Radio voice and educator Bob Long passes the torch to former student

After 44 years as a full-time communications teacher at Streetsboro High School, and as the general manager of the school’s radio station, WSTB 88.9 FM, Bob Long is retiring from full-time teaching, and is passing on his position as the station’s general manager to former student Corey Teuton. He’ll move to part-time teaching next year for two years.

Long, 76, started out in radio as a freshman at Akron University in 1968, before the school’s station changed from WAUP to WZIP. After graduation, he became the news editor at WHLO in Akron from 1969 to 1972. From 1972 to 1979 he was the news editor at WKNT in Kent, now WNIR.

On Oct. 12, 1981, Streetsboro High School asked Long to be on the board of directors for the school radio station, WSTB. Long began teaching communications at the school, was hired as the general manager of WSTB and has been there ever since.

When Long arrived at WSTB in 1981, the station was transmitting music to the radio waves using audio tapes, but Long said it wasn’t an ideal format.

“[The audio tapes] were really bad, dried up, and I couldn’t stand it anymore, so we changed to contemporary pop by that point in 1982, and we played records instead of old tapes,” Long said. “We did that for a few years, then in 1991 we changed the format to heavy metal.”

From ‘91 to ‘99, WSTB played heavy metal all day long, which became popular with listeners. During that time period the station’s programming was called V-ROCK.

“That was the first really big format for the station that really kicked up the audience. Stuff like Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, that kind of stuff, which isn’t really heavy now, but, man, that was cutting edge back in ’91,” Long said. “Then the next change came in ’99, when we switched to alternative rock. …we called ourselves the Alternation. It was alternative rock, and that’s what we’re still playing today. We haven’t changed the format in 26 years.”

In 1997, the station began playing hits from the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s all day on Sunday, called Sunday Oldies Jukebox. The program is still going and is run by volunteer DJs.

“On Sunday, we have adults come in from the community. That staff has been pretty stable for decades,” Long said. “They don’t change much. They get in here, they like it, and they do it.”

But 1997 wasn’t the first time that WSTB had broadcast the oldies out to listeners.

“About 1975, when a guy named Bill Weisinger came in as the general manager, he changed the format to play oldies, rock ‘n’ roll oldies, and at that point there wasn’t rock ‘n’ roll oldies on the dial much, because rock ‘n’ roll was only 20 years old. It was like something new, playing oldies,” Long said.

WSTB was started by superintendent Lowell Myers in 1972. Long was working at WKNT in Kent when Streetsboro’s new high school radio station hit the airwaves.

“When it [WSTB] first came out, the best I can describe it is, it was sorta like NPR-type programming,” Long said. “They were not an NPR station, but it was ’72, they had, like, different programs, information programs, educational programs, some light programming with the DJs playing music, but not much.”

WSTB is special among radio stations, not just because it’s owned by the high school and run by the students, but also because the station is an accredited class program that offers structure and real job skills to students, which Long says is rare among high school radio stations.

“Besides just playing music, we have a lot of internal structure here. I run the radio station sort of like a business,” Long said. “We have a structure of program director, music director, promotion director, news directors. All these people are juniors and seniors, and they have real jobs, just like they would at a commercial radio station.”

At WSTB, the students are responsible for every aspect of the station, including managerial positions, organizing events and public relations.

For example, come August the station will be broadcasting live from Streetsboro’s Brew and BBQ Bash. For that event, the program director will monitor staff personnel files, the chief of staff will supervise employees and make sure the station runs properly, while staff set up contacts for the event, book sponsors and provide live coverage — all run by students.

“We teach them responsibility, because they have to do their DJ shows on a regular basis,” Long said. “We teach them time management, those kinds of things that we do within the program, which make it kind of special.”

Long said you can count the student run radio stations in Ohio on one hand, and he doesn’t think any of them operate with total student involvement and remain on the air 24 hours a day, 365 days a year like WSTB does.

The station also has 30,000 listeners and is broadcast out to the entire Akron area, as well as Medina, Warren, Cleveland suburbs, and down to North Canton.

Throughout the years, many of Long’s students have moved on to careers in the radio business.

“We had one who left here and went to college and immediately got a job with Herschend Entertainment, the people who own Dollywood. He does the digital promotion for Dollywood. He started doing that kind of stuff when he was here with us, when he was in high school,” Long said. “Then Ken Steele, he’s the music director at WQMX, he was one of our products, he just retired a couple of years ago from there. And George Mcfly — and these are the radio names over there — he was also at WQMX.”

Now that Long is stepping down as general manager for WSTB, his former student and colleague, Corey Teuton will be taking his place. Teuton first met Long his freshman year in high school, when he was randomly placed into Long’s TV Film Literacy class. Long recommended that he take Intro To Radio his sophomore year. Shortly after taking that class, Teuton signed a contract with Streetsboro’s then-superintendent, Michael Daulbaugh, and began working at the radio station and has been there ever since.

Teuton is also currently enrolled at Akron University in the AYA Integrated Language Arts program, a course that prepares secondary teacher candidates to be licensed in Adolescent to Young Adults [AYA]. From there he will be assuming Long’s teaching responsibilities.

“I think it’s important to know that, although he’s retiring as general manager, he’ll still remain a vital part of the station,” Teuton said. “People know him a lot through his weather updates. He does those every half hour, Monday through Saturdays, so just because he’ll be stepping down from that position, he’s not going to completely walk away from the station entirely.”

Long has been at WSTB for most of his adult life, and he’ll likely stick around for a while, just for the fun of it.

“I think it’s important in life to do something you like to do, and this has been a tremendous amount of fun for me for 44 years, or I wouldn’t have done it,” Long said. “To work the rest of your life, you really need to make decisions and direct yourself into an area that you’re going to enjoy doing whatever it is you do.”