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New to Spartanburg
- Thread starter D-Oradio
- Start date
Welcome to the area. I personally never listen to the big class As. They all sound so homogenized, and have limited entertainment value. That is unless you are interested in seeing how enormous their client list is--
The AMs still offer something different. 1510 in Woodruff sounds pretty good for a small town oldies format. It is satellite most of the time. I personally like 1230 in Anderson. Rick Driver has done a good job with that. News Talk, and other local interest. Its better if you are southwest of Greenville. Just a few ideas.
The AMs still offer something different. 1510 in Woodruff sounds pretty good for a small town oldies format. It is satellite most of the time. I personally like 1230 in Anderson. Rick Driver has done a good job with that. News Talk, and other local interest. Its better if you are southwest of Greenville. Just a few ideas.What are you looking for? If you want "crazy stunts" and "prank phonecalls" then you have Hawk and Tom on B93.7 or The Rise Guys at 93.3. Hawk and Tom are Top 40 and The Rise Guys are Alternative Rock. You have country and soft rock stations. Again, each of these has two primary choices. WESC and WSSL are the country stations, and Magic 98.9 and MY 102.5 are the soft rock stations. WORD is talk on 1330 or 950 AM. Classic Rock you have The Buzzard and Rock 101 (with Johnboy & Billy syndicated. There is Spanish Language programming on WOLI and WOLT, I think. Also Christian music at the WALK and HIS RADIO. For rap music you have WHZT 98.1 and WJMZ 107 as your main choices. I'm probably leaving something out. It would help if you told us what you like.
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Art Sutton
Guest
DoubleO said:
The best small station around is not far from you. 1460 (AM) WBCU in Union. Great revenue, ratings...a true gem.
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Art Sutton
Guest
TheStoker said:
Ty Boyd went on to become morning man at WBT. Maury O'Dell became morning man at WPTF. Jack Clements was the evening announcer when the station went on the air in 1949. He later became President of Mutual Broadcasting. Jack Roper on WSPA-TV started there. THere is a book that was written about the station on it's 50th anniversary...A Perfect Union by Bob Doll.
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CJ_Jackson
Guest
Maury also did mornings at WSPA-AM for a bit. The "Big Al" comment brings back lots of memories. I worked at WORD 91 when he was there. One night the Corvette didn't make it all the way through the run from Union-to-Sptg. Allen was a nice guy and had one of the best on-air deliveries I've ever heard. ... might have a reel of him somewheres in a box. I need to see how many WORD airchecks I have laying about. --CJ
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Art Sutton
Guest
CJ_Jackson said:
Please let me know if you find an air check of Allen. I'd like a copy to pass along to WBCU. When I owned the station and we had the big 50th anniversary for WBCU in 1999, we did not have any audio of Allen. Everyone associated with WBCU when Allen was there felt there was no limit where he could have gone in radio. A true talent.
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CJ_Jackson
Guest
I'll dig around this weekend and see what I can turn up. I see Tony Brooks every so often when I drive up to Sptg from Atlanta (The Beacon calls every so often) , he might have some airchecks as well from then. I was going to dig up some I have of Bob Morgan, Humble Carl and Bob Dean (who both have gone to the big mike in the sky) I know I have on cassette or reel somewhere in storage. Might be a good time to digitize those tapes *grin*
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toomuchrf
Guest
HOLY COW! old ORD airchecks....please post if you do "digitize" any. I've searched everywhere for any old upstate radio preserved on carbon. With a few bits and pieces here and there, I can't find very much. Oh, my question. Is Carlyle still playin good ole gospel or has he headed to the great golden control room above?
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Art Sutton
Guest
Goose said:
Carlisle passed away last year. He outlived all the WBCU legends except Bill Stribling. Bill was the first morning man on WBCU working at that post from 1949 to 1975. He served as Union's mayor for about 10 years during the 1960s.
Bill, 82, now lives in a Spartanburg retirement facility. I'm told he is not doing well.
Bill's trademark was "hello here"
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toomuchrf
Guest
Thanks for the update and history lesson, Art. I wonder if the things he said happened on the old piano really happened. BTW, Would you please buy WCRS-AM back before those *&%$#! destroy every last little bit of dignity it has left....remember those county by county numbers it used to pull....GONE.
Kick me in the *ss again Carlisle...
Kick me in the *ss again Carlisle...
