• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Q98 Fayetteville, NC

D

DeMann

Guest
I was stationed at Fort Bragg in the mid 80's and Q98 in Fayetteville, NC was the hottest Carolina station. The morning guy was Jay Andrews out of Atlanta and he was awesome. The entire base kept him on early pt and he did a 'news you can choose' feature with the news department that was funny. Anybody else remember his show or where he is today? The night guy was good but I can't remember his name. This is a cool web site!
 
Q98 became "Q98" in the mid 70s. Initially the station was 100% automated with the TM "Stereo Rock" format. During this period Q98 enjoyed huge ratings success, with 12+ Arbitron shares as high as 25%. Q98's biggest competitor for listeners in those days was WRAL-FM in Raleigh. Jay Andrews joined the station as PD and morning host around 1980 from Z-93 in Atlanta where he was doing overnights. Jay Andrews led the station from its automation era to a staff of live jocks. Jay left Q98 a few years later to buy an AM station in a small town in Georgia. How that venture turned out, I don't know--that was the last I heard of him. For my money, however, the absolute best morning talent on Q98 was Sander Walker and Sue Runyon in the 1990s. After they left nothing else seemed to work out and Q98 evenually turned to the syndicated Bob & Sherrie morning show, which has performed well in the market. The sale of Q98 and other Cape Fear Broadcasting stations to Cumulus for $47,000,000 closed in May, 2001.
 
Jay Andrews was the greatest. I remember one Friday, 1984ish, when they did the remote when they turned Hay Street into a pedestrian mall. That was like radio should be.

I looked him up on the internet a couple years back, when I was reminiscing and thinking about getting back into radio. He was running the station (maybe a combo) he'd bought part of in Dahlonega, GA. He responded to my email, which is rare, and he was helpful and encouraging, which is rare.

I remember the Q98 automation, they would play the same songs in the same order at the same time sometimes for several days straight. It would get kind of predictable, even, we'd try to guess/remember which song was coming up next. Even so, it wasn't like we were going to listen to anything else. Q98 was the heat! 8)

Today, they do their format pretty well, but their format is usually some songs I don't enjoy (got older, "wiser" :D ). Hearing the songs from the 80s though is pretty good (I think they do them at 8, or it might be lunchtime, I check by sometimes to see, but cannot remember: again, older, "wiser" :D ).
 
Jay Andrews checking in here, and I'm truly humbled by all the words. Q-98 was a very great 80's CHR radio station and my time as PD there from 1984 to 1987 was successful due to a tremendous staff of radio people. My news sidekick Bill McClement, MD Greg Davis, Chris Collins, Michelle, Mark Lewis, Bill Sellers, Shawna, Rob Richards, Mike Mantell, Tonya and so many other on air talents, as well as the fabulous station owners - Vic Dawson and family in Fayetteville, NC made for a potent situation. I was working at CHR Z-93 Atlanta and saw the opportunity to program a 100,000 watt FM into Raleigh so I went for it. The station was in a big, rambling building off of Bragg Boulevard, and I remember arriving at the station for work and having no control room. Everything was on those huge TM Century reel automation, and we started from scratch. I had great engineers Jesse Sprouss and Terry Jordan go to work on it, and soon we had a homebuilt board built by the former Big WAYS Charlotte, NC engineer, two ITC triple deckers, a skimmer for airchecks, an ITC 850 reel to reel in control for editing phone calls, and a serious music dubbing station put in my office. Greg dubbed music to cart for what seemed like months, and my magic number was 900 gold titles plus current and recurrents. To make the station cume like mad, I played all the gold titles for variety around the loudest current playlist I could get away with. We topped out with a 26 share and people called from everywhere. I was nearly stupified as we had a 16 share when I started. Believe me, we got a whole lot of agency business. Coca Cola called me from Atlanta and asked if they could sponsor weekends. G-105 in Raleigh was a very great station and I was humbled to get a call from that group for positioning help. I used the Dollar Bill Game to contest weekdays with on Q-98. I think the company gave away a total of $5,000 in cash over 3 years with it, and we made it sound like $50,000. I gave away an incredible amount of product on the air - each weekend was a 6-pack album weekends. Yep, vinyl.

Being live to dedicate the newly renovated Hay Street/Fayetteville Commons downtown, holding huge street dances on the Commons with great Carolina bands, putting on big shows by Kool & The Gang, Bon Jovi, Kiss, and yes - even those big wrestling events at the Cumberland County Arena like The Great American Bash - Q-98 was exciting, alive and the station to beat. The company also owned WGNI Wilmington, NC, and I was fortunate to get to consult a bit and be involved with their success.

I had an opportunity to own a station near my hometown, and I bought WDGR Dahlonega, GA in 1987 and sold it in 1992. I still enjoy voiceover work and have a home studio business, Jay Andrews Productions. Today I am VP & General Manager of Jacobs Media in Gainesville, GA. I also do the MAJIC 1029 Morning Show with Jay & Robin every weekday morning. We have three stations; WDUN NewsTalk, MAJIC 1029 SuperHits of the 60's, 70's and 80's and 1240 The Ticket, as well as online newspaper AccessNorthGa.com. Occasionally I'll get a call from a listener who'll say "Hey Jay, what's for lunch?" and it will be someone who remembers hearing me make fun of every school system's lunch on the mighty Q-98. And for those who'd like to hear what I'm doing log onto http://www.MAJIC1029.com between 6am and 10am eastern M-F, click the Listen Live link, and smile. WQSM Fayetteville, NC / Q-98 rocked Carolina, and I have great memories of its sound and what it took to assimilate and for the station to become Tarheel culture, my sleepy babies.

Jay Andrews
 
See? All the kind words were right on.

BTW, the 80s show comes on at 8pm, and when I hear it, like tonight, it just makes Q98 feel right again. ;)
 
Thanks very much Quad - keep things hip and square up in the Tarheel state. If you have news about Fayetteville radio I'll be looking for it here.

Jay Andrews
 
Anyone remember "Pat & Cheryle"? They were the team after Jay left and before Sander Walker came later.

Pat left and headed west and Cheryle went on to WKML and others around the Fayetteville area.
 
Yep -- Sue went on to sell products....no sure where she is now.
 
It was a blast doing mornings on Q-98 with Jay Andrews. We certainly had fun with our "choose the news" segment. It consisted of my selection of two stories from our "brite" selections...and giving each a quick headline. If there was one I really wanted Jay to select...I would give that story the "more sexually explicit" headline...and he would always choose it. We had a number of other crazy skits, including a young man Jay dubbed "Ricky the Cruiser", our engineer "Wally Watts" and a local dude we called "E"....because he thought he was the incarnation of Elvis, complete with his own homemade jumpsuit. We even had fun reading the school lunch menus each morning. It was great local radio, rather than a lot of the card-reading station promo events read between songs nowadays. I was also part of a great radio news team which also did the news on 940 (now 640) am WFNC. I left Fayetteville in 1987 for the mountains of western North Carolina where I worked for 16 years at WWNC-AM and WKSF-FM in Asheville where I worked mornings with another great morning personality, Chuck Finley. I am currently Program Director and afternoon co-host of the " WISE GUYS" at WISE-AM in Asheville which is an ESPN Radio format affiliate.


Bill McClement
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom