The Horror Stories

[Deep_Thought]

you and I both are products of ASU's RTV program, and we had an interest in radio early on, having gotten our first jobs in high school. We both have this stuff in our blood.


I'm an ASU Alumnus too... Did my time at KJBR (now KISS-FM) and Everybody's favorite boss Clyde Bass and Larry Duke at KFIN.

-Todd Stuart

 

[rwells2265]

Of course, my Traffic Director can hold it over my head that I've never done that job at a radio station!

Cool! Wanna come over to Savannah and do my job for a week? ;D ;D ;D I'm Ops Manager for the coastal stations of Ga. Public Broadcasting -- part of my job is to generate logs, juggle the underwriting spots, rotate copy (it's all done live-read) ... also, while we're one short, I'm in the round-robin hosting our midday classical music show. And I also take out the trash. There's not enough room on my balding head to wear all the hats .... but you know what? I love it!

Who was the tall, scrawny part-timer who followed me on Sundays? This dude was so laid back he made the Dalai Lama look like a Type-A personality. He always referred to the "Top Ten Turntable."

I remember him. Didn't he have a contrived Brit accent? This guy loved to belch out loud, and for a time lived out of his car. I saw him once camped at the rest area on 79 outside of Rison. A real piece of work.

--Russell

 

[rwells2265]

I'm an ASU Alumnus too... Did my time at KJBR (now KISS-FM) and Everybody's favorite boss Clyde Bass and Larry Duke at KFIN.
-Todd Stuart

I was there 1984-87, before the "Super Hits 102"/"Power 102" renaissance. KJBR was satellite AC "J-102" and was running 100 kW from KBTM-AM's stick on Aggie Road. If RF caused cancer, there'd be nobody alive who attended ASU in the '80s! I recall they pioneered unattended operation back when that was still verboten. They had, at the time, the worst audio I've ever heard on an FM station. Its only saving grace was "Dr. Demento" on Sunday nights - sponsored by The Record Exchange (back when it was owned by Jonesboro's Star Neo-Hippie, Franklin Chestnut).

I did my "sales practicum" under Larry Duke at KFIN. What a class operation back in the day; I hate what's become of it. Ahhh, but I earned MY stripes at Northeast Arkansas' college rock blowtorch, KASU. Back when the highlight of their evening programming was Moods In Music and the most excruciating 59 minutes of radio ever made, Dinner By Sunset. All Mantovani, all the time.

KASU in many ways resembled the station in Good Morning Vietnam, pre-Cronauer. Noisy, abused LPs all held together with duct tape to keep 'em from disintegrating. Eddie Albert singing "Little Green Apples" ... Jim Nabors crooning whatever Columbia plantation owner Mitch Miller told him to this week.

As if I couldn't get enough easy listening, in later years I would commute back home to NLR, where I'd do parttime work at KEZQ, back when it was in "Radio Center" on north Main. Larry Henthorn was a helluva PD, and was one of the few who treated the parttimers with some level of respect.

It took a number of years before I realized Mr. Carvell (back then KASU's GM) did very well teaching me a lot about the "responsibility" side of broadcasting. I've kept his wise words in the back of my head every time I've had to do weather bulletins: "Somebody is always 'just tuning in.'"

--Russell

 

[broadcaster4hire]

Names are not used to save further embarassment for the low rent, penny pinching, jelly spined that were involved...lol.

I was working at a stand alone FM in NW Arkansas. On the way home from work one day, I got a call from an owner in NE Arkansas. He offered me, among other things, a chance to do a daily sports talk show networked on a couple of his other stations. "I want you to be the Randy Rainwater of NE Arkansas," he gushed. He told me the guy currently doing the show has a lot on his plate. "He's just too busy. He wants to concentrate on sales and his PxP."

I go and meet with him and the other partner. We worked out a deal that would bring me to the NEA.

About 3 hours before air on my first day, the guy I'm replacing walks in and introduces himself and says, "Hey, you must be my new producer." If there was ever a deer-in-the-headlights moment, this was it! It seemed everyone knew about the new direction of the show...except its host.

The owners, in their infinite wisdom, decided that instead of making the tough decision they've put themselves in, they would compromise. Me and the guy I'm replacing will work together! For, you see, they couldn't risk the original host getting mad (or madder), because it was the middle of basketball season and he was the PxP guy.

As you can imagine, it was a magicial experience. And as you can probably also imagine, as soon as basketball season was over the owners basically dumped the other guy.

I remember saying to myself that day, if they'll do it to him, they'll do it to you. And they did about 13 months later.

 

[eggman961]

Okay, I'm late on this one, too, but what the hell.

