This is what I don't understand about Snory. There's no transition period between
same good night and snoring. There's not like a ten-second window of opportunity
where I too could fall asleep. It's just simply him talking. Good night, honey.
Do you want to just look at them and go, you're going to wait one second to go.
I'm fully conscious in talking. I didn't make you noise that loud and not wake yourself up.
Literally a pin could drop and my work was like, but I didn't expect you to sleep
through Jurassic Park.
In 707 at WRJN Radio, good morning. I'm Don Roseneer. It's civic media.
It's home town radio refreshed. There've been a lot of owners at this radio station.
The current owners are civic media, but a lot of people have owned WRJN over the past 97 years.
And one of them has to be a good friend to Tony Gassana. Anthony Gassana will call him Tony,
because that's how he knows. Tony Gassana was our owner. Now I joined in 1991.
You were the owner, but when did you buy the radio station? What year?
1989. So yeah, two years. Now, did you bring WRJN and WHKQ together or they combined beforehand?
They were combined when I purchased the radio station, but they were physically in two different buildings.
Obviously the current building where RJN is, and then we had another building.
Taylor behind the mall. Yeah, Taylor Avenue. Yeah, Taylor Avenue.
Yeah, building's still there. I figured what they used it for now, but yeah.
Go ahead. Actually, the building was sold a few years ago. I actually donated the building to a local church.
Look at you, Mr. Philanthropic person. Wow. Well, now this is a program we're going to do for this entire year.
I named it WRJN Historical Marker. This is number one, Tony Gassana.
And we're going to talk to the people who are all part of the WRJN family over the past.
Well, we can't do 97 years, but we're going to do the last several decades we can do.
And we're going to memorialize it. And then we're going to donate it to the Racine Public Library.
And they're going to archive it for us. So maybe in 50, 60 years from now, people will listen back and say,
it was radio bank then. It was audio. What? Anyway, so Tony is here.
He's my first guest because I know him probably the best out of all the owners of the radio stations.
Now, I joined you. I joined WRJN in 1991, but before that, you owned other radio stations.
This wasn't your, was this your first or you? No, no, I've been in radio started like most people.
I have an announcer up in Milwaukee, moved around the country, got into sale.
I was always wanted to own radio stations. So I put a group together.
And we owned a station in Lafayette, Indiana, Fayetteville, Arkansas, Billings, Montana.
And ultimately sold everything. And I decided had I heard that there was a station for sale in Racine.
It was owned by Dex Carg, I believe his name was. It's a disjockey in Chicago.
And he owned the radio station and was looking to sell it.
And I called him and I said, hey, I'm interested. And we have a discussion.
I can tell you a story that I've told nobody before.
We met. He told me what he wanted for the radio station.
And basically I said, okay, here's what I'll do. I'll give you a check for extra number of dollars,
which was pretty much everything that I owned. And I said, I'll have the balance of the money in 60 days.
And he said, okay, and we signed a contract. And he said, of course, if you don't come up with the balance of the money in 60 days,
you lose your offer and you lose all the money you put down. And I said, no problems.
So I wrote one of the biggest checks I ever wrote. And I had no idea where I was going to get the rest of the money.
And for the next 60 days, I ran around talking to a million people, probably 15 different banks.
And somehow at the 11th hour, I got a commitment from the bank for the balance of the money.
And became the proud owner of WRGM.
So how many times do I wait? How many turns you down, by the way?
More than I care to think about.
Are you crazy? We're investing in a rack of all radio station. Are you nuts? Get out of here.
Pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah.
Well, it worked out fine for you because you owned it for many years.
And by the way, the radio station you were DJ at was WZMF. Correct?
Oh, yes. WZMF and Monomaly Falls started when it was playing Gail Embardo, Frank Sinatra, you know, Mitch Miller.
And one day, to keep in mind, this was FM before people knew how to spell FM, you know, 1968.
So it was interesting. And then one day I heard this guy on WUWM, which was the radio station for the college.
His name was Bob Wrightman. And I talked to the guy that owned our radio station.
