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It was 40 years ago tonight at midnight...

C

Charles1

WQEZ, "your 'Q' to 'EZ' listening", signed off for the last time. At 6:00 AM the next morning WMJJ signed on as Magic 96. Within days, billboards all over town were flooded with boldface messages proclaiming either "NO PUNK", "NO FUNK", or "NO JUNK".

Soccer moms all over the metro area rejoiced.
 
I remember this well, although I do recall tuning in to 96.5 FM a few minutes after midnight that evening and hearing some distorted audio, presumably resulting from some type of audio issues; one of those songs being played shortly after midnight was "Maneater" by Hall & Oates. Maybe the format change was originally planned for midnight, but due to the technical problems, WMJJ was re-launched at 6 am that morning. I do remember the WMJJ tower being vandalized and pulled down around that same time period, but IIRC, that occurred several days following the format change.

As far as WMJJ playing "no junk"...that's up for interpretation. lol. Although it's no more on local FM, "Stereo 96" continues to exist via the Endless Radio Dial (y'all knew this shameless plug was coming, right?). ;)

Long Live Beautiful Music! :)
 
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It's strange… I remember listening to Magic 96 right after the format debuted but for the life of me I don't recall WQEZ at all. Granted, I was but a wee laddie at the time but I did already have an interest in radio. Living in Tuscaloosa at the time, I remember thinking how neat it was that we could hear a Birmingham station, not realizing that the transmitters were barely 30 miles away, ha ha. I think the only stations my little kid brain recognized were WFFX, WJRD and WVOK. And shortwave! I probably listened to that more than anything at the time.
 
Many of you might remember the vandalism that both WMJJ and WCRT-AM experienced following the sale of the two stations. WMJJ's tower came down in late December '82/January '83? when someone pulled down the guy wires. WCRT also suffered a devastating fire a few months later in May of 1983 while the station was being spun off from Capitol Broadcasting to the Jireh Corporation. Someone who worked at WCRT at the time sent me some info several years ago regarding what, or rather, who, was responsible for the damage. What he sent me appears below. Note there is no means to corroborate the info; it is merely what he told me.

"When Ken Johnson bought QEZ and CRT from Hal Fredericks, he decided to break the union since by this time deregulation had dictated that you just had to have an engineer "on payroll" for emergencies. The Union didnt know Ken Johnson had sold the station to us. They thought he still owned it."

More info regarding the WCRT fire can be found here:

WCRT AM 1260 History, Birmingham, AL

Another interesting tidbit of the WCRT/WQEZ damage I came across on WMJJ'S history card at the FCC...WCRT-FM changed its call sign to WQEZ on May 16, 1973. The fire at WCRT occurred on May 16, 1983...exactly ten years to the day of the WCRT-FM/WQEZ call sign change. Coincidence...?
 
passtheword said:
Many of you might remember the vandalism that both WMJJ and WCRT-AM experienced following the sale of the two stations. WMJJ's tower came down in late December '82/January '83? when someone pulled down the guy wires. WCRT also suffered a devastating fire a few months later in May of 1983 while the station was being spun off from Capitol Broadcasting to the Jireh Corporation. Someone who worked at WCRT at the time sent me some info several years ago regarding what, or rather, who, was responsible for the damage. What he sent me appears below. Note there is no means to corroborate the info; it is merely what he told me.

"When Ken Johnson bought QEZ and CRT from Hal Fredericks, he decided to break the union since by this time deregulation had dictated that you just had to have an engineer "on payroll" for emergencies. The Union didnt know Ken Johnson had sold the station to us. They thought he still owned it."
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It's important to remember that Birmingham in that era was a very pro-union town. In the early 70's, was PD of WERC and its CHR FM. Mooney had bought the AM and FM from Taft who kept the TV. The union wanted us to keep the union agreements and shop rules, but we did not agree. For months and months there were extremely aggressive picketers outside the building entrance, and they got to shoving and swearing at some of us.
 
tomservo said:
I'll admit, I had no idea about the fire at WCRT or the tower for WMJJ coming down. I need to add that to the histories of those stations on my website. But I also need to go through and completely re-write the WMJJ history, it's a bit bare bones.
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I have a newspaper clipping somewhere of the info on the WCRT fire. It might iinclude the info on the WQEZ tower falling since the two stories are related. I can make you a copy of it if I can find it in my attic and email it to you.
 
ThePowerCow said:
Did not know about the Magic tower going down. Was it 100kw on Red Mtn by then?
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Yes, WMJJ was already broadcasting at 100 kw prior to the time of the vandalism. Seems like the tower was on Shades Mountain at the time, but not entirely sure. Ken Johnson who was at WMJJ has frequented this board in the past may be able to shed some light on the event and subsequent damage.
 