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Art Sutton
Guest
Goose said:
After Carlisle's funeral at the cemetery...a few of us gathered and started telling Carlisle stories..just as he would have had it. Among my favorites was some of Carlisle's textile buddies were going to Greenville to a convention and knew if they invited Carlisle (who was in textiles prior to radio) along, they would all have a better time. Said by about 12 midnight or so, Carlisle was on top of the piano leading all those in attendance with song and merriment..and it went on for hours. Everyone had a great time as you always did with Carlisle.
When Carlisle got back to Union and finished his show, his preacher called and told Carlisle he had heard what had happened in Greenville and that wasn't the behavior the Baptist Church expected of its deacons. Well, a called deacon meetings was held. Carlisle is there and so are the other deacons and the preacher tells Carlisle they want him to get up before the church Sunday and confess what he had done. Without missing a beat Carlisle responded, "now preacher I will be glad to get up there and confess but you need to know that when I'm done, I'm gonna ask you to come up and join me." Why asked the preacher. "So you can confess about that young gal you're seeing now behind his wife's back."
End of deacon's meeting.
As to WCRS, Greenwood is a really tough radio market. Great town, bad radio market. However, I recall being told many years ago that it took an idiot to screw up a Class IV AM radio station. The old class IVs...now kilowatt day and night non directional were inexpensive to run but gave you full time coverage to do all the things you can do in a small market and make money. We got good response to putting community features on with the MOR music at WCRS then added talk shows as well. It was coming along til I discovered I could move the FM to Greenville and cash out plus cover my losses incurred as we gave Greenwood community radio. We had a new competitor come to town who did a good job and that slowed our sales progress. Despite all our efforts in Greenwood, the AM/FM took 3 years to match the billing of co-owned WBCU, AM only, in Union. Union..and WBCU, in my opinion, which I no longer owns, remain the best small radio market and station in the South.
We're doing the same now with WSNW in Seneca we did at WCRS "Western Carolina's Radio Station". Went on the air in 1949 and was an institution til about 1980 when the co-owned FM, now WHZT, took over. It's harder to turn them around now. Easier to get an audience. Tougher to find someone who can go out and sell ads on AM radio in a market where FM has dominated for 25 years..but we only paid $40,000 for the station and put that much into improving it technically so we will get there.
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toomuchrf
Guest
Great Carlisle story. Thanks. Good to hear about the advacements at WSNW. I'm guessing when you walked in it was barely capable of a full broadcast day or unable to produce a signal at all. The question has come up many times among station owners, usually while I was waist deep in a transmitter, that they couldn't figure out if it was Sutton or BCU or a combination of both that made it so succesful. I never really understood that if the magic could happen in Union, both on the books and in program quality, why it didn't work as well in Newberry or Laurens, Clemson, Abbeville, or Greenwood. Well I'm guessing Newberry is a bit of a curse. Old man Coggins sucked so much money out of WBCU that young man Coggins just won't do as well with a stand alone operation. I know you had some Newberry experience as well. Even though it was for investment purposes, did you try to sell any in that market and was it a bit like Greenwood? I gave up on that town a long time ago. I had a false sense of security set in when Rick packed his bags in Greenwood and Broomfield moved in but it seems nothing has changed other than that for the first time ever, Wally's old empire is the best sounding thing in that area now. The pirates sound better than half the stations in that area these days. The best of luck in Seneca. If it keeps in the community tradition and format stylings of WBCU and WCRS, then you've got some true class on that frequency.
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Art Sutton
Guest
Goose said:
Of all the radio stations I've been associated with over the years, there has been only one that at least once a week an advertiser would call and want to buy ads and that was while we operated WGVC in Newberry. It was not my kind of radio.....no weather, no news...just music but the Rhythmic Oldies format was unique and had a good following among both black and white listeners.
We found Newberry a fairly decent radio town. Certainly better than Greenwood but not as good as Union. There were always two stations in Newberry or had been for years..then the FM so it's harder to build loyalty when there is more than one station in town.
I still think the first operator in a market sets the tone for generations to come. Ed Osborne was a terrific operator in his day. That helped and Ed was an aggressive operator in sales and programming. Unlike Greenwood which was put on the air by a wealthy lawyer because he couldn't pick up very well the good music off WFBC in Greenville, Ed has a note to pay. The fact too it has remained the only radio station in Union and the fact Union has long been isolated...thus had more in market shopping that made the merchants(advertisers) more successful.the fact most folks in Union were working class folks and not blue bloods...thus relied more on the things WBCU did well..all these factors I think contribute to WBCU being the great success it has been over the years.
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