There are many stories about radio stations with call letters we never heard of in towns we never heard of. Some were stories of great stations. Some were of stations that were so bad you couldn’t wait for a new gig. I’m especially talking back in the days of warm bodies in radio stations every hour it was on the air.
Most of the stations were in backwater places, small towns where your ratings don’t earn you advertising buys.
A common complaint was equipment. There was always that lowest rung of station that had the “come take it before it hits the dumpster” equipment the engineer managed to get to work although it was as reliable as a $500 used car.
Another complaint was programming. There are stories of stations with virtually no music library. There are stations where that newscast is every PSA and press release brought to the station or arrives by mail. If you are really a go-getter, you swing by the convenience store to grab a daily paper so you can rewrite some stories so you have more than local stuff. There the station where the jock is to write down the weather forecast from cable TV before coming in for the shift or listen to another station. A long distance call to the National Weather Service where you got the recording of the forecast was ‘not in the budget’.
There were stations where burned out bulbs/lights on equipment, dead fans, barely working motors and even a replacement turntable needle was never an immediate fix. In fact, at one station, it all had to wait until the contract engineer came out on a regular basis because he charged travel time (74 miles each way).
At one station we had a Russco 5 channel board. It had a red square button to turn on a pot. The microphone button light was out for a long time. We got good practice at potting down the microphone and taking off the headphones to see if the microphone was on. I recall at the same station, the red button for one of the turntables would not stay in the on position (would stay depressed). We tried a piece of duct tape and it worked.
At the same station we had two cart machines somebody put in a wood case without a way for the heat the fans tried to expel to find its way out of the case. Our GM said to just turn off the cart machines when we weren’t using them. Frequently we forgot to turn them back on. Or we’d forget to cue up a cart. We discovered the problem when we'd play a cart and the audio sounded funny. Don't know why that was but I recall we turned off the machine. Later when the GM came in we turned it on, played a cart and it sounded fine. We resolved to just turn the cart machines off when not in use.
At the same station, a bit farther out than the sticks, we never kept a spare needle for the turntables. We had to order by mail or make a run about 75 miles (each way) to the city for a replacement. Once the GM was out of town for the weekend. About 5:15 Friday afternoon, the needle hit the felt on the turntable and bent beyond use. We were on one turntable until Monday afternoon. As fate would have it, each turntable had different cartridges, so you couldn’t just take the needle out of the back turntable and move it to the front. It was the front turntable that was affected. On another front, one of the turntables had some issue. It would ‘wow’ every record and take 2 or 3 revolutions to reach the right speed. We had to remember to keep the turntable out of gear instead of turning it on and off. For some reason it worked fine as long as the motor stayed on.
At this same station, the original owner had sold the station to the guy I was working for. Back then the FCC took months to approve a sale. It seems the original owner suffered a stroke. So, the employees just kept working. The family doled out the paychecks and said the station was shutting down until the FCC approved the sale. In the coming weeks the former employees cleaned out the records, took a bunch of equipment and more. The new owner knew the station never billed more than about $600 a month. Locally the original owner charged about 25 cents a spot. Out of town, it was $1. Being shut down, there was no business on the station when it started. At least the land and building was included and valued at 75% of the price he paid for the station.
The new owner shows up to find no music library and virtually no studio or production studio. He scrambled to find anything and managed to find equipment already given up for dead at other stations. They managed to assemble maybe 8 hours (if that) of music. The station was country, so all the songs were from the past few years. For us jocks with 6 hour board shifts, the tiny music library was horrible but people generally liked what we played and there were very few complaints about hearing the same song every 8 or 9 hours. We hardly ever added or rested songs, maybe about 6 to 8 the whole 11 months I was there.
During this time stations had teletype machines, usually one for the news and one for the National Weather Service. You might have network news as well. Even though we had a contract inherited in the sale of the station, we couldn’t afford it, so the AP, had the contract on hiatus (it would pick up where it left off once we could make the $500 a month payment). We had no news other than press releases and PSAs. There was no news director. If the GM managed to have a local story find him as he visited clients, he’d hand it to one of us as a few scribbled notes and we’d make it radio ready. Weather meant listening to a station 75 miles away and writing it down. We had told the National Weather Service our situation and those guys were great. They call us if we were for sure going to get severe weather.
It was 1981. We were country with any songs we had (a stack of maybe 120 45s at most). We had 90 second local news breaks 7 times a day weekdays (6:23, 6:53, 7:23, 7:53 and 8:23, 12:23 and 5:23pm). Weather was at :08 and :38 and after news. Weekends were different. We had high school kids. They were to read the weather forecast, including legal ID, every 15 minutes starting at the top of the hour. Between the weather, they were to play songs unannounced. What few commercials were to be played at about :52, :22, :37 or :07 in that order depending on the number in an hour.
We never did well in sales. I talked to the GM a bunch. We needed $5,000 a month to break even. The best we had done was about $3,500 the December I was there. We were averaging about $3,000 a month when I left compared to $1,600 when I got there 11 months earlier. They charged $1.05 for a thirty. The rate card showed $2.50 as the 1x rate but an annual 210 times a month rate was $1.05 on a yearly contract. The GM just sold at the lowest rate.
