Charlie and Ernie sign off after 20 years on WVMT

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Fri, 21 Dec 2018 08:32:58 -0500, "billohno@gmail.com" <billohno@gmail.com> said:

> Charlie Papillo and Hall of Famer Ernie Farrar sign off WVMT (620
> Burlington) in a half hour.  Ernie started at the station over 50
> years ago. (I look forward to a cup of coffee with Ernie sometime
> soon to talk about his amazing career in radio.)

I remember when I was a wee'un my father would drive me to school with
WVMT on the (AM-only) car radio, and we would listen to "Ernie in the
Morning" back when WVMT was still an AC station.  (Fairly heavy on the
70s gold, as I recall -- I especially associate the station with Anne
Murray's cover of "Daydream Believer" but I also remember hearing Men
At Work's "Down Under" so they weren't completely gold-focused.)  It
was quite a long drive since we lived 20 miles out of town and I went
to parochial school.[0]

> “Pete and Sarah” take the news/talk helm on Monday, moving over from
> across town at “95 Triple X”.

I think you mean "across the hall".  WXXX and WVMT have been co-owned
and in the same Malletts Bay studios for a couple of decades now, next
to the AM transmitter.  (The site is pretty close to the Broad Acres
roller rink, destination of many a school trip in the early '80s.)

I remember when WXXX started (it was on 95.3 then) as a standalone FM,
with studios in its community of license, South Burlington.  It didn't
take long for Q-99 (WQCR) to succumb to the competition, despite
having the high-personality "Manno in the Morning" in AM drive and, of
course, the huge class-C signal.  By the time my parents got a car
with FM, those morning school runs were pretty much exclusively Triple
X with the "Walt and Dena" morning show (Walt Speck and Dena Yasner --
Speck left radio when he inherited his father's business, and Yasner
moved to Phoenix and is still doing voice work there).[1]

Both stations will be moving in with WEZF in Colchester shortly.

-GAWollman

[0] You would think, after nearly 40 years, I could forget this
stuff.  NOPE.

[1] Having a look at my 1989 M Street Directory, WXXX was already in
Colchester by then (when I was still in high school), and got a 19.8
Arbitron 12+ rating.  The station went on the air in 1984, was sold in
'86 and again in '89 -- that last time to Atlantic Ventures, the
company that would later become American Radio Systems, which put it
under common ownership with WDOT 1390.  WVMT was a stand-alone, owned
since forever by James Broadcasting, and was still getting a 7.3
rating.  Hall's WQCR was still hanging on, with a 9.6 rating in a
format that /M Street/ coded as "CH-AR", which I'd dispute, especially
for 1989.  To round-out the picture, Plattsburgh's WGFB (99.9C) is
shown as unrated, and had already switched from automated CHR to
satellite-delivered AC.