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WBAD (and maybe some insights on KXI and other things)

R

robgrayson

Quote:

WBAD is off topic, I agree, but if a discussion on it ensues, I can offer a lot of history ... the two guys who started the station (and still own it, I believe), were close friends of mine in the 70s and 80s.

Mr J. Alex, I would love to hear more!

As I mentioned in another post, I came close to being one the the "BAD" guys, which would have made me "pretty fly" back when. It has had its share of glory and infamy, including IIRC an on-air homicide along the way.
 
thanks for the invitation, Rob ... I'd love to do my memoirs on WKXI and WBAD ... It starts in 1964, with the birth of WWHO FM 94.7 in Jackson, a strange bird if there ever was one. I'll do it in installments.

A preacher, Dr. Marvin Osborne (I should put the "Dr" in quotations) built WWHO, an independent FM (unheard of in 1964) at the corner of Terry Rd and Elton Rd in south Jackson. A Jim Walter home for a studio, and a 210 ft tower with a 110 ft pole on top which supported a 12 bay horiz antenna.

First mistake: you're at the south end of Jackson, and you want to optimize the signal going back north over the city. Why would you mount the antenna bays on the south side of the pole?

W-Who (with an owl in the logo) was essentially beautiful music, and a quintessential mom & pop operation. All family members pulled air shifts. Mrs Osborne was known to mix Songs of Faith (he was, after all, a preacher) with the Percy Faith ... and when one of the kids ran the board, you would get heavy doses of his favorite singer, Ricky Nelson, mixed in with Andre Kostelanetz. Ozzie and Harriet would have been proud.

Osborne later obtained the CP for UHF TV 40, and built a huge metal building next door with prominent WWHO TV 40 signage on it. Never mind that a stand-alone independent UHF TV station back then was even more unlikely than an FM unspported by a sister AM. The building had a huge stash of discarded black & white studio equipment when we got there.

The banks foreclosed around 1969, but the facility and license sat there for two years. Imagine a Class C FM license sitting there with no applicants today. But this was 1969.

At that time, I was in the Navy and had a lifelong interest in radio. I worked in beautiful music FM while in college in Mobile, but I listened mostly to r&b. My brother-in-law in Jackson, Clifton Thomas, owned a recording studio that had churned out some r&b hits. (Remember Lovers Holiday and Pickin Wild MOuntain Berries by Peggy Scott and JoJo Benson?). He had been known to cozy up to a WOKJ DJ to get airplay.

Clifton told me he'd rather OWN a black station than persuade other ones to play his record product, and I had no place to go once I got out of the Navy. We agreed that although FM stations at the time were virtually worthless, that would change in the future for the obvious reasons. We agreed that it was absurd for Jackson, 45% black, to have 10 general market stations, and one black station to have almost half the market to itself. And that station, WOKJ 1550, had about the worst signal (highly directional at the top of the dial) imaginable, so it was plenty vulnerable.

We agreed to get the WWHO facility and put it back on the air, which we did on August 10, 1971. I'l do another installment shortly.
 
Slight digression in the direction of WOKJ. Most southern cities had one, possibly two black stations. Typically daytimers at the top of the dial, stations that had difficulty competing against the stronger facilities. WOKJ started as 1 kw day on 1590, later 5 kw day 1 kw DA-N. It was owned by John McLendon (don't confuse with Gordon McLendon). He specialized in these facilities, then known euphemistically as Ebony Stations... WOKJ, KOKY Little Rock, KOKA Shreveport, WENN Birmingham, and I believe at one time WOKS Columbus Ga (notice the "OK" position in the calls). The 1550 freq had very few US stations on it, as the freq was designated for Canadian and Mexican clear channel stations. Through some screwy FCC dealings, the frequency was opened up and an unbelievable number of applicants swarmed the process. There was already a 1550 in Huntsville AL and in Shreveport ... applications came in for Mobile (50 kw), Birmingham (50 kw), Selma (5 kw), Baton Rouge (5 kw), Senatobia (5 kw).

The FCC rather than sort all this out, decided to license them all, if they would as necessary go DA and accept each other's interference. I was told that at the time, national ad agencies would buy time on a station if it was "50,000 watts." Never mind how DA or how high on the dial , didn't matter if it didn't have many listeners ... they didn't have all the ARB demographics, etc; as long as it was a 50 kw station they would buy it. WOKJ's new facility, 5 tower 50 kw DA-D, and 6 tower 10 kw DA-N, was actually inferior to their 5 kw non-DA on 1590, but it didn't matter: they predicted that national spot business would increase as soon as they waved a media kit saying 50 kw, and it did.