I recall we sold 2 hours Sunday morning, earning us $400 per month. I recall all 7 daily newscasts were sponsored by the local bank at $160 a month.
One of the things the GM started was classified ads. We’d run up to 5 a day for $1.75 a week. You might think that wouldn’t be a big deal but that billing really helped. We had a guy that sold hay that stayed on every week. There were gardeners that bought classifieds to sell their tomatoes and such. The classifieds became the go to place for the buy, sell & trade group and the smallest business (we had Avon and Mary Kay reps). These were not recruited by the GM, our only salesman, but walked in to the station already written (15 words plus contact info) and with cash payment. We even had a few wanting birthdays, anniversaries and births announced. Heck, we even announced card showers and engagements, all paid. For $3.50 cash, we’d announce them up to 30 times. We’d identify the ‘buyer’ by saying “X person wants you to know it’s Y person’s birthday”. We ended up with enough of these classifieds that we’d read a few at the weather breaks to fit them all in. We really needed it because we didn’t have very many commercial buyers. By the time I left, we’d have 10 to 12 classifieds an hour. I liked them because it gave you something to say and it gave the illusion you were working your tail off to be local. It was really small town. We were the only station in a town of 3,000.
I stayed way too long at that station but I have fond memories for some reason. It might have been the other jocks or the GM that was a really nice guy. It might just be that we made that little station sound a lot better than it really was. All in all, it was a radio station of dead in the water equipment run by people who chose to make that little station sound like a million bucks.
This little AM daytimer with pre-sunrise authority (about 125 watts as I recall) sold about 2 years later. One of those years it actually made about $1,000 profit.
The new buyer decided to live in the station and have his family run it. When his kids grew up a few years later, he tried selling it but wound up shutting it down. He eventually sold it but for very little. I never understood his programming. He played big band and beautiful music with an occasional religious song (George Beverly Shea, for example) or hymn (ie: organ and congregational sing). Mostly it was about half an hour of uninterrupted music and a 30 minute program. Some hours the legal ID on the hour was the only station identification heard in the hour. Between music segments you heard long form programs (mostly half hour). I listened one afternoon and it was drudgery. I heard a 30 minute program on physical fitness with an interview by a doctor describing how the body reacts to physical activity in a step by step manner. There was a Social Security Q & A program. There was a discussion among college professors on the foreign trade policy and the emerging Asian market. It sounded more like a requirement for a college course than mass appeal. Most programs were on rather dry topics and mostly produced by universities. I heard 1 commercial all afternoon (about 5 hours).
Most of the stations were in backwater places, small towns where your ratings don’t earn you advertising buys.
A common complaint was equipment. There was always that lowest rung of station that had the “come take it before it hits the dumpster” equipment the engineer managed to get to work although it was as reliable as a $500 used car.
Another complaint was programming. There are stories of stations with virtually no music library. There are stations where that newscast is every PSA and press release brought to the station or arrives by mail. If you are really a go-getter, you swing by the convenience store to grab a daily paper so you can rewrite some stories so you have more than local stuff. There the station where the jock is to write down the weather forecast from cable TV before coming in for the shift or listen to another station. A long distance call to the National Weather Service where you got the recording of the forecast was ‘not in the budget’.
There were stations where burned out bulbs/lights on equipment, dead fans, barely working motors and even a replacement turntable needle was never an immediate fix. In fact, at one station, it all had to wait until the contract engineer came out on a regular basis because he charged travel time (74 miles each way).
At one station we had a Russco 5 channel board. It had a red square button to turn on a pot. The microphone button light was out for a long time. We got good practice at potting down the microphone and taking off the headphones to see if the microphone was on. I recall at the same station, the red button for one of the turntables would not stay in the on position (would stay depressed). We tried a piece of duct tape and it worked.
At the same station we had two cart machines somebody put in a wood case without a way for the heat the fans tried to expel to find its way out of the case. Our GM said to just turn off the cart machines when we weren’t using them. Frequently we forgot to turn them back on. Or we’d forget to cue up a cart. We discovered the problem when we'd play a cart and the audio sounded funny. Don't know why that was but I recall we turned off the machine. Later when the GM came in we turned it on, played a cart and it sounded fine. We resolved to just turn the cart machines off when not in use.
At the same station, a bit farther out than the sticks, we never kept a spare needle for the turntables. We had to order by mail or make a run about 75 miles (each way) to the city for a replacement. Once the GM was out of town for the weekend. About 5:15 Friday afternoon, the needle hit the felt on the turntable and bent beyond use. We were on one turntable until Monday afternoon. As fate would have it, each turntable had different cartridges, so you couldn’t just take the needle out of the back turntable and move it to the front. It was the front turntable that was affected. On another front, one of the turntables had some issue. It would ‘wow’ every record and take 2 or 3 revolutions to reach the right speed. We had to remember to keep the turntable out of gear instead of turning it on and off. For some reason it worked fine as long as the motor stayed on.