And I said, you know, we should hire that guy and change the format to what was then,
or I don't know, alternative rock underground rock, whatever it was called.
And we actually actually was called A-O-R.
Album. Album. Album.
So we hired Bob Wrightman and that's when we flipped the radio station.
So yeah, that was my first job in radio.
And we have a picture of it. Actually, I saw a photo of it.
Pretty grungy looking. It's a day when nobody's showered and we're old clothing.
Pretty good. Yeah, I was in the Milwaukee Journal a hundred years ago.
Yeah, and that picture still haunts me this day.
You also had a rock band, right?
Yeah, I was guilty of that as well.
We had the record. We actually put it, we memorialize it in a video.
We had a picture of you with the band and we played the music underneath it.
So I actually have the video of that.
You know, Don, you said this was going to be a friendly interview.
Not stretching up the pants. So let's talk about, let's talk about WRT
and some of the things you started here that, you know, still last today,
some of them don't, but you started the bridal extravaganza,
which you didn't, I think you did in another city or if I'm not mistaken,
but you brought it here to the festival hall.
And for a long time, this is where the brides came in January.
As a matter of fact, it would probably be about a week from now
when the brides came to festival hall.
And you had all these vendors out there plus a fashion show.
It was great.
Yeah, it was pretty awesome.
I remember one of the first shows that we did, bridal show.
We had the night before and the morning we had one of the biggest snowstorms
that we ever had in the scene.
And I said, I guess, you know, we had all the vendors, all the booths,
every all the promotion, all the brides were supposed to come.
And, excuse me, and we thought, well, no one's going to show up.
And it turned out we had the biggest attendance we ever had at the bridal show.
And that went on for how many years and many years?
Well, I think I did the first bridal show in 1989.
And when I left the station, it was still going on.
So, yeah, it was a big event.
Yeah.
And the next owner's bliss communications kept it going.
Then the last owner before ours, he ended it all.
He didn't want to do it anymore.
But we won't talk about that.
We'll just say he ended it.
The billboards were up all over town.
He said not to do it.
Anyway, so you brought the bridal extravaganza.
And these shows were packed.
And all the employees had to wear tuxedos.
We all wore tuxedos.
And it was free.
Later on, I think we had a nominal charge for the bride.
For everybody but the bride.
The brides didn't have to pay, but the rest of the bridal party did.
But it was free for years.
And it was filled up to the brim with vendors all across the area.
Milwaukee were seeing Kenosha.
This was a major event.
We still have signs from it here at the radio station.
It was a major event you brought here.
It brought a lot of money and cost a lot of money.
They're running too.
It wasn't cheap.
Now, you also brought something else to the radio station.
Our first and only crystal award nomination.
And this is from the National Association of Broadcasters.
That was exciting.
That was pretty proud about that.
The crystal awards for people don't know.
It's an award that the National Association of Broadcasters
hands out every year in their annual conference.
And one year we got nominated.
Basically, you get nominated for your civic responsibility,
things that you do in the community to further on all of the good things
that happen in your city and helping people.
And we were nominated.
And I was pretty excited about it.
Now, right up until the end.
I have a funny story to tell.
Do you want to tell it?
Do you want me to tell it?
Go ahead.
All right.
Tony, they're announcing all the nominees.
And this is what I think was in Dallas.
I think it was.
I think it was in Vegas.
Vegas, Las Vegas.
Oh, yeah.
Why have a convention in Dallas?
We can gamble in Las Vegas.
So it was in Vegas.
Room filled with radio people.
The biggest names in radio, the biggest radio stations.
And they're mentioning the nominees for the crystal award.
And Tony's clapping when he hears each one.
Oh, it's just great to be nominated.
This is just fantastic.
This is wonderful.
And they announced WRJ.
Oh, just, this is one of the proudest moments of my life
just to be nominated.
They announced the winner.
And it's not WRJN.
And Tony sits down.
I'm a bitter, bitter man.
I love that.
It's so on.
I was.
I was gracious right up to the end.
You know, they say the Academy Awards.
The host doesn't joke as much in the second half of the show
because the room is filling up with losers.
