I'm going to be a good hour. This is WRJN historical marker number 12. We're tracing the history
of WRJN leading up to our 100th anniversary coming up on December 6, 19, 19, 20, 26. Where's
my head? 2026. I'm feeling too much with the history of the station with the 1900s and one of
the most influential and I probably one of the longest owners of WRJN. Skip Bliss is with me from
Bliss Communications. He was the president and CEO, actually the owner. Let's just call him
the owner of WRJN for 17 years. According to my records, you bought the place in 1997. You
kept it to 2014. It was very profitable. We had 20 or so people working here at any given moment.
And we think you're one of the best owners in the company's history. So that's pretty good.
A lot of people have nothing but nice things to say about you. So that's pretty good. And
thanks for joining us. Skip, do appreciate it. Well, you're more than welcome. And I guess I
must have fooled more people than I thought. Now you had a great, you had a great list of people
working with you like Bob daily. He ran the stations and so forth, but you also in newspapers.
And you owned one of the most influential papers, one of the biggest in the state, the Jamesville
Gazette. Now give us a little bit of the history of that because that was not started by you or
your father. That goes way back. Yeah. Yeah. My great grandfather in the middle 1800s
brought a printing press to Jamesville. And I think I think it came in some came out of wagon
nurse. It had to force back. But yeah, they published it for a long time. And then my grandfather
took over late in the 1800s. And we have a nice string, had a nice string of longevity in
the family. So we've been around for a long time. And I actually once the newspaper had really
taken hold and Jane so was growing, my dad had an interest in radio. And he was a bit of a
pioneer in radio himself. The license for WCLO that was issued was actually, I think the original
license was issued to someone in the Kenosha area. And the call letters that they established
the WCLO, he had some business interest in some sort of a camp. And the camp was called
Camp Lake Ults or Lake Something. And that's where the WCLO call letters came from at the time.
So yeah, we've been around for a long time. Now was WCLO in Kenosha at one time,
I think it was. No, it was originally licensed. And that's like I say, where the camp
lake, but it was never, he never built it out. And so my dad bought the license and moved it to
Jamesville. And the rest is history. So now you own a company on a newspaper at this point,
you own a local radio station, WCLO. When did it start to expand to newspapers all over the
state of Wisconsin, radio stations in Illinois, the all of the upper peninsula, and all over the
place. Yeah, that all really kind of picked off in the early 70s.
It was a time when I think there was a lot going on. Newspaper families were
having family related discussions about who wanted to stay in the business and who wanted to
cash out. And so there was turnover in the industry. And newspapers to a large degree played
a pretty significant role in the growth and establishment of broadcast radio.
So you know, as some of those newspaper families were having issues in terms of inheritance
and stuff, I think the radio stations began to come into play too. And so you know, there's been
a marketplace for quite a long time. For newspapers and radio, there's more, I guess there's more
turnover has been for 20 or 30 years than once was the case. You know, if you have owned a newspaper,
your family owned it for eternity at the case really anymore. So how many newspapers did you
own at the peak? And how many radio stations did you own at the peak? Do you remember?
I think we had seven radio stations and five newspapers. The newspapers were all daily,
but they were, Jamesville was the largest daily that we had. And then the other
daily were in the five to 10,000 circulation. They were smaller communities,
Marinette, Wisconsin, Ironwood, Michigan. That was a fun one. And actually, I had
oversight responsibility for both of those papers. And back in the ancient times, I traveled
a fair amount to both of them. And traveling to Ironwood, Michigan to do what I could to help
those folks. That's a trip. The weather and ironwood needless to say can be pretty rough.
So that was a tough trip to get up there. When I went, I usually stayed for a while because
you never knew when the snow was going to melt. Yeah. Hold on a second. We're talking to
Skip Bliss, the former owner of WRJN Radio. And this is WRJN Historical Marker number 12. I didn't
want to make you 13 in case you're superstitious. So I think we're going to jump 12 to 14. I don't think
anybody wants to be stuck with number 13. War with Skip coming up at just a moment. We'll talk about
when they purchase WRJN. When they sold WRJN all that's coming up in just a moment here.
