L to R: Matt the Cat, Betty Korvan, Joel Frensdorf (WMMS sales), John Gorman, Debbie Ullman, Jeff Kinzbach, Denny Sanders, Kid Leo, and Bob Zurich (RCA Records).The station first turned to adult contemporary, then Top 40, big band and finally the Drake-Chenault automated Hit Parade '69. WMMS reverted to progressive rock on September 11, 1970.
Following a legal dispute with a competing station owner over non-compete clauses in their contracts, former WIXY personalities Dick "the Wilde Childe" Kemp and Lou "King" Kirby were signed by MetroMedia. The station briefly battled with WNCR of Nationwide Communications, itself filling the void created by the brief absence of WMMS on the rock scene.
Key WNCR personnel (including former WHK-FM/WMMS personalities Martin Perlich and Billy Bass, and station newcomer David Spero) were soon hired by WMMS, taking most of their audience with them. During this time, WMMS used slogans derived from its call sign: first as "Music Means Satisfaction", and later as the place "Where Music Means Something".
Throughout the '70s and into the '80s, the ratings soared, and the station became synonymous with rock 'n' roll in Cleveland. Its program directors and DJs would go to great lengths to obtain exclusive tracks from acts such as Fleetwood Mac, whose hit album Rumours sold one million copies in the Cleveland area alone. WMMS played David Bowie's "Space Oddity" well before other stations in the country would play anything by the Thin White Duke, and after embracing Bruce Springsteen early in his career, WMMS built a library of his unreleased tracks that no other station had.
Billy BassIn November 1972, WMMS was sold to Malrite Communications, a Michigan-based firm that relocated to Cleveland upon purchase. Under Malrite ownership, WMMS would become an album-oriented rock (AOR) powerhouse, much in the same vein as its former MetroMedia progressive rock siblings.
During this time, WMMS also began broadcasting a remarkable amount of live concerts, many of which originated in Cleveland and were produced by the station itself. The WMMS Coffee Break Concert was a weekly music-interview show broadcast live from the station's studio, and later with an audience at the Agora Ballroom. Warren Zevon, John Mellencamp, Lou Reed, Tim Buckley, Peter Frampton, and a host of others performed on the program over the years, recordings of which are still widely available as bootlegs. The WMMS Coffee Break Concerts were booked by Denny Sanders and hosted by Len "Boom" Goldberg, Debbie Ullman, and later, Matt the Cat. The concert series continued on well into the 1990s and early 2000s, albeit much less frequently.
As WMMS-FM/100.7 program director from 1973-86, Gorman led the Buzzard troops on a campaign of conquest that transformed an unknown, FM upstart into a rock 'n' roll powerhouse. In 1986, Gorman and 12 other staff members left WMMS to start classic-rock station WNCX-FM/98.5.
During this time, with Denny Sanders as his creative services director and Rhonda Kiefer as programming assistant, WMMS broke all Cleveland ratings and revenue records.
WMMS was the first radio station to employ full-time promotion and marketing directors: Dan Garfinkel and his successor, Jim Marchyshyn.
L to R: Matt the Cat, Jeff Kinzbach, Denny Sanders, Murray Saul, John Gorman, Roger McGuinn, program asst. Annette Salvatore, and Charlie Kendall.
Suzi Quatro was an established superstar in Cleveland – but hadn’t really caught on in the rest of the country. She was too rock for top 40 stations and too pop for most album rock FMs. WMMS listeners found her to be a perfect fit.
In lieu of awarding us a gold or platinum album – since she hadn’t achieved that prominence nationally – Bell Records, her label, created a special award for breaking Suzi Quatro in the Cleveland, Akron, and Canton markets.
In lieu of awarding us a gold or platinum album – since she hadn’t achieved that prominence nationally – Bell Records, her label, created a special award for breaking Suzi Quatro in the Cleveland, Akron, and Canton markets.
In other words, the carrion-eating bird represented "death and dying" – a darkly comic reflection of the city's decline. EC horror comics, Fritz the Cat, Rocky and Bullwinkle, and Looney Tunes – all served as inspirations for the "bird of prey with attitude" concept.
The station was known as "The Home of the Buzzard" at first. The Buzzard was the co-creation of Gorman, Sanders and American Greetings artist David Helton.
"We joked about the Buzzard becoming Cleveland's Mickey Mouse... a "Buzzard Land" amusement park filled with sex, drugs and rock and roll..." – JOHN GORMAN
A study conducted by MBA students at Case Western Reserve University in 1975 found that the new WMMS logo was more recognizable to those living in Greater Cleveland than both Chief Wahoo of the Cleveland Indians and even Coca-Cola.
