WNAK is gone

A few days ago I received this comment on my post about Nanticoke's radio station, WNAK:

As a former employee of WNAK it saddens me that Neilson sold the station. I enjoyed the eight years I was there on-air, and the Nightwatch was like saying "goodbye" when the station would go off the air. Mr. Neilson passed away a few years ago but he told me how he made a mistake in the sale and wished we could have all worked together to keep the station alive. Time ran out for all of us and, well under different ownership things changed.

Some good news perhaps, as of Dec 1, 2008, I hear the old sounds could be coming back to WNAK? Let's all hope and prayer!!

I do not know if the format has switched back yet - I haven't tuned in in a very long time. But as of yesterday, the former funeral home that housed WNAK from 1982 until the new owners relocated earlier this year no longer exists.

Former home of WNAK razed for church parking

BY BOB KALINOWSKI
STAFF WRITER
Published: Thursday, December 4, 2008 4:06 AM EST

The residential Nanticoke building that was home to the small, but popular WNAK radio station for decades and launched many successful media careers was demolished Wednesday.

The building at 84 S. Prospect St. has been empty since early this year, when the station’s new owners, West Chester-based Route 81 Radio, moved operations to a multi-station headquarters in Avoca.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Sadly, when I was taking pictures of the churches in the area of WNAK - including the Nebo Baptist Church, which purchased the building and had it torn down to build additional parking - I didn't bother to take any of WNAK itself. I'm not sure if the sign indicating that it once was home to the radio station - an old-style NBC "N" logo, a holdover from the brief period when the station was an NBC affiliate - was still there. (Owner and broadcaster Bob Neilson would refer to the station on-air as "NBC" long after this affiliation ended, saying it stood for "Nielson's Broadcasting Company.")

Another piece of Nanticoke history is gone.


UPDATE: Yes, it's true. The "old sounds" have returned, at least in the form of easy-listening Christmas music. After the season, who knows? But it will never be the same as I remember it, with Hymn Time (an hour of religious music) every day, and commercial-free Sundays (with the special Sunday jingle "There's something missing from this station...it's WNAK!"), and Bob Neilson giving a daily editorial called "Another Point of View" (with the sound of a chattering ticker-tape behind him) and ending it with the disclaimer that the station would broadcast other viewpoints from "responsible persons," although this always seemed to mean only one person, a woman named Marion Dunstan Karsten of Kingston, PA, and of course, Night Watch ending every day's programming.


UPDATE 2, 12/7/08: Jan Souther, in his column "The Wax Museum" at the Wilkes-Barre Citzens' Voice, confirms that these really are the "old sounds":

The station’s owners realized that what Luzerne County really needs is Adult Standards radio and they wisely kept the music library we listened to for so many years, with a little updating here and there.

WNAK

When I was growing up we always had Nanticoke's own easy listening station, WNAK, playing in the house. My parents were children of the 1930's, and came from somewhere in-between "The Greatest Generation" that fought World War II and the "Happy Days" generation of sock hops and submarine races. Technically, I believe they fell into what was called the "Silent Generation" - overshadowed by those who came before them, eclipsed by the Baby Boomers who came after them, conformist, moderately conservative, moderately progressive. Their music was not the rock'n'roll of Elvis and Chuck Berry, but was something smoother, mellower, gentler.

WNAK catered to their tastes, playing a mix of songs from their childhood by performers like The Andrews Sisters, The Mills Brothers, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra, songs by their contemporaries such as Jim Reeves, Englebert Humperdinck, and Robert Goulet, Polkas (always popular in this Polish-dominated area), and hymns (also popular in a primarily Roman Catholic area), along with softer stuff by more modern artists like Elvis, Ray Charles, Jim Croce, Anne Murray, The Carpenters, and The Captain & Tennille. Each day would be punctuated by the ultra-conservative editorials of station owner Bob Nielson and pieces by Paul Harvey and "This Is Pennsylvania" by Peter C. Wambach (featuring the line "It's a beautiful day in Pennsylvania,"), even "Old-time radio dramas" - actually funny little 30-second melodramatic commercials for C.W. Schultz and Sons Plumbing, Heating, and Air Conditioning. Each broadcasting day would end with Jim Reeves' version of "Night Watch":

Bright stars are watching the world as it sleeps
Shepherds watch over the little white sheep
The lighthouse is shining for ships far at sea
As God keeps the night watch for you and for me.

So sleep, sleep in peace and rest
Don't be afraid of the darkness
All's well for over the land and the sea
God's keeping the night watch for you and for me.*

I learned a lot of older songs back then, while other kids my age were growing up listening to The Who and The Doors, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. I would learn those songs, too, but later, as my older sister entered her teen years and blasted them from her stereo. (Later, during her college years, she would work as a DJ at WNAK for a while.) I think my childhood is richer for this layer of musical experience that many of my contemporaries, whose parents were sometimes ten to fifteen years younger than my own, never got to have.

Over time the artists I heard on WNAK have died off. Some, like Jim Reeves, died before I was born; others died when I was young. A few, like Englebert Humperdinck, are still alive and well, touring and performing.

WNAK itself has died, in a sense. Years ago Bob Nielson sold it to a corporation, which gradually morphed the station into a soft rock/easy listening format intended to appeal to the under-70 crowd. A while back Bob Nielsen died. A few weeks ago WNAK changed formats again, now into a Spanish easy listening station. It calls its format "Caliente", but the times I have listened to it - well, without the lyrics, you wouldn't know the music was any different; even polka and mariachi songs are fairly interchangeable.

Now another artist I learned to love from WNAK has passed away. Two days ago I learned that Robert Goulet was gravely ill and in need of a lung transplant. Yesterday he died. Tragically, the world has lost one of its great voices - and a pretty fair actor, too. He will be missed.

*Hearing this song on a Sunday evening was always one of the saddest experiences of my childhood, because it meant that the weekend was ending, and it was time to start thinking about whatever homework I might have been assigned on Friday.