This is WRJN Historical Marker number 12. We're talking to former owner Skip Bliss. I've been blessed
to have so many good owners to work with you're starting with Tony Gazzana. And then yourself.
And then we had Wilson Marcus Gazzana, which was Greg Marcus from Marcus theaters was on the station
and current owner sage while who owns civic media. But I got to say you're in that batch. Those
wonderful owners I had the pleasure to work with. And I do appreciate it. Your company was never
anything but good to me. And I've got a story coming up later on to tell people how good
you were to me. And that's coming up a little later on. We'll save that. Okay. So we talked about
your great grandfather's starting with a newspaper brought a printing press in Conestoga,
wagon to rest to change probably. I mean, really, I mean, the 1800s probably a Conestoga wagon
with a printing press in it drawn by horses and it evolved into many newspapers and radio stations.
What made you buy WRJN? Well, I mean, I think what you, as you said, there were people.
It was a time when when there were transitions in families and local radio stations that were
it's not always handed down like like I don't know like TV sets and houses. But
I think it was an opportunity. We understood we liked radio. My dad
was a radio guy really. There were a lot of other members of our family over the years that
were involved at the newspaper, but he loved radio. And had he died to Earth,
and we had outside the family management, Marshall Johnston, who also had an interest. And of course,
our radio stations were being managed by Bob Daley who was, he was a bit of a legend and
Wisconsin radio world also. And when we sat down and decided that it was maybe time to take a look
at expanding the company and whether we wanted to do that with newspaper acquisitions or if we
wanted to look at radio and we decided, let's go look in person radio stations. And then the
impact of matters, they're much like newspapers in their communities anyway. I mean, you know,
that you're in the news business. Good radio stations are stations that are covering the local
community and to a degree doing it pretty aggressively. So it was a good fit. And there were other
people that we knew in the newspaper world that were already buying radio stations around the
country. And so we got started and eventually we were fortunate enough to get to six or seven
markets. And all small, all small, the medium size, much like Racine. And it was a good business.
You owned a station in Dixon, Illinois, correct? Yes. That was the station president Reagan used
to work at. That's a story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was the story. Yeah.
In fact, there was a local hotel outside of Dixon. And I didn't, I was never aware of it,
but the family that owned the Dixon properties decided that some of the meetings that were held
between our company and theirs while we were looking at acquiring them. Some of those they wanted
to hold at a local facility that had some limited meeting space as well as a hotel and
restaurant attached to it. And the hotel, I can't remember the name of the property, but they had
a room in Dixon where when Reagan visited, he was the Reagan room. And this was after much,
there was a lot of time since that happened, but I stayed in the Reagan, I can't remember when
we were acquiring the Dixon radio stations. My room was there was the Reagan room. And so my claim
to faint, my claim to knowing, knowing Mr. Reagan is limited to sleeping in apparently the bed
that he slept in. That puts you, that puts you one degree away from Ronald Reagan. That's pretty
good. Plus you owned his radio station too. Oh, that is. Yeah. Well, we got, got the radio station
in the deal. So we're talking to, uh, Skip Bliss, former owner of WRJ, I've got lots more to talk
about. And he is historical marker number 12, the history of WRJN.
And this morning, we have historical marker number 12, the history of WRJN. And that is Skip Bliss,
who owned it WRJN from 1997 to 2014, 17 years. Well, I did the math right on that. I tried
to do it without a calculator. And I think he did it in my head. Okay. And he bought the radio station
from Tony Gassana and Greg Marcus. Tony owned it when I first came here. And then he joined up with
Greg Marcus from Marcus theaters. They owned it for a while. And then they sold it to the Skip and
you owned it for 17 years. Now, some of the people you had involved in running the station, Bob
Daley and Michael Brian, those were two instrumental people who helped run the station. And you were
very good at selecting general managers because they all stayed a long time. And I don't know if you
personally picked them out or was up to Bob Daley and Michael Brian to pick them out.
But one of the people you picked out, Chris Marrow is our general manager here at the radio station
today. So who picked out all these employees? He just happened to do a good job with.