December 1980, I'm on the air at KARV. My buddy Johnny Story is in the production studio, which was / is separated from the control room by a glass window. I pick up one of the phone lines, and it's a guy I went to school with. He says, "I just heard on Monday Night Football that John Lennon got blown away!" I look up at the phone and see that all the other lines (all 3 of them) are blinking. Johnny picks up one of the other lines and looks at me through the glass with a shocked look on his face. I then bolt out of the control room and sprint down the hall, open up the teletype machine (you kids, we'll explain what that is in a minute) and there's the bulletin just finishing typing - 'John Lennon shot dead.' I tear off the copy, run back to the control room, pot (we'll explain that one too) down the record (and that one), stop the turntable (yup) with my hand, read the bulletin that one of the Beatles has just been murdered, more details to come soon, and let the record go and fade it back up -

and it was 'Another One Bites the Dust.'


gm

 

[kudzooter]

KSMB...pre-CHR...ca 1983. After not quite hearing it well enough to know what was wrong, I finally had the cans on just as a
Jerry Reed-voiced spot for Honda of Lafayette played: "Son, this is ole Gator...Gator wanted to go huntin' bear...but they
wouldn't let me...(sell sell sell) So y'all 'member what ole Gator tells ya...don't never got huntin' bare -- a big old copperhead
might raise up and bite ya right on the gonads." Turns out he was contracted for two "Gator" spots, and thought he'd give the
production guys a laugh, with his third. Damn sure did. Guy who dubbed it--now a superb radio operator in the Rockies--squelched my beginning tirade with the simple question, "Scott, what's a gonad?"

 

[sportsannouncer]

Those were classics and made me laugh. I actually have a couple of horror stories, both from the year 2000. Back when Beebe Badger football was on the old KPIK, 101.5FM, we used an older cell phone kit to broadcast the road games. Now, for this kit, we didn't have to pick up the handset to talk to our board op in the studio, we could talk as if it had a speakerphone feature. Well, we were in Dover for the Beebe/Dover football game and were setting up. My color guy and I had just finished setting up and had called in to the studio to find out how we were sounding. At the time, the owners controlled 101.5 and 97.7 FM. One of the co-hosts from the morning show on 97.7, a lady by the name of Laura Harris, was our board op that night. Now mind you, we're in Dover, in their small press box and we were sitting beside the public address announcer, who was getting ready to do a mic check of his own. I remember that we asked Laura how we sounded then asked how she was doing. She replied that she had been feeling bad the past few days and she had the "Hershey squirts". Right after she said that, the PA guy did his sound check. He never even looked our way(thank goodness).

The other horror story happened at Lamar, that same year. And Laura was our board op that night also. Well, you guessed it, we did the game over the cell phone kit. When we used this, we had the understanding that when we went to commercial breaks, if our board op said, "okay", that meant that we were on the break. If not, that we were caught up on breaks and that we would continue. Well, in the middle of the 3rd quarter of the Beebe/Lamar game, we went to a break, but never heard okay, so we "assumed" that we were caught up. Turns out that we were off the air for pretty much the entire 2nd half, plus postgame. Right after the football coach finished his postgame interview, the cell phone itself rang. It was our owner, wondering when we ever going to get back on air. Needless to say, the next week, we all felt about an inch tall after the talking to we got. The lesson here..........never assume, because you know what happens.

 

[old man river]

OK, I'LL BITE. AND, BY THE WAY, TODD...YOU'RE MAKING ME CRAZY TALKING ABOUT THE GOOD OLD DAYS HERE IN JONESBOOGIE...BUT, TO THE MATTER AT HAND...WHEN I WAS 16, I THINK, I WAS WORKING AT KWYN-AM IN WYNNE. IT WAS A FRIDAY AFTERNOON AND I WAS PLAYING 'PLATTER PARTY'...IT MUST OF BEEN 1963. IN THOSE DAYS...NO CART MACHINES, YET...SO, I HAD A 'SCHLITZ' BEER AD TO PLAY WITH A LIVE TAG...IT WAS ON ONE OF THOSE HUMONGOUS 'E.T' DISCS. WELL, I CUED THAT PUPPY UP...PLAYED THE AD AND CRACKED THE MIKE FOR THE 'LIVE' TAG...AND I SAID 'SHI** BEER...DISTRIBUTED BY CRIT-CROSS DISTRIBUTORS IN WEST MEMPHIS. THEN I GENTLY CLOSED THE MIKE AND STARTED TO SWEAT. BAD THING WAS A WYNNE HIGH SCHOOL BUS WAS ENROUTE TO THAT NIGHTS FOOTBALL GAME AND ALL ON BOARD HAD HEARD! IT TOOK WEEKS BEFORE I COULD WALK DOWN THE HALLS OF DEAR OL' WHS WITHOUT SOME SMART CRACK ABOUT 'SHI**' BEER.

