The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 75

The Beacon Journal F5 Sunday, October 14, 1990 WAKR has 50 years under belt JAMES BELUSHI MICHAEL CAINE I i. Would you give up everything you everything you've ever wanted? Then ik Destiny if nattniiWMii ii in ffnn -itniTi- rt-'tt-T i l'lUji'iiia GENERAL CINEMA CHAPEL HILL MALL 2000 MITTAIN tOAO 633-3111 UOVi SHOWING! ner in WAKR from 1946 to 1976. Toward the end, he wanted to buy out the Berks, and offered Roger Berk a directorship in Knight Newspapers. Berk turned him down, and soon Knight sold back his percentage. "Nobody wanted to own a minority share of a family company," Berk says today.

WAKR's FM sister station came along in 1947. The TV station was established in 1953 a foray that did not surprise the people who knew Bernard Berk. In addition to being an attorney and radio dealer his Sun Radio Co. is still in existence at 110 E. Market St.

he also was a gadget-lover and inventor who was instantly attracted to the new medium. Bernard Berk died in 1966. Son Roger was the primary architect of the radio group: two stations in Dayton in 1965. Two more in Dallas in 1967. Two more in Denver in 1972.

Then one day an Atlanta firm with the ironic name of Summit Communications walked in with the proverbial offer he couldn't refuse, acknowledges Berk, 67. In retrospect, the timing was perfect: The sale came at the peak of a buying and selling spree that overtook the radio industry during the national junk bond frenzy of the 1980s. Prices have since dropped. "But we may get back into it," Berk volunteers. Into radio? "Radio, TV, everything." If another empire is in the offing, it will be directed by Berk's sons, who now make most of the day-to-day decisions at Channel 23 and at the family's lucrative TV production company, Creative Technology.

Those sons are Roger Berk Jr. and Robert Berk, who are yes, indeed the great-grandsons of rock roll. "BRAVE. COMPELLING. FUN." Richard Schickel, TIME A MASTERFUL WORK.

A WONDERFULLY ENTERTAINING, ROBUST AND FASCINATING FILM. large numbers," Anthony responds. "It's still a viable, effective radio station. It still gets results for an advertiser, and what an advertiser is interested in is results." Advertisers do continue to ante up their bucks. Although Anthony declines to discuss revenue, industry insiders say WAKR grosses about $2.8 million annually.

AM radio's fall from grace is not the only factor working against the station. For the first 46 of its 50 years, WAKR was the very model of corporate stability. Once the Berk family sold it in November 1986, however, WAKR saw three new owners in a little more than three years. The current landlord is a Philadelphia lawyer. Since taking over in January, Ragan Henry's U.S.

Radio has: eliminated WAKR's full-time sports reporter, decided not to renew the station's longstanding play-by-play contract with the Cleveland Indians, hit employees with an increase in health-care premiums of as much as $4,000 a year, and been at least partially responsible for the resignations of several longtime news employees. Au contraire, insists Anthony, claiming the new owners have poured money into the operation. He attributes the above events to changes in programming strategy, price gouging by the Indians network, soaring health-care costs and normal employee attrition. Anthony says the core of the station's programming news and information remains the same, and points out that the WAKR newsroom which includes six full-timers is among the largest in the state (and second-largest in Northeast Ohio behind Cleveland's WWWE). That takes money.

Although news has been WAKR's centerpiece throughout the half-century, another staple and another key to survival for AM stations is live sports. And those costs have gone through the roof, too. Anthony says the group that controlled Akron rights to the Indians games this season wanted $165,000, compared with $144,000 last year. The station is already paying an estimated $135,000 for the Browns and $55,000 for the Cavaliers. "Now all of a sudden you've got $200,000 in rights fees, right off the top," Anthony moans.

"And that's very painful, because you cannot get that back in advertising." He views the expendi- ture as the radio equivalent of a loss leader, something to get people into your store. "You have to look at it almost as promotional dollars," he says. "But that has a limit, too." The rest of the WAKR format consists of ultra-conservative "adult contemporary" music, music that strikes some listeners as an afterthought, something to fill up dead air between the news, sports and commercials. Anthony says the station investigated switching the music segments to talk, but the research didn't justify it. Until recently, consistency was a recurring theme.

During its first 50 years, for instance, WAKR was housed in only three different facilities. The current home is a white, two-story structure in the crook of the curve where the west leg of the Akron Expressway, Interstate 77, turns north. WAKR has shared that site with its sister station, album-rock WONE (97.5-FM), since the 1986 sale split them from the Berks' TV station, WAKC (Channel 23), on Copley Road near Buchtel High School. WAKR began life in the lofty First National Tower (then First Central Tower) on South Main Street. But the view was hardly panoramic.

