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wfom

R

russellbl

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What happened to Roger clark? What about all the other DJ's that worked there. Don Yow? Mike Damarra?
 
WFOM may not have ever had the signal strength of WQXI or WPLO or WIIN but their reputation for breaking new hits in the market was legendary. Davenport's connections with the labels' reps gave him a major edge over the egos at the other three stations. The jocks all had talent; there wasn't a lot of reliance on gimmicks, gadgets or such nonsense. It has long been overlooked by historians.
 
I was a teen in Cobb County during WFOM's heyday and they were a big deal. I got to meet Jack Hurst and some of the jocks there in the 70's - they were all nice to me, so I have nothing bad to say about them.
 
Jimmy Davenport gave me my start in radio when I was only 13! I started hanging around the station after school doing stuff for him and the staff. I was priviliged to work with Hugh Jarrett (Big Hugh Baby!) not only at the station but at his teen nightclub on "the four lane" in Cobb County. As a senior in High School (Osborne High) I worked the 7p-12m shift under the name Steve King and had a ball. On Friday nights the record promo men would come and have dinner and drinks in Jimmy's office and bring all of the newest releases for everyone to listen to and comment on. Then Jimmy would decide what new ones to add. He would bring them into me and I got to be the first one to play them.
It was a great time for Radio... and WFOM was a great station. Thank you Jimmy.
Joe Pedicino
 
the amazing fom did help break some records in atl. thanks to "the gator" and others who had to be on the payroll of several stations and probably lables too.
what a fun place to work for young kid outta college. keep your eye on the ball!
 
zillajockey said:
thanks to "the gator" and others who had to be on the payroll of several stations and probably lables too.
Click to expand...
Bob Lenihan (The Gator) was not on any record company payrolls. He was a consultant for several stations. To imply any wrong doing on his part is hogwash. If you would be so kind as to identify the "others", perhaps we can get that cleared up. By the way it's "labels".
 
Why did WFOM have so many gold records on their walls? Why did WFOM have a seventy record current playlist?
The answer to both questions is that WFOM was heavily involved in payola. WFOM was poorly engineered and had a string of small market sounding djs. WFOM was one of the greatest radio toilets of all time.
 
RADIO TRUTH said:
Why did WFOM have so many gold records on their walls?

Because like WQXI and WPLO and many top 40 stations, they were given to them by record companies for taking a chance on new artists

Why did WFOM have a seventy record current playlist?

They listed 50 on their silver dollar survey

WFOM was poorly engineered

Gene Ludwig and Jack Geisler would probably disagree with you. At one time in the 70's, Davenport hired Eric Small, nationally recognized as am expert on making AM's sound bigger than life.


and had a string of small market sounding djs.

WFOM offered a lot of young jocks the opportunity to work in a major market metro area. Some went on to bigger an better things.


WFOM was one of the greatest radio toilets of all time.

You must be a disgruntled former employee. You certainly have no idea what you're talking about
Click to expand...
 
When I was doing the Saturday Night All Request show on B98.5 I was usually relieved at midnight by Bill Duncan. He is no longer with us, but a real nice fellow, and he knew where the "all you can eat Prime Rib" places were.

He was a WFOM alumnus and always told great radio stories about that station. Would love to see some pics of the studio and perhaps an air check or two. For a class IV AM ia market the size of Atlanta..it must have gotten out pretty well from Marietta to have such a reputation.

In Buffalo we had the big 2 WKBW, and 1400/WYSL..major differences in signalbut crazy Gordon McClendon ran that place like a major market blowtorch, and the engineering made it LOUD.
Then there was WNIA out of Cheektowaga..a little dumpy station in a residential area running 500 watts at 1230. But ya know..they had the promo guys there all the time, and that little station broke a truckload of hits..So every market had one.
 
WNIA was owned by Gordon Brown and was the sister station to WSAY in Rochester, NY. Even though WSAY was only 5,000 watts at 1370, it came into my hometown of Baltimore well at night. But what a joke of a station it was. Brown's stations were his hobby. WSAY's nighttime jocks were always called Mike Melody. I finally got to see the station in the 70's when visiting a friend in Rochester. By that time, the format had changed from top 40 to album rock. Supposedly the jocks asked Gordon Brown if they could change the format, and he said yes. Ratings were probably nonexistent with either format.

The station occupied a 2-story old house at the transmitter site. The transmitter was on the first floor. The studio was in kind of a living room or bedroom, and it had a fireplace. The equipment was extremely antiquated. The current Mike Melody was a kid named Kevin. When I was there, a Yankees game was on, and Kevin and a friend were enjoying alcoholic beverages.
 
i remember WFOM had the VU meter on the board wired to show gain reduction instead of vu.

and the mic channel program/line switch was flipped over so that when you put the mic in program you were actually putting it in audition... and audition fed the mic processing... before it was fed back into the program line.

i'm sure someone can expound on those engineering features.
 
I always wondered why Atlanta could not support two major market Top 40's. WQXI had a poor nightime signal as I remember. Charlotte had 2 serious contenders for a while and so did Richmond and Norfolk.
 
MsMusicRadio said:
I always wondered why Atlanta could not support two major market Top 40's. WQXI had a poor nightime signal as I remember. Charlotte had 2 serious contenders for a while and so did Richmond and Norfolk.
Click to expand...
Quixie had Top 40 competition--first WPLO 590 before they went country, and WAKE 1340 (before going urban as WIGO), and later WIIN 970. 970 later served as an AM simul of AOR 96 Rock before going religious.

By the time WIIN faded, Quixie's Top 40 competition was coming more from the FM dial with Z-93 and Quixie's sister 94-Q.

If anything, the weakness of competition more derived from the weakness of signals in the ATL metro, especially at night. 970 was a daytimer through the 96 Rock AM days, signing off completely at dusk with the Looney Tunes "That's All Folks" theme. My daughter points out that 590 was highly directional at night, with an east-west pattern. And she also reminded me that 1340 is a local channel that has difficulty reaching out to the suburbs day or night with its measly 1000 watts.
 
amos said:
i remember WFOM had the VU meter on the board wired to show gain reduction instead of vu.

and the mic channel program/line switch was flipped over so that when you put the mic in program you were actually putting it in audition... and audition fed the mic processing... before it was fed back into the program line.

i'm sure someone can expound on those engineering features.
Click to expand...

Didn't they have a FCC "issue" with the antenna current meter once?
 
MsMusicRadio, at one time (1972), the Richmond Metro area had five top 40's:

WEET 1320 (Daytime Only)
WTVR 1380 (Called Themselves "Request Radio"-Full time)
WLEE 1480 (Full Time)
WSSV 1240 (Petersburg but covered Richmond during the day)
WHAP 1320 (Hopewell but covered Richmond during the day)

TVR and SSV were simulcast on FM (98.1 and 99.3 respectively).

WIKI (1420) in Chester was also a Top 40 but I think that format ended in 1970 or 1971.

Richmond also had two "Soul" stations...WANT 990 and WENZ 1450 (Highland Springs but covered Richmond during day and night patterns.

I grew up in Emporia and was lucky enough to listen to the Richmond stations and stronger Norfolk stations (WGH and WKLX) plus Emporia's WEVA which was a pretty good station on it's own.
 
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