The people from WLCS Baton Rouge picked up 1590 and became WWUN, but that's another fork in the road.

WOKJ's day pattern went east from its Bolton xmtr site, over Jackson, toward Meridian, but it was a narrow lobe. Another went NW into Issaquena and Sharkey, an underpopulated area. It had sharp nulls SE toward Mobile, and less sharp nulls south to Baton Rouge, west toward Shreveport, and north toward Senatobia. It wasn't even audible during the day in Florence, and wasn't really listenable in Canton or Vicksburg. At night, it was even worse: it wasn't even audible at the WKXI site on Elton Rd (south Jackson), and it wasn't listenable at Tougaloo (north Jackson). But - its skywave went NW into Oklahoma and SE into south Georgia.

McLendon died maybe around 1969, and the Roden brothers (who had black stations in Tuscaloosa and Pensacola) bought WOKJ from McL's estate ... for about $775,000. That was a high price at the time, but the station had huge ratings by default and was a billing monster. And it had enormous engineering expenses, maintaining an extremely critical DA pattern. We knew it was vulnerable, and that given the significant black population in Jackson, the market needed and deserved a second soul outlet.

There were plenty of nay-sayers; they told us FM will never make it without an AM to support it, and that "those colored people don't have FM radios." We were just a couple of young guys with an idealistic but unrealistic view of the world.

It didn't take long. We came on in August 1971 and the following month we were broadcasting the Jackson State College football games (too many people had complained that they couldn't pick up the games, especially at night, on WOKJ's terrible signal). In the first Pulse survey, 6 months later, we were #1 (12 plus) with a 19 share, beating WOKJ's 17. We were by far #1 overall with teens, and by far #1 at night. Our 6-10 and 10-3 numbers weren't that great, and the older demos weren't there, but that improved over time. Should mention that Carrol F Jackson left WOKJ to come with us as GM.


As another frequent participant in this forum, Henry McClurg, can elucidate, we were also the flagship station for the Miss Radio News Network.

The Rodens had just paid a lot of money for a station that had huge numbers and billing, and the monopoly had just been undone by an independent FM. Once they saw what was happening, the Rodens went to WRBC and bought its FM, WJMI, for a ridiculously low price of $140,000. Though we staved it off for a year by filing a petition to deny with the FCC, WOKJ in 1973 got its sister station, WJMI, to try to destroy us as competitors.

I'm not sure how you get on the air on your AM station and tell your listeners to switch over to your FM station - and at the same time, try to keep your AM viable ... but they did. Even the largest cities in the US still did not have a black-programmed FM (they didn't start calling them Urban stations until much later), but Jackson, incredibly had TWO of them!

We talked to a lot of operators in other markets who were giving consideration to switching their non-performing FM over to the soul format. One was the guys in Greenville MS.

Bill Jackson is a classy black gentleman who is an experienced engineer and has a radio voice that does not give a clue as to ethnicity - he had worked on general market stations in Greenville.

Stanley Sherman was a local businessman; his mother's family founded Stein Mart stores.

Greenville was another situation like Jackson: huge black population, but underserved on the radio. Despite a majority black population, its only voice was WESY 1580 - only 1 kw, daytime only, at the top end of the dial. Bill Jackson wanted to own his own station, and realized the void there. He and Sherman partnered up to get a Class A 3 kw facility allocated to Leland. They came down to spend the day talking with us about WKXI, and we remained friends for many years afterward - even built and owned some cable TV systems together in the 80s.

So WBAD 94.3 was born, with a great set of call letters and a void in the market wide enough to drive a truck through it. They had a tower site between Leland and Greenville, and the studio was an old building that had been moved from the local air force base. And as Rob mentions, one of its DJs was murdered while on the air (was his name Derek or Doc Malone, something like that). Jackson & Sherman did business as Interchange Communications.

WBAD was financed by a local minority small business investment company called The Delta Foundation, also known by a subsidiary Delta Development & Management Company (DDMC). WESY was owned by the same people who owned WNAT in Natchez. Delta and Interchange did a joint venture to buy WESY eventually, so the combo - one straight ahead r&b, the other black gospel - put a good grip on that segment of the market.

