CQ 102

WECQ (Geneva NY)  is a legend. No really. You may not have heard of the station, but trust me, a ton of very talented people came out of WECQ to go on to much success in radio. It was the ultimate farm team station. Program directors in large markets kept an eye on the station and would often swoop in and grab on air people and news people for large market gigs. I don't want to give the impression that it was some kind of revolving door situation. Folks that got the chance to work at CQ got some coaching, some encouragement, a nice work environment and when the time came, a helping hand out the door. What I mean by that is, that David Weinfeld who was part owner and General manager would gladly help you find that next great gig when the time was right. It was ok to tell him you wanted to move on. You didn't have to sneak around making air checks and typing resume's. No, David was fine with you moving on to something better when it was time. In fact he was happy to make some calls on your behalf. He used this to his advantage in attracting talent.

How does a revolving door help your station? Well, on David's wall in his office he kept a page of yellow legal pad paper with a list of all the names of people who had worked at CQ and then moved on to a larger market. Most of the names had a city and station name listed. When interviewing someone David would
pull the sheet down from the wall and hand it to the prospect. He would say, well here is a list of the last few people who left CQ and where they went.

It was an impressive list and this was usually enough to seal the deal. Using this technique plus his astute nose for talent CQ 102 was always staffed by a very talented group.

This was the first time I had encountered this kind of open-ness around a radio station. After leaving CQ I rarely have encountered it, but when given the chance I attempted to emulate David's approach. It was one of the many lessons I learned while working with David, but maybe the most important.

Radio only has one resource. People. The tower and building and transmitter and studio equipment mean nothing without talented people to create great programming. So it's not much of a leap to say, you really need to take care of your people and get the most out of them if you want to be successful.

You'd think everyone would understand that, but alas the Radio industry is full of C students. Most of them in managment through some accident, or inheritance or just plain dumb luck. In the spirit of full disclosure I must credit the "C student theory" to Gary Burns. Gary will show up later in the story.

Anyway, it was rare that radio stations had an atmosphere of openess and encourgment. There were lots of closed door meetings and sneaking around to make air checks. Plus lots of late night copy machine usage in the sales area when it came time to make resume's

Radio, until the mid '90's was very Mom and Pop. The FCC limited the number of stations you could own. There were no mega companies that owned stations. No stock, no stockholders, no IPO's. Just stations run by small companies. Many times family companies. We didn't have many benefits, no human resource department, no legal department and not much training on how to manage people. Oh sure we taught people how to be on the air and write copy and do news and so forth. But most companies did not spend much time teaching managers how to actually manage people.

Given that, a lot of stations were really very poorly run in terms of how their people were treated and that was generally accepted by folks who wanted to work in radio.

That's one of the reasons why CQ was such breath of fresh air.

I arrived in September of 82 to take over as PD at CQ 102. Pat Gillen the current PD was adding his name to David's list on the wall. He was going to program a station in Trenton NJ WPST.

It was sort of a reunion at CQ. John Hogan was the sales manager and we shared an office. He of course had been my partner in crime in the unfortunate Oneonta episode.

Once again I settled into a motel for a while, with Vicky and Erin remaining in Rushford. Shortly I found a small house to rent in nearby Waterloo and once again Mom and Dad helped us move our stuff and get settled.

I took over a station that was well staffed and focused and really one of the best sounding small market stations I had ever heard. It was a little intimadating.

But soon I was setting about putting my mark on CQ like all the previous PD's had done and having a great time.

During my time at CQ 102 I encountered a collection of characters that influenced me and made my experience one of the richest in my career.

Next time some of those characters and some of the amazing things we did at CQ.