WORCESTER—In radio and community storytelling, few voices resonate as warmly and genuinely as that of Hank Stolz, the host of Radio Worcester’s “Talk of the Commonwealth.”
Stolz’s journey into broadcasting began in boyhood with a simple cassette tape recorder and a pile of 45s. He would imagine himself at a microphone “as if I was one of the jocks on the radio.” He would find and forge his way through a succession of experiences that would craft and hone his career to maximize a mutual love affair with his radio-listening audience.
His early years were marked by the mobility of a military family and coziness of small-town life. These exposures laid the foundation for his deep understanding of people and communities. Born at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, he began life in Rochester, New York, from where he was uprooted in third grade to Worcester County.
A graduate of Ashburnham’s Oakmont Regional High School, Stoltz carried with him a tapestry of small-town experiences, further strengthened by his ties to Worcester through his wife’s family history. Stoltz, an American history major, met his wife during their undergraduate years at UMass in Amherst, and they moved here together after leaving western Mass.
Radio, for Stolz, seemed not just a career choice, but a calling. Though it didn’t happen overnight. He was working at a video store in Natick when the owner asked him to catalog the inventory, requiring him to capsulize the essentials about each title. He knew many TCM-type classics from his prior viewership during college.
“The theater in Amherst had two double features with guys like Cagney and Bogart. I knew this stuff,” he said.
Stolz appreciated listening to the radio as much for the talent talking between the songs as much as the tunes themselves. “These were the characters who made the experience authentic and personality-driven,” Stoltz recalls. “You couldn’t pick up those shows and just drop them anywhere in America — the way it is now — delivered in a flat American accent — it was locally driven and created by the people who lived it right from where they broadcasted.”
WBCN’s Charles Laquidara and Worcester’s Mark Parenteau were influences. Stoltz also studied television’s Johnny Carson and Regis Philbin for their deft handling of guests and storytelling.
“Carson would be finishing a conversation with Truman Capote and have a guy come on to do bird calls next. Every bit of it was interesting,” Stoltz said.
Time marched on, and during his 20s, Stolz had his hand in communications entertainment through a small chain of comic bookstores he created titled “Same Bat Channel,” trading on the Batman television show (think Newbury Comics).
The experience led to valuable self-awareness, crediting his savvy media creativity balanced with what he describes as a somewhat lagging business acumen. In time, most of his store managers bought the stores he closed, and Stolz took the cash from the final day of sales, put it in a shoebox, and registered for classes at a school in the Berkshires that would train him for a radio career.
“I was like 30 years old—everyone else was 18, 19, 20,” Stoltz said.
He’d met his match, but none too soon.
After earning his radio license, Stolz landed a job with Springfield’s WHYM, spinning records from 7 p.m. to midnight. Thrilled that he was finally playing “Stairway to Heaven” for a listening audience, he still wanted more, and asked if he could do a morning talk show at the station. The answer was yes, and Stoltz spent his mornings taking phone calls from listeners. Still wanting more, he asked if he could do the news at the top and bottom of the hour, and he got the nod. He was on his way.
Stolz landed solidly at WTAG in March 1997, the station named for its former relationship to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. The newspaper was the first American paper to have a radio station. The family relationship between the two related media outlets was an immediate advantage for Stoltz.
“This was a great training ground,” he remembers. “The paper had an institutional memory that would have taken a radio team years to develop in this business. I immediately immersed myself in Worcester and enjoyed a working camaraderie with the station’s news director, Paul Tuthill.”
Tuthill emphasized the synergy between the paper and the radio station: “We are the radio; we should have the news first. We’ve got to make sure it’s ready for 11 p.m. The paper will always have the story after us.”
Stoltz learned quickly that the T&G team couldn’t have been better allies.
“I was the new guy; I didn’t know the contacts or the context histories,” he said. “The paper had these things and shared them; it made my work better.”
After one year as WTAG afternoon reporter, Stoltz was asked to fill in one morning when former mayor Jordan Levy, who held that position, could not work. The opportunity came a few more times, and Stolz, who enjoyed the give-and-take aspect of the work and loved taking listener calls, would eventually take over that morning show.
He held that role for nine years while also assuming the news director position when Paul Tuthill left, reflecting: “I loved every minute of the ten years I spent at WTAG.”
Local radio station WCRN was Stolz’s next stop in March 2007, where he ran the caller-driven morning show. “The WCRN Morning News with Hank Stolz” ran for 10 years. The 50,000-watt powered station was a hefty player, but it seemed to be looking for its place in the market as time passed. The station had begun simulcasting “Boston 25 Fox Morning News” and was losing valuable staff.
“A bunch of us had the same idea at the same time … buyouts,” Stoltz said.
He and his colleagues knew they were losing something valuable.
“We needed to keep the local news here,” Stoltz recalled.
In late winter 2019, change was occurring in the Worcester radio space, and Stoltz was on the cusp of an idea already riding that wave.
“I went back to WCRN and told them I planned to start a new venture as a content creator and owner of a podcast,” Stoltz said.
He and Ben White, his last producer at WCRN, were creating the Radio Worcester Network, from where his flagship morning show ‘Talk of the Commonwealth’ could be carried on WCRN in the morning and WPKZ in the afternoon.
WCRN agreed, and the show would be carried on weekdays from 6 to 10 a.m. The show is on Spotify and Apple as a weekly podcast.
Stolz’s journey into radio has been one of passion, adaptation, and deep connection with his audience. It seems he picks up local flavor from his encounters, weighs, holds, and forms it into a unique object of his awareness, forming a knack and sensitivity that has helped him dial into his audiences for years.
Paul Carr has a deep history in communications and publishing. He grew two businesses, first as founder and principal of a niche advertising agency (Strategen) serving the medical device industry and as publisher of a monthly regional publication, The Sturbridge Times Magazine. Now retired, Paul writes for businesses, non-profits, and The Worcester Guardian. He will launch an electronic version of Vegan Villager Magazine in early 2024, and can be found at: paulcarrwriter.com.