 

[DIZ Guy]

Wow.....it is cool to know that the wonderful Dr. Demento was on in Jonesboro....I used to love it when he would play "The Headless Horseman" from Bing Crosby during his Halloween shows.....but....you wanna talk about horror stories....just thinking that Tommy Smith is still on the air....now THAT is a horror story!!!!!!

 

[ARRadio1]

Someone ask the TV sports guys this question right now. "There's this one time we broke programming to announce a new football coach...oh wait, he's not coming." "Then there was this other time we broke programming to announce a new football coach was coming...oh wait, he's not coming either?" ;D

 

[sportsannouncer]

In my opinion, the stations are going to have to adopt new procedures when it comes to announcing news like that. Once everything is settled, a lot of people are going to end up looking bad, including several TV stations.

 

[Ramblin]

you and I both are products of ASU's RTV program, and we had an interest in radio early on, having gotten our first jobs in high school. We both have this stuff in our blood.


I'm an ASU Alumnus too... Did my time at KJBR (now KISS-FM) and Everybody's favorite boss Clyde Bass and Larry Duke at KFIN.

-Todd Stuart

You guys are pups! Also an ASU grad, I was at KFIN when it was out in the boonies south of town off Highway 39 (then). We got the "Elvis is dead" bulletin off the AP when I was there. Perry Boxx I think actually broke into the beautiful music format for the announcement.

One night, we got snowed in and the tower just in back of the building froze up. As the snow/ice melted the next day, it broke off in chunks and came hurtling down with incredible explosions on the roof. That was the closest I've been to being under fire.

I left that excitement just before KFIN moved downtown. Went to KBTM-AM/FM when Guy Patteson was still in high school but basically doing the music for the FM. Sometimes he would come in during the evenings and do portions of his shift live. I VT'd the overnites and never really got to hear an entire shift. That early reel-to-reel stuff never worked right and would always get "out of synch". So, I always sounded like more of an idiot than I already was, intro-ing and/or outro-ing the wrong songs. Finally, just had to do generic stuff.

Great fun, tho. Did tons of production, wrote copy, read news/weather, went to concerts, got free records. Very cool! Wish I'd stuck around a bit longer...

 

[rwells2265]

You guys are pups! Also an ASU grad, I was at KFIN when it was out in the boonies south of town off Highway 39 (then). We got the "Elvis is dead" bulletin off the AP when I was there. Perry Boxx I think actually broke into the beautiful music format for the announcement.

I'm pushing 43, and most of my hair has gone the way of the cart. I started out in time to experience much of the "old" ways. When I started at KASU, they'd just switched from the old-school AP and UPI machines to dot-matrix printers. The newsroom had nothing but typewriters, and the only computer in the place was a "Trash-80" for the music library catalog. KASU felt so high-tech compared with my first radio job in high school, KBHS/Hot Springs.

As for your "pup" compliment, I'll take that and run. ;D Woof!

--Russell W.
ASU RTV '87 / Savannah, Ga.

 

[kudzooter]

[size=10pt][/size]Ole Man River, wanna help me out on this?
We started when all CMs, jingles, and songs were on...(the envelope, please)...DISCS. And most stations had a maximum
THREE turntables (those were what your grandparents called "record players," OK?) -- and like at Tulsa's market-dominant
KAKC in 1959, the third one had so much Pepsi spilled on it, you could only use it for small-plane landings. :'(
Then, there became the "McKenzie," which was a five-stack cartridge player...which required you to input the "cartridge," then manually roll it forward to where the silvery thanggy was just barely in-sight. These were orders-of-magnitude ahead of where we dark-ages dudes had been (no "dudettes" in those days) ... until something happened to the drive shaft, which left all FIVE carts in the deck TFW (totally freakin'--[size=10pt][size=10pt][size=10pt][size=10pt][size=10pt]well, this was back in your gramps' day[/size][/size][/size][/size][/size]--worthless).
Then came various other "cart" players...and we'll skip putting you (and ourselves) to sleep with evolving the whole damned
thangg up til now.
This has been the speed-freak version of what's evolved just since some of us posters have been doing it. From reel-to-reel
tapes, music played on turntables, and news on AP/UPI/INS teletypes (don't ask; you wouldn't really care to know)...
CMs, promos, jingles, "drops" all on various eras of "cart" players ... then (damn, wasn't this hip when we did it, huh?) music
on CD's--freakin', mothah-brothah WOW ... to this week's so-very-damned-NOW "state of the art" computer delivery.
Yeah, it is "so what, who cares?" to a lot. To some: "damn, that was so special, then." And to maybe just one or two:
"Wonder how we can take what that meant, into the next generation."
Only when we stop THINKING ABOUT WHAT WE CAN DO NEXT will this crazy thing we love, called Radio, quit meaning
something to those people out there, our LISTENERS.