And that's what happens to the crystal awards.
As the awards go out, the room starts filling up with losers.
And nobody wants to have fun when they just lost the crystal award.
Right?
Yeah.
But we were in good company with stations and big cities,
you know, Minneapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, all around the country.
So to get to be nominated was an artist and then to all of the people
that worked at WRJN.
And we had the certificate on the wall here.
It's not here anymore.
I don't know what happened to it.
Coming up, we'll talk more with Tony Gazana former owner of WRJN radio.
We're going to talk about the change he made on our FM station
from country to beautiful music.
A change on WRJN from music to talk radio.
We'll talk about that.
We'll talk about the day it rained here in WRJN.
It actually rained.
And I don't mean drips of water.
I mean I'm on soon.
That's all coming up.
It's WRJN's historical marker number one, Tony Gazana this morning
at WRJN radio.
Home count radio refreshed.
Now a civic media station.
Good morning at WRJN radio.
It's our historical marker number one, Tony Gazana former owner
and general manager.
You have that title too of WRJN radio.
How many years did you own this radio station again?
Hold on a second.
Hold on.
I learned one thing in life.
Turn on the microphone when you're interviewing someone.
How many years did you own the radio station for?
Just over seven years.
And at the end, you co-owned it with Greg Marcus
or Marcus theaters.
Yes, I did.
Did that happen?
Well, I was approached by somebody kind of midterm
and said there was somebody who was interested in getting
into radio.
They heard about me.
And I asked who it was.
And they said, well, I can't really tell you.
But it's a respectable company and individual.
And he's looking to partner up with somebody
that has a good reputation, et cetera.
So I said, well, I'm always interested to talk about opportunities.
So finally, we met and I found out it was Greg Marcus,
of the Marcus Corporation.
He is now the president of the company.
And we put a deal together where he was a partner.
And our goal was to not only own our JN,
but eventually by other radio stations
and build a broadcast company.
That didn't come to fruition.
But it was a great marriage.
And Greg was awesome.
To this day, we remained friends.
And it was a good marriage at the time.
Now, we actually have the logo in the back room I found
for Marcus Casana.
Marcus Casana.
Now, the actual name of the company we wanted
was Vision Broadcasting.
Yep.
And well, it was Vision initially.
And then when Greg came on board,
we changed it to MG Communications,
Marcus Casana Communications.
And the reason we said communications is because
not only did we own the two radio stations,
but we started a magazine called Renaissance News Magazine,
which was a monthly aimed at the young population over 50.
And which were all members of exactly.
And then another company called Sign Pro,
which was, you know, like a company that did signs for trucks,
et cetera.
So it was more than just radio.
We built a small little company with multiple entities.
Now, let's talk about Renaissance News Magazine.
That was on my list.
Renaissance News Magazine started out as just a publication
for, I think, was it the Bridalic Straub against
or there was something?
It just started out as a one issue thing, I believe.
Yeah.
We started one issue,
and I hired somebody who ran a monthly magazine
up in Milwaukee.
And I said, hey, how would you like to be the editor?
I didn't even know what an editor was,
but it sounded like a great title.
And he came down,
and we built an office in the basement, the WRJN.
And we did the one, and then I said, hey.
Let's do this as a monthly magazine.
I didn't want to call it like a senior magazine,
because that just didn't sign, right?
So we said, hey, Renaissance is something that
harkens back to days before.
And it was a good publication.
I thought it was great.
We had local, we had articles written by the hospital
at all Saints and different attorneys in town
and pet store owners
and maybe 20 different companies
and received wrote articles.
And every month we had a feature article
about somebody in the community.
So it was good magazine.
And the guy you hired was Ross Warzella.
That's right, Ross Warzella.
Very good.
Super young guy.
And it was a great magazine.
And the interesting thing is
it was kind of taking WRJN full circle,
because as you know,
done, WRJN stands for Racine Journal News.
So the newspaper in town started
the radio station 97 years ago.
And then here we were, you know,
many years later doing radio
and print at the same time.
So, in a full circle.
