What's going on

[ricksegers]

This board has been too quiet. Surely there is something going on.

How about some stories. Surely you can remember some bizarre characters or great stories.

Rick

 

[BSteve]

> This board has been too quiet. Surely there is something
> going on.
>
> How about some stories. Surely you can remember some bizarre
> characters or great stories.
>
> Rick
>

========================
Many years ago I worked with a guy on a morning show who had the largest audience around. A lot of them were little old ladies who thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. He could do no wrong. This was back in the day when you had to be very careful what was said on the air.

To protect the innocent we'll call the guy Joe. He would record phone calls while a record was playing and if they were funny or he could make something out of it he would play it back after the record ended. Sometime when he didn't have anything good on his tape and a call came in just as the record ended he would put it directly on the air.
This particular morning that was the case.
The caller said "Hey Joe, you been advertising that Preperation H stuff for a while on your show and I decided to try it."
Joe: "Thats great, I hope its working for you."

Caller: " I been using it now for couple of weeks and for the good it's done me I might as well have been sticking it up my a**"
Dead silence.....then the next record started.

Doesn't sound so funny now considering whats on the air, but back then the whole radio station was laughing except Joe who was worried the boss had been listening and he might have to explain why he was putting live phone calls on the air.

 

[jjjohnson]

OK. Here is one of my favorites. The radio station where I was employed was located in a "less than desirable" neighborhood. We kept the office doors locked at night and weekends to keep curious "neighbors" out. Late one night, I heard someone banging loudly on the front door and hollering for help. Thinking the worst, I put my better judgement aside and went to door. I could see through the window a man standing on the steps, wearing no shirt and no shoes. When I asked him what he wanted, he begged me to let him in to use the phone. Throwing caution to the wind, I opened the door and the fellow came in, out of breath and wheezing.
When he was finally able to speak, he told me that he had been having an affair with a married woman in subdivision about a mile from our studios. The woman's husband came home unexpectedly and the fellow ran out the back door, sans shirt, shoes and car keys. He wanted to use the phone to call his brother, who would come to pick him up. I let him use the phone and went back into the studio where he wouldn't see me laughing.

 

[jpedicino]

> This board has been too quiet. Surely there is something
> going on.
>
> How about some stories. Surely you can remember some bizarre
> characters or great stories.
>
> Rick

Here's one I'll never forget... The day that Martin Luther King was murdered. I was just a young pup working the midnight to six am shift for the late GREAT Jimmy Davenport at WFOM AM 1230 in Marietta. All afternoon we had been warned about people rioting...real possiblitiy of violence... Jimmy was really worried about someone trying to take over the radio station. He decided to run a special story as a tribute to Dr. King. He notified several local churchs that we would run special tributes from their church if they wanted to come and record one. But Jimmy was never one to leave things to chance. He recruited the engineer, Gene, and one of the announcers to stay at the station all night with me, "just in case". Atlanta was blessed and we had no big scale violence that night, unlike some other cities. But I will never forget doing my show with Gene in the transmitter room with a double barrel shotgun, the announcer at the front door with two revolvers, me in the studio with the biggest damn 357 magnum I had ever seen, and Jimmy in his office at the main door with an old fashioned machine gun! I almost passed out when he pulled that thing from behind his desk! Damn I loved that man! I will never forget the respect he earned from a young kid that night. He did every peaceful thing he could think of to protect his station... but then sat back loaded for "Bear"... as he always said..."just in case"!
Joe

 

[JackieSteele]

Great story, Joe.

A great deal of my war stories come from my tenure at WUOG (student-run at Univ of Ga).

We came in one day to find that the glass of the station front door had been shattered. Obviously we thought that someone had broken in, but that didn't make much sense because there was always one staffer there no matter what the hour. Turns out that the one staffer always locked the door during her midnight shift (no fault there). When she ran downstairs to get a candy bar from the vending machine, she locked herself out. Rather than go across the street to campus police to get a key, she went to the parking lot and got her baseball bat out of her car. And the rest is WUOG history.

Then there was also the time that the student engineer (wish I could remember his name) pretty much single-handedly saved all of the equipment when we had a roof issue and water was quite literally pouring into the studios. He was wading through angkle-deep (at least!) water to cover all the equipment with trash bags and begin moving it to a drier locale. Especially heroic given all of the soggy electrical connections involved.

 

[Radio-X]

Well,
When I was working at a country station in VA, the afternoon jock (We'll call him Dan) decided to play a trick on the midday jock (We'll call him Jack) by saying he was with a bank and his account was overdrawn. He cut this on a 360 and played it over the air (Jack was not in the listening area at the time). The idea was to get Dan to call up a sales number that was hooked up to a 360, then tell him that he had been duped.

