STATION PICKS WJZR KANAPOLAS CHARLOTTE

[CrazeeCarroll1]

OK I know Kahuna will love this topic ;D. I found this station by accident one night back in early 1984 and fell right in love with Z100... This station had the sound and feel of true big city radio something that a lot of other stations were unable to pull off... There are so many jocks that if I mention one I would forget a lot of others... The music was very well balanced with lots of good dance mixes thrown in for good measure... 1986 seemed to be the year that radio companies were destined to kill good Top 40 radio. In Apr of 86 and this is memory Z signed off and the Foxx was born... One of my favorite jocks on Z was Animal... I always enjoyed hearing him when ever he was on the air... The last time I got to hear Animal was during overnight on Gorilla Radio in the Summer of 1990... Of course there was Jack Daniel who is still around in QC radio at The End... One other jock that this topic would not be complete would be Kahuna... If you really want to know about how much of a force Z100 was check out thatwasradio.com and you will see what kind of legacy this station left in its time on the air... Now it is your turn gang... Have a good week and we will catch ya from time to time... CC1

 

[eacalhoun1]

It's really sad that Z-100 was relatively short-lived...which makes it so amazing that we're still talking about it over 20 years later. Animal R.O. Boogie, too, was one of my favorites.

 

[TheStoker]

What ever happened to the great RC Chrysler??

 

[Matt]

RC buried his passion for radio along with his wife, Debbie Brennan, whom he dearly loved. Kahuna's website tells me that he's designing flight simulator computer programs these days.

BTW...and not to be a-braggin'...I was the last DJ with the country format on the old WRKB-FM before everything changed. The song was "Take This Job and Shove It" by Johnny Paycheck.

It was also the last time I played Country Music on the radio. After that, I did oldies, CCM, AC and Southern Gospel, but NEVER Country. WRKB-FM gave me my start in the business...and I was the one who put it to bed.

Later....
Matt Smith
WGSR-TV

 

[vchimpanzee]

RC buried his passion for radio along with his wife, Debbie Brennan, whom he dearly loved. Kahuna's website tells me that he's designing flight simulator computer programs these days.

BTW...and not to be a-braggin'...I was the last DJ with the country format on the old WRKB-FM before everything changed. The song was "Take This Job and Shove It" by Johnny Paycheck.

It was also the last time I played Country Music on the radio. After that, I did oldies, CCM, AC and Southern Gospel, but NEVER Country. WRKB-FM gave me my start in the business...and I was the one who put it to bed.

Later....
Matt Smith
WGSR-TV

If you know WRKB-FM, could you add that to Wikipedia? Or have you already?

 

[Matt]

Kahuna really should be the one to do that. He has a nice history of the station at http://www.thatwasradio.com/history.html and has information that I was unaware of.

I'm just not comfortable about copying such things over to wikipedia without his permission.

Later....
Matt Smith
WGSR-TV

 

[vchimpanzee]

Kahuna really should be the one to do that. He has a nice history of the station at http://www.thatwasradio.com/history.html and has information that I was unaware of.

I'm just not comfortable about copying such things over to wikipedia without his permission.

Later....
Matt Smith
WGSR-TV

I'm signing off from this site now. Maybe you could ask him, since you seem to know him. If you don't, you know ABOUT him, which puts you ahead of me.

 

[thatwasradio]

CrazeeCaroll;
Ahhh, yes, you started a good one here, I can't wait to see more posts!

Matt;
Did you work with John Stiles at WRKB or Eddie Ashworth? They have the old Z-100 control board there now, I spoke with Carl Ford a year or two ago and he said they have a duplicate of it also that they still use.
To all who posted about Animal, he was truly a one-of-a-kind, wild, crazy and growly on the air, and the nicest, most calm guy in person you would ever meet. I have plenty more airchecks of his to put on my site AS SOON AS I FIND THE TIME!!! I am trying to find some of his stuff from WOKI-FM 100 in Knoxville, TN, from when he left Z-100 to go back to get custody of his daughter. A little known fact: 'Mul was the first male in the state of Tennessee to gain full custody of a child, he was so relieved and happy.
I am in the process (I have been for a year or so) of building a page that is a tribute to 'Mul, I have PLENTY of pictures of him, a lot of from our days at The Fox (WRFX), in the beginning, we both were a little sour inside on that station at the start, and we were such Monkees geeks, I think he and I were the two biggest Monkees fans in the Carolinas at the time, he had The Monkees' Head soundtrack UNOPENED.
Mary London was also very close to dear 'Mul, she was there with him at the hospital his last few days, I had already moved to Louisiana by then but we still talked on the phone a lot, always about The Monkees, The Ol' Road Hog (Ernie's Egg Market In Rainbow Valley!!!), and the good ol' days. Animal always told me if I wanted to have a successful morning show, to style it after Jack Gale's Big Ways shows, and that I did, as 'Mul had done also, and who knows how many other jocks were influenced by Gale and 'Mul.
Bob Chrysler was mentioned in a couple of the posts, now there is a genius. Yes, he is still doing the flight simulator thang, among other projects, I talk to him on e-mail every now and then. If you read the acknowledgment section of the Selector Music Scheduler Manual, you will see that Chrysler's name is in there with Mike Joseph, Scott Shannon and others, Chrysler was way ahead of his time when everyone was still using the index card filing system to rotate music.
Oh, and about the Wikipedia thing, geeze, if I ONLY HAD THE TIME!!!! Matt, be my guest, let me know if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to oblige! You can copy the text from my site, just give me credit somewhere on it if you can!
I could go on and on, but enough from me, I want to see what else everyone has to say about my favorite station in creation!!!