Now, you also,
we also did some other things here
at the radio station.
You had to sign all of them.
You can't talk about all of them.
No, can't, but I'm going to talk about a lot of them.
The embarrassing was the stuff I'm saving for the end.
Now, you started Sign Pro, you mentioned.
Now, this was a thing, I guess,
a company called Sign Pro was starting to hook up
with a lot of radio stations.
And I believe the gimmick was
by advertising and will give you a free sign.
That's how it started out, right?
Well, kind of like that.
It was basically taking the radio station clientele
and leveraging it to the next,
the next limit where we'd say,
hey, as long as you've got a business
and you're having a sale,
why don't you do some signage?
And I have a company right here,
and if you work with them,
you know, we'll get some kind of a discount and a break.
And our salespeople basically would introduce them
to the Sign Pro people,
and whether we did trucks or, you know,
hands for customers,
it was a nice business.
And it seemed to fit nicely
with the radio station and our magazine.
And this was before the internet and everything.
Oh, yeah.
You know, you only had radio.
It's a good thing we're doing this interview today.
I don't think you're going to make it.
What?
It sounds very prepared.
I got plenty of time in front of me.
All right, let's see if we get enough time
to get this topic in here.
You changed, the reason you hired me was,
well, let's talk about this as a shorter bit.
When you hired me, I said no the first time.
And I said, I said no the second time.
Then you got somebody named Rich Washer involved.
And I'm a cool friend of ours.
Rich Washer.
And I had worked in Milwaukee at W.E.C.W.
and I left, I was doing real estate
and I went to W.O.K.Y.
And I said to Rich or you,
you called me at the station.
I said, well, I'm out of radio.
He said, well, why am I calling you with W.O.K.Y.
If you're out of radio.
And so I said, all right.
Rich Washer said, talk to this guy, Tony Gazana.
Get him off my back.
Tell him what you want.
Blow him out of the water.
And we don't have to deal with anything more.
So I remember I met with you.
I think there's a second time.
I met with you.
And I said, I can't even hear the radio station
at WHKQ or FM 92.1.
You said, well, I'm getting a new transmitter.
And I said, put the towers in.
It's so tiny.
I'm getting a new tower.
And I said, I just get a, I lived in Brown Deer.
I said, cost me more to travel in gas.
I will get your free gas.
And you gave me everything I wanted.
I said, okay.
That was it.
And I will say this.
Tony kept all his promises to me.
We got a brand new transmitter.
We got a brand new tower.
And he paid for all my gas for all the years I was there.
And that tower, 500 foot tower still stands right off highway K
or two mile road to the west of I 94.
Yeah.
That is an adventure unto itself.
And we're going to talk about that because I don't want to forget about that.
How we turned on the transmitter from that tower.
I mean, that's actually have a video.
I have it at home and I watch it the other day of the tower being built
from the ground level on up to when we had to move the transmitter
from Taylor Avenue all the way to this in the middle of nowhere place.
The other day.
And it's just a dirt road.
Oh, I got such stories to tell about that tower.
We're going to talk about that in just a minute.
I hope I have enough time for all this today.
Tony gets on a former owner of WRJN radio as my guest.
It's WRJN historical marker number one.
Keep it right here.
WRJN radio.
It's 729.
That's 34 past the hour WRJN radio.
That's now, but back in the 90s, it was owned by this guy, Tony
Gassana, vision broadcasting.
And let's talk about, I get so much I want to talk about here.
We talked about the transmitter you promised me in the new tower.
So we're going to talk about that.
You had a tower built right off the interstate by highway K or whatever that road is.
Couple of problems.
You had the tower built, but you had to get the transmitter over,
because you bought a new transmitter, it was installed on Taylor Avenue.
And you had to get it somehow to over to the new site.
But that's, it's, it's a major process because it's a very delicate piece of equipment.
So you hired a moving company with a giant flatbed truck.
And they had to get it out of the Taylor Avenue building.
So what they did was they packed it up like a little baby and blankets and everything.
And they lifted up in the air over the top of the building, remember that?