 

[old man river]

Hey, Kudzooter...check this out...when I came up to Jonesboro from KWYN in Wynne to work for Alan Patteson at KBTM we had what was called a Gates-101 Spot Deck. It was a single piece of audio tape on a roller and it was segmented into 101 strips...one cut, or spot per strip. You accessed it by moving a 'selector' on the front of the machine to whichever of the 101 'stops' you wanted. It was unreal. And, a lot of times it dragged....because you used the same tape over and over and over...and, in those days we did production while we ran our live shifts! I remember cutting ads on the old '101' many days direct into the machine...you just hoped and prayed you'd get through the copy without making too many mistakes. Oh, and we had two turntables and one cart machine...that was in the summer of 1965. But, the really neat thing about those days at 'BTM was their huge library of 45's! They had everything from like 1950 on....it was truly awesome to go down into the studio and pick your music each day for your shift! I also remember being the only one, besides the station manager, who was brave enough to change the ribbon on those old teletype machines....I still have purple inck on my fingers....old man river

 

[kudzooter]

KXJK, Forrest City, had all their CMs on the 45RPM disks in a Seaburg Select-O-Matic jukebox. I got to sit in their CR for a few minutes with Lloyd Denny, and was amazed at the way he'd do weather, or a live "cross plug" for something else coming up on the station...while watching the just-played spot be returned to its numeric slot, then another brought out and spun up to play.
Several years later, I told that story to one of the KRMG crew. He said, "oh hell, we did that at WJAX in Jacksonville...but we
didn't have to do so much filler gab -- we had TWO Select-O-Matics." Wonder if they also had duplication on the machine that tilted the road, so that after crawling the five miles uphill to do your shift, you then had it re-set so you'd have to do it uphill again, on your way home?

 

[Danoinark]

Dennis
I remember the gates spot 101's...those things will sure teach you to ad lib for sure.
I also remember racks of magnacorders...at the time no finer I would say.
Dan S.

 

[bub]

...open up the teletype machine (you kids, we'll explain what that is in a minute)

One station I worked at, it was in the days of the old EBS - Emergency Broadcast System - long before the present day EAS. In those days, it was customary to get a EBS message over a teletype machine. In the main studio, the way the studio was set up, there was a large red light bulb affixed to the wall over the Arrakis board that lit up whenever an EBS message was coming over the system. When the bulb lit up, you listened to the station sending out the EBS in cue, then you got up and went to the teletype machine to get the EBS that was printing over the teletype. You then ripped the info off the teletype, attached it to the transmitter log and recorded the time on the log as having received an EBS, date and time noted. Then you went to the transmitter rack and pushed the button that turned off the light bulb. Then you proceeded with your shift.

By the time I got there, the teletype machine was pulled out of the building but the red light bulb remained. We relied on that for EBS info. One day, the owner's grand-daughter was running the board at the station and during her shift, the red bulb lit up. Problem was, she didn't know what that meant, didn't ask for help and didn't know how to turn the bulb off. So she took it upon herself to reach up to the bulb and turn it counter-clockwise just enough to turn the bulb off, and she never bothered to tell anybody what she had done. As a result, the owner and CE were wondering why we weren't receiving EBS test messages for 6 months. ;D

 

[Zeke_Terry]

Oh bub THAT is funny.

 

[FiveStar]

The first station I ever worked at was WFSH 1340 in Niceville, Florida (anyone want to guess what the logo was?). Just before I was hired, the PD was an old radio greaser named Dan Harley, about whom the stories are many, but here's my favorite. One of the guys I worked with was there when Dan was PD and this guy came in to work one morning and found the station was empty. Not empty of people, empty of EVERYTHING. Turntables, records, cart machines, even the Sunbeam Bakery clock the station traded for was gone. He called Harley....no answer. Eventually the owner got paged and called the cops. I guess to report that someone has stolen his radio station. (I'd have loved to have heard a tape of that conversation but we're talking mid 70's here)

As it turned out a few hours later, the aforementioned Mr. Harley was stopped by a State Trooper while tootling down the Interstate while pulling a U-Haul. Of course, every bit of missing equipment and assorted stuff was stuffed into the U-Haul. I think Harley got probation. I never did hear exactly what Harley was going to do with all that stuff.

By the way, the station is still there and even has a website. In that place, we didn't put pennies on tonearms to keep records from skipping, we used quarters....

Some places are forever burned into your memory, no matter how hard you try to forget.....