At this same station, the original owner had sold the station to the guy I was working for. Back then the FCC took months to approve a sale. It seems the original owner suffered a stroke. So, the employees just kept working. The family doled out the paychecks and said the station was shutting down until the FCC approved the sale. In the coming weeks the former employees cleaned out the records, took a bunch of equipment and more. The new owner knew the station never billed more than about $600 a month. Locally the original owner charged about 25 cents a spot. Out of town, it was $1. Being shut down, there was no business on the station when it started. At least the land and building was included and valued at 75% of the price he paid for the station.
The new owner shows up to find no music library and virtually no studio or production studio. He scrambled to find anything and managed to find equipment already given up for dead at other stations. They managed to assemble maybe 8 hours (if that) of music. The station was country, so all the songs were from the past few years. For us jocks with 6 hour board shifts, the tiny music library was horrible but people generally liked what we played and there were very few complaints about hearing the same song every 8 or 9 hours. We hardly ever added or rested songs, maybe about 6 to 8 the whole 11 months I was there.
During this time stations had teletype machines, usually one for the news and one for the National Weather Service. You might have network news as well. Even though we had a contract inherited in the sale of the station, we couldn’t afford it, so the AP, had the contract on hiatus (it would pick up where it left off once we could make the $500 a month payment). We had no news other than press releases and PSAs. There was no news director. If the GM managed to have a local story find him as he visited clients, he’d hand it to one of us as a few scribbled notes and we’d make it radio ready. Weather meant listening to a station 75 miles away and writing it down. We had told the National Weather Service our situation and those guys were great. They call us if we were for sure going to get severe weather.
It was 1981. We were country with any songs we had (a stack of maybe 120 45s at most). We had 90 second local news breaks 7 times a day weekdays (6:23, 6:53, 7:23, 7:53 and 8:23, 12:23 and 5:23pm). Weather was at :08 and :38 and after news. Weekends were different. We had high school kids. They were to read the weather forecast, including legal ID, every 15 minutes starting at the top of the hour. Between the weather, they were to play songs unannounced. What few commercials were to be played at about :52, :22, :37 or :07 in that order depending on the number in an hour.
We never did well in sales. I talked to the GM a bunch. We needed $5,000 a month to break even. The best we had done was about $3,500 the December I was there. We were averaging about $3,000 a month when I left compared to $1,600 when I got there 11 months earlier. They charged $1.05 for a thirty. The rate card showed $2.50 as the 1x rate but an annual 210 times a month rate was $1.05 on a yearly contract. The GM just sold at the lowest rate.
I recall we sold 2 hours Sunday morning, earning us $400 per month. I recall all 7 daily newscasts were sponsored by the local bank at $160 a month.
One of the things the GM started was classified ads. We’d run up to 5 a day for $1.75 a week. You might think that wouldn’t be a big deal but that billing really helped. We had a guy that sold hay that stayed on every week. There were gardeners that bought classifieds to sell their tomatoes and such. The classifieds became the go to place for the buy, sell & trade group and the smallest business (we had Avon and Mary Kay reps). These were not recruited by the GM, our only salesman, but walked in to the station already written (15 words plus contact info) and with cash payment. We even had a few wanting birthdays, anniversaries and births announced. Heck, we even announced card showers and engagements, all paid. For $3.50 cash, we’d announce them up to 30 times. We’d identify the ‘buyer’ by saying “X person wants you to know it’s Y person’s birthday”. We ended up with enough of these classifieds that we’d read a few at the weather breaks to fit them all in. We really needed it because we didn’t have very many commercial buyers. By the time I left, we’d have 10 to 12 classifieds an hour. I liked them because it gave you something to say and it gave the illusion you were working your tail off to be local. It was really small town. We were the only station in a town of 3,000.
I stayed way too long at that station but I have fond memories for some reason. It might have been the other jocks or the GM that was a really nice guy. It might just be that we made that little station sound a lot better than it really was. All in all, it was a radio station of dead in the water equipment run by people who chose to make that little station sound like a million bucks.
This little AM daytimer with pre-sunrise authority (about 125 watts as I recall) sold about 2 years later. One of those years it actually made about $1,000 profit.
The new buyer decided to live in the station and have his family run it. When his kids grew up a few years later, he tried selling it but wound up shutting it down. He eventually sold it but for very little. I never understood his programming. He played big band and beautiful music with an occasional religious song (George Beverly Shea, for example) or hymn (ie: organ and congregational sing). Mostly it was about half an hour of uninterrupted music and a 30 minute program. Some hours the legal ID on the hour was the only station identification heard in the hour. Between music segments you heard long form programs (mostly half hour). I listened one afternoon and it was drudgery. I heard a 30 minute program on physical fitness with an interview by a doctor describing how the body reacts to physical activity in a step by step manner. There was a Social Security Q & A program. There was a discussion among college professors on the foreign trade policy and the emerging Asian market. It sounded more like a requirement for a college course than mass appeal. Most programs were on rather dry topics and mostly produced by universities. I heard 1 commercial all afternoon (about 5 hours).