Yeah, because of the size of the unit.
And then they put it on the flatbed, drove it up to two mile road,
up a big dirt road to the top of the hill, where the transmitter building was being built.
And then they lowered it through the top of the building,
because it couldn't go through the front doors too big and then installed it.
Not that easy.
So they couldn't get that giant truck up this dirt road, which wasn't paved.
There was a giant hill and it wasn't paved.
So they had to back the truck up very carefully,
because on either side with these giant culverts, it was a farm field is what it was.
It was just a soybean field.
Right.
And there was 40 acres that I purchased at the highest point in Racine County.
Right.
And you even let the farmers still grow his soybeans on there, I remember.
You didn't take a bushel.
You didn't take a bushel of soybeans for payment, did you?
No.
Okay.
Not at all.
All right, just checking.
All right.
So they had to back this giant truck up and then they had to get the transmitter in there
into this new building you built small shed.
It's not a giant building.
It's a utility shed.
And they had to get this in carefully.
Now there was one problem.
There was no roof on the building.
And here we are installing this brand new state of the art transmitter.
And there's no roof.
And the only way to get it into the building through the top.
But you were ballistic about it because the roof was supposed to be done.
And I remember you calling it people, I have a video of you sweeping out the dust
at that building with no roof on it.
And eventually we got the roof on.
Now the next problem was there was a dirt road leading up to it.
And when it rained, it was a mud road.
And I remember a few times the light on the top of the tower
with the breaker would go off.
And I had to go out there three in the morning, drive down from brown to your go up this dirt road.
My wheel spinning because it was a steep road.
Wheels spinning in this dirt to get up there and hit the breaker to turn the lights back on.
This happened a lot.
And I remember losing my temper with you once.
I said, you've got to do something with this road.
You've got to go up this.
So you put gravel down, but not good gravel.
You put giant boulder gravel down there.
So now when I went out the road, I was spinning my wheels going back down the hill again
because I couldn't get any traction on this gravel you put up there.
Another big mistake.
And eventually you paved the road with real-ass fault.
And now it's a nice road to go up.
And there's another tower that you said secondary tower up for, I think, correct.
Pax TV rented it at one time, I think.
So there were two 500 foot towers up there.
The first one took me five years to get the permit before I started building it.
It was a task to say the least.
But you got it done every promise you made to me, you got done.
And that's a testament to you.
You kept your word to me.
And there were no bodily threats.
I didn't threaten you or anything.
You just kept your word to me.
And that was nice.
Let's talk about the format changes here.
WRJN was a music station.
And I remember I went out to Denny's with you.
And we talked about it.
And I said,
the pace of music on AM radio is gone.
You got to go to talk radio.
And we switched to talk.
Remember that we met at Denny's and you made me program director.
I was hired here in 1990 was just program director of WHKQ, 92.1 FM.
But then I was made program director of WRJN and we turned to talk radio.
Which was what radio was doing at that time.
Music was on the FM.
Talk radio was on the AM and you did that.
And that's really good.
We basically brought it back to its heritage.
You know, in radio when RJN started it was primarily talk radio.
The little bit of music.
But I remember we had such luminaries as Frenchie bouton.
I still have a Paris sewer.
By the way, we still have.
We have a giant poster of Frenchie bouton in the back room here.
We still have that.
Wasn't thrown at it.
All right, so go ahead.
I'm sorry, friends are up to you there.
You had Frenchie.
You had Gary sewer.
Get it.
Debbie Ferguson.
The party line.
Right.
Ron Richards.
Right.
Tom, obviously Kramer was on.
Tom Mountain.
I'm sure there were others that I can't recall.
But we had a lot of great people, a lot of talented people.
And people at New Racine and what people in Racine wanted to hear.
All right, here so that's when we want to talk.
There were some of the names you miss.
Bob Cook.
Who did I have?
Collins.
You also Bill Fritch, who worked overnight.
Tom Mountain.
Tom Mountain, who did our mid days.
Yeah.
That was the lineup.
Now, in WHKQ, the lineup was me.
Don Rosen, over and over and over again.
