Wow, I should come around here more than once every couple of years!
WBHF started sometime in the mid-1940's, I think. There was a framed newspaper article in Herschel's office talking about the opening. Anyhow, John Friar was the name of the guy who started it, I think, and he also started the Daily Tribune there. Herschel Wisebram came to the station in the 1950's as a young news reporter, and moved on to Lake Charles, Louisiana to anchor news on TV and/or radio, but Friar offered him a job running the station and Herschel came back. I think Friar willed the newspaper to one guy he regarded as a son, and the other to Herschel, whom he also regarded as a son, and there was some sort of Cartersville media sibling rivalry there (so someone told me).
In the 1960's it was a Top 40 station. Lee Burger had worked at Lockheed driving a forklift or something but took a job there as a DJ and hit it off with Herschel and became his Number Two guy running it, i.e. "general manager" to Herschel's "president." Two other guys were hired as DJ's around then: Sam Irwin and Steve "Boomer" Sutton. Yes, the Boomer we all know started at WBHF.
I think by the 1990's the station was struggling and (this is my vague memory) Herschel read in a trade magazine that partnering with cable TV had saved some small AM station's, and he called the subject of the article and when the guy was passing through from Florida he met with Herschel and gave him some ideas.
Around this same time John Osher, who was a salesman for WAGA-TV in Atlanta, had been visiting friends on Lake Allatoona and mentioned something he wanted to see on cable, and they said Bartow County didn't have cable yet. He thought that was ludicrous, and went in front of the city council and asked for cash to help him start a cable TV company there, and Prestige Cable was born. He wound up having other cable networks in Virginia and North Carolina and I think some other places. Anyhow, Osher and Herschel partnered up.
When I got there in 1996 Wisebram Enterprises, as it was called, was already a subsidiary of the John Osher small town cable TV empire, and the audio from the cable TV newscasts was run on the AM. I read the news there in the morning with Sam Irwin from 1996 to 1997, and then it was about October of 1997 I got to do a show for three hours in the afternoon where I would talk about Monica Lewinsky and 20-something pop culture stuff, and then some 90 year old woman would phone in and want to know the date and time (seriously). From this launch pad I became the huge star I am today.
Between 1996-2000 it was Sam and I in the morning (5:30 a.m. sign on), then Ludlow Porch, then Judy Jarvis or Ken Hamblin or David Brenner for awhile, then it was my little show, and then Braves baseball or One-On-One Sports after that, with NBC news throughout the day. Sign off about 10 p.m. or 11.
About 1998 Sam got fired the first time and Lee Burger came in one day and said, "Start the promos! BOOMER is coming back to Cartersville!" I had interned with Boomer for one month in December of 1992 at Star 94, and now he was going to do mornings while I did afternoons. In other words, we would be equals. I could not believe my meteoric rise in just six short years. Boomer tried to woo the listeners by giving them jelly donuts out in front of the station, which was a nice idea. However at some point he made some joke that was the biggest scandal since I had made a perfectly witty quip about the Woodland High School football team, and Boomer decided he had had enough and moved over to Canton or Woodstock's oldies station, I believe, then down to Y106 or the Eagle or something. Sam was back for the next several years with a girl named Johnette in the mornings.
Jason Miles was a news reporter there at the same time I was doing my radio show, and aside from Boomer I think he's the other big WBHF success story, because he's a reporter on Memphis' Number One TV station and anchors the weekend news. Shelby Brown was another reporter and she's on the air in Alexandria, Virginia, I believe.
WYXC, at this time, was owned by John and Linda Frew, I believe was their names, but their main business was a daily news FAX they sent out every day. They closed WYXC's doors and Chip Rogers, a former WBHF sports reporter and current Woodstock state representative, bought it and did sports all day and night.
In 2000 Prestige Cable was sold to Adelphia Cable and I got laid off, but due to being the most controversial talk show host in Cartersville (not hard to do, just mention anything that happened after 1967) I don't think they liked me much, anyhow. They kept several other people in John Osher's new non-profit enterprise. The radio station was kept, and Osher also started a cowboy and science museum (long history of cowboys and scientific discovery in Cartersville...not) and he also bought the Grand Theater. The manager of the Grand Theater was my former Saturday morning co-host Matt Santini, whom I believe is the reigning mayor of Cartersville, and therefore as qualified as anyone to run for the GOP nomination in 2012.
So that's what I remember about WBHF!