In time, the station adopted new slogans reflecting the callsign: "We're your Modern Music Station" and "your Music Marathon Station." Although never used on the air, listeners alternately knew the callsign as an acronym for "Weed Makes Me Smile" and "Magic MushroomS," the latter referencing the somewhat controversial logo used before the Buzzard. WMMS also began referring to its frequency in promotions as "101 FM", a rounding-off which continued for the next decade.
1975 TOUR WITH DENNY SANDERS
The original WMMS studios and offices were located in the “Midtown” section of Cleveland at Euclid and East 50th.It was a dangerous and dismal part of town. Robberies were routine. An average one car per week was stolen from the studio parking lot. Maneuvering around the hookers and drug dealers working the street was required to enter from Prospect Rd.
The WMMS and WHK offices and studios were housed on the first floor in a windowless part of the building. It resembled an underground bunker.
The studio was small and dirty. Every square inch was cluttered with albums, tapes, carts, reference books, speakers, wires, wires, and more wires. Layers of dust and grime coated the cabinets, the speakers, the clock, and the wires that snaked everywhere.
The Buzzard became synonymous with WMMS, Cleveland radio and the city itself, spawning a series of T-shirts so numerous that they are now impossible to catalog, many with slogans like "Where Music Means Something" and "Ruler of the Airwaves."
A major contributor to the ratings success was an airstaff that remained fundamentally unchanged for many years: personalities like Kid Leo, Jeff & Flash, Matt the Cat, Dia Stein, Denny Sanders, Murray Saul, Debbie Ullman, Betty "Crash" Korvan, Ruby Cheeks (Debra Luray), BLF Bash (Bill Freeman), TR (Tom Renzy) and the late Len "Boom" Goldberg were invaluable to the station's popularity.
Of all the personalities that worked at WMMS, Len "Boom" Goldberg remained the longest. He joined the station in early 1972 before its sale to Malrite, and stayed in different capacities until 2004. He was best known as the voice for the station's hourly IDs, music segues, sweepers, and commercials, and was also a member of The Buzzard Morning Zoo in the mid-80s.
Fleetwood Mac at the Bond Court Hotel press conference.WMMS was directly influenced by then and current sister station WHTZ/New York (Z100), which rose to the top of the ratings books immediately after installing a contemporary hit radio (CHR) format. Among the more significant moves taken by WMMS was the formatting of the morning zoo concept created by Z100's Scott Shannon onto the show Jeff & Flash (Jeff Kinzbach and Ed Ferenc) were already hosting. Kinzbach and Ferenc had already been a morning team – with sidekicks – since 1976, seven years prior to adopting the "morning zoo" label, so the basic structure was already in place.
The music structure also was modified at this time as artists such as Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince soon found airplay on WMMS. The change was done for many reasons: as a nod to the sudden influence Z100's format had on the Malrite group; Gorman and Sanders intention to stay with the current music trends as the album-oriented rock (AOR) format was, even then, in a state of decline; and as a means to attract a female audience. By 1984, the WMMS format moved to an CHR/AOR hybrid, playing a great deal of Top 40 rock singles in hot rotation mixed with album cuts; this new blended rock/Top 40 format was soon known by those at the station as Rock Forty. The station also started to devote weekend programming to the classic rock format.
In the WMMS studio, Part 1 & 2 filmed by Art Vuolo, 1980s.
John Gorman and Denny Sanders left the station in fall of 1986, leading fourteen staff members with them to start rival station WNCX. Gorman credits his decision to leave to changes in management, and the station's overall shift to a more "corporate" mentality.
Rolling Stone named WMMS "Radio Station of the Year" nine straight years (1979–87) as part of its annual Readers' Poll, but a February 1988 front-page story in The Plain Dealer revealed station employees had stuffed the annual survey's ballot box for the 1987 poll to allow for the possibility of a tenth straight win the following year. Lonnie Gronek, then general manager of the station, claimed in The Plain Dealer article that the process had gone on "for years", however other accounts dispute Gronek's claim.
The station claimed it was simply "a marketing strategy" and "much in line with what many stations did." Negative reaction was swift and widespread; some called the scheme a mere "lack of judgement," while a reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal compared the station's response to that of discredited former Vice-President Spiro Agnew.
WHO WORKED AT WMMS? Here is the list: Victor Boc, Ross Brittain, Rick D'Amico, Tom Daniels, Ted Ferguson, Donna (Halper), Darla Jaye, Chuck Matthews, Blaine Schwartz, and Jim West.