Kahuna
www.thatwasradio.com
www.myspace.com/kahunaradio

 

[CrazeeCarroll1]

To me Z was a one of a kind station... I have not been to thatwasradio in a few months, but I was always curious how Z did in the ratings? At that time BCY, ROQ, and Z were all Top 40 stations... That was a three slice pie. Out of the three Z was what I would consider to be true TOP 40 while ROQ was trying to shrug off its AOR Image and BCY more or less was a adult CHR with the exception on the weekends when they reved things up quite a bit with Club Traxx... Once Metroplex purchased Z did they already have a plan to dump CHR in favor of AOR??? As for Animal when I started out in Broadcasting he was one of the influences that I tried to model my shift after... I was kinda tied down when I first started because the station was AC if you want to call it that... Once we flipped the switch off on 94.3 Mhz and moved up the dial to 102.7 on Oct of 97 that was when I was able to be more creative on air... Animal, Landecker, Little Lar were just some of the jocks that I really enjoyed listening to as a kid growing up... The reason I do these station picks on the Charlotte and SC boards is so that I can give back to those stations what they gave me and that was hours upon hours of radio enjoyment... Although there is still magic to be had in radio it is just not the same as it was even 10 years ago... I feel that by discussing these stations lets people share their past ie if they were a jock, or just an avid radio geek... That is what radio is missing today is the magic and connection it had with its listeners and now it is just mostly a high powered Ipod... CC1

 

[thatwasradio]

...I was always curious how Z did in the ratings? Once Metroplex purchased Z did they already have a plan to dump CHR in favor of AOR???

We were limited in the ratings due to the low wattage and tower antenna height. Z-100 had spurts in Birch and Arbitron, the summer of 1984 was the highest ratings period for us, ranking #2 with persons 18 to 34, although the station was consistently #1 with teens, obviously, we were perfect for the Jr. High and High School crowd at the time. We were competing with 100,000 watt stations with huge towers, our tower at 910 Fairview in Kannapolis was only about 500 feet, it might have been only 300, I'll have to look it up, I remember we never bragged about the tower height until Paul Downs finally built the 2,000 ft. tower (actually I think it's 1,700 ft.) that 99.7 still broadcasts from today. It was bitter sweet, though, less than a month after completion of the tower we knew Downs had put it up just to increase the value of the property so he could sell it, then poof! Metroplex moves in and wasted no time flipping the format. After FCC approval of the sale, Metroplex did plenty of research before hand and found that AOR would be more financially rewarding than CHR, which it has been for The Fox, but I have always maintained that ANY format can make good money if it is marketed correctly, programmed right, the sales department is managed right, and there is an audience for it. Oh, and a high-powered signal with a tall tower doesn't hurt either.
I remember that they didn't tell any of us that the switch was going to happen when they took over, but I knew something was awry when Bob Chrysler had me dubbing music by Van Halen, America, Tom Petty and Boston, that was a dead give-away to me, he said "KEEP THE DOOR SHUT AND TRY TO HAVE THE ENTIRE LIBRARY DONE IN TWO WEEKS". The full time jocks and the engineer knew what was up, but no one had been given details yet.
It was an exciting time, but it was sad to see Z-100 go. I think the worst was when they made Animal change his name, he hated it, he never used any name at all on the air there in protest before we went to B-100 in Wilmington. Van Mann, Mary London, 'Mul and I were the only ones on the programming staff that were held over, even Van had to change his name, he's now Production Director at The Fox. Even worse was the first staff kick-off party thrown by Metroplex at some high-falutin' Hotel in Downtown Charlotte, and Station Manager Steve Godofsky invited everyone except Animal, who had to work on the air. 'Mul (to me) was our superstar jock, and not to have him at a station party made it pretty dull, this was before John Boy & Billy came on board.
Enough about the sad times, the good times are what we should remember. Remind me to tell everyone about the time Bob fired a gun in the control room...

