NY Radio: New Book Provides History Of Ithaca Stations

ABC News Radio's entertainment correspondent Bill Diehl calls "Ithaca Radio" a wonderful trip back to another time.

CBS Radio News Correspondent Peter King Steinhaus and his brother Rick Sommers Steinhaus "celebrate Ithaca's rich broadcasting history through stories and photos highlighting four stations, WHCU, WTKO, WICB, and WVBR. Keith Olbermann, a Cornell grad and WVBR alum, in his introduction talks about Ithaca as "the biggest small radio market in the world", according to Diehl.

The book (available from Amazon) boasts more than 200 vintage images and chronicles the history of radio in the area.

From Long Island to Fiji, college students have flocked to the sleepy little town of Ithaca, NY to learn the how-tos and how-not-tos of broadcasting. From that influx came some of the future leaders and celebrities of the broadcasting industry. Television stars were born here, and some of radio’s future stars were nurtured to succeed in an industry that impacts the daily lives of Americans.

Ithaca’s rich broadcasting history includes two college radio stations and several locally owned and operated stations. From the Greaseman to Keith Olbermann, Ithaca was the launch pad for numerous successful careers in music, talk, news, business, and satellite radio. Through vintage photographs, Ithaca Radio shares a history of local radio and some of the great voices that have called Ithaca home.

Highlights from Ithaca Radio include:

• This is the first pictorial history of Ithaca’s four legacy radio stations, WHCU-AM, WTKO-AM, WVBR-AM/FM, and WICB-AM/FM, from their beginnings through the early 1980s.
• The introduction by ESPN’s Keith Olbermann captures a particularly special era for Ithaca radio, the mid- to late-1970s.
• Along with photographs spanning the 1930s to the 1980s, the book features rare and historic documents, including ads and promotional material from all four stations.

King has set-up a Facebook page for the book. He also reports the book has received interest from radio stations in the region as well. He's been interviewed on WHCU and WICB, which are prominently featured in the book. Plus, WNBF in nearby Binghamton has featured the book.