WMRY

WMRY Was Like No Other Station

Mention WMRY and you'll get different reactions, depending on the age of your conversation partner.

Baby boomers are apt to remember the FM station, which broadcast at 101.1, as a great source for music uninterrupted by commercials - at least in its early rock incarnation. Those listeners who are approaching the older end of the spectrum have fond recollections of a station where the music was listenable and the announcers were personable. The only "commercials" were thought-provoking messages.

WMRY signed on in May 1966 from studios at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows on an Illinois bluff overlooking downtown St. Louis, under the ownership of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. The 101.1 frequency had been dormant for about a year, originally having been assigned to WAMV, whose call letters were briefly changed to WBBR-FM. The 50,000 watts of effective radiated power helped the station reach listeners 75 miles away.

By 1969, General Manager Paul Bair told St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Jack Rice that ecumenical messages were running once an hour and were no longer than 40 seconds. And, even though they were voiced by some of the area's highest-ranking Catholic and Protestant officials, they seldom were overt in religious overtones. In fact, the most overt religious reference was the station's call letters, which Bair said were the closest they could get to the name "Mary."

Unlike most of today's non-commercial stations, WMRY did not solicit monetary contributions from its listeners, but money dribbled in anyway, and when lightning hit the tower and blew out the transmitter for 10 days, the station reportedly received hundreds of phone calls (and a few checks) from listeners who had grown fond of the music and the messages.

As one might assume, the construction of WMRY was in no way ostentatious. Its location atop the bluff meant the tower height of 350 feet was fine for propagating the signal all over the St. Louis Metro area - even though most other stations had to build towers at least 500 feet tall.

The newly constructed studio building could easily have been mistaken for a house with a basic suburban ranch architectural style. Inside, furnishings were relatively sparse, although a functioning kitchen was occasionally used by workers. There were no sales offices since the station needed no staff to sell advertising. The studios were equipped with modern broadcast equipment.

The technical side of WMRY was a group effort. A couple engineers at Pulitzer's KSD, Bob Harvey and Ralph Aldridge, pitched in to help build the station and maintain the equipment. Harvey calls his work there designing the studios a "labor of love." He'd done studio design work a couple times prior to going to work at KSD, and the professional relationship he developed with Bair, who was then a KSD announcer, led to his volunteering to help build WMRY. Rice's article indicated it cost $69,000 to build the station and get it on the air with annual operating costs around $80,000.

The Oblates' station was, in fact, a kind of throwback to small radio stations of the past where the studio building was constructed in the shadow of the tower, usually outside of the town to which it was licensed. The nighttime disc jockey could put on a long record, step outside and hear the crickets in the tall grass and trees and see the bright stars above, unimpeded by bright lights from the city.

During its first several years of operation, WMRY managed to maintain its folksy approach to broadcasting, but rising costs eventually forced the owners to sell ads to stay on the air. In 1991, the station entered into a leased-time agreement with River City Broadcasting. The call letters were changed to WSNL, and soon thereafter, River City purchased the station outright.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 12/03)

WMRY Was Born In Idealism

In 1964, idealism prevailed in many of the nation’s subcultures. People felt there could be a better world, and some took the bull by the horns to try to create it. In St. Louis’ Metro East, a committed group of people sought a combination AM/FM radio license for the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows to provide radio as a public service to the community.

Under the ownership of Our Lady of the Snows Broadcasting Corp., a reassignment was sought for the frequencies of two stations that had gone off the air in April of that year, WAMV-AM and FM. The AM station was at 1490 kHz, and the FM was at 101.1 mHz. Father Edwin Guild, O.M.I. (Oblates of Mary Immaculate), was president of the corporation. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted, "If successful, the new station would be the first Catholic radio station in the St. Louis area since St. Louis University sold WEW in 1955." Father Guild told the newspaper he planned a format of "60 percent classical, popular and jazz music; 14 percent religion; 13 percent news; 4 ½ percent panels and roundtable discussions and lesser percentages of conversation, education, education and agriculture." There would be no commercials.

Within a month, the group announced it would no longer seek the AM license. A simulcast had originally been planned, and engineering studies showed the FM signal would provide all the coverage they needed. It was their intent to broadcast 18 hours a day Monday through Saturday and 16 hours on Sunday. The construction, equipping and operation of the station would be funded by donations from the Catholic church.

WMRY was supposed to sign on May 9, 1966, but there was a delay when the Federal Communications Commission indicated it was not satisfied with the station's transmitter tests. The actual sign-on came at 6 a.m. on May 13th of that year. In a short article published in the Post on November 1, 1970, station manager Byron Bellville noted it was the station's fourth anniversary, and he called WMRY "the only motivational radio station in the middle west." Competition on the FM radio band was beginning to heat up then with twelve stations in St. Louis. But the uniqueness of WMRY stood out.

The station’s broadcasts remained true to the vision of its founders. There was music, and no commercials were broadcast. Every hour on the hour, listeners heard "inspirational messages," which were not what one might expect. There was no emphasis on religion, especially Catholic religion. The messages came from Catholic, Episcopal and even Baptist clergy. WMRY was, for a time, the only station of its kind in the country. When lightning hit the tower and knocked the station off the air for 10 days, over 1,500 calls came in from listeners. Some even sent money, although no financial donations were ever sought from listeners.

As the years wore on, WMRY did away with much of the talk programming and placed emphasis on music and the inspirational messages, and jazz became a nighttime staple featuring the legendary Leo Chears, the "man in the red vest." In 1985, the public service format ended and WMRY began selling advertising. In 1989, operation of the station was transferred through a local management agreement to an outside corporation and the inspirational messages ceased. WMRY became WSNL, "Sunny 101."

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 12/01)