Kahuna
www.thatwasradio.com
www.myspace.com/kahunaradio

 

[CrazeeCarroll1]

I won't dwell on the bad times, but will give my collective observations that change was on the way... Maybe I was crazy at the time, but about a month or two I noticed that you guys pulled a lot of the 12 inch mixes that was being played in favor of 45 edits... I don't know much about what you guys used ie CD's Carts etc when the change took place, but the one very big dead give away was the processing... You guys were loud although not the kind of loudness that Kiss FM used in Asheville, but you were loud and proud... About a month before the format change I noticed that the audio was changed very dramatic in fact it was as if the whole audio chain was cleaned up... The other clue I noticed was the fact that even if the music was on cart the head alignment was just a little off base, but before the format change took place that seemed all cleaned up also... OK now onto the good times... Tell me Kahuna how crazy was I LOL... BTW check the SC board for the get together... CC1

 

[billengguy]

Just wanted to add a slight correction to the technical side of present day 99.7. The tower near Enochville was 1000' tall. The site was abandoned around 1996 and was moved to the WTVI tower in NE Meck. This is the present broadcast site for 99.7. The tower built by Downs was donated to Davidson College. They absorbed the expense of taking it down and moved it to their site north of Charlotte. I always wished I could have been in town when Z100 was on the air. I worked with a few of the folks that remained at the station after it became "The Fox". I have heard a few WJZR airchecks and the station sounded great!

 

[Matt]

Re: STATION PICKS WJZR KANNAPOLiS CHARLOTTE

Okay guys, I have gleaned what I believe to be the accurate history of then-WRKB-FM from my own personal recollections and Kahuna's website. The business about Gray Broadcasting buying the station evidently never reached the point of an FCC application, so I didn't include any of it.

Also, I avoided information on WRKB-AM after the separation. I'll let Carl Ford tell its story, if he chooses to do so. I worked for WRKB-AM and FM during the transition from Hefner to Downs Radio, but left shortly after Z-100 took flight. Yes, Kahuna, I worked with Eddie Ashworth during that time.

I was out of radio then for four years, but I returned as Program Director for the AM in 1987, just before Metroplex sold the station to John Stiles and Jim Mintzer. I stayed there from 1987-1990, and we took it from Southern Gospel/Preaching to a full Contemporary Christian Music format, but the ownership struggles in that station were very difficult.

I was offered the PD position with WABZ-FM in Albemarle, and spent the next three years back in Southern Gospel Music. I left WABZ to prepare for the ministry, which I still do (as an Assistant Pastor) in addition to managing WGSR-TV here in Reidsville.

That's the gist of my time and experience with WRKB. I had one more swing through 910 Fairview Street...as one of the first master-control operators for then-WKAY-TV 64. That was my baptism into the TV end of this business, and was invaluable when my wife's illness forced me out of full-time ministry. That's when I started working with then-WXIV-TV 14, and eventually worked my way to where I am now.

When I'm back in K-Town, I try to swing by that now-unoccupied building and remember the times...both good and bad.

Later....
Matt Smith
WGSR-TV

 

[Matt]

The tower near Enochville was 1000' tall. The site was abandoned around 1996 and was moved to the WTVI tower in NE Meck.

Thanks for the information. I included it in the Wikipedia article.

Later....
Matt Smith

 

[RobynWattsV2.0]

I understand from reading Kahuna's Z-100 history page that the station was known as "FM100" on the air after flipping to CHR in 1983. How long was the FM100 handle used?

Robyn

 

[thatwasradio]

Robyn;
The "FM 100" moniker was used only a few months before Chrysler was brought in to do the Hot Hits format, Eddie Ashworth (John Holliday) remembers more about those days, as he was there when it was FM 100, Matt might know also. I'll have to get Ashworth hip to this site if he isn't already. Chrysler had already been experimenting with that type of format on WDEX-AM in Monroe.

CrazeeCarroll;
You are an astute radio listener!!!! Bob Chrysler was VERY adamant about the processing, I remember he and Mike Stevens running in and out of the studio to Bob's car (Mobile phones were not very affordable at the time) to listen to the processing and tweak it at least almost once every week, ever so lightly at a time though, until the change was on the way. Garry Hattaway, who frequents this board often, was an engineer there and knows more about it. A few months before Metroplex took over (after FCC approval went through) they stopped tweaking the processing (Hattaway had moved on by this time), and, if you noticed, the :05 past promos dissapeared also, we REALLY knew something was up when the station stopped airing promos!
The music was on cart, I dubbed from 45 rpm's (or 12 inch remixes) straight to Blue Capitol carts on an IT cart machine in production, there were two tripple deck cart machines in the control room, on the left and one on the right, the left was for commercial stopsets only, and the right was for music carts only, I never knew the real reason why, but Animal told me one time that the heads always got out of alignment on the left (Commercial spots) side machine and didn't get calibrated often enough so the music was not supposed to be played on that side. However, I did notice, close to the end, jocks were starting to play music on that side, that might have been the alignment problem you heard.
Now, the jingles were a different problem, some of those JAM Flame Thrower jingles were dubbed from a JAM demo CASSETTE, and the cassette heads were HORRIBLE, and some of the jingles were out of phase. I used to aircheck in mono sometimes to hear the phasing and almost every one of the jingles were out of phase, especially the slow one and the "Rockin' America" jingle.
When Metroplex came in, they completely re-did the entire studio and audio chain, and put in brand new TomCat cart machines, and we started playing some of the music from "Compact Laser Disc", as it was to be called on air.