I know WBAD upgraded from a Class A to a C2, but I haven't followed its progress in recent years, as I got out of radio in 1992 when I sold my FM in Mobile.

I'll fill in some more details as they come to my feeble brain.
 
One thing I should add about WOKJ's dreadful facility: years later, Arthur Holt, an experienced broadcaster, bought WOKJ/WJMI. He also bought WOAD (formerly WJQS), 1400, a Class IV facility, which had done well once it became a black gospel station. By then WOKJ had evolved into a black gospel station, but Holt kept WOAD and cut the 1550 facility loose. The one time I met Holt, he told me that the Class IV station covered the city better than did the 1550 one, at a fraction of the overhead. I knew this to be true, and it's no wonder that 1550 eventually met its demise.
 
I got a call one evening from Clif Thomas asking if I could run over and lay down a guitar track. I was a Jr. in HS at the time. There were three other players there I had never met, and we worked about two hours to get the sound and the feel laid down. I got a check a couple of weeks later for $10. I can't prove it, but I swear the song was "Pickin' Wild Mountain Berries," but had other instruments added after the four original parts were cut. My HS band at the time, Buttermilk Blues Band, also did some original tracks in that same garage studio. I have no idea whatever happened to them.
 
Cliff, his brother Ed, and Bob McCree were listed as publisher (Thomas-McCree-Thomas) on a number of songs. Cliff died in Gulfport about a year ago. In the mid 60's they had a recording studio out in Clinton; it was an abandoned movie theater building. Cliff and Ed were primarily involved in their family business, S.N. Thomas Sons (distributors of wholesale dry goods) and Norman Shirtmakers (whose factory was in Byram), but they did the music thing on the side. Around 1958 they recorded "I'm On My Way Home" in Sam Phillips' Memphis studio. It was released on the Phillips label (as opposed to the Sun label) and was a regional hit.

Cliff, Ed, and I originally owned WKXI as TAB Broadcasting (for Thomas And Bowab). Later Carrol Jackson became a partner, and his interest was bought out by Bob O'Brien. In 1978 we sold controlling interest of TAB to the people who owned WLOX TV Biloxi. TAB simultaneously bought WRBC 1300 AM. The WKXI black format moved to 1300 AM and continued to do well for many years; WKXI 94.7 became WTYX, as the market's first FM top 40, and it was quite a success also. WRBC at the time was plodding along with an automated, syndicated MoR format called "The Entertainers," after having crashed and burned with NBC Radio's News & Information (NIS) format in 1975.
 
J Alex Bowab said:
One thing I should add about WOKJ's dreadful facility: years later, Arthur Holt, an experienced broadcaster, bought WOKJ/WJMI. He also bought WOAD (formerly WJQS), 1400, a Class IV facility, which had done well once it became a black gospel station. By then WOKJ had evolved into a black gospel station, but Holt kept WOAD and cut the 1550 facility loose. The one time I met Holt, he told me that the Class IV station covered the city better than did the 1550 one, at a fraction of the overhead. I knew this to be true, and it's no wonder that 1550 eventually met its demise.
Click to expand...

Alex, GREAT radio history post! Mid 70’s FM radio also received a lot of help as FM became standard in all automobile radios. Up until that time if you wanted to listen to FM (mono) in a car, an outboard converter was required.

The mention of “Dr O” brings back a lot of memories. A co-worker at ch-29 was Cecil Selman who was the “as needed” emergency engineer, “Dr” O was a “ticket mill” First Class Licensee. WWHO would be off the air for days or weeks at a time and Cecil said that when the “DR” and his family would take a vacation they would simply leave the station off the air which got him in trouble with the FCC for not operating the station for minimum hours. Cecil said he would go out and run the station for the minimum time then pray that he would get paid. It seemed the “Dr’s” checks weren’t always good down at First national Bank. I also recall Collins Radio was owed a lot of money for the equipment there. The Collins regional manager at the time was a nice fellow and long-time friend Ray Evans; he came to town when the station was seized. If I recall, Cecil claimed the”Dr” took the station license with him and the FCC executed an involuntary license transfer.

The WOKJ null structure was so sharp that the station was either non-existent or badly distorted in a lot of the area because of carrier and side-band cancellation. It sounded only fair if you were in middle either of the lobes.

Your recollection, comments.
w/
 
J Alex,

Thanks for the memory shaker. It was at Bob McCrees house where I recorded in the garage studio. I know I met Cliff at least once as I was and remain friends with one of the Thomas family. Amazing how the memory fades.
 
