Wdas

Legendary radio broadcaster Georgie Woods, "the Guy With the Goods" who was a Philadelphia leader in both entertainment and civil rights, died early yesterday morning. Mr. Woods, 78, who moved to Florida in 1996, is believed to have suffered a heart attack at his Boynton Beach home, said his longtime companion, Doris Harris. He died shortly thereafter at Bethesda Memorial Hospital, according to staff at the Boynton Beach medical facility. After he came to Philadelphia from New York in 1953, Mr. Woods used the airwaves of WDAS-AM (1480)

WDAS-FM program director Joe "Butterball" Tamburro, who will take his place today on Philadelphia's musical Walk of Fame on South Broad Street, has survived through thick and thin. He recalls one day relatively early in his career. He was playing a new record he thought was wonderful, but his boss didn't like it. "He called me on the hotline and told me to take that piece of garbage and throw it in the trash. And never, ever put another record on his radio station without his permission.

Irate callers yesterday besieged the switchboard at black-oriented sister stations WDAS-AM/FM as word swept through the city that the stations indeed had laid off 20 full- and part-time employees Monday and that the AM facility would soon switch to a gospel-and-talk format. "We can't just sit back and let this happen," one caller said on the morning talk show hosted by Georgie Woods, WDAS-AM (1480) program director. Another caller, referring to WDAS's parent company, Unity Broadcasting of New York, which apparently ordered the cutbacks, told Woods: "The African-American community in Philadelphia has got to come together and take buses or whatever up to New York and stand up and fight those people.

Texas company took control yesterday of WDAS-FM and WDAS-AM, local radio stations with deep roots in the African-American community. Evergreen Media Corp., which owns WUSL-FM (Power 99), paid $103 million to acquire WDAS (1480-AM and 105.3-FM), the influential adult urban contemporary and gospel music stations. Evergreen, based in Dallas, bought the stations from the Beasley Broadcast Group, the Florida company that paid $26 million two years ago for the stations. Beasley president Bruce Beasley called the sale "bittersweet.

Word is that Cody Anderson, the longtime general manager of WDAS-AM/FM, will soon leave the black-oriented sister stations. Insiders say Anderson is negotiating to buy WHAT-AM (1340), a black-oriented talk-and-nostalgia station, with an eye toward returning it to its former stature. They also say that Anderson will be replaced April 10 at 'DAS by Kernie L. Anderson, vice president and general manager of urban-contemporary WIZF-FM in Cincinnati. Cody Anderson did not return a phone call Friday.

Joe "Butterball" Tamburro, 70, the radio personality and tastemaker who built a bond with Philadelphia music makers and music lovers over a nearly 50-year career at rhythm and blues station WDAS-AM, died Friday, July 27. Mr. Tamburro died at his home in Haverford, according to Loraine Ballard Morrill, news and community affairs director for Clear Channel, which owns WDAS (1480). No cause of death was given, but Morrill said Mr. Tamburro had been battling complications from heart disease and diabetes and had not been well.

A saleswoman, saying she was sexually harassed and assaulted for more than two years by a station sales manager, filed a lawsuit yesterday against Philadelphia radio station WDAS and its New York owners. In her suit filed in U.S. District Court, Andrea Corum accuses the station of sexual discrimination and harassment and says she was "economically retaliated against" for complaining about her boss, Peter Drialo, who is named as a defendant. Corum, 29, a saleswoman for the station since 1984, said that she had complained to WDAS general manager W. Cody Anderson numerous times about the alleged incidents of sexual harassment but that her "complaints were not taken seriously.

Joe "Butterball" Tamburro, 70, the radio personality and tastemaker who built a bond with Philadelphia music makers and music lovers over a nearly 50-year career at rhythm and blues station WDAS-AM, died Friday, July 27. Mr. Tamburro died at his home in Haverford, according to Loraine Ballard Morrill, news and community affairs director for Clear Channel, which owns WDAS (1480). No cause of death was given, but Morrill said Mr. Tamburro had been battling complications from heart disease and diabetes and had not been well.

It was a long wait for those of us who follow the stories told every three months by the quarterly Arbitron ratings - two days, to be exact. But when the numbers came out Friday morning, it was kind of anticlimactic. No huge surprises. Unless you work at WDAS-FM (105.3), WJJZ-FM (106.1), or WUSL-FM (98.9). These three stations, all boasting large concentrations of urban, predominantly African American listeners, showed the most movement in the Arbitron winter book. The book measured the listening habits of selected area radio listeners between Jan. 8 and April 1. WDAS-FM had the most impressive gain in winter '98, surging from fifth place a year ago (5.4)

WDAS-FM (105.3) fans who think they've noticed a change in the station in the last week are not imagining things. It's the new 'DAS. Less than a month after he arrived, general manager Kernie Anderson has effectively dumped 'DAS's 20-year-old urban- contemporary format in favor of a softer, mellower sound designed, he says, to "bring our audience home. " "Black adult contemporary" is what Anderson and others in radio are calling this new format, a sort of a black answer to WMGK-FM (102.

