Faye Gade, owner of WHTG and alt-rock pioneer, dies

Faye B. Gade, the Jersey Shore radio station owner who was in the vanguard of the alternative rock era of the 1980s, died on Thursday, Jan. 29, after a long illness, according to the New Jersey Broadcasters Association.

She was 65.

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Gade was the general manager of Eatontown's WHTG-FM (106.3) when the station made the switch in 1984 from a "beautiful music" format to the then-rare alternative rock format. That meant a steady stream of music from the B-52s, the Smiths, the Cure, and R.E.M. Station disc jockey Rich Robinson convinced Gade to try the format and Mike Marrone was brought on board to be music director.

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"She was really pleased by it," Marrone said. "The station back then was really well respected in the industry for our taste in music and our standards -- we didn't take money to play records, we played the music that we loved and she enjoyed that."

Gade was the daughter of station founders Harold and Theo Gade, for whom the acronym of the call letters, "H T G," referred to. The station's studios were in a house on Hope Road were Faye Gade lived.

"She did live there in a totally separate area but she was very engaged and she always talked to everybody -- she was a night owl," said Jon Vena, now the director of marketing of the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank who worked at the station form 1994 to 2000. "We spent many nights talking about everything from radio to our families."

Gade stood out in the industry as a female head of a radio station.

"It was a very male dominated form of media," Vena said. "It was ground breaking that she owned that station and she made the final decisions on almost everything."

WHTG-AM was founded by the Gades in 1957 and the FM signal was up by 1961. Faye Gade became owner in '85 as the station's national profile was ascending. At the time, there were less then 10 alt-rock stations in the country when they made the format change. A decade later, the alternative rock format was mainstream and WHTG-FM was cited as an industry leader by Rolling Stone.

"The bands were always respectful to her," Vena said. "Miles Hunt of the Wonder Stuff introduced himself to her in the lobby, knowing how important the station was to their career."

Musicians like Gwen Stefani, Jewel and Joey Ramone made the trek to the white house on Hope Road.

"It was a little big station that reverberated from the East Coast to the West Coast," Vena said.

In 2000, Gade sold the signals to Press Communications and today on the FM it broadcasts country music as WKMK, or Thunder 106, and on AM as WHTG, Great Gold 1410.

Gades is survived by her husband, Dick Swetits. A funeral will be held 1:30 p.m. Friday, Jan 30 at Bloomfield Cooper Jewish Chapels, 2130 Route 35, Ocean Township.

Chris Jordan: 732-643-4060; cjordan@app.com