Okay..fasten your seat belts...when I first moved up here to the Smoky Mountains there was only one FM signal in this county. They ran ABC's Star Station when they were on the air from 6am to 11pm. No local content at all. I had been creative director at the Cox cluster and had been off the air as a jock for a good while. I remember sitting on the deck listening to the station and pounding the railing, saying they SHOULD have a local morning show at least. My daughter said.."why don't you go do it Dad"
So I put one some real clothes and went to meet the owners of the station, who were at the time two former sales and on air ladies who had purchased the station. They were nice as pie, although suspicious that I would have any interest in working for them..and they had no money to spend on people, but I presented a good case, and they paid me..(gulp) 200 bucks a MONTH..but gave me five commercial minutes an hour during 6a-10a to do with as I liked. I traded out EVERYTHING. tires, a tractor, groceries from Piggly Wiggly, meals at the local Italian place..car washes, gasoline, heating oil, ice cream..EVERYTHING. I actually couldn't believe how sweet of a deal that was until one of the ladies came to me and asked me to back off a little because they were not getting the usual money sponsors..so we sat down and figured out how to get real money from typically non-radio advertisers.
We SOLD the top of the hour ID to Caterpillar (they had a plant here) and THAT paid for the power bill. We traded a generator and fuel for power outages.. "When the power goes down..we stay around..with a Generac LP powered electric generator installed by Tugalo Gas" We sold a bottom of the hour promo to Lee Jeans "Macon County's successful farm families listen to 1050/WFSC in Lee Jeans..a product of Franklin's own VF Industires". We even sold FIRE calls. The smaller local fire departments didn't have a budget for a paging system, so when there was a fire called into the county dispatch..they would hit a button that would interrupt programming on the FM, and send the dispatch over our FM station..."attention South Macon Volunteer firefighters, we have a report of a dumpster fire behind the Huddle House on 441 South..please respond". THEN...they SOLD a special spot to run right after those fire calls to a local INSURANCE agent..."If that fire had been on your property..would you be adequately insured? Call Rob Hausman at the Independant Insurance group". That commercial ONLY ran after those fire calls. And they only paid based on the number of times it ran per month.
Some would muse after the fact that if the station was falling short some months that somebody could go out and set a few small fires, and..well you know..get to run the spot a few more times..
But that never happened..really. Anyway Art Sutton owns the two stations now and he has made legitimate operations out of them.
Sorry for rambling..my trade-out nurse is here with my bartered medication.
