This year commemorates the 70th anniversary of when Beaver County’s first radio station, WBVP, was heard over the airwaves for the the first time on May 25, 1948. To mark the historical event, each week, another “70th Anniversary Moment” will be showcased on the airwaves and published on the station’s online feeds.
One of the popular options for young people graduating from high school in the 1970’s and 1980’s, who didn’t want to go away to college, was to enroll in one of many local broadcasting schools. Broadcasting was an exciting, popular field and these programs offered the opportunity to learn the skills necessary to get a job at a radio station in a relatively short period of time.
Ambridge native, Dan Dunlap, was a graduate of one of the local broadcasting schools, Columbia School Of Broadcasting in Pittsburgh. Dunlap had just finished his coursework at Columbia and showed up at the Duss Avenue studio of WMBA with a tape in his hand around 1985. Travis Green, also known as Jim Green on the airwaves at WMBA, served as the Program Director at back then and remembered meeting Dunlap. Green said: “Dan was nervous and timid, but he sounded great. His audition tape sounded real good. I told him even back then on that very first day of meeting him, that he would do very good in the business. So, I asked Dan if he could start that day, and he about dropped his drawers”.
Travis Green was right about the sound of the talent on the cassette tape that Dan Dunlap brought with him to WMBA that day. Dunlap has a beautiful, velvet toned, smooth, low pitched baritone voice that doesn’t seem to go with his smaller physical stature. If Dan didn’t make it in the broadcasting business, he could easily have found work as a base singer in a barbershop quartet. Listeners loved the sound too. Not too long after starting at WMBA, Dan Dunlap starting doing part time fill in work at WWKS, Kiss 106.7 F.M. in Beaver Falls. Dunlap was so smooth, so professional in the way he could say even mundane things like the call letters of the radio station, that young part timers at WBVP and WWKS during 1986 and 1987 would reportedly gather at the studio window just to watch Dan work his craft. While it’s never been researched, Dunlap is thought to be the only announcer ever to achieve such fame among fellow employees at the Beaver Falls radio headquarters. Dunlap could read the lottery numbers and make them sound like a romance novel. His tone and delivery style would mesmerize people. He was, and is, that good.
Other radio operators began to fall in love with what they were hearing as well. Dan Dunlap also started working part time at WSHH, Wish 99.7 F.M. in Pittsburgh in 1986 and Eventually was hired on full time as the afternoon host. WSHH was often referred to as “Beaver Falls South”, because many WBVP and WWKS employees ended up working at that radio station as well. Dunlap teamed up again later on in Pittsburgh with other people familiar to WBVP , WWKS and WMBA listeners, including Steve Granato, Chris Shovlin and Current WBVP newsman, Pat Septak, who also worked at the Greentree based station in the 1990’s. Judy Marcella and Mark Peterson were sales staffers in Beaver Falls who also worked with Dunlap at WSHH and it’s sister A.M. counterpart radio station, WJAS.
For a couple years, around 2008, Dan Dunlap, along with his wife Sue Dunlap, hosted a Saturday Morning variety talk show on WBVP and WMBA appropriately called “The Dan and Sue Show” . Dan loved radio so much, that even on his day off at his full time gig in Pittsburgh, he elected to spend his free time on the airwaves.
Dan Dunlap continued to talk to listeners on Wish 99.7 F.M. until 2014. Since then he has become a very highly sought after voice over artist, working with many major businesses like Netflix, Charter Communications, Bristol Motor Speedway, Dietz & Watson, Edward Jones Financial, Cox Media, Field & Stream and Tin Cup Whiskey along with many others. Locally, Dan Dunlap continues to do the voice over work for the annual Medic Rescue membership drive commercials which are on the air now on WBVP and WMBA.
70th Anniversary Moments” is presented by Abbey Carpet and Floor, Albert’s Heating, Cooling and Plumbing, Aliquippa Giant Eagle, The Beaver Falls Municipal Authority, Beaver Valley Auto Mall, Beaver Valley Sheet Metal, Castlebrook Development, The Community College Of Beaver County, Farmers Building and Savings Bank, Freedom United Federal Credit Union, Hank’s Frozen Custard and Mexican food, The Health Huts, Kitchen City, Laughlin Insurance Agency, Rochester Manor and Villa and Young’s Jewelry and Coins.