Radio Days in Morristown

By Peggy Carroll

It wasn’t exactly like Woody Allen’s Radio Days.

There were no soap operas. No Our Gal Sunday or Ma Perkins or Helen Trent.

Nor were there famous newscasters like Edward R, Murrow, H.V. Kaltenborn or even Gabriel Heater, the deep-voiced, rather gloomy commentator who opened each program with a terse summary of what he was about to report: “Ah, there’s bad news tonight.”

Nor was there The Shadow (who could “cloud men’s minds so they could not see him”) or the Lone Ranger (and tales from “those thrilling days of yesterday”).

(If you remember this stuff, you are most likely in Woody Allen’s generation. He is 80.)

Morristown’s very own radio days were of a different wattage entirely. The call-sign, 1250 AM on your dial, was a very local station, attuned to an audience in a rather small, historic town and the still partly rural county that surrounded it.

It was called WMTR-AM, owned by the Morristown Broadcasting Co.  And it aired the kind of music and the down-home news that it believed its audience wanted.

Morristown Broadcasting is long since gone. And the station has changed hands four times.  Just last month, its current owner, Greater Media Group, agreed, pending federal approvals, to sell WMTR and its sister station, WDHA-FM, to Beasley Broadcasting, a publicly traded media group based in Naples, FL.

The deal will add 21 stations in seven markets to Beasley’s 52, making it the ninth largest system in the nation, based on 2015 revenue (its last quarterly revenue was $27 million), and its  audience reach will double.

The price tag: $240 million for the whole package.

THE MORRISTOWN BOYS

It is an amount that would have amazed George and Kenneth Croy.

They were brothers, and sons of James Jr. and Olive Croy of Morristown, who put WMTR on the air on Dec. 12, 1948.

Their family business was selling ice and coal, a good line for keeping things cold or hot in the ’20s and ’30s. When Kenneth enlisted in the Army in World War II, he gave his occupation as “truck driver.”  Presumably, he delivered the products.

But he showed leadership skills. He went into the service as a private in 1941 and within a few months was promoted to corporal with the specialty of air mechanic.

By the following year, he had graduated from Officers Candidate School in Miami Beach and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. Almost immediately after, he married his sweetheart, Ann Elizabeth Glanville, who was born and raised in Morristown.

Throughout the war, he served with the Army Air Corps 95th Bomb Squadron, 17th Bomber Group, European Theater. He was discharged as a captain in February 1946.

After the war, Kenneth and his older brother George found their world was changing fast.

Ice boxes (kept cold by large blocks of ice they lugged into homes) were giving way to refrigerators.  And coal, the cumbersome, dirty and rather demanding fuel (ask anyone who had to shovel it)  was losing out to oil.

So they changed fields.  They went into radio.

It was the day when entertainment meant movies and records and an occasional concert — and radio. The flickering black and white images on a 10-inch television screen were in a few living rooms.

A STUDIO ON THE GREEN

The Croys opened their studio and offices right in the heart of Morristown, on the Green at 10 Park Place. The square was the media Mecca of Morristown. The Daily Record was across the Green; the once-influential Newark Evening News staffed a bureau right next to WMTR.

The radio station’s transmitter was on Evergreen Avenue (now Martin Luther King). In the early ’60s, they built the present transmitter and studios on Horse Hill Road in Cedar Knolls.

Kenneth served as station manager. The first news director, Merrill Morris, also was the farm reporter.

WMTR was what the trade called an AM Daytimer, on the air from dawn until dusk. The Federal Communications Commission then required these AM stations to reduce their power or cease operating at night to avoid interference with other AM stations.

This meant, of course, the station was broadcasting for more hours in the summer than in the winter. It would be more than three decades before that changed.

Programing included:

Hourly newscasts, often with very local news. In the early ’60s, the Croys worked with the Daily Record reporting county news. Newspaper reporters would cover meetings (remember those days?) of councils, school boards, planning boards, Freeholders and even, sometimes, boards of adjustment, along with a reporter or two from the radio station.

They would type out their stories, making carbon copies (you can look that up) and share them with each other.

There were breaking news reports and police news and, as more than one generation of Morristown kids recalls, announcements of the school closings when it snowed.

Up early for once, the youngsters complained that they often had to wait until the station actually went on the air.

And oh, yes, there was agricultural news. Morris County still had a thriving farm community and a Grange that sponsored a county fair.

Music.  The station played country music in the afternoon and the syndicated soft music of Candlelight and Silver during the dinner hour (if still on the air.)

One story, furnished by several observers, said the Croys hated rock and roll when it burst on the scene in the ’50s. (They even were said to break records they did not like). The brothers liked their music slow and quiet.

All through the ’50s and ’60s the station had a regularly scheduled Bing Crosby show, led with his theme When the Blues of the Night Meet the Gold of the Day.

And instead of  the Star-Spangled Banner, they signed off with Kate Smith’s Bless This House.

Talk shows. The hands down favorite was a woman named Susan Bond, whose program had an irrefutable title: Women Are People. Bond was on the air for years and her popularity spilled over into retirement. Her nursing home claimed her as a celebrity guest.

In 1970, the Croys retired and sold their station to Drexel Hill Associates, which also owned WDHA-FM in Dover. And for the first time, the station added contemporary- and soft rock to its music mix.

In 1980, they also stabilized their hours, winning permission to keep the station on the air until 6 p.m., even if it got dark. Two years later, it was granted a 24-hour-a-day license.

The next sale was in to Legend Broadcasting. It tried unsuccessfully to convert the format to all business news all the time. Ratings went down and in 1991, the station changed hands again, this time to Signal Communications, which switched to “easy listening standards.”

In 2001, the station was sold once again – this time to the current owners.  The menu changed to Classic Oldies programming. Calling itself  “New Jersey’s Oldies Authority,” WMTR played music from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.

The sale to Beasley is expected to close in the fourth quarter. Under terms of the agreement, Beasley shareholders will own 81 percent, and Greater Media 19 percent, of Beasley’s outstanding shares.

Beasley has not commented on its plans for the two Morris County stations or the others in the Greater Media purchase. Staff at WMTR said Beasley executives visited the Cedar Knolls studios this week and toured the facilities.

In its recent acquisitions, Beasley has cut staff. In Charlotte a year and a half ago, in the same month that it acquired seven stations, it laid off a dozen or more employees.

On the other hand, Caroline Beasley, the company’s chief financial officer and interim CEO, has assured listeners that the personalities at the four Philadelphia stations it bought last month would remain.

In a letter to employees, Caroline Beasley said the “transaction will create a powerful union of two outstanding companies with successful family-owned roots.”

In a statement, Peter H. Smyth, chairman and chief executive of Greater Media, said the companies share “a common appreciation for the enduring strength of local radio.”

Beasley is 55 years old, Greater Media is 60.

WMTR, of course, is even older. The Croy brothers who founded it  probably would agree on the strength of local radio.

They lived in Greater Morristown for many years. Kenneth and Ann died within 12 days of each other in February 2003, she at age 87 and he at 88. George Croy died in May 2003 at 90.

But their family name is preserved in the town where they spent their lives and where they brought something new into the lives of their neighbors.

In 2005, Kenneth and Ann’s estates donated $250,000 to the building fund for the new addition of the Morristown and Morris Township Library.  The Library honored them by dedicating a service to them.

Fittingly, it is called The Kenneth and Ann Croy Media Center.