WBFO - About Mark Wozniak



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About Mark Wozniak

Mark Wozniak, WBFO's local Morning Edition host, has been at WBFO since mid-1978.

He started as a volunteer board operator for the late Bud Ralabate and Bob Chapman on the program When Rock Was Young. In the fall of 1979, he applied for a job posting for a control board operator for NPR's new morning news program, and on November 5th, 1979 he was finally on the WBFO payroll for the debut of NPR's Morning Edition.

In 1980, Mark left Morning Edition to host WBFO's lunchtime news program at the time, Midday. He also became involved with audio production work, and other various aspects of station operations, including many of the station's growing computer functions. Mark co-hosted A Polka Sunday With Friends with the late Stan Sluberski on WBFO from 1981 to 1986, and emceed several call-in trivia game shows on WBFO in the early 1980s. Mark returned to Morning Edition as a local correspondent for a while in the mid 1980s, but heavier workloads in the data processing area of his job led to a reduction of on-air duties. In late 1992, he returned as WBFO's host of Morning Edition after then-News Director Toni Randolph left WBFO. Also, during this time, Mark was moonlighting as the assistant to the late longtime Buffalo broadcaster Stan "Stash" Jasinski on his weekend polka shows on WHTT-AM in Buffalo, from 1986 to 1997.

Mark, a 1971 graduate of Buffalo's (sadly now-defunct) Calasanctius Preparatory School, started his radio career while attending Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken New Jersey, on the school's carrier current AM station WCPR (the Sporty 740 and the Nifty 750!). His interest in radio came from listening to "one of America's two great radio stations," the old personality and Top 40 oriented WKBW-AM in Buffalo during the 1960s and 1970s, plus the famous WABC in New York in the early and mid 1970s.

Mark's day starts when the alarm rings at 3:21AM (or, 7, 14, or 21 minutes later, depending on how many times he hits the snooze button). He says the best part about getting up so early is that he always gets hot water in the shower, there's hardly any traffic, and he always gets one of the first parking spaces on the University at Buffalo's South Campus. Besides, somebody has to get to the radio station to tell everybody to stay home on a snow day.

Mark's family includes wife Karen and daughter Carrie. Son Alex passed away June 27, 2004 following a nearly eight year battle against leukemia and its complications. A web site was set up after he relapsed for a second time in late 2003, to document his treatments. It continues now as a memorial site. Here are some other links about Alex.

Mark combines his interests in computing and Buffalo history by maintaining a database of Mark Scott's 1982 WBFO News of the Year book. Trips to the library for other primarily (but not exclusively) Buffalo history and trivia tidbits have expanded that database into over 30 thousand entries, with a This Day In History format (one of these days, he hopes to make it available on the Web). He is also a genealogy buff, tracing his wife's lineage back to the Mayflower (through two lines!), and trying to find out more about his ancestors from Poland.

Mark's other interests include family activities, naps, Beatles music, naps, polka music, naps, home improvements and naps.

You can send Mark an e-mail message at mwozniak@wbfo.org.