We did all these liners, short announcements saying the stations call letters and other things including the city for the station we were taking over. The station that was wasn’t making any money and we had some plans, so we had a couple of guys from the Erie radio station recorded voiceovers for us. “you’re listening to w-i-d-g, Saint Ig-NACE.” Don Angelo goes up there and he gets himself settles a few weeks before I would move there. He would be the general manager station manager. He calls me he says you got to go back into the studio get all the guys to change it it’s not Saint Ig-NACE it’s Saint Ignas.
I was the morning man and the same thing happened that happened in Alaska, we got to help people, the hospital up there was 10 beds maybe and it wasn’t it wasn’t a very big. Population it was maybe 5 000 people in the wintertime when everything shut down. The A&P was only open three days a week, all the restaurants except for the truck stop closed down for the winter.
We had studios on main street massive windows so people could see me . We had an engineer who I think spent a little bit too much time in the bar. There were times I couldn’t get the transmitter on from the studio so I would have to drive out to the transmitter site, try to coax the transmitter back on , drive back to the studio and then play the first record. So there were a couple mornings where we got on a little bit late.
Saint Ignace was basically his tourist area; Mackinac Island is one of the big tourist places that you could go from Saint Ignace by ferry.
WIDG also was a station that had what they call pre-sunrise authorization so you could sign on in the lower power and then at sunrise you could sign on at full power which was for that station 5 000 watts. You had to sign off at sunset or that time period every month would change so sometimes you’d be off the air at six o’clock at night. We didn’t have authorization to stay on later but we misinterpreted some FCC rules. The FCC had changed the rules that said anybody with pre-sunrise authorizations can sign on full power now at 6am or 5 30 whatever, well it was only for certain stations it was, we weren’t included in that but we didn’t know that so we started signing on that 5,000 watts. 5,000 watts on a clear channel station, I was getting mail from new jersey. I go something’s wrong they shouldn’t be hearing us in new jersey and sure enough we misinterpreted the rules and we had to write the FCC and tell them that oops we did not interpret the rules correctly. The station didn’t get fined or anything for it but you know had we not have told them what we were doing probably wouldn’t have been probably been a pretty hefty fine.
After Fran graduated from Mercyhurst, we got married in New Kensington and moved her to Michigan. I tell you it gets cold up there, I thought a lot Alaska was cold but you know in Michigan, the upper peninsula it does get pretty cold and a lot of snow.
One of the first times walking to the radio station, I had a apartment there was two buildings away from the radio station ,very convenient so I’d walk out of my apartment and walk downstairs and then walk to the radio station . One time when I was walking down, I got into the station started doing the show and about seven o’clock or something there’s a guy in a pickup truck and he’s unscrewing all of the parking meters, so I mentioned on the air I said someone please come down someone’s taking and stealing all the parking meters. The mayor of the town called me and says no we pulled them up for the winter. Eventually I would come to know the reason why they pulled them up. One snowy morning I walk out of my apartment and I come face to face with a massive snow plow coming down the sidewalk, I mean a regular snowplow not somebody on a little tractor, this was a big truck and there were three other trucks forming a conga line behind him. They would take the snow push it off to the side and then they would come up later scoop it up put it in dump trucks and take it and dump it there on the bay. When I saw those two headlights coming at me now I know the reason why they take up the parking meters.
St. Ignace was and still is a tourist town. The radio stations transmitter and tower are still there, but they are controlled by a group of the stations in Cheboygan. No longer a local radio station, just hooked up to a satellite feed from somewhere. St. Ignace is a stepping stone to Mackinac island. (Photo credit Rick Johnson)