1570AM in Doylestown PA

I know Doylestown is not exactly the Lehigh Valley but I was wondeirng if any of you would happen to know what the format was for 1570am in Doylestown before it became Holy Spirit radio. I remember visiting the radio station as a little kid for a school field trip but don't recall what type of station it was. Thanks!

I can tell you some of the formats the station had, but not give you an exact timeline.
In the late 1980s, it ran a nostalgia/American Standards format.
After that, it was all-70s, all-news, and an adult top 40/upbeat soft rock station.
Now, it's religious.

I had worked at WBUX in the late 1960s ! The control room was located at the transmitter site on a farm a mile or two from downtown.It was a dump.The business and sales office was in the city.I had worked as an engineer and announcer.The format was all country and western with an absentee owner.It was a daytimer at 5000 watts directional,however the ground system with four towers I believe was not good.We constantly had problems with the ground point and the pattern shifting causing interference and degradation of the signal.Some day when I am in a wistful mood I will listen to my air checks.Those were the days.

Wow, I'd love to hear those airchecks. As a kid in the 1960's I thought WBUX was the big time. When I started listening about 1965 it was block programmed with country (Hugh Clinton) & top 40 (Bob Hamilton, later a major player in Philadelphia, LA & Miami) & Rev. Carl McIntire each morning, plus something called the 'Auto race of the Air' with Elmer Smallwood, basically recorded car race sounds as an excuse for blocks of local spots, & religious shows all day Sunday. My friend in elementary school's Dad played steel guitar in a local country band & they played live Sat. mornings on WBUX - he said the studio was so small he had to sit on the radiator to play guitar. In the spring of 1967 the station went all country & brought in a 'professional' out of market morning man John Meder - the station had very few new records so the few 1967 hits they had played over & over (Pop A Top - Jim Ed Brown, It's Such a Pretty World Today - Wynn Stewart, etc.). Six months later WRCP AM-FM in Philadelphia went country leaving WBUX the small 'howdy friends & neighbors' classic country station, finally going back to block programming. The sponsors were limited - I can still hear the Sanitone Dry Cleaners jingle in my head that played every 15 minutes & Hugh Clinton's long reads of the Textile Discount Center spots in Quakertown. In high school I won the biggest contest prize they gave away to date - a portable B&W tv in the "Why I Listen to George Mayfair" contest. George Mayfair was afternoon dj, then Hugh Clinton left the station for a month to get his FCC license to eventually buy WCTX Palmyra, Pa. It was January so the station was on 7am-5pm, poor George Mayfair had to do the entire broadcast day by himself for a month, which started with a full hour of news - no network or audio clips, he read news wire copy for a full hour! What an amazing station - wish there was more real local radio again!

Addendum to jack Daily- I failed to mention that I had used the radio name of "Jim Scott" while working at WBUX in Doylestown in the late 1960s.It was indeed interesting times for local radio.And yes Hugh Clinton was there as was George Mayfair. George was a rather interesting young man.Perhaps "strange" would be a more fitting expression.I met so many different characters while in local radio.I left WBUX in 1968 and started a career in television engineering in Binghamton, NY. Sincerely.....Gentleman Jim Scott. ( Jack Daily )

I worked at WBUX for several years, starting as a high school intern in the mid 1980s. At one point, I volunteered for a massive spring cleaning of the attic. There were boxes and boxes with hundreds of reels, mostly spots, dating back to the late 1960s. I made sure to look at EVERY single tape box to see what was there, it took me days. Most of it went in the dumpster, but I made sure to save the many jingle demos, vintage tapes and resumes from the 70s, old Billboard Magazines, boxes of 78s and radio programs from the U.S. Army (on vinyl) hosted by William B. Williams, Allison Steele and Wolfman Jack.

These WBUX jingles from 1965 were also found in that attic sweep:
https://soundcloud.com/digitalmediaarchive/wbux-doylestown-pa-pepper-jingles-1965

Back in the JFK Airport DXing days, WBUX was an almost omnipresent catch at sunset, despite WQXR 1560 being the closest station to where the DX crew hung out. WBUX was strictly a daytime-only station at the time.

From recall, I believe that WBUX -- now WISP -- sent and still sends the bulk of their signal southeast to cover as much of 'Bux' County as they can arrange.

Their main rival through the 60's would've been the only other Bucks County AM station -- WBCB 1490. And again, iIrc, their formats were similar. That must've been quite a duel for county bragging rights, what with daytimer WBUX being the bigger signal and with WBCB being 24/7.

Steve- When I had worked at WBUX in Doylestown in the late 1960s,I believe our biggest daytime rival was 50,000 watt WRCP at 1540 in Philly.Regarding our directional pattern,look at my earlier posts.Thanks. regards....Jack Daily ( Country gentleman Jim Scott )

In the early/mid 1990s, WBUX was I believe the very first station in the country to do the all 70s format, which later became a huge fad on FM radio. It was the huge response WBUX received with the format that inspired big city FM stations to do it.

WBUX's signal was not good at all for 5,000 watts. Their towers are literally in a valley. Driving down the nearby road, you literally look down at them. I lived in Lansdale, only about 10 miles from Doylestown in the 1990s and the signal was just "eh." At night, it was gone. I think the signal traveled better towards Philadelphia, though.

After the 70s format, they tried an all-news format with mostly off-the-bird news during the hour and a couple minutes of local news, trying to be Bucks County's version of KYW. It never caught on.

AM signals do not require height like FM. With AM, the signal is mostly propagated through the ground wave. That was one of the main problems with the WBUX signal in the 90s, the ground system was partially rotted away. Otherwise, being in a valley does not matter. WBUX also had antenna efficiency issues. The more power you’d put into the towers the less wattage came out of them. This also effected the overall frequency response of the audio, although hard to tell with the average AM radio. Too bad, as the station had a nice processing airchain. Two of the towers were eventually replaced by the end of the decade. The current 1570 WISP technical facility has never been better.

I used to listen to them . Station of the Stars in the 80s. I remember Alan Ross , Tom Calvin and there was a young girl on there evenings also when I won tickets for Delaware River Tubing. And she’d play my requests. I wonder if she’s a member here. I used to record off there , too . Still have the cassettes. Tom Burke, Stephen Gary.

WBUX became "The Music Of The Stars" during the same time it was upgraded from being a daytimer to 24-7 status, around 1986. At the time, Diane Theodore did nights. She went on to do radio in Wilmington, DE and in the Lehigh Valley, using different on-air names. She was most recently heard on York, PA.

Side note: it was 950 WPEN in Philadelphia, which was known as The Station of The Stars.

Thanks for the update .