@ThePowerCow Yeah, I wasn't too excited about that particular format change, either.
Could ya tell? ;) lol
 
I've looked online but haven't been able to find any news about the WMJJ tower coming down. From what I've seen in the history cards for the station, the transmitter site was originally next to The Club on Red Mountain, then moved to the channel 42 tower for a few years before moving to its current location on Ishkooda Mountain.

I thought there might be an silent STA or emergency filing to get the station on the air from a different site filed in the 80's, but there's nothing like that. Granted, that period from 1980 until the FCC began making all the filings available in the late 2000's is devoid of a lot of information, but… The only thing I find is a modification in 1985 that went unbuilt and expired. It didn't sign on with those changes until 1987 after getting the CP replaced, so it must not have been a serious change.
 
Zach, the following is from the same individual who worked at WCRT-AM and WQEZ when Hal Fredricks and his wife owned the stations aka Magic City Communications and who also sent me the info I mentioned previously in this thread. Below is what he sent me:

When Ben Cleary and I started the station we thanked God for that fire. The insurance enabled us to build new state of the art studios. The fire was started by the "engineers union" because we were not going to honor their previous rediculous contract. A couple of years before they also cut down the WQEZ (Magic 96)'s tower for the same reason."

When I received that message, I had been aware of the WMJJ tower vandalism from earlier, so his comments did not seem unusual. I will see if the news article concerning the WCRT fire which appeared in the Birmingham News in May of '83 mentions the WMJJ tower coming down. I do remember an article did appear in the paper when the WMJJ tower collapsed, but I do not have a copy of it in my possession, nor do I know the exact date or time frame when the vandalism actually occurred. I remember my dad (former radio DJ) and I discussing the WMJJ tower coming down and if the vandalism might be due to a disgruntled WQEZ listener unhappy about the station's format change from beautiful music to adult contemporary. I told him that sounded farfetched and there must be another reason.

Side note: the person who sent me the info states the WMJJ tower was vandalized a "couple of years" before the WCRT fire. It was more like a couple of months before the fire, not years.
 
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I hope you have better luck than I did. I did some more searching looking through Google's book archive and some Newspaper.com archives and nothing mentioning WMJJ's tower could be found. But I chalk that up to my lack of search prowess more than anything.

Is it possible the tower that was vandalized was not actually a transmitter site but maybe an STL or auxiliary site? That might not make the news.
 
One of the things that amused me in the run-up to the format change, and then for months afterwards, was the constant harping by the Birmingham News radio-TV columnist about death of "good music" radio in Birmingham. WQEZ changing formats happened about 16 months after WAPI-FM changed from easy listening "Beautiful 94" to 95 Rock, meaning that the columnist then had not one, but two radio stations to kvetch about. Reading his columns, one would have thought that the Philistines had come into town to wreak havoc.

As a sidebar: the main claim to fame of the columnist was his weekly "Dining Out" column, where he would wax poetically about restaurants who comped his meals. :)
 
tomservo said:
It's strange… I remember listening to Magic 96 right after the format debuted but for the life of me I don't recall WQEZ at all. Granted, I was but a wee laddie at the time but I did already have an interest in radio. Living in Tuscaloosa at the time, I remember thinking how neat it was that we could hear a Birmingham station, not realizing that the transmitters were barely 30 miles away, ha ha. I think the only stations my little kid brain recognized were WFFX, WJRD and WVOK. And shortwave! I probably listened to that more than anything at the time.
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Growing up on the west side of Birmingham and up against some major hills to the west of of our house, we couldn't get WUOA (later WFFX) in our neighborhood. For that matter, we couldn't pick up Q-104 at our house, either. Once I moved into the dorms at Samford (ca. 1979), I was able to get both stations fairly well. And both of them were pretty darned good stations!
 
Charles1 said:
One of the things that amused me in the run-up to the format change, and then for months afterwards, was the constant harping by the Birmingham News radio-TV columnist about death of "good music" radio in Birmingham. WQEZ changing formats happened about 16 months after WAPI-FM changed from easy listening "Beautiful 94" to 95 Rock, meaning that the columnist then had not one, but two radio stations to kvetch about. Reading his columns, one would have thought that the Philistines had come into town to wreak havoc.

As a sidebar: the main claim to fame of the columnist was his weekly "Dining Out" column, where he would wax poetically about restaurants who comped his meals. :)
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Was that Bob Carlton? I remember reading his articles when I was younger.
 
@tomservo No, it was not an aux site, as WMJJ was off the air for a few days before returning with a diminished signal until the repairs were completed.
 
@tomservo One of my listeners who is on Facebook found the news article in the Birmingham Post-Herald concerning the WMJJ tower collapse. It did in fact occur, but I was mistaken on a couple of items. One, the tower was vandalized on March 29, 1983. about two months prior to the WCRT fire; it did not occur a few days after the WQEZ/WMJJ format change. Secondly the article mentions that WMJJ was off the air for just six hours time (from around 1:15 am to 7:40 am) before returning to the air from another temporary location and broadcasting with half its licensed power of 100 kw.
 
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