WEEX Where are they now?

Charlie Ryan?
Jane Farmer?
Steve King?
Judy Snyder?

Steve King is Steve Cannon and works for Cumulus in Indianapolis.

Last I heard Charlie Ryan was working for a satellite company in New Jersey, and Jane Farmer and John Knight bought a station in western PA. Steve... no idea. Judy is in the medical field...I think she is either a CRNP or a PA. Have not seen her since Joeys funeral, and didn't really get a chance to talk to her there. Charlie

Steve King was the program director of 1360 WNNJ Newton, NJ from some time in 1979 to August or September of 1981. Under him WNNJ was Mainstream Top 40 which back then had charts leaning Adult more than before. Once Steve left for WEEX, WNNJ evolved into MOR/Standards. Since then they were Big Bands, back to MOR back to Easy Listening Standards, then AC in February 1984, CHR by August of 84, AC by february 0f 85, Oldies/AC later that year, All Oldies by 1990, Satellite Oldies January of 94 till February 1997 when they flipped to Satellite MOR/Oldies/Standards Hybrid to Westwood One's Standards/Soft Hits Format in 2000 to Country November 2002, to Oldies 1955-73 September 2004 to Satellite Classic AC/Oldies August 2007 to Scott Shannon's True Oldies Channel July 2008 until August 17, 2011 when the station went silent and was donated to someone. They were locally owned till 1997, owned by Nassau 1997-2001, Clear Channel 2001-2011. They are now on the air with Spanish stuff of some sort. Calls became WTOC in 2008.

WNNJ is now running a small syndicated Hispanic religious format. At the top of the hour they id maybe 5 or 6 stations. They're running the same programming in NYC just up the dial on 1330 AM (WRRV?) Most likely Arthur Liu has some hand in this.

No one cares about WNNJ. Besides, this thread's about WEEX.

I remember hearing John Knight with Jane Farmer doing news on WHUM (1240 Reading, HUM Country) around 1978, I think that was prior to WEEX, so they must have come together as a 'package'. I somewhere have an aircheck of them on a Saturday morning trading places after a bet - he was good with news but she wasn't as good as a jock. WHUM was an uptempo top 40 style country station.

Your right about John and Jane...they came to WEEX as a package, and left as a package. I heard they were planning to get married after, I think it was Johns, divorce was final.

Without a doubt, the Big X was the best sounding Top 40 station in the Valley. And having the Big X on FM at 99.9 even in mono was fabulous especially for those areas that lost the 1230 signal at night. It was a shame this station ever went beautiful music. It paved the way for WLEV on 96.1. Imagine had the Big X remained on FM through the 70s..how that could have re-written LV radio history.

Nice to see some WEEX chat here from the days when I was there. I did lots of different shifts on WEEX. I was hired by Micky Haggerty originally, then Charlie Ryan came in and changed our format to more of an A/C type station. I was doing evenings, overnights, and even did morning drive for a few months.

I had a blast working with John Knight and Jane Farmer. I was on overnights when they were there, and I used to stay past my shift and do some bits with them on air. Lots of fun in those days. I was the station's music director at the time.

Made a lot of good friends there in those days. I'm long out of the radio business now, living on Long Island.

Gene O'Brien (yes, I used my real name on air!!)

CHarlie Ryan

This is a real old thread, but in case anyone reads it Charlie Ryan was my dad. I'm sorry to say he passed away in a car accident in 1994. I was going through some of his things a couple months ago and found an old air check tape from WGBB in '79. It was great to hear his voice again, even if he was talking about ABBA. My hope is someone sees this and maybe can share a few stories about him that I haven't heard, from the few things I can see on here he is remembered warmly.

This is a real old thread, but in case anyone reads it Charlie Ryan was my dad. I'm sorry to say he passed away in a car accident in 1994. I was going through some of his things a couple months ago and found an old air check tape from WGBB in '79. It was great to hear his voice again, even if he was talking about ABBA. My hope is someone sees this and maybe can share a few stories about him that I haven't heard, from the few things I can see on here he is remembered warmly.

Seltzer said:

Without a doubt, the Big X was the best sounding Top 40 station in the Valley. And having the Big X on FM at 99.9 even in mono was fabulous especially for those areas that lost the 1230 signal at night. It was a shame this station ever went beautiful music. It paved the way for WLEV on 96.1. Imagine had the Big X remained on FM through the 70s..how that could have re-written LV radio history.

Click to expand...

That's an excellent point. But face it: in 1971, few FM stations were doing or willing to do Top-40. The paradigm shift to FM for top-40 had yet to occur; especially in the smaller markets like the LV. Face it, as much as I loathe the format BM/EZ was a mainstay on FM even at that time! It was almost impossible to scan the FM dial anywhere in the country without coming upon a BM/EZ station. Even the smaller communities had at least one! I suppose management felt WFMZ needed competition. Now in 1980 when WEEX dropped Top-40, they probably should've considered moving the Top-40 to FM. Even though top-40 was in a 'lull' by that time, on FM the format was still doing respectably well IIRC. Granted, it might have been prudent for the powers-that-be to go to a 'Rock-40' type of format, but they still could've made a 'go' at it IMO. They might've even forced WAEB to go to a different format. Now when Q100 first signed on in 1983, I do know that the AM picked up the trad-EZ for a short period only to go away shortly thereafter.

The Big X would have written a new book.

Memories of Charlie Ryan

Hi David,

My name is Sy Marsh and I worked at WEEX in the years before, during and after your father was at WEEX in Easton. I'm sorry to learn of his passing, especially since it happened so many years ago.

I have a number of fond memories of working with him. I also can recall my wife Lyn and I having dinner with your parents at their apartment on Delaware Drive, just north of the city (Route 611.) I'm pretty sure you were recently born about that time (+/- 1981 - Am I correct?)

Your father was a load of fun to work with and for. I was in the news department part time, but often filled in when full timers took the day off. As operations manager, your father often covered an air shift when a full timer was out, and had a regular air shift of his own as well. He was exceptionally good at what we called "post newscast banter" where the jock on the air would carry on a casual conversation with the news anchor. GOOD TIMES!

Your dad left WEEX to take a position with RCA in south Jersey, as I recall. I honestly wished he had stayed because the revolving chain of program directors and jocks began after he left, though we did have some success at WEEX with a morning all-news format that he had first suggested.

I left WEEX in 1985 for the competition across town and retired from radio in 1989, though I continued in my primary career (teaching high school in NJ) for many more years after that.

It's been so long since you posted in this thread so I'm not even sure if you'll get this.
Best wishes,
Sy Marsh

I remember Sy Marsh! Wow. So kewl to be reading the names of all these folks I remember from WEEX! Does anyone know what happened to John Kiernan?