Zach said:
J Alex Bowab said:
And as Rob mentions, one of its DJs was murdered while on the air (was his name Derek or Doc Malone, something like that).
Click to expand...

:eek:

OK, this needs to be expounded upon!
Click to expand...

His name was Doc, and I recall him as a super guy. I would come visit him at the station back when I was still living in Greenville. I heard of his death when I was at JDX, so that narrows it down to 1975 or 1976. I am short on details, and most of what I could add would be speculation. Seems like the murder happened at the station while he was working his shift one Sunday night, while a church service was on the air. WBAD was in a sparsely populated area, on a road running north from highway 82 about halfway between Greenville and Leland, so nefarious activity wouldn't garner much immediate attention.
 
Dealt with Ray Evans in repurchasing the Collins studio/xmtr equipment. He was a great guy, but from the old school. He used the "N word" in referring to our programming plans. Deeply religious, though, and we had to be careful not to offend him by referring to alcohol consumption or by using language that had become a part of me after 4 years in the Navy.

Cecil Selman was the first engineer we used to get the station going again. Studio and production room needed to be re-wired. Selman had done some engineering for Cliff's recording studio. He was very meticulous. He was deceased I believe by the mid 70s.

After we had been on the air about 2 years, we got a letter from "Dr" Osborne's lawyer, demanding rent payment, claiming that his client still owned the property. Bizarre. Seem to remember Dr O had relocated (or fled) to Orlando. Our response, essentially, was to tell him to put it where the moon don't shine.
 
At WKXI we did a lot of things I was proud of (without claiming more than my share of credit)... the amazing ratings we pulled for an indie FM in that era ... already mentioned that ... but I came into the situation as someone who had been peripherally involved in desegration and civil rights. I knew that there were black stations which did more than just play a lot of music that had everyone finger poppin' ... there were stations like WDIA which devoted air time in support of worthy causes and were truly involved in the community, and became a positive force therein. Using such stations as a role model, On many occasions we would stop the music and turn the microphone over to NAACP officials and other civil rights leaders.

I think my proudest moment was when I became a close friend of Frank Bluntson, then an official at the local Youth Court... and one of the finest gentlemen you would ever hope to meet. In 1975 I offered him a Sunday afternoon talk show called Straight Talk. Eventually we were on with it every weeknight at 9. Charles Evers and other prominent community leaders were on the air and taking calls. Frank became a celebrity, and you cannot imagine how thrilled I get when considering that (a) the program has been on the air in Jackson continuously for 34 years now, and (b) Frank has been elected, then re-elected, to the Jackson City Council.
 
Gosh, J. Alex. I can almost feel I'm back at WKXI now. But I have a confession to make. One night at midnight, before WKXI started licensed broadcasts, but was conducting transmitter tests, I was at a bar, the Raincheck Lounge off of Northsidee Drive. Other local broadcast celebrities were there too, including Murray K of WRBC and a tall, lanky newscaster at channel 3, whose name I cannot no3w remember.

Midnight had arrived and the bar was throwing us out. So I said, "Why don't I take you guys over to the studio and give you a tour?"

We did, even turned the transmitter on and played Diana Ross and the Supremes. In fact, I took the whole bar over there, not just the broadcast people. We had a ball. Yes, that was wrong. But we got away with it.

I bet you kind of suspected something had gone on.

Henry
 
Enjoyed the background you've offered on KXI, Alex. Amazing how the transformation of the frequency,format,etc., of the station led us to today's Kixie 107,the dominant station in all major demos in the market.(Source Arbitron,2010)
Okay,that was shameless bragging,but it's Friday,ya know?
 
I know it would have been too expensive to put WOKJ back on the air with 6 towers, but I'm surprised that someone didn't try to put a new station on 1550 with a different pattern and a transmitter closer to Jackson.
since the stations on 1550 in both Shreveport and Mobile, AL have been gone for years, you wouldn't have to protect them with a null anymore. The only station you'd have to protect in Huntsville, since that station is still around. (I used to pick up shreveport behind wokj at night, and Mobile at sunrise) I think if WOKJ had better local coverage they might could have still been around in some form. But maintaining 50kw with 6 towers must have eaten up a lot of cash, just on the light bill alone. And the fact that the only people that could hear the station were either in Bolton or Tulsa, OK.

