George Louvis has broadcast WVRM on short wave radio from his office on Valley Road since the late-1990s. Its signal is weak, only commanding antennas for one block between Bellevue and Lorraine avenues.
Unwitting listeners tuned to 91.9 FM as they drive through the uptown shopping district are delighted to find the signal as it plays its only program: a one-minute loop of Boyz II Men’s 1994 hit “I’ll Make Love to You” that repeats ad infinitum. But the bemusing broadcast is no irreverent prank. Or, if it is a joke on anyone, it would be Louvis, who’s been pumping the signal into Upper Montclair’s airwaves for more than 15 years.
“The mystery of it has been so amusing to people,” Louvis said from his home in the Midwest ― although he still returns to New Jersey regularly. “I feel obligated to let it play until the machine dies.”
Specifically, that machine is a DGX 1050 Drive By Broadcasting transmitter. They were manufactured for commercial use by businesses to advertise upcoming sales or pipe Muzak through a store’s PA system, according to Louvis, who leased them to car dealerships and strip malls, which would play their advertisements for passing motorists tuned to a frequency of the business’ choosing.
By August 1999, Louvis had installed one in the office he kept above his family’s former restaurant — now under new ownership as Montclair Diner — and ran ads for stores situated along the small retail strip. That Christmas, he connected a five-disc CD player the transmitter, broadcasting a mix of carols and holiday themed radio plays from the 1930s and ‘40s.
When he came back to work on Dec. 26, 1999, everyone at the diner downstairs told him how much they appreciated hearing the nostalgic holiday shows like Fibber McGee and Molly. WVRM, or “Village Radio Montclair,” was born.
Louvis leased copper wire from the phone company to send his feed to multiple transmitters he’d placed around town in friends’ homes, and even had one installed on the roof of Town Hall. He played music under a classic rock format and created original Montclair-relevant programming, interviewing residents on air and produced a talk-show called Sports Yak, hosted by two regular WFAN callers.
Soon, he moved WVRN to the internet. But a live feed proved prohibitively expensive.
“It was like $3,000 per month to have a stream that could handle 10 listeners. I saw it as the future and I wanted to be a part of it. But I was too far ahead of that wave and it crashed on me,” Louvis said. “I couldn’t sell enough ads to recoup the cost.”
By uploading audio files of WVRM’s live broadcasts to a website — a forebearer of the podcasting boom to come — he could increase listenership and rationalize selling ad space to businesses. Likewise, he no longer had use for the countless transmitters he’d set up around Montclair, or at least until his friend Gary asked to borrow one for a party.
Caught in a loop
The DGX 1050 has an added feature that allows the user to record a 60-second audio loop directly into the device, allowing the user to broadcast the brief message in lieu of a live feed. If the power fails during a broadcast, the machine will automatically default to the recorded loop when electricity is restored.
Once he’d taken back all his transmitters, his friend Gary asked to borrow one for a party he was hosting at his home. It’s difficult for Louvis to remember exactly when this occurred, but guesses it was about 2007 and WVRM had been effectively off terrestrial air for a few years.
The friend had issues with neighbors quick to phone police when his music was too loud. So, he devised a gimmick whereby he could use one of Louvis’ transmitters to pump his playlist into various FM radios placed around his backyard. That way, each radio could play the music softly, but audible anywhere the guest mingled.
When the party was over, Gary returned the transmitter to Louvis, who placed it on a shelf in his office and forgot about it. “Somewhere along the line, there was a power failure in the building and the loop starts to play. I have no clue, because I’m not listening to it, I’m not even thinking about that thing,” he said.
“Why in the world, he recorded that one-minute loop of Boyz II Men, I have no idea,” Louvis said. “My only guess is — when he was going to do the live broadcast — he hit the wrong button and ended up recording.”
At some point a video appeared on YouTube of a tickled driver motoring down Valley Road between Bellevue and Lorraine avenues showing that 91.9 FM appeared to play the saccharine ‘90s Motown hit over and over. Friends brought the video to Louvis’ attention.
“I didn’t want to turn it off because people were going there to see it,” he said. “After a year or two, I stopped it because I was like, ‘this is just dumb.’ But I didn’t bother unplugging it. I just hit stop.” Another power failure shut down service to his office and the loop started broadcasting all over again. Again, and again and again.
Louvis, it appears, is caught in a loop of his own.
You can’t choose your legacy
The accolades the station receives from locals is amusing, even if that particular song might not have been Louvis’ first choice — he’s a bigger fan of oft-forgotten R&B trio Tony! Toni! Toné! However, more than any nostalgic slow-jam, he would rather it be one of his songs.
His current office where the transmitter is located was once Stardust Recording Studio, which Louvis operated from 1981 until 2010. He and others have mixed, produced and engineered songs for Diana Ross, Earth Wind & Fire, and the soundtrack of Whoopi Goldberg’s 1996 racial farce “The Associate” in the cozy studio over the years.
He sang on stage at the Grammy Awards and “did the rockstar thing” in the 1980s, playing shows along the I-95 corridor in a band called The Persuaders, he said. As of late, one of his songs is set to appear in a motion picture.
Given all he’s accomplished, Louvis can’t help but chuckle that a local in-joke, of which he was as much the victim as its perpetrator, would garner the most attention of anything on his curriculum vitae.
One day he went to his office to find a pile of shirts illustrated by an anonymous fan who wanted to help promote the station. The graphic jokingly misrepresented Village Radio Montclair’s call letters as “WBYZ.”
“It’s funny to me that would be my legacy,” he said.