I did not know about the tower switch for 99.7, I guess I've been away too long!

Kahuna
www.thatwasradio.com
www.myspace.com/kahunaradio

 

[Matt]

Re: STATION PICKS WJZR KANNAPOLIS CHARLOTTE

The "FM 100" moniker was used only a few months before Chrysler was brought in to do the Hot Hits format

Use of the term dates from the May 15, 1982 switch from Country to A/C. The format change, music selection and liners were the brainchild of Terry Setzer, who was FM-100's first PD, and later by Lee Michaels, whom Chrysler replaced as PD.

Later....
Matt Smith
WGSR-TV

 

[NewsNow]

Z100 was the station I grew up with for the most part. I lived in Cabarrus County, and I would bet in county reports, Cab, Rowan, and maybe Stanly were big for Z100.

I started out as a BCY listener (and later employee), but with Z100's presence at our cultural cetners (the uh, Carolina Mall) they were quickly a crowd favorite.

I worked with one of the previously mentioned Z jocks. As a board op at BCY, he was the roughest on us peons, treated us like garbage, and generally had a lot of problems. I was three minutes off my maintenance prior to his shift one time and you'd think he had to pay personally for the time. I don't know if it was his success at Z compared to his obscurity at BCY or what. When I came back later as a producer and occasional announcer on the BT side, I was suddenly his peer and he greeted me with a big "welcome back!"

 

[CrazeeCarroll1]

Thanks Kahuna... That really answered a lot of my questions... I have always had a good ear for good audio, and I could always tell when something was different... Up here in Rockford a Jock that I know calls me the audio police because if I detect something not right with their stations I always let him know my thoughts... I guess not seeing well I rely on my ears a lot more... Where I worked back in SC they got a brand new optimod 8200... The CE just set it to the oldies setting and to me it sounded like crap... All the music sounded like it was being held back and they kept it that way for a few years... A few years ago I visited my old stomping ground and sure enough the setting was still the way it was when I left there in 99... So there CE myself and a bunch of my blind friends who worked in radio at one time all worked together to give that station an audio face lift... It took about a week to get it the way I thought it should sound... We went in and cleaned up a lot of the audio files that was on their ENCO automation, did some tinkering with the processing and now that puppy sounds better than a lot of the Columbia stations which when I left I was very proud of... My former boss said that he got more compliments from female listeners which is what they have a lot of since it is oldies and Beach... My ears was able to pull magic something that even an o scope could not do... CC1

 

[nerleman]

When Metroplex came in, they completely re-did the entire studio and audio chain, and put in brand new TomCat cart machines, and we started playing some of the music from "Compact Laser Disc", as it was to be called on air.

So, Kahuna, am I to understand that anything the Fox had on vinyl initially was dubbed to carts? Wow! Dubbing a classic rock library to carts must have been extremely tedious and time consuming!! But I wish we could have done it that way at XRC. It was very obvious that we were playing some stuff straight from vinyl. In 85 and 86 when I was a part-timer there, the station was in uptown Hickory, right next to the railroad tracks. And any time a train went by, it always rattled our foundation a little. It never caused any records to skip, but it created some really bad wow-and-flutter. I noticed it the worst during the organ intro of "Free Bird".

One of my college buddies told me that in the early 90s the Fox had switched to those Denon CD Cart machines. We had four of those in the control room up at Western Carolina University when I was there and they're nice.

On a slightly different subject...now that the Fox has gone to using computers for all audio, I've noticed that they're airing a slightly homemade remix of Jethro Tull's "Aqualung". Although the differences are subtle, there are two different studio versions of that song: the original version on the Aqualung album from 1971, and the newer mix which appeared on all the Tull compilations. The newer mix is of superior sound quality and the little opening guitar riff at the beginning is actually played twice, where in the original mix it's only played once before the vocal starts. Also, the acoustic portion in the middle of the song sounds a little clearer on the original mix. So the Fox is playing a "hybrid" mix containing the best parts of both versions. Whoever did the editing did an excellent job because the edits are completely undetectable. But, I digress.....