WJAS adds a new morning show
May 2, 2022You can say the call letters WJAS (1320; W256DE 99.1) and Darryl Grandy are synonymous. After all, Grandy has been with the station under three ownerships. Under Renda’s ownership he worked with the promotions department and eventually worked as Jack Wheeler’s morning show producer. Later he was moved over to WPTT (1360 McKeesport) where he produced programs for Lynn Cullen and Doug Hoerth. At one time Grandy said he had access to at least 3 of the market’s major radio groups producing programs at KDKA (1020) and elsewhere. When Frank Iorio’s Pittsburgh Radio Partners bought WJAS from Renda, Grandy was hired as Operations Manager. Soon after he was the host of the Saturday morning Tower Auto 412 program. Last week he announced that he would be hosting a 1-hour morning program with Greg Maxwell.
Maxwell is “Luh-TROBE” raised and admits he’s one of the few natives who doesn’t say “LAY-trobe”. He also admitted that he was still “peeing his pants” when Grandy was getting his start with Renda Broadcasting in the mid-1990s. Maxwell had the privilege of being mentored by the late Dow Carnahan at WCNS (1480). Carnahan’s sudden death a few years ago hit Maxwell pretty hard as they had worked together just hours before.
St. Barnabas Broadcasting approached Grandy and Maxwell a few weeks ago about doing a morning show. Bloomdaddy had ended his run for a new opportunity. WJAS replaced his show with two hours of the syndicated America in the Morning (hosted by former WKST-FM [96.1] programmer, John Trout) with an hour of First Light sandwiched in between. The GD Morning Show will take the 6:00 – 7:00 a.m. hour replacing one of the AITM hours. Oh, GD? G=Greg; D=Darryl… what did you think it stood for? The show started on Monday.
Grandy said he was once told by a local talk-show program director that in order to get listeners to talk the host had to rile them up and make them mad. But that’s not Darryl. While Greg said he’d be apt to giving it a try, both said they will focus on local matters and news including sports and other areas of interest. They’ll leave the “heavy stuff” to the hosts who fill out the rest of the day’s programs.
Meanwhile now that iHeart moved their six stations out of the “Flashcube” at Jacob Center, WJAS is taking up studio residence in the old WPGB (104.7) studio.
That First Light program is a good news hour. I hope they keep it!
I’ve listened to First Light, with its surprisingly low key host for a wake-up show. His announcing is what you’d find on a station like WMBS, not expected from Westwood One.
Jacob Center’s parking lot now looks empty and forlorn, without all of the radio station vans and cars. They had a whole small fleet in the lot across Fleet Street.
Times have changed for radio, so much is virtual and cloud databases today, you just need a transmitter and a way to stream into it, a computer with Enco for production and Zoom or Skype for guests.
Boomer