2 thoughts on “Engineering”

1. Max Weiner was the administrative head of the engineering department at its apex: 39 IBEW staffers, I believe, on the payroll at the flood tide. In the early 1960s, before automation, WNEW required, full time, a studio engineer, master control operator, AM transmitter engineer, FM transmitter engineer, newsroom engineer, and, I believe, maintenance engineer. John Zarpaylic, who lived in West Paterson (now Woodland Park), NJ, was the operational genius. On July 13, 1977, when the lights went out in New York City (but not in New Jersey, where the AM transmitter was located), John hustled into town and literally built a control room around me while I was on the air, wiring battery-powered cassette decks and additional microphones into the Collins remote console we were using to stay on the air. [The transmitter engineer that memorable night was Dom Papale]. Roland Lohse lived in Cold Spring Harbor, LI, and was the resident intellectual on the engineering staff. He told a story about how Freddy Robbins stormed into master control one night with a piece of audio equipment and demanded that Roland repair it. “The speaker tube’s shot,” he explained. Roland spent much of the next few hours trying to figure out what a “speaker tube” was. Dave Sohmer was a hilarious curmudgeon who loved it when an air personality would make a mistake. His fights with much of the air staff were the stuff of legends. To many listeners, they were stars; to Dave, they were nobody special. They had their foibles, but they were all first-rate technicians. WNEW wouldn’t hire anyone less.

2. Does anyone remember Max Weiner, John Zarpaylic, Roland Lohse, Dave Sommers, Carl Infantino? Also, does anyone have any informsation about Hans Andersen, who in New York State, started at WVIP in Mt. Kisco, spent some years at WNEW and then moved to WHN, with his own show?

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