[Description by Bill Tash]

A sleepy little 16,000 watt FM radio station in a major market, happy to be delivering multi-ethnic programming (polkas, waltzes) to an ever-dwindling Cleveland, Ohio audience, gets the word from the owners at Booth American Broadcasting (Detroit) that the format would be changing to Rock. The entire WXEN staff was about to be fired (all except for one engineer… me).

Public protests by the station’s staff fell on relatively deaf ears. A few of the ethnic language “program producers” scrambled to claim a tiny Sunday morning public-affairs time slot offered to them on this new rock station, and that is how the first day of this radio station began on Sunday morning, March 13, 1977.

Around 12 Noon, after the former station manager Kalmann Novak broadcast some spirited dialog to his Hungarian listeners, WXEN became ZIP-106. (Kirk Russell is featured here with the opening set.)

The call letters were soon changed to WZZP to better reflect the ‘ZIP’ image, and a new 50,000 watt transmitter also came online, to complete this solid rock station’s new image in Cleveland. As the long-term studio engineer for both the ethnic and rock operations, I had the extraordinary experience of destroying a firmly embedded mainstay station and building a rock success. I will not soon forget the mental and physical highs and lows this project created. The last time I checked, WZZP had become WLTF, and was playing “Lite Rock”.

[Note from Uncle Ricky: This composite also includes a few sets from contributor Bill Tash. This engineer was a jock, too!]