Well, I can tell you for sure, it was not my skill set. I basically came out of a newspaper
background in terms of my own personal work time. Although when I finished my schooling,
I did go to radio. And I spent three years in West Bend working as a sales rep.
For WBKV. And I had three great years up there. And it was a really good experience that
kind of gave me some background in the world of broadcasting. When I came back to Jamesville,
and the newspaper was in need of some additional management support, I loved my time in radio.
And I was never the guy that picked personnel at any of the radio stations. I relied on Bob Daley
primarily. And as time went on, Michael Brian, because of Mike's ongoing Bob was a programmer.
In a broadcast on air guy, his whole career was spent in that arena. And Mike was a broadcast sales guy.
And they were a fabulous team. So when it came to acquiring these other radio stations,
both of those guys were the primary people in looking at what do we have in the way of
management at these stations that we were acquiring. And what do we have to do to add quality
management going forward? They were the guys. I remember the first time I met you.
The station was just sold to you. And I met with you. And you talked to me. I
said, this guy's pretty nice. I mean, he's acknowledging my existence. That's pretty good
right off the start. Yeah. But you had some great management teams here under you. We had
Timidus. And of course, Chris Marl was here under you. And people stayed a long time, which is
hard. Not a big thing in radio. Radio is kind of a floating business. People stay a year or two,
three years. They move on. But under you, the station thrived. Our news department thrived.
Mainly I think because you came from a news background. So we had a great news team here. Tom
Carco, Janet Hoff. Yep. And we had a great sports department with also Gary Sewer was here.
We had a great sports department carrying all the local sports. It was really a good local
Racine radio station under you. And it really thrived. Sales were good. We made a lot of money.
We had a new roof put on our building under you. We had we out of the quick start. We had a
guy right before you bought the radio station. We had somebody put in the roof on. Did a bad job.
And it rained inside the radio station. I don't mean drip drip drip. I mean it poured inside
the radio station. And so Mary Jolvia, who was your head of HR, her husband came in as soon as you
bought the place and put in the roof on the building. And it hasn't rained since 1997 in here.
So he did a good job. And we drip drip drip or rain, rain, rain in here. I also have to tell you
a quick story because I don't want to forget. I want to tell you how important your company was to me
in 2011. I had to have open heart surgery. And I remember that. I remember you were here on
some other purpose. And I had to tell you I was taking a month off because I was having the
surgery. And I talked to you about it. I talked about artificial heart valves versus real because you
you had an artificial thing put in your your knee. And when I was just about to have the surgery,
the day before you switched insurance companies. And that sent me into a turmoil because all the
stuff I had done with the hospital and everything was based on an insurance company. And then
they switched. And I had to get this medication the day before my surgery. They said,
don't forget you must take this the day before. And I went to Walgreens and they didn't take
it. They didn't have my insurance because we switched. So I called Mary Jolvia with head of HR.
And she said to me, I'm giving them the bliss credit card. You get whatever you need. And we'll
settle this up later on. And so I went in there and I had to get these medications before the
heart surgery. And it was all put on the bliss American Express card. And it was an emergency cut
to about six months later. I'm getting medications at Walgreens. I said, do you want this on your
American Express card? I said, I don't have an American Express card. Yes, it's bliss
communications. I said, no, take that off now. We're done with that. We're not going to use that
anymore. And then what happened was it was a snafu because they sent all the names in from
all the employees to the new company. The reason they didn't know it wasn't working right was
because I was the first person to use it. And so they had to recent the names and everything was
straightened out. But I was in a panic because I needed that medication. It was very expensive.