After Dan had left, Jack came to the studio asking me for any money I had because he was overdrawn and his child support was due the next day. I realized he was taking Dan's prank too serious, so I had to tell him Dan's plan.

Jack decided to enact revenge on Dan. When both of them arrived at 9 am, Jack snuck in a tape recorder and an unloaded air rifle and started acting very depressed, announcing that he was going to shoot himself. Jack (who was unaware that Dan knew about his plan) tried to explain, but before he was able to Dan "shot" himself with the rifle, making a loud pop and scaring Jack so much that he got weak in the knees and fell to the ground. The tape Jack played sounded something like this:

Jack: Dude, I just want this to end right now
Dan: Look, look, look...I was going to tell...
Loud POP! from air rifle
Dan: Oh...my...HOLY S**T! CALL THE RESCUE SQUAD! OH MY GOD!

Jack then busted out in laughter and I assume the feud was settled after Dan cussed him out.

Anyway, probably sounds long-winded and stupid now, but it was funny as hell being there...God, sometimes I miss those days working there.

Radio-X<P ID="signature">______________
Formerly shocking, rocking, and angering the R-I community as radiodxrichmond!</P>

 

[Braswell]

Which one to tell...which one to tell???

Here in the naked city, there are many stories to tell. This is but one of them:

It's a humorous story, but first the background.

For a short while in 1975 (As I recall, all my gigs were for a "short while"), I worked for WJEM/Valdosta. In those days, Big Jem was the only non-fulltime station in the market, but had significantly higher ratings than any of the others.

There were several reasons, all coming from the mind of Vernon Arnold, the legendary Uncle Vern. Vernon was the manager and 25% owner of WJEM. J.C. Johnson was the majority owner.

WJEM was country formatted, and had been since it's first day on the air, way back in '55. J.C. was a local celebrity, having worked for a number of years at WGOV, playing country music. He had been the host of the "Bonnie-Lou and Buster Show" (a well known, regional country act) on television, which had been extremely popular. J.C. bought WJEM from Jim Massey (JEM=James E. Massey) in 1960. Vernon came along in '63, and stayed.

Here's the way Vernon had it structured. Everyone (on-air) that worked at the station was announcer, newsperson and salesperson. The first day on the job, they took your car to the radio shop, and had a two-way radio installed. My shift was on-air from 8:00A-10:00A, news 10:00A-12:00N, and sales in the afternoon. I was paid $100.00 a week, plus 10% commission. The news and air work was a breeze, but I hated sales. It was especially difficult there, because there were SO many folks selling...a total of six. As the new guy, there wasn't much left for me. It was easy to give up, but I was starving. Ah hah...an idea!

37 miles "up the road" was Nashville, Georgia...home of WNGA, a kilowatt daytimer on 1600. After a few weeks of struggle, I buzzed up to 'NGA. As luck would have it, manager Duane Tucker needed an afternoon guy. Perfect, I thought. Ain't nobody from Valdosta listening to WNGA, but, to be safe, I decided to use one of my old air-names...Bob Walker.

I swear to God, it happened just this way. Second day on the air at 'NGA (I worked 1:00 'till sign-off), 20 minutes into the shift, and the phone rings. I answered to hear this, "HELLLLLOOOOOO, Bob Walker. This is your Uncle Vern calling. Are you taking requests?". I stammered, "yes", and he said, "First, how do you like workin' up there?". "Okay", I replied. "Good", he said, "here's my request. Bring your car in tomorrow morning, so we can take the radio out. Be good, and have fun, now. Bye bye".

And there it was. Vernon and I later reconnected and reconciled, and I'm happy to call him an old friend. We've laughed about that, 'till our sides hurt.

Life is SO strange. For several years, I've been doing some consultation for Bennie Hewett. In the late 80's, he somehow ended up owning WNGA. When I started working with him, he had WNGA "leased out" (but not legally LMA'd). The guy had been paying him regularly for a few years, but all of a sudden stopped, and Bennie couldn't get his phone calls returned.

In December '92, he asked me to go down, and see if I could find the guy. It was a Saturday when I went down, and surprisingly, I was picking the thing up about 30 miles out. Not bad for a kilowatt on 1600, in sandy south Georgia. As I listened, it was obvious that whoever was there, was just tracking CD's. There were no commercials, no liners and no legal I.D's.

When I got there, there were no cars at the station, but I didn't think much about it. I went to the front door, and found it locked. As I knocked on the door, it opened. I walked inside, but found the place empty. I walked around for a few minutes, and finally decided to try to find the guy. I had been given some places to inquire, but nobody had seen him in "quite a while". I went by his house, but it appeared to be empty.