BTW, whatever became of "Heavy" Herb Anderson from 13 KXI? He was also the weatherman at WAPT. I remember he got in some trouble over his wife being shot or something like that, my memory is fading. Someone fill me in. But I do remember those "Million Dollar Mouth" billboards that KXI had around town. Were they really paying him 1 million? That couldn't have been 1 million a year! or was it?
 
Senatobia on 1550 moved to 1140 so that would also loosen up the pattern if 1550 Jackson were resuscitated. Yes, Mobile 1550 moved to 660. The night pattern would still consist of pencil-narrow lobes, tho. I wasn't aware that 1550 Shreveport was gone.

Heavy Herb Anderson came to us originally in 1973, from Kansas City. Subsequently, we hired several of his associates from KC - Tommy Marshall, Brett Lewis, and Henry Harrison III. They had all been at KPRS in KC.

The $1 mil was a publicity stunt - $1 a year for a million years. Herb killed a guy in a lovers triangle, but he was acquitted IIRC on grounds of self defense. He subsequently became a preacher, and I think he is in Jacksonville FL ... I can find out from Frank Bluntson. The nickname "Heavy" was amusing, as he was about 5 ft 4, 130 lbs, and mildly handicapped, believe from polio. Great guy with a fantastic sense of humor. His hometown was Phila PA.
 
flytrap said:
I know it would have been too expensive to put WOKJ back on the air with 6 towers, but I'm surprised that someone didn't try to put a new station on 1550 with a different pattern and a transmitter closer to Jackson.
since the stations on 1550 in both Shreveport and Mobile, AL have been gone for years, you wouldn't have to protect them with a null anymore. The only station you'd have to protect in Huntsville, since that station is still around. (I used to pick up shreveport behind wokj at night, and Mobile at sunrise) I think if WOKJ had better local coverage they might could have still been around in some form. But maintaining 50kw with 6 towers must have eaten up a lot of cash, just on the light bill alone. And the fact that the only people that could hear the station were either in Bolton or Tulsa, OK.
Click to expand...

Actually they did. Carl Haynes tried to get 1550 licensed closer in to Jackson (maybe Flowood?) at a lower power level. I remember seeing the FCC filings on the CDBS. They may still be there if you search for 1550 in Mississippi. If I remember correctly, the FCC never approved it.

RFB
 
Not sure what happened to the apps but there were some new ones for 1550 a few years ago. These were in 2006.

NEW AM 1550 kHz DA2 Daytime B B APP GERMANTOWN TN US BNP-20040130AHM 2.0 kW 161080 BRET D. HUGGINS
NEW AM 1550 kHz DA2 Nighttime B B APP GERMANTOWN TN US BNP-20040130AHM 0.25 kW 161080 BRET D. HUGGINS


NEW AM 1550 kHz DA3 Daytime B B APP BYHALIA MS US BNP-20040130ASR 1.0 kW 160563 EDUCATIONAL MEDIA FOUNDATION
NEW AM 1550 kHz DA3 Nighttime B B APP BYHALIA MS US BNP-20040130ASR 0.14 kW 160563 EDUCATIONAL MEDIA FOUNDATION
NEW AM 1550 kHz DA3 Critical Hours B B APP BYHALIA MS US BNP-20040130ASR 1.0 kW 160563 EDUCATIONAL MEDIA FOUNDATION

NEW AM 1550 kHz DAN Daytime B B APP SHERWOOD AR US BNP-20040130AGR 10.0 kW 161270 ADVANCE ACQUISITION, INC.
NEW AM 1550 kHz DAN Nighttime B B APP SHERWOOD AR US BNP-20040130AGR 0.75 kW 161270 ADVANCE ACQUISITION, INC.
 
IIRC, the Byhalia 1550 app was granted a CP? The question was building a high dial position, directional AM, before the new FCC rules on directional proofs. Gotta have some deep pockets and be willing to wait on the payback for a long time (if ever).

Thanks J Alex for posting the history of WBAD! We may have met when you owned Mobile as I was the engineer for the 107.3 in Pensacola during the 1980's. I also worked at WABG-TV & AM in Greenwood and lived in Greenville for a few months. I grew up in Senatobia and remember when J.B. Skelton changed the frequency of the WSAO ITA 5 kW transmitter to 1140. I was going to Miss State and vaugely remember that maybe WOJK paid Mathis to move WSAO so that 'OKJ could open up their day pattern?

Dr. Bob
 
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