"I had visions, when I went in for my interview (in 1949), that obviously, with radio, you would be at the top of the tower, beaming a signal out to the world," says former secretary Simms, who continues to work part time at the television station. "I walked in and the person said, 'Go down those stairs over there, and I thought, 'Oh, that can't possibly be right But they were down. As a matter of fact, the studios extended out under the street a little ways." For a while, it appeared that WAKR wouldn't end up anywhere. WADC (now WSLR) one of two Akron stations already on the air tried to block the Berks' application. During a three-year battle in the midst of the Depression, Bernard Berk and his wife repeatedly drove to Washington to try to convince the Federal Communications Commission that there was room for another station.

WADC was not alone in claiming the market was saturated. The Beacon Journal did, too. "I can't say we need it," editorialized John S. Knight. Knight eventually changed his tune, becoming a financial part- CLINT EASTWOOD MOST DARING AND SUCCESSFUL PERFORMANCE AS AN 1 ACTOR.

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BLACK HEART" JEFF FAHEY GEORGE DZUNDZA ALUN ARMSTRONG MARISA BERENSON CO-PRODUCER STANLEY RUBIN SCREENPLAY BY PETER VIERTEL JAMES BRIDGES AND BURT KENNEDY EXECUTIVE PRODUCER DAVID VALDES PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY CLINT EASTWOOD IPGInwnin mama aiminoo-l mioounsTpgjy GENERAL CINEMA WEST MARKET PIAZA 7 I-77ARTE IS (WEST MARKE1 ST. 666-1311 Exclusive Akron Area Showing WEST MARKET PLAZA 7 GENERAL CINEMA (77 ITI IWtil WMKII i.J 666-1311 1 03 4 29 at 7:30 PM Continued from page Fl cumbersome two-way radios strapped to their backs) and we would record it on discs. We didn't have tapes or wires; we actually put it on wax." The gizmos and gadgets must have worked, because WAKR became an immediate winner. "We were in the black immediately," says Berk. During WAKR's peak, in 1946 and '47, the leading ratings service of the era (Hooper) once credited the station with 60 percent of the audience.

By comparison, today's top-rated Akron station, WKDD (96.5-FM), draws less than 8 percent of the listeners. WAKR had studio orchestras. It had a horde of staff announcers and reporters later on, a fleet of news vehicles (including an airplane) that would have made the late Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh jealous. It encouraged listener participation with such shows as Beat the Expert, in which a caller would try to stump the staff musician with an obscure song title. Along the way, WAKR helped nurture personalities who would become national stars, among them film actors Lola Albright and Mark Stevens; radio names Peter Hackes, Scott Muni and Charley Greer; and the first host of TV's Jeopardy! Art Fleming (known here as Art Fazzin).

WAKR also has been a training ground for local television figures Dick Goddard, Ted Henry, Bill McKay and Dick Russ, among others. But the past may be considerably brighter than the future. On the eve of WAKR's golden anniversary, the question is not whether WAKR will be around for another 50 years; it's whether WAKR will be here another five. The ratings are dropping faster than Rosea nne Barr on a Bun-gi cord. After decades of absolute dominance and a first-place finish as recently as late 1985 WAKR today ranks 10th, with a measly 4 percent audience share.

In the past five ratings books, the station has recorded four "worst ever" finishes. Mostly, that's the nature of the AM beast. During the late 1960s, 75 percent of the nation's radio listeners could be found on the AM dial. Suddenly the FM band boasting superior technology took off, and by the mid-'80s the percentages had been reversed. "AM is by no means dead," claims Fred Anthony, vice president, general manager and 22-year veteran of WAKR.

Nationally, "the giants of AM are still there, and they're there because the service they provide is unique." But those who have lived by the ratings will die by the ratings, and WAKR's bedside chart is not encouraging. "People are still listening in GEORGE CHAKIRIS Dinner and Show Tickets $23.50 to $29.00 Show Only $13.00 to $18.50 General Cinema BARGAIN MATINEES 3.S0 AU SHOWS BEFORE PM EVERYDAY DOLBY STIREO t-77 RTt 18 IWiST MARKET ST.) 666-M1I GO0OFEUAS 1:00 4:40 fctt 9:30 1 MARKED FM DEATH 140 4:00 140 1040 1 MR. DESTINY i-M SM 7:40 :50 K13 MEN AT WORK 1:00 )M S40 740 9:00 KU NARROW MARGIN 1:10 5:10 7:10 W0 I POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE 3:30 5 7:10 I WHITE HUNTER lUCK HEART 1 00 M0 207:50140 2400 tOMIO ROAD 753-6401 MARKED FOR DEATH 1:15 5:15 5:15 7:19 MS I PRESUMED INNOCENT 140 4:30 7:00 I DEATH WARRANT 1:30 3:30 3:30 7:30 T7 1 2QOO BRITTA1N RP. 633-3111 MR. DESTINY 1:00 3:13 3:13 7:30 :45 FC13 DEATH WARRANT 1:30 3 30 3:30 7:30 130 1 FLATUNERS 100 4:30 7:13 30 1 MARKED FOR DEATH SHOWING ON TWO SCREENS ON.

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