You turned WHKQ from country to beautiful music.
And beautiful music was for lack of a better word, elevator music.
It was that soft instrumental music, which was a big smash in Milwaukee.
I did very well here in Racine, as long as we had it, but times changed and we changed
it with them.
But we changed it to beautiful music.
And I remember we turned off the country station for two days to do the equipment change
over and everything.
And I think one person called up to say, where's the music?
And you didn't want to change it on April 1st because you thought people would think it was
a joke.
Exactly.
So you changed it on April 2nd of 1991 and it became WHKQ quality radio.
Remember that?
I do remember it.
I still have a coffee cup with that.
So do I.
And eventually we changed it to WEZY.
Here is a fantastic story on how the change came to WEZY and you made it happen.
You weren't even here.
You were in Dallas at the, you were voting around at the NAB convention doing whatever you
do out there.
You were at the convention and I called the FCC and there was a woman there who was in charge
of call letters.
And I said, we'd like, we actually paid to have a rundown of all the easy call letters
available and some of them were, you know, not available somewhere.
They weren't that good.
The WEZY was becoming available and I called the woman at the Federal Communications Commission
and she said, well, right now it's at a station in Florida or something and they own another
station right over the border over the Mississippi River and they want to get special permission
to use WEZY on both sides because if you were on the west side of the Mississippi, all
your stations have to begin with the letter K.
And they wanted special permission to use WEZY on both sides for their stations.
And I remember saying, well, we're considering it and she was real nasty to me.
Very curt, very nasty, you know, just to get rid of me.
And I remember you said he was around Easter time and you said, send her a basket of candy
and flowers.
Do you remember that?
Yes, you said you get much more done being nice done.
And so I sent her a basket of candy and flowers and I let a week go by and I called her up
and now she's a totally different person.
And she said, oh, hi, I got your candy and flowers.
Thank you so much.
And I said, well, what about WEZY?
Why?
Let's get down to the brass tax here.
Here's what we're talking about.
The candy and flowers supposed to get my way.
So let's talk about it.
And she said, I'm going to give them 24 hours to make up their mind.
And I said, okay, I'll hear from you tomorrow.
And I remember you called your attorney in Washington and he said, you're dealing with the
troll under the bridge.
That's what he called her, the troll under the bridge.
He was a can ask nobody can deal with her.
But you in your infinite wisdom of sending candy and flowers made it happen because the
next day she said, you can have the call letters, W, E, Z, why.
And I remember telling you and you said, well, it's, it's sure it's official.
And I called her back and I said, we have, is it official?
And she said, I'm going to send you a letter making it official.
I said, then we can have letterhead printed up and everything.
And the letter said, you now have W, E, Z, why it's been filed, start printing your letter
head.
And that's how we got W, E, Z, why?
Because you said send the candy and flowers.
And that's how we got it.
Isn't that amazing?
Well, there's, you know, there's more than one way to get to achieve your goals and
it's very rarely a straight line.
So.
And you don't get it by being nasty to people, making demands, which I found out.
That was so great.
And we got W, E, Z, why and it was like that years and years and years and all because
of you and your wisdom of, of doing that.
So we were beautiful music for a while on, on the RFM and eventually we changed to an adult
contemporary format, but kept to call it was W, E, Z, why it did very well.
You put billboards all over town.
You put our radio stations on TV commercials.
You did all that and you spent a lot of money in promoting both radio stations, WRJN and
W, E, Z, why.
You put wraps on our van because we own signposts, they were able to put a wrap around
the.
And you brought us out in public.
We were at Salmon Arama for 10 days, and by the way, the Salmon Arama festivals coming
back this year for the first time in years, they bringing the festival back.
And I said to Kelly Cruz from the downtown nursing corporation that we used to broadcast
from there for 10 days at Salmon Arama.
And that was stuff you did.
I mean, you let us broadcast at the 4th of July Parade everywhere.
We wanted WRJN out there and you really made us a community radio station, which was
great.
Well, I was felt that there were more than three people gathered and were seen, one of
them needed to be WRJN.
And you were right.