Finally, I called Hewett, and he asked what I thought we should do. After I explained to him that the station was operating in a highly illegal fashion (no I.D,'s, no remote control and no EAS), he agreed that I just needed to shut it down, change the locks and secure everything, before I left. At my insistence, we filled for an STA to be legally silent, while an attempt to sell was made. After 6 months, we renewed the STA, but had no able buyers. I tried to encourage him to spend the 10 to 12 grand to put it back on (automation, satellite, remote control, EAS), but he wouldn't go for it. When the second STA expired, the station's license was officially cancelled, and that was that.

Six weeks later, the FCC opened an AM "Major Change" window. If we had hung on, and kept it operating, we, like so many others did, could've filed to move that thing, on a different frequency (but still as a daytimer) to the outskirts of some big city, and could've sold the permit for big bucks.

That's the only station I've ever permanently shut down, and I don't like the way it feels. I hope to never have to do that again. <P ID="signature">______________
Jay Braswell - Moderator
Atlanta/North Florida/South Carolina/Georgia Boards</P>

 

[jpedicino]

Re: Which one to tell...which one to tell???

Ok... if this keeps up I'm going to break down and start bawling! Be honest... do these stories sound like the radio business we live in today? (Well Ok... not me anymore) If you read between the lines of all of these stories one thing stands out... WE WERE HAVING FUN! WE LOVED THOSE OLD SMALL TOWN RADIO STATIONS! We didn't just "work" there... they were our life. And another thing... the stations were very important to the small towns we worked in. We were part of the life thread of the community. People counted on us... because they knew they could!
(btw Braswell, did you ever find out what happened to the guy that just went out for a pack of smokes and left the radio station switch on?... I swear I heard the Twilight Zone theme playing as I got to the end of that story!)

Ok... here's another one...
I was working for WSSA radio in Morrow Ga. I was the GM for an owner that lived just outside of Washington D.C. His son was my PD. Things were actually going along ok... or so we thought. Sales were up... we sounded good... we were staying on the air and all was great with the world. Then one afternoon after having a bad experience with a potential client I came back to the station in a rather bad mood. I was sitting in my office (which as in many small buildings was right off the lobby) and I heard someone come in the front door and ask to see the manager. Being young and stupid I just yelled out "Tell him I'm not available".
After several moments of silence my receptionist/traffic dept/bookeeper person came in looking white as a sheet... she said "I think you need to see him" and gave me his card. Turns out the guy, whose name was Mr. Savage (yes really!) and he was from the IRS! He came walking in my door and I swear he had a big chain and padlock in his hands! He asked if I was the GM... and told me that he had a cease and dissist order to close down the radio station! I needed to get everyone out of the building as soon as we signed off that day! Turns out our good buddy the owner had not payed any payroll taxes for over a year! He had made many promises... but no checks! I begged him to let me call the owner and find out what was going on. You can imagine the owner's reaction when I told him he was about to lose his precious radio station. He worked out a ONE DAY reprieve and swore to deposit a payment of over $21,000 into the IRS account the next morning and to keep doing so until he was caught up. Told his son that he just never got around to making the tax payments! And I stopped wondering why he would name a radio station WSSA... ASS backwards radio. I think that was just about when I started sending out resumes and ending up going to work for Susquehanna in Atlanta!

BTW... the son and myself went out that night and got very drunk!
Damn I miss those days!
Joe

ps... btw.. did I ever tell you about the time I helped take WCNN RADIO and put the audio from CNN Headlines on it as the format? First story on the air after the change started with..."As you can SEE behind me" But it was Ok.. Ted Turner loved it!





