Vintage Radio, Down to Farm Reports and School Menus, Is Signing Off
By G. PATRICK PAWLING
Published: February 1, 2004
UPPER DEERFIELD TOWNSHIP, N.J., Jan. 29— As radio stations go, it's not fancy.
The microphones appear to belong to the 1940's, and some do. There is not a single personal computer in the building, though a typewriter sits on one desk and is used every day. The format? Call it country nostalgia: polka, school lunch menus, farm reports, hunting and fishing news and pet advice. One of the most popular slots is a call-in show called ''Country Store,'' during which people try to sell three-quarter-ton pickup trucks, tractors and, at least once, a cow.
WSNJ, which sits in a farm field just outside Bridgeton, is the radio station that time almost forgot. But not for much longer. The family that nurtured it for more than 50 years is selling. The much-sought FM license will go to Radio One, a hip, urban-oriented company with 66 stations. Radio One intends to move the operation north to Pennsauken, where it can broadcast across the Delaware River to a bigger and more lucrative Philadelphia audience. The AM side is also being sold, to the mayor of nearby Millville, who says the operation is too successful to change or move, so he won t.
But the heart of the operation is the FM side, which has more power and a far bigger reach to four states. Some people who know radio say that when WSNJ-FM goes dark, probably sometime Monday afternoon, so will a rich part of the state's history.
''This is absolutely the end of an era,'' said Scott Fybush, editor of NorthEast Radio Watch, an online publication. ''WSNJ is very popular among folks like me who study the history of radio, simply because it presented a style of radio that died in most places years ago.''
But the family that owns the station says it's time. Its share of the reported $35 million that Radio One is paying is some $20 million, an amazing amount of money for a country radio station that did not even bother to subscribe to Arbitron ratings, relying instead on phone calls and letters to prove its worth. But positions on the radio dial are a little bit like land: nobody is making any more.
Like farmers who've worked their fields for decades while progress made everybody around them big money, the Bolds of Bridgeton are ready for their final harvest -- cash.
It started in 1946, when a man named Ed Bold emerged from the Coast Guard with some training in electronics and a duffel bagful of ambition. WSNJ AM (1240 on the dial) had gone on the air in 1937. In 1946, the FM side became one of the first, if not the first, commercial FM stations in New Jersey. Mr. Bold started working there shortly after the FM side went live. Over the years, he tried other jobs, starting a cable TV operation nearby and working for RCA, but he always walked back through the open door at WSNJ.
In 1971, Mr. Bold and his wife, Katherine, bought a half interest in the station. In 1991, they bought the rest.
Although time moved, WSNJ did not. It was successful, it reflected the rural character of its home, and the Bolds did not think there was any particular need to become modern. There were plenty of successes. The station fed the family, for one thing, and over the years it gave jobs to people who later moved on to New York and Philadelphia. It even played host to a show by a country yodeler named Bill Haley, who performed from the lobby, the crowds were so big.
Brokers would periodically court Ed Bold, promising him enough money for anything he wanted, but what he wanted he already had. He was the chief engineer and the guy who swept the floors, the detail man who wanted to make sure his people kept their jobs. But as he got older, the offers finally became more persuasive, and he began negotiating a deal.
Then came the cancer. Mr. Bold died last March, having walked out of the station on a Friday and succumbing the following Tuesday. Katherine Bold, 82, continued the negotiations. On Thursday, she said the deal would probably be concluded Monday afternoon, with the wiring of money to the family's account. Once that happens, they will shut down WSNJ FM.
If the Bold family is elated about becoming among the richest people in this part of the state, they're hiding it well. Lynn Timberman, one of Ed and Katherine Bold's two daughters, said nobody had any plans to move. She and her mother will now concentrate on the country furnishings store Ms. Timberman runs in Bridgeton, Kate-Lins & Park House Primitives.
''It's been a real hard thing,'' Ms. Timberman said. ''Harder than we thought. Our family has been involved with this station one way or another since 1946. ''
On Thursday and Friday, she and her mother were closing the accounting books, cleaning out the closets and clearing away some clutter in the small workroom Ed Bold had used to keep the ancient analog equipment running. At that, they said, he was a near genius, a radio station engineer who could coax life out of equipment that would have been junked by anybody else decades ago.
''He really was four or five steps ahead of everybody else when it came to FM,'' said Dan Morrow, a salesman and WSNJ on-air personality.
On Thursday, Katherine Bold kept both her strength and humor. What, she was asked, does she intend to do with all that money, considering that she had come from modest means and had stayed that way? She made $21 a month when she started work as a teacher, and still has scars on her hands from working in the nearby glass factories.
''I figure it's time to go on to bigger and better things,'' she said, smiling broadly. ''I just hope I m not bored.''
''Let's put it this way,'' she went on. ''I'm going to be 83. I've had enough. I taught school for 39 years and the last day of school I walked out and didn't look back. And I think that's the way it's going to be here. It s been interesting, but it's been a headache too.
Ms. Timberman, who has worked at the station since she learned to walk well enough to stay out of the way, said her father was never particularly interested in the money either.
''He hung on because he loved it, and to preserve the jobs mainly,'' she said. ''I always say it was the American dream. He got his education in the service and made something of himself, and that is what the American dream is about. ''
The mayor of Millville, Jim Quinn, who is buying the AM operation, owns another area radio station. He said he is through with trying to compete with the Bolds' formula. He will keep WSNJ-AM s format virtually as is and will extend its reach by simulcasting with his other station, abandoning that station's format entirely. Thus WSNJ's style will be preserved to a degree. Quinn said people have been coming up to him to thank him for that.
''It's probably one of the most unique radio stations in the country,'' Mr. Quinn said. ''It is truly local, and they get unbelievable response. I was on there recently and I had 18 people who called in during my hour. On my show we don't get 18 in a week.''
Still, even Mr. Quinn said something will not quite be the same when WSNJ-FM goes dark. But that's radio. That's progress. And that's a heck of a lot of money for a family that worked hard for a heck of a long time.
Photos: Members of the Bold family, above, Katie Timberman, her mother, Lynn Timberman, and Lynn's sister, Susan Bold. Left, Katherine Bold, the matriarch, with her great-grandson Ethan. (Photographs by Laura Pedrick for The New York Times) Map of New Jersey highlighting the location of Bridgeton: Radio station WSNJ-FM's signal reaches into four states