on the phone a lot. Then I would meet with the manager of the business and convince them that buying commercials on WCHP was a good use of their advertising dollars. The good news was that WCHP was very popular with the 15,000 CMU students so it was not real hard sometimes to sell airtime. I think I made 6% commission on the airtime I sold…root beer money. Then I would have to get info from the client and have the commercials written so a WCHP air talent could record it and get it on the air. I wrote a lot of those commercials myself…even recorded a few myself. My junior year I served at Continuity Director.

One of our station logos. Yes it was an AM station heard in the dormitories on campus. The CMU FM station played classical and jazz music. But AM radio was still cool in the 70’s playing Rock ‘n Roll…big AM stations like CKLW in Detroit and WLS in Chicago were very popular. WCHP eventually folded as popular hit music went to FM. I am a proud member of the WCHP Alumni Facebook group which keeps me updated on those that worked on the station. And I attended a WCHP Reunion at Soaring Eagle in September, 2014 which was pretty fun!

While at WCHP, I recorded a feature called “Mid-American Conference Football Preview” each week in the Fall and fed it to WWJ 950 AM in Detroit for airing.

Press cards I was issued for access into sports events I covered for WCHP.

A little promotion on the weekly music survey for my Sports Report I did as Sports Director of the station.

I did Junior Varsity basketball play-by-play on WMHW, 91.5 FM with Brian Jackson…I called him Action Jackson! WMHW was the other student radio station on CMU’s campus…a competitor with WCHP! We had more listeners but they had that nice FM stereo sound.

So this was Jay Bond, aka Brother Bond, who I went to school with in 8th Grade at East Hills Jr. High and who helped me make an audition tape which got me accepted into the WCHP group of talented radio broadcasters. I roomed with Jay in a double room in Robinson Hall and then with him and Dave Brewer in an apartment our senior year. Stories to tell there as we hosted several WCHP Seabreeze parties.

Brother Bond (Jay Bond) doing his dance to Desmond Dekker's Israelites song in dorm lobby during WCHP's 48 Hour marathon for Special Olympics. We would get tons of students to come down to the lobby to see Jay perform and we raised a lot of money by passing the hat. Jay was the WCHP Station Manager.

This is Dave Brewer, aka Brew, who I roomed with in my senior year along with Jay Bond. Brew was the WCHP Program Director and would come on my sports talk show on Sunday nights to talk sports on occasion. I took this photo of Brew doing his Tricky Dick, Richard Nixon impersonation.

One fun thing we did was play the CM Life staff in a charity basketball game. At 25 cents a person, I don’t think we raised a lot of money for Easter Seals…the game was mostly for bragging rights. We had shirts printed up and the WCHP girls did their cheerleader thing. I do believe we prevailed in the games my junior and senior year.

Articles about WCHP in my Junior year where I served at Continuity Director, the person who is responsible for the writing of commercials and assigning copy to talent for them to record the commercials and get them on the air. My roommate that year was Jay (Brother Bond) Bond and we lived in Robinson Hall, a few doors down from Dave (Torbs) Torbi and Dave Brewer (Brew, Dylan Austin).

Reunion held at Soaring Eagle in September, 2014.

Photo op with Paul Boscarino at the reunion who brought a CM Life article about me.

Photo display with photos from back in the 1973-75 era…photos were black and white because I took the photos, developed the film and printed the photos in CMU photojournalism dark rooms.