Early Career
Bob started his broadcasting career in the summer of 1951 on KWBE radio in Beatrice, Nebraska, right after graduation from Lincoln, Nebraska High School. In the fall, he moved to KLMS Radio in Lincoln, while he pursued a degree in Radio and Television at the University of Nebraska. Following graduation, and after becoming a jet pilot with the Nebraska Air National Guard, in 1957 he moved to Oklahoma City with his new bride Barbara, for his first TV job. Two years later, he started as a disc jockey for WDAF, a Kansas City NBC radio affiliate. After only a year, a spot opened up doing weather on the weekends at the sister Kansas City television station. He stayed there through 1965 as TV staff announcer and weekend weatherman.
In 1965, Wells arrived in Cleveland to replace Howard Hoffman as the 6 and 11 PM evening weatherman on WJW Channel 8 as "Hoolihan the Weatherman." At the time the area weather personalities were Dick Goddard, Don Webster, and Hoffman, all of whom delivered forecasts in a "serious" style. The production manager asked him if he could "be funny," and gave him the "Hoolihan" pseudonym. It seems to have helped, because the newscasts moved from a distant #2 to the #1 rating within a few months, and the "Hoolihan" name stuck. A year later, when Dick Goddard moved back to Cleveland from Philadelphia, the station moved Wells to the noon and weekend weather-casts, to make room for Goddard.
In addition to his meteorological duties at WJW, Wells began to moonlight as a supporting cast member for WJW's Shock Theatre with Ghoulardi, hosted by Ernie Anderson. Following Anderson's departure from WJW, Wells teamed up with then-station engineer Chuck Schodowski on December 23, 1966, to create the Hoolihan and Big Chuck Show. Airing at 11:30 p.m. on Friday nights, the show usually showed Z-grade movies with comedy skits in between, often featuring Wells and "Big Chuck" Schodowski, as well as local TV personalities Art Lofredo and John "Lil' John" Rinaldi. The skits usually ended in a recorded distinctive laugh by late actor/comedian/disc jockey Jay Lawrence, who worked for KYW-1100 radio in Cleveland in the early 1960s, and had also appeared in some of the sketches on the Ghoulardi programs.
In 1971, Wells quit the staff of WJW to free-lance in New York and Chicago, although he continued to do weekend weather and Hoolihan and Big Chuck. However, in 1979, he helped start a new Christian TV station in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, which resulted in Wells' family departing for Clearwater, Florida, a city north of St. Petersburg. Both he and Barbara had become born-again Christians in the middle 1970s, and Wells even helped to establish WSUM Radio in Parma (now WCCD) back in 1975. Rinaldi replaced Wells as Schodowski's co-host for the remainder of the show's run.
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