Former WDTH Announcer

Prehistory

My start in radio was in 1968 at KUMD-FM at UMD, back when the station was on the ground floor in the Education building, near the Ven-Den.  200 watts of screaming power, with great coverage of Superior and spotty coverage in Duluth.  The antenna height of 35' above average terrain had a lot to do with the lack of Duluth coverage.  We had "Music for Dining" before it became known as elevator music, and a lot of great jazz programming.  Our transmitter and logs had to be signed off by a "first phone" and Dave Gordon of WEBC did that job for us.  Dave was one of my early idols, and a really nice guy as well.  Dave knew no more about electronics than any of us, but you had to have a first class FCC radiotelephone license to control the transmitter of a directional AM radio station, and Dave had taken one of those quickie "get your license" courses.  He eventually moved on to a career in teaching.

When WGGR came on the air I started working some weekend nights there.  They'd spent a fortune building acoustically perfect studios, but had some horrible old recycled transmitter remote control and a tube-based stereo exciter that often as not didn't work.  More elevator music to play on the air, but in a tightly controlled format.  The turntables were lousy - and were used for 80% of the programming.  There was an expensive condenser mike - used just four times an hour.  The WGGR folks hadn't figured out that whole "FM thing.

WDTH (We Do Things Hard)

Then WDTH came on the air.  I remember eagerly listening as they were going through transmitter tests, and also heard a bit of music before the official sign-on occurred.  If memory serves, it was 'Manha Manha' (from the Muppets), but that memory may be faulty.  When I came to work at the station I made $1.60/hour (hey, it was the minimum wage!) and my job was to spin records and play commercials.  No announcing.  That really doesn't work too well, so I gradually moved into the role of announcer.  I'd follow Bob Hansen's morning show and keep things going until Dean-o Voight took over for the afternoon.  At that time Chuck Butler was the night guy and he'd play entire album sides.

FM was quite new to the Twin Ports, and many calls would come in from people complaining of interference or poor reception, most often cured by moving the radio a foot or two, or reorienting the antenna.  Callers would often speak very softly on the telephone, apparently afraid they'd be heard over the air.

When school closings became necessary due to weather, we'd just flip on the EBS (Emergency Broadcast System) receiver and write down what we could get from the KDAL announcer, and air it.  I'm pretty clear they weren't fully appreciative of our efforts along those lines.

Being the highly paid announcer I was, economics dictated that I slept on the floor in one of the offices at night.  This became a convenient situation for Bob Hansen, who'd often call in and have me sign the station on the air in the morning.

Bob Hansen

Bob was a ball of energy, a self-promoter, and not a man whose word could fully be counted on.  I heard, perhaps from Bob himself, that the original call sign for the station was going to be WHSN, in honor of his last name.  Bob was always hustling for more business, and I recall one of his favorite expressions, "Housewives like commercials."  I've never understood that expression, but I do remember it.

One January Bob promised our sponsors that if they bought as many commercials that month as they had in December, he'd double the number of spots we'd air for them.  Apparently the strategy was successful, and one morning when I intentionally didn't hear the phone ringing, I finally yielded and picked up the phone.  Bob wanted me to sign on again.  Well, we had something of a backlog of spots to air, and I added up the results on the program log.  In the first two hours on the air I played an hour and seven minutes of commercials.  At one point I actually played some music, promising the audience we'd be back for more commercials right after the song.

The 'Jesus People'

Chuck Butler used to play album sides late into the night, but I don't recall that we kept the station on air 24 hours until the Jesus People came in.  They had the idea of providing all-night commercial-free programming.  Since I was asleep most of the time, I don't remember exactly what the format was like, but we'd also had a speakerphone installed so that people could call in and and be on the air.  There was no tape delay system, and if anyone used inappropriate language, it aired - until they could be cut off.

Format Changes

My term at WDTH ended when a consultant helped Bob Hansen decide that we need to be a hard-driving rock-'n'-roll station, with DJs.  I was a radio announcer and have never had the personality to be a high-energy, high-drive on air personality.  The station and I parted ways, and while I have worked in television engineering and digital motion picture post production, I have not worked as a radio announcer since that time.

P.S.

Just when you think your name is unique, someone calls up and says they just heard you on the radio.  There's another Curt Lundgren (who even has the same middle name) who has worked at WCCO 830 AM in Minneapolis, and has also had a career around oldies music.  Different guy, same name.

A big special thank you to Curt for submitting this article about his days at WDTH. We hope to hear from more former WDTH "staffers" who want to share their stories of working at the old WDTH. We're pretty sure Curt will have more for us in the future so stay tuned for that!