And Mary Jovia came to the rescue and said, don't worry about it. Get what you need. It's all
taken care of. And that's the type of people who were working for you. And I thought that we had
we were very fortunate. And she was still employed after our company was sold. She
moved into a human resource position with a very, very large company. And she's done exceptional
work for them. But she is a real quality person. If you're going to specialize in human resources,
you're going to be dealing with human needs. And she understood that better than anybody I'd
never met. And so she would find a way to deal with special needs. And I'm glad I'm glad in
your case. Oh, yeah. I was in a panic because I was having a surgery in 12 hours. And they said,
take that medication. Don't forget. So I thank Mary Jovia very much. And her husband for making
a new roof on her building. That was pretty good too. Now you own the station for 17 years. And over
that time, you want W F H R up in Wisconsin rap. And you want a bunch of stations around. But they
were all really local radio stations. And just a little side note, uh, the company that I
the knowns W R J and now civic media also owns W F H R as well. So yeah, but they you made your
stations all local local local radio stations. And you also gave autonomy to a lot of the program
directors. And I was the program director here during the entire round of bliss. And I remember I
wanted to spend some money on advertising at W R J and then went to the TV, one new billboards,
all that kind of stuff. And I remember it was you at a meeting said, well, what are your plans for
it? And I was ready for that. And I had called the TV stations, the cable companies. I got all the
right demos. I got all the shows with the right demos. And I gave it to you. And I remember you
said, OK, go ahead with it. It's approved. And I said fantastic. And it really helped the radio
stations. And that's one thing I loved about working for bliss. If you had a good idea and you
can prove it was a good idea, go with it. And there was no double checking. No, we're not doing
it because we didn't come up with the idea. And even when it may changes in the programming,
I explained it to what even Bob Daley, whoever it was in our general manager. And he said,
OK, you think it's a good idea. I trust you go with it. And I love that autonomy.
Where I and stations said, well, I mean, I didn't make any stupid errors that I know of.
And I loved, I loved that aspect of blisk communications owning W R J and because we saw at the time,
music on a music on AM radio wasn't doing that well. So we went to a talk format at the time.
And it really did well for us. We did local talk. We had some national shows in there
because talk host are very expensive. And eventually went back to oldies where we're thriving
today with oldies. And we do some talk like we're doing right now with you. We do some talk radio
on the morning show. But I love the fact that you let the program directors in your company and
your general managers run the radio stations. A lot of companies don't do that. They run it from
one central location, but you didn't do that. Well, we spent time, you know, I like, as I said before,
you know, the guy that says he did everything in his company and was the only person who was
responsible for its success. There's, you're not getting the whole story. And I was so fortunate
because I had people that tutored me and took an interest in me when I was coming into into a
business that, you know, sure, it was a family business and it was what was talked about over dinner
last time around my warehouse. But, but, you know, there were people who had been hired within
our company for many, many years before I got there. And the people that were hired were real
quality people, hardworking smart. And people with a background that they brought to our company
was invaluable. And, and I, you know, there, I think the idea that you use try to find people in
a community or people in the industry to run these properties that companies buy is a critical
decision. And, you know, in the case of, we were just, we were fortunate to a large degree
that people that were doing the hiring were veteran experienced broadcast people and good people,
higher good people. And we were, we were lucky. We were fortunate. We didn't, we did pretty well.
I think with, and then we have a lot of people today who are, you know, from the period that I
was working in the business, people who are now retired doing other things. But they're still involved,
you know, it's like you talking to me. Still like talking about the business. And, and you know,
word gets around. There's quality companies to work for in anywhere, any sector of business. And
people like to work for good companies. We were just lucky. We attracted some really great people.
Now, you built, you, thank you. You built a giant printing press. I mean, this place I took a
tour of it was mammoth. And talk about that a little bit. What made you want to get into that
multi-million dollar printing press? Well, it was, it was a, it was a factor of aging equipment
in our existing plant. And opportunities to move from just printing our newspaper in,
this was in Jamesville. And it was much more than the press. The press was the feature of the
building. But it was a facility. And from the get go, it was built not only to print
our newspaper. And in, and in Jamesville, it's a, it's a pretty good size newspaper. We were
about a 32,000 circulation daily. But that plant's been in existence now for cash. Probably
going on 20 years. But at the time, other newspapers were dealing with aging equipment,
newspapers in basically the southern half of Wisconsin. And there were opportunities there
to work with them and, and say, look, instead of reinvesting in all of this equipment and,
you know, the necessarily business is, is equipment intensive. And it's very expensive.
And so the opportunity to print up for other people was pretty attractive.
What made you put an end to bliss communications? They had to be a big decision.
This didn't, you didn't wake up one morning and say, you know what? I think I'm done.
It didn't work like that. What made you give up and sell the entire company, radio properties,
newspapers, and get out of the business? What, what, what brought that on?
Well, I got old. It happens. And, you know, I do have a son who is active still in the
business and is working actively for the people who purchased our company. But, you know,
the media world is changing. And, and in many respects, unfortunately, it's, it's changing
particularly for the newspaper industry. It's, it's very expensive to operate newspapers.
There are a lot of equipment. And, and a lot of people. And it, you need resources out in the
field to bring people the news about their community. You know, not so much, not so much the rest of
the world, but the advent of the internet and, and cell phones and being able to access
news from around the world with a click of a button on your phone. Unfortunately,
in many respects, it's been very hard on the newspaper industry. And,
I, not only me, but people who worked with me saw that happening. And it's, it's happened all
over, all over Wisconsin. Newspapers have changed hands. Some, some are no longer being published.
And that's a very sad thing. Because they're heavily vested in covering their communities. And
those communities are not getting the intensive kind of news coverage that they used to get.
So, you know, I, I pretty much, I would say much the story. I know how you feel because when I
read in one of the trades that a radio station went dark, which means it goes off the air, I was
feel bad because it was once a vibrant part of the community, employing a lot of people. Now it
goes dark. And that's a horrible feeling for me, because I've been in radio for 53 years my
entire life. And I've been working continuously in radio for 53 years. So I take it per, like you
take the newspapers personally, when they go out, I take the radio stations personal. Do you know,
in 53 years, I was only fired once from a job once in 53 years. You know what station that was?
This one. My God, you sold it to fired me. And well, here I am back again. But I want to say,
in the last few minutes here, we have been blessed in this radio station with great owners. Now,
Tom Carkel was here. He could tell you the owners from day one. We had the recene journal news,
which is where W R J and gets us call letters from. We had so many great owners over the years.
I worked with Tony Gazana. I said them with Greg Marcus, Gazana Marcus,
Marcus, Gazana. And you and the folks here at civil media, civic media, they brought back local
radio, just like you, when you left, it was a local radio station. The people at civic media came
back with a phrase, hometown radio refreshed. So this station, you're at the whim of whoever
owns it at that time. And for 17 years, the people you had in charge, Bob daily, Michael Brian,
everybody down the line, kept it a local radio station. So it was able to still exist with great
audiences. Our numbers are just great in the ratings. We are doing very well here because you
kept it a local station and civic media. Sage Wilde kept it a local radio station. So for that,
I know the city of Racine, all the people in the county. And of course, the employees here thank
you because for 17 years, Skip, you kept it a vibrant radio station. And I'm going to let out one
little secret. A lot of people don't know. Your name's not Skip. It's Sydney. That's correct.
That was I'm a junior. That was my father's name. And so it was apparently it was too complicated
to have. And when it was time for breakfast in the morning to call Sid for breakfast, because
there were two of us in the house. So my dad was a sailor and he named me Skipper.
We let that dirty little sick. We let that dirty little secret out of the bag.
After all these years, because I never remember anybody calling you anything, but Skip,
you know, I remember there used to be a fear that went through the station. Skip is coming in today.
Uh-oh. Skip's coming. We always thought some horrible thing was, uh-oh, Skip's.
And you all you did was come in. I want to see my radio station and meet everybody again. Say
hello, but it's a Skip's coming. I actually had a desk for hours that I did park myself at
when I would come to the radio station. Well, let me say that we miss you. You're a great human
behind. So glad you had a chance to be historical marker number 12 and not 13 historical marker number 12.
And for anybody missing the broadcast, this will be podcast this week. And so everybody will be
able to get it. It will also be the, I think the Racine Public Library is going to preserve this
forever. They're going to put it in their archives. So 100 years from now, they're going to say,
who owned this place back in the late 90s? And we're going to find out. Skip, thank you very
much for coming on this morning. I really do appreciate it. And I want you to hold on the line
a second. Okay. Chief, I don't go anywhere. Stay the right where you are. Wow. That was great.
Historical marker number 12. Skip Bliss, former owner of WRJN. Exactly eight o'clock on the Noggin.
Let's check our news.