John Andres, WXXI Guy With the Glue
Sunday morning host has been an announcer on WXXI-FM for close to 30 years
By John Addyman
It’s Sunday morning. Early.
Winter is still here, but the light is different when you open the front door. You take a quick breath to decide whether to take the trip outside now or a little later.
John Andres is already with you.
He’s been at it since 6 a.m. in your radio, on your phone, rumbling in your computer. He’s got that voice. Authoritative. Knowledgeable. Reachable. Unflappable.
The music he’s programmed is starting to roll out. He tells you about weather and road conditions. Then he hands you the music, a butler presenting it on a plate for your morning’s pleasure.
Andres has been an announcer on WXXI-FM for close to 30 years. His cherished spot in the programming week is Sunday morning. And he knows his audience.
He was an elementary teacher for 25 years in the Greece schools.
One of the favorite sounds he heard then was those snappy and wiggling fifth-graders coming to his room on the first day of school in September, and in the last days of June, hearing them confidently tell their classmates about something wonderful as “guest speakers.”
“I always wanted them to want to come to school,” Andres said. “What I taught was to have them be comfortable talking to a group of students, their peers. I called it ‘guest speakers,’ not show and tell. They would bring in things they were involved in, like a collection of some kind, a vacation, hobbies, they could bring a friend up with them to do this. I had them write for our PA system, too. I had them write scripts for their own TV program. My favorite part was the creative writing they did.”
That was a while ago. He’s 75 now. But the urge to welcome is still there.
Given the chance, he likes to welcome visitors to the offices of WXXI downtown Rochester for a tour. He introduces them to staff as they walk around the hallways and peek into radio and TV studios.
He shows where the 30,000 music CDs are. In an empty studio he points to the computer screens with the shows’ digital setups, what’s going to be heard over the air as announcers select their playlists. He introduces you to the stars of the day — Brenda Tromblay, who kicks off Rochester’s weekday mornings with birdsong, then welcomes you to classical music; Mona Seghatoleslami, who soothes respectfully about so many local artists at Hochstein and the wider area; Steve Johnson, with his youngish approach and artful enthusiasm for the music he’s chosen to play for you.
Getting Started in Radio
And there’s John Andres himself. He begins mapping out his Sunday morning show on Thursday. If another announcer is on vacation, he’s called to duty, a little like a substitute teacher, and he slides into the air chair for them. Someone sick? If Andres is available, he’s there. Emergency? Same. Someone need backup to handle phone calls for an on-air personality, or do news for WXXI-AM? He’s the guy. On any given day, you might hear him subbing for someone else, but Sunday morning early belongs to him.
In a real way, he’s part of the glue that holds WXXI together.
This is a station that intimately knows it derives its strength and purpose from appreciating the community and serving it. Visit the studios in downtown Rochester, and watch people drive the place forward.
How did Andres get started in radio?
“I have to credit East High,” he said, sitting in an empty staff room. Somehow, he’s taller than you expect after listening to him for years. “We had a PA system there and a TV studio where we did programming for the Rochester City schools. The high school would tape programs for classroom use, mostly high school science, industrial arts, home economics. I had gone down and auditioned. I wound up doing morning announcements on the PA system in my sophomore year, which I thought was pretty cool.”
A young John Andres used to ride his bike over to WROC-TV on Humboldt Street, “because it had TV and two radio stations, and I’d just watch and observe,” he remembered. “I watched the operation, watched how the announcers and engineers would time up to the news, how they did their programming. It was quite an interest for me. I always wanted to do to two things – to be involved in the media and to teach school…and I got to do both. I was very lucky.”
His dual career started with a classical music show in college at Rochester Institute of Technology. Then he did local news on the half-hour at WHEC-AM. “There was a Channel 10 anchor who wrote the news for me. We used to make calls to the police departments, the fire stations, to see if there was anything going on. You would call and ask, ‘Is there anything happening in your district? Your precinct? Your fire stations?’ That was back in the day. They don’t do it anymore.
“I hooked up with WRUR-FM at the University of Rochester. I worked there in the summer of 1972. The program director liked me and said, ‘How about helping us with election night?’ That was the Nixon-McGovern election. Then I started there in the fall of 1975, on weekends, and I taught during the week.”
Andres was at WRUR for many years, then in 1995, he got the call.
“The personnel director at WXXI would call me from time to time and say, ‘So-and-so is applying over here and he-she said she’s worked with you at WRUR: would you recommend him/her?’ And I’d say, ‘Certainly.’ Then I decided to take the plunge myself, and here I am.
“I started at WXXI in 1995, on August 30. It was a Wednesday. “I worked with talk show host Bob Smith, who was ‘1370 Connection.’ It’s now called ‘Connections with Evan Dawson.’ I’d coordinate the phone calls, do station IDs, give the weather and the underwriting (mentioning those who supported the public radio station).
“My Sunday show started 28 years ago.”
He was filling in for others, sometimes with the news cutaways alongside “All Things Considered, and often with the three computer whizzes on Saturday’s call-in show, Sound Bytes (Dave Enright, Nick Francesco and Steve Rea) who have the longest-running show about computers in the country, birthed in 1989), now at WGMC jazz 90.1 in Greece.
“Classical is my favorite genre of music, although I like music of all sorts. I like the individual programming we have here. All the announcers select pretty much about 99% of the music that we play. If you’ve been doing radio as long as I have, you get to know what you think the public would like to hear.”
Because most of the classical music played is longer in duration, it’s important that announcers keep listeners engaged longer. Andres has a philosophy about that.
“You have to play some familiar pieces,” he believes. “I usually start out my program — whether it’s my own program or I’m filling in for someone else — with something familiar. Then you can play something that’s not so well known, but very likeable to listen to. Baroque, classical, romantic — whatever era you’re talking about.
“To me, it’s all about the flow. You want to keep people listening longer. I think a familiar voice is helpful. Brenda has been here since 1991 — people know her. Mona has been here 14 years. Steve has been here five or six, and people know him. People also know our fill-in announcers as well – Marianne Curbury, Joshua Bassett and James Aldrich Moody.
“I think we’re unique in a way because most commercial stations have a music director who programs your music. Here, choosing your music is like setting up your own classroom, or your own living room. You put your stamp on it, your own personality.
“This station has so many hearts,” he said. “Public service, connection to the community, producing quality programming — TV or radio through the network or locally, the news department is second to none, the people who work here, the format of our programs, connections with all sorts of institutions around town – partnerships with Eastman School, Roberts Wesleyan, University of Rochester, RIT, a lot of community orchestras and choral groups, the Little Theatre…it’s just amazing the amount of media we have here.
“I wanted to be a teacher since first grade,” he said. “I have several members of my family who are teachers or were teachers. I was also fascinated by radio way back in the day. Back to the mid-50s, really. ‘If you’re in a profession you really love,’ as (local radio and TV legend) Jack Palvino once said, ‘it really isn’t work’ — it is work, but there are lots of positives. I get to work with some very incredible people who are very talented.”