THERE WAS the time in 2008 Tyler Perry showed up in the lobby of the WDAS radio station in Bala Cynwyd asking to see on-air host Patty Jackson. She'd met him years earlier when he was still producing stage plays and only dreaming of getting into the Hollywood scene. But Jackson hadn't seen him in ages. When Jackson walked out into the lobby, Perry greeted her and explained, "I had to come by and see you because you were there for me from the beginning. You talked with me when nobody else would talk with me. " Her stunned reaction: "You hang with Oprah and Gayle, and you remember me ?"

THE OBJECT wrapped tightly in Terri Choplin's hands on Thursday as she stood outside the Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul wasn't a rosary. It was a cassette tape. On the tape was the voice of the man she was there to mourn — longtime WDAS disc jockey Joe "Butterball" Tamburro. The tape held his last broadcast before his death on July 27. Choplin, 53, of the city's Bella Vista section, said that she has almost every one of Tamburro's broadcasts on cassette. "Anybody who listened to him was truly blessed," she said.

The "Your Money" feature Tuesday incorrectly reported the holdings of EOG Resources. The company is leveraged 70 percent in oil and 30 percent in natural gas. The column "The Jersey Side" on Sunday incorrectly reported the hospital where the recently widowed Shayna Stoney's infant son, Seff, was treated. It was Virtua Memorial-Mount Holly. An obituary Saturday for the disc jockey Joe "Butterball" Tamburro incorrectly identified the person who hired him at WDAS-FM.

Joe "Butterball" Tamburro, 70, the radio personality and tastemaker who built a bond with Philadelphia music makers and music lovers over a nearly 50-year career at rhythm and blues station WDAS-AM, died Friday, July 27. Mr. Tamburro died at his home in Haverford, according to Loraine Ballard Morrill, news and community affairs director for Clear Channel, which owns WDAS (1480). No cause of death was given, but Morrill said Mr. Tamburro had been battling complications from heart disease and diabetes and had not been well.

Joe "Butterball" Tamburro, 70, the radio personality and tastemaker who built a bond with Philadelphia music makers and music lovers over a nearly 50-year career at rhythm and blues station WDAS-AM, died Friday, July 27. Mr. Tamburro died at his home in Haverford, according to Loraine Ballard Morrill, news and community affairs director for Clear Channel, which owns WDAS (1480). No cause of death was given, but Morrill said Mr. Tamburro had been battling complications from heart disease and diabetes and had not been well.

TODAY MARKS 30 years in radio for 105.3 WDAS midday host Patty Jackson . The lifelong Philadelphian is heard 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday and also from 9 a.m. to noon Sundays on WDAS. Jackson started her radio career at Camden's WSSJ and later worked at Power 99 and Q102, but has called 'DAS home for many years. Clear Channel is celebrating Jackson's anniversary with a breakfast for staff and friends at WDAS' Bala Cynwyd studio. "I feel blessed to be working 30 years straight in a career that has spanned up and down the dial.

William H. Vogt, 90, of Oreland, a former radio and television sales executive in Philadelphia, died Monday, Nov. 14, at Willow Ridge Center, a nursing home in Hatboro. Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Vogt graduated from Simon Gratz High School in 1940 and served in the Army Air Force from 1942 to 1946, including service in France. While a sales service manager at WFIL-TV - now 6ABC - from 1950 to 1954, he earned a bachelor's degree in 1952 from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

TELEVISION   Game broadcasts: Comcast SportsNet is scheduled to air 105 games (all in high definition). Games aired at 7 p.m. will replay at 10:30. MyPHL17 will air 45 games, nine games will be on Fox and three on ESPN. Six games will be simultaneously broadcast on MLB Network. Flyers and Sixers playoff games could change the schedule and the Phillies could be shown on more national broadcasts. Broadcast team: Tom McCarthy returns to do play-by-play, and Gary "Sarge" Matthews and Chris Wheeler will serve as color commentators.

IT STARTED OUT as a simple project, a classroom assignment on a subject of their choice. Before the kids from Masterman had finished, their little 10-minute documentary on the civil-rights activism of WDAS-AM, a local radio station, had earned them acclaim in local, state and national competitions. Even more, by the time they blew the dust off the grainy black-and-white pictures of radio personalities in their skinny-legged suits and bouffant hairdos, and replayed some of that history, they learned some things about this city's history that aren't always taught in classes or covered in textbooks.

Elroy Smith has been in radio since 1981, and it's not what it used to be. "Jocks are working double shifts," says Smith, Philadelphia operations manager for urban-oriented Radio One. "I'm doing three stations here, and one in Charlotte. " "We have to survive. . . . This is no joke. " Nobody's laughing. Stock prices have plummeted, and red ink is rising around Radio One and the entire industry, struggling with a mountain of debt and a disastrous drop in advertising revenue, although listenership has shown only a modest decline.