And we were the community radio station and that's what we're working to strive again
because there was a period here for nine years when we weren't the community radio station
and now civic media is bringing that back again, which I'm very happy to say.
Now coming up, I want to talk about the April Fool's joke that I played on you, which
I thought was just terrific.
It's the only time I ever played the April Fool's joke.
I want to talk about you recording your mom and dad.
So future generations will know your mom and dad.
That's basically what we're doing here.
But I want to talk about that big old time radio we had here in the lobby.
It was from the 1940s, I think.
It was a giant old time radio that worked really well.
And when the new owners came in, Magnum Media came in here, they were going to take it.
And I said, Tony, they're taking the radio, I said, no, no, no, I'm giving you ownership
of that radio.
And I remember you signed the letter and you sent it over to me.
And I said, take that radio off the hand truck.
I own it.
And it's sitting in my living room now, centerpiece of my living room.
One problem.
We brought it to an anniversary party at Memorial Hall and it was during a snow thing
and it dropped.
It doesn't work.
But my wife recently said to me, let's get it restored to its original glory.
We'll have somebody fix the insides and redo the outside because it got, you know,
it's not old radio.
What I love about the radio was on all the, all the buttons, the actual call letters of
the radio station are printed on there.
And all these stations should Chicago and Milwaukee are printed from the 1940s.
Like the radio station was, the radio was never going to move out of Milwaukee.
It was going to stay here forever and ever.
We're not moving in.
We cannot take it to another city, but actually have them printed on there, which I thought
was interesting.
So we're going to have it restored to its original glory.
And it's going to be a proud display in our living room and some day with something happens
to me and my wife, it's going to move on to somebody else, but it's going to stay an
old time radio.
And it was your dad's radio, which I really hold on.
Tony Gasson is here.
We're doing WRG and Historical Marker number one Tony Gasson, the owner of WRG and radio
for seven years, he said.
Okay.
I have to talk to Tom Carto and find out which number only you are in the, in the progression
of own Christmas radio station.
48 past, they make it 49 past the hour, WRG and I'm Don Rose and it's civic media home
down radio.
Refreshed 1400 AM, 99.9 FM and 98.1 FM, stay with me.
That's Tony and his band playing, isn't that great?
That was their one-hit record.
You guys sold three copies, my mother, my father and my sister.
One thing I want to touch upon is always we're improving this radio station with remote
broadcasts.
We used to have this poll, the Tom Kramer made one of our guys, he was a handyman with
the radio station.
He built this poll to get our signal back from remote broadcast.
It was a wireless link, microwave link to get our broadcast back here.
And he built this, built this poll at a PBC pipes.
And I remember the guy who ran sign pro, borrowed the van and broke the poll or lost it or
whatever.
I was screaming at you.
It was a Sunday morning, we're broadcasting from South Hills Country Club and I got back
to the radio station and there was a flyer on the backs of machine and it was for a brand
new stainless steel or aluminum, I should say aluminum, a party poll and it cost like $1200
or whatever.
You said buy it because you were sick of hearing me complaining and crabbing about it.
You also bought other equipment for us that just made this station sound better on remote
broadcast and we brought a vector, we were all this great equipment under you and it was
done.
And you also bought us a brand new Marty because I think I was complaining and bitching about
the old one not working well and you bought a brand new Marty transmitter for us.
I remember that.
Well, here's something else that I bought.
I tried to bring our station into 20th century and I thought, well, when I bought the station
we had typewriters, no computers and this was when everything was moving over to computers
and I couldn't get anybody in the building to use a computer.
So one weekend I came in and I took the select IBM typewriters, I locked them in the basement
in a small room that we had and I'm Monday morning when office opened up, people said,
where's the typewriters and I said I gave them a good will so I better learn how to use
the typewriters because I mean the computer, that's all you got and that's how we switched
into the 20th century but by the end of the week, by bookkeeper quip, she didn't want
to deal with the computer.
