WYSL

It had a tiny signal but the memories live large.

At 1,000 watts by day, and 250 watts by night, WYSL didn't exactly blanket the Eastern seaboard like its Top 40 competitor WKBW. But many outstanding talents passed through its doors, and listeners and employees still remember it fondly many years after its call letters disappeared from the 1400 spot on the Buffalo, N.Y., AM dial.

Sean Grabowski, Gary Byrd, Kevin O'Connell, Jeff Heustis, Chris Clark, Jim Bradley, Paxton Mills.

The roots of WYSL go back to January, 1948 when WXRA Kenmore, N.Y., signed on at 1080 on the AM dial. It was originally owned by Thaddeus Podbielniak and Edwin R. Sanders (The Western New York Broadcasting Company). George "Hound Dog" Lorenz was an announcer there until he was fired for playing too much "race music", as R&B used to be called. John W. Kluge bought the station in 1957 and promptly changed the call letters to Top 40 and the call letters to WINE.

In 1960, Gordon McClendon purchased WINE, dropped Top 40 in favour of beautiful music and changed the call letters to WYSL (for "Whistle".) The station moved to 1400 in late 1961 and flipped to a Top 40 format in early 1966. WYSL continued playing hit music until it turned in its call letters September 10, 1986, and became a full-time simulcast of WYSL-FM. Station formats ranged from Beautiful Music to Top 40 to heavy metal, to its present format of "Solid Gold Soul".

Chris Clark - a.k.a. Paul Palo - on January 8, 1967. [ LISTEN ] (5:48) and Chris again on February 9, 1968. [ LISTEN ] (11:22)

As a 21-year old, fellow WYSL jocks tagged Chris as being "wet behind the ears and and shoes". He had sort of a hipster delivery that you would hear on R & B stations at the time: (like : "Ya babies" and "dig it").

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the station was owned by top 40 format innovator Gordon McLendon of Dallas, Texas (well known for helming legendary Top 40 stations in the continental U.S. such as KLIF in Dallas, Texas and WAKY in Louisville, Kentucky), whose ownership caused many of its personalities to use the station as a springboard to national or international prominence. Under McLendon's ownership, young personalities who would later become prominent on radio and television in the upstate New York region, including Kevin O'Connell, George Hamberger and Jim McLaughlin, got their first foothold in Buffalo (then a top-20 radio market) at WYSL. The station's ability to develop emerging talent made it competitive in the immediate Buffalo city and inner-ring suburban area despite a weak signal, especially when compared with 50,000 watt format rival WKBW, which could blanket upstate New York by day and the eastern seaboard of North America by night.

In a particularly singular example of the station's wide impact, in 1961, DJ Ron Baxley, after recommendations from McLendon, became program manager during the summer of 1961 for the offshore pirate radio station Radio Nord, beaming broadcasts to Stockholm, Sweden. Radio Nord was financed by McLendon and his business partner, Clint Murchison.

(The WYSL calls would end up on a news-talk station in rural Livingston County, serving the nearby Rochester metro area, in 1987, not long after the Buffalo station dropped the call sign.)

Paul Palo was one of WYSL's early Top 40 jocks as Chris Clark. Clark returned as a newsman to Buffalo by the name of John Patrick at WYSL in the late 60s after a 6 month active duty tour at Ft Leonard Wood, Mo forced on the upper managers of McClendon Corp because of Federal law. This was because of the VietNam War & the fact he was a member of the NY State National Guard and called to active duty for training. WYSL had to re-hire him or face Federal law penalties (or maybe they were just good guys). It was a great decision, because he got to work and learn under a great pro newsman Jim McLaughlin who kicked his ass into doing things the right way.

WYSL spent over a decade challenging the bigger WKBW, and it could be said that the latter would not have achieved the success it reached, if it were not from pressure provided by the much smaller but competitive, WYSL. By the mid-70’s the station was sold to Howard Broadcasting, and shortly thereafter had made a full format switch to FM.

Most notably, Howard brought in morning show host Harv Moore, who together with WYSL veteran Bob Taylor became morning show favorites in WNY for nearly a decade before they were pushed out the door during an ownership change in 1989. It was this conversion that saw “Whistle” AM become nothing more than an echo of the past, still cherished to those who remember, yet no longer heard.

In 1989, the station changed its calls to WXBX-AM and became “Rebel Radio” playing alternative rock for year or two before changing to WGKT-AM, for a couple of years. In the mid 1990’s, another call letter change to WWWS-AM, “Solid Gold Soul”, calls and format the station still has today.

Some materials found on this page were originally published by the following: Rock Radio Scrapbook.