Longtime local radio personality Bud Finch to be honored

Oct 05, 2008 (New Haven Register - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- CCU | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Merritt "Bud" Finch started working in Connecticut radio in 1939, and he's still making shows for local radio today. If that doesn't blow your mind, you're not very good at math.

The Connecticut Broadcasters Association has done the numbers, and will induct Finch into its Hall of Fame Oct. 14, conferring its Lifetime Achievement Award at a CBA convention luncheon in Hartford.

"I'm very appreciative of that," Finch said this week. "It means a lot to be recognized by my peers."

Finch returned from World War II and became an organist and then announcer for WELI-AM (960), where he did the morning show until (as an executive of the station) he turned it over to a big talent he hired and helped mold, Ron Rohmer.

Finch sold ads at WELI and kept an on-air role at WELI ("Point of View") until the mid-1990s when Clear Channel radically changed the station (although his voice was still heard in commercials).

"If it hadn't been for corporate takeovers ... I'd probably still be working there," Finch said of WELI, which went from a news staff of about 30 people to zero in recent years.

His return to local radio came in 2005 when, at the age of 88, he partnered with writer Franz Douskey on a weekly big-band show airing on Quinnipiac University station WQUN-AM (1220).

"I knew Bud from my church in Hamden," said WQUN morning host and General Manager Ray Andrewsen. "He said 'I love the station; what can I do to help?' And I knew Franz Douskey had this collection of bigband music." Veteran musician Finch became the on-air host of "Once Upon a Bandstand," which now airs at 11 a.m. Sundays. "I thought I'd do it for a couple of months," he said. "Well, now it's been three years as of Oct. 15."

That's two October milestones for Finch, but it will be a bittersweet time for him, too, dealing with the death of his son Andy three weeks ago in California.

Andrewsen said only the late WTICAM legend Bob Steele and CPTV's first president, Larry Taff, have been awarded the Connecticut lifetime achievement honor before Finch.

"Bud created certain formats in radio that developed into some of the programming we still hear today," said Andrewsen. "He created 'RSVP' with John Birchard, which premiered the week of the Kennedy assassination. He was creative over the years; he did a remote from a train and a submarine."

The luncheon will include a film about Finch done by radio and TV producer (and former WELI official) Bill Rock, another local radio veteran from Stratford who does voice work for NBC and others. It is a daunting task to represent almost 70 years of a career, Rock acknowledged this week.

Andrewsen said it goes beyond the radio work. "I've gotten to know and admire him as a person. He plays piano at assisted-living facilities, he sings in the church choir in Spring Glen, and he still golfs two or three times a week."

As for how he's been able to stay active at 91, Finch jokes and then turns serious. "Officially, I'm 84. ... But it's luck, if we live a long time."

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