We're quickly, you had the roof replaced on this building and you got the cheapest bid
from a guy named Jeff Ashman I think his name was and for whatever reason he put a
tarp on the building or whatever and it didn't work well and it started pouring rain in
this building and I have that my video camera in the car because I was filming the tower
being built and it was pouring.
I just recently uncovered the rain video the car goes at it and it was pouring rain and
the whole building got destroyed, not the studios, but the lobby, some of the offices
got destroyed and what a mess and you were out of town again, you're outside of town
when these events happen.
Actually, you called me and I was between flights in Chicago and you told me about this
horrendous rain and it's pouring inside studios or the lobby and I said, well, is earning
I can do should I come back and you said there's nothing you can do and I said, okay,
I'll go to take it son, I'll call you when I get back.
I remember one of our salespeople was calling and he said, you get back to the places crumbling
and I said, it's not crumbling, we just have to clean up the water but it was really
bad.
I mean, you had to rent rooms over at the Ramata for the staff because it's stunk in the
building during the summer.
Quickly too.
I want to tell you about it.
April Fool's joke I played on Tony.
We just had an inspection by the Federal Communications Commission and we were waiting
for the report and it was April 1st and I got some FCC letterhead.
I think I had it left over from the call letter change and I made this phony letter to
pursuant to field testing blah, blah, blah, blah, docket number, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or inspection.
You are now going to owe like $14,000 in payments and fines and I put it in a FedEx envelope
stuck in your door and one of our salespeople I knew she would call you and snoop in your
door.
It was all predicated and heard snooping into the door and she looked in the door and she
found the FedEx, opened it up and read it to you and the last line I put in there said,
I don't want any of your phony excuses, pay up now so you knew it was a joke but you were
pretty upset.
You were nervous.
You were scared when I got that letter.
Well, FCC was somebody you didn't pull around with but I think if I recall I got the
last letter.
Yes, you did.
Yes, you did.
You said you were cutting everybody's salaries in half because you had to save, you had
to save money to pay the fines on the FCC and you put that out on April 1st and people
didn't know what you were talking about because I didn't tell anybody about this April
fool's joke.
I did it all on my own but it was a good joke and every time I call you on April 1st,
you say, I know why you're calling and real quickly here we got a minute show left.
You did something with your mom and dad people left to know about.
Well, this goes back 20-some years ago.
We hired a person, a professor out of UWM or UW-Madison.
She was a genealogist and we asked her to come and visit with my mother and father and
we court conversations with them so over a period of three months she did this.
She transposed, made CDs, six of them for my mother and six of them up my dad and they
just talked about their parents, their grandparents, their struggles when they came to America etc.
And then my brother and I made copies for all of our kids and grandchildren so they have
a living history that goes back to my grandparents and my great grandparents and it's a great
legacy.
In fact, I just listened to them recently and I brought a tear to my eye listening because
my father is passed but my mother in about 30 days will turn 103 years old so I shared
the conversation with her.
Excellent, excellent idea.
Everybody should do something like that.
Record your parents.
I did.
I have them on video and I have audio recordings of my dad talking about his military career.
Excellent idea.
People should do that.
And that's why we're doing this because we want to preserve history and you and I aren't
going to be around forever.
I hope.
Well, I'll have a little longer on for yourself.
And I just want to preserve the history of this radio station and you are WRGN Historical
Marker number one Tony and I wanted you to be number one because I probably had the
most fun with you, the most approachable person when you own this radio station and I had
my run-ins with you, not you personally, screaming things in your office and we're not going
to go into that.
But it was, you know, look back now and you can laugh at all that stuff.
Tony, hold on the line.
Okay, don't go anywhere.
Tony, thank you for owning WRGN and doing so much innovation with this radio station and
keeping it what it was, a community-based radio station.
Thank you very much, Tony.
Well, thank you, Don, and I was probably part of the 97-year history.
Oh, yeah.
Hold on, Tony Gazana, one of our owners here for seven years, starting in 1988 or 1989.
I forgot.
1989.
1989.
Thank you, Tony.
I'm Don Rosen back tomorrow morning, 6 a.m., bright and early at WRGN Radio, Civic Media,
a hometown radio refreshed.