 Under McLendon's ownership, young personalities who would later become prominent on radio and television in the upstate New York region, including Kevin O'Connell, George Hamberger and Jim McLaughlin, got their first foothold in Buffalo (then a top-20 radio market) at WYSL.The station's ability to develop emerging talent made it competitive in the immediate Buffalo city and inner-ring suburban area despite a weak signal, especially when compared with 50,000 watt format rival WKBW, which could blanket upstate New York by day and the eastern seaboard of North America by night.In a particularly singular example of the station's wide impact, in 1961, DJ Ron Baxley, after recommendations from McLendon, became program manager during the summer of 1961 for the offshore pirate radio station Radio Nord, beaming broadcasts to Stockholm, Sweden.