Early Charleston radio history

[Jeff Miller]

I have a web site devoted to the history of broadcasting in West Virginia at

http://jeff560.tripod.com/wvbroadcasting.html

I was looking tonight through old newspaper articles and found that some of the on-air dates I had for the early Charleston stations were off a bit. So, for those interested, here are the on air dates of the early stations.

WAAO unknown, only on air in 1922
WPAZ unknown, only on air in 1923
WOBU (later WCHS) Oct. 12, 1927
WGKV (later WHMS, WXIT, WSWW, etc) Sept. 24, 1939
WTIP (later WBES) Nov. 24, 1946
WKNA (later WKAZ, WQBE, WVTS, etc.) Jan. 9, 1947
WCAW (later WKAZ) Jan. 12, 1947

The newspaper ad announcing WKNA is at
http://jeff560.tripod.com/images/wkna34.gif

The newspaper ad announcing WTIP is at
http://jeff560.tripod.com/wtip3.gif

The newspaper ad announcing WCAW is at
http://jeff560.tripod.com/wcaw5.gif

[CoolBreeze]

Jeff.. on those newspaper Ads: Do you have the year they were published... and maybe add that to your title?

[Jeff Miller]

Cool breeze, I do have the exact dates for the articles. If you go to the web site

http://jeff560.tripod.com/wvbroadcasting.html

and go to the articles on the individual stations, you will see that there are links to those articles with the exact dates given...

[the jive talkin one]

Jeff, I've seen precious little (or no) historical perspective given to Mountainet, the West Virginia Radio Network that united 50-some stations from 1982 to 85, until it was conned into oblivion by John Raese (yours truly being one of the marks).

I'd love you to talk to some of us who were associated with this effort, of which I am more proud than anything else I've accomplished in my 53 years!

[ralphallen]

Mountain Net was awesome. One Christmas Paul Rose sent the WPAR crew this humongous huge major big box and inside it was a huge maga large plastic bag of POPCORN! That thing fed us for two weeks.

[Hoss]

You know another interesting story is Mountain News Network. A just short of successful venture that had the rug pulled by Charter Cable to make way for what eventually became Network WV. Maybe Tim Sharp could give us a overview, he was the ND. Think he teaches at University of Ohio, Athens. Also what happened to Seneca Communications, the word was a lot of back door deals between Joe Manchin and Verizon. Verizon wanted them shut down because they were outselling them, eating their lunch and dinner, on some type of higher education system. Supposedly when the venture capital firm pulled Seneca's money they did not lose a cent and left quite a large amount of business on the table as well as long term maintenance contracts. Manchin politics as usual would not surprise me. John Calvert one of the principals at Seneca, maybe he has a story if anyone knows him or Tim.

[the jive talkin one]

My mom found a media kit.....like I predicted to Lynn Sample (Rick's wife) at the time....years after we all left Lewisburg, I would look back on Mountainet as the best work i ever did.