Games Gone By

In the summer of 1961, WNEW’s GM, Jack Sullivan, appointed me Director of Special Projects when Bill Persky and Sam Denoff left the station to write for Steve Allen’s new weekly TV Variety show.  A few years into my “drektorship;” —that would be the summers of 1965 and ’66—I fielded a WNEW softball team  to compete with other NY stations. 

 On the roster were:

  • Ed Dennehy–WNEW’s business manager.
  • Sales reps–Bob Goldsholl, Marty Ross, Bob Faselt and Bob Mounty.  Faselt and Mounty became sales managers and Mounty became WNEW’S GM.  Ross became my sales manager when I was sent to L.A. to run KMET. 
  • Chip Cipolla–originally an overnight newscaster and subsequently the sports reporter/color broadcaster on Giants broadcasts.
  • Bill O’Shaughnessy–a Sullivan assistant without portfolio.
  • Jerry Graham–WNEW News Director.
  • Steve Nelson–engineer.
  • Allan Richman–systems analyst hired by Gerry Carrus, Metromedia’s comptroller.  Carrus subsequently owned Trinity Broadcasting.  Richman eventually owned stations run by Mel Karmizan, who was GM for both WNEW-AM and WNEW-FM before becoming top exec at Infinity, CBS Radio, Viacom (#2 there) and Sirius.
  • Me.

Some station-wide memos of results are all that remain of those epic contests on the diamonds of Central Park.