> Here in the naked city, there are many stories to tell. This
> is but one of them:
>
> It's a humorous story, but first the background.
>
> For a short while in 1975 (As I recall, all my gigs were for
> a "short while"), I worked for WJEM/Valdosta. In those days,
> Big Jem was the only non-fulltime station in the market, but
> had significantly higher ratings than any of the others.
>
> There were several reasons, all coming from the mind of
> Vernon Arnold, the legendary Uncle Vern. Vernon was the
> manager and 25% owner of WJEM. J.C. Johnson was the majority
> owner.
>
> WJEM was country formatted, and had been since it's first
> day on the air, way back in '55. J.C. was a local celebrity,
> having worked for a number of years at WGOV, playing country
> music. He had been the host of the "Bonnie-Lou and Buster
> Show" (a well known, regional country act) on television,
> which had been extremely popular. J.C. bought WJEM from Jim
> Massey (JEM=James E. Massey) in 1960. Vernon came along in
> '63, and stayed.
>
> Here's the way Vernon had it structured. Everyone (on-air)
> that worked at the station was announcer, newsperson and
> salesperson. The first day on the job, they took your car to
> the radio shop, and had a two-way radio installed. My shift
> was on-air from 8:00A-10:00A, news 10:00A-12:00N, and sales
> in the afternoon. I was paid $100.00 a week, plus 10%
> commission. The news and air work was a breeze, but I hated
> sales. It was especially difficult there, because there were
> SO many folks selling...a total of six. As the new guy,
> there wasn't much left for me. It was easy to give up, but I
> was starving. Ah hah...an idea!
>
> 37 miles "up the road" was Nashville, Georgia...home of
> WNGA, a kilowatt daytimer on 1600. After a few weeks of
> struggle, I buzzed up to 'NGA. As luck would have it,
> manager Duane Tucker needed an afternoon guy. Perfect, I
> thought. Ain't nobody from Valdosta listening to WNGA, but,
> to be safe, I decided to use one of my old air-names...Bob
> Walker.
>
> I swear to God, it happened just this way. Second day on the
> air at 'NGA (I worked 1:00 'till sign-off), 20 minutes into
> the shift, and the phone rings. I answered to hear this,
> "HELLLLLOOOOOO, Bob Walker. This is your Uncle Vern calling.
> Are you taking requests?". I stammered, "yes", and he said,
> "First, how do you like workin' up there?". "Okay", I
> replied. "Good", he said, "here's my request. Bring your car
> in tomorrow morning, so we can take the radio out. Be good,
> and have fun, now. Bye bye".
>
> And there it was. Vernon and I later reconnected and
> reconciled, and I'm happy to call him an old friend. We've
> laughed about that, 'till our sides hurt.
>
> Life is SO strange. For several years, I've been doing some
> consultation for Bennie Hewett. In the late 80's, he somehow
> ended up owning WNGA. When I started working with him, he
> had WNGA "leased out" (but not legally LMA'd). The guy had
> been paying him regularly for a few years, but all of a
> sudden stopped, and Bennie couldn't get his phone calls
> returned.
>
> In December '92, he asked me to go down, and see if I could
> find the guy. It was a Saturday when I went down, and
> surprisingly, I was picking the thing up about 30 miles out.
> Not bad for a kilowatt on 1600, in sandy south Georgia. As I
> listened, it was obvious that whoever was there, was just
> tracking CD's. There were no commercials, no liners and no
> legal I.D's.
>
> When I got there, there were no cars at the station, but I
> didn't think much about it. I went to the front door, and
> found it locked. As I knocked on the door, it opened. I
> walked inside, but found the place empty. I walked around
> for a few minutes, and finally decided to try to find the
> guy. I had been given some places to inquire, but nobody had
> seen him in "quite a while". I went by his house, but it
> appeared to be empty.
>
> Finally, I called Hewett, and he asked what I thought we
> should do. After I explained to him that the station was
> operating in a highly illegal fashion (no I.D,'s, no remote
> control and no EAS), he agreed that I just needed to shut it
> down, change the locks and secure everything, before I left.
> At my insistence, we filled for an STA to be legally silent,
> while an attempt to sell was made. After 6 months, we
> renewed the STA, but had no able buyers. I tried to
> encourage him to spend the 10 to 12 grand to put it back on
> (automation, satellite, remote control, EAS), but he
> wouldn't go for it. When the second STA expired, the
> station's license was officially cancelled, and that was
> that.
>
> Six weeks later, the FCC opened an AM "Major Change" window.
> If we had hung on, and kept it operating, we, like so many
> others did, could've filed to move that thing, on a
> different frequency (but still as a daytimer) to the
> outskirts of some big city, and could've sold the permit for
> big bucks.
>
> That's the only station I've ever permanently shut down, and
> I don't like the way it feels. I hope to never have to do
> that again.
>

 

[taylorengineer]

So that's what WSSA stood for!!

> Ok... if this keeps up I'm going to break down and start
> bawling! Be honest... do these stories sound like the radio
> business we live in today? (Well Ok... not me anymore) If
> you read between the lines of all of these stories one thing
> stands out... WE WERE HAVING FUN! WE LOVED THOSE OLD SMALL
> TOWN RADIO STATIONS! We didn't just "work" there... they
> were our life. And another thing... the stations were very
> important to the small towns we worked in. We were part of
> the life thread of the community. People counted on us...
> because they knew they could!
> (btw Braswell, did you ever find out what happened to the
> guy that just went out for a pack of smokes and left the
> radio station switch on?... I swear I heard the Twilight
> Zone theme playing as I got to the end of that story!)
>
> Ok... here's another one...
> I was working for WSSA radio in Morrow Ga. I was the GM for
> an owner that lived just outside of Washington D.C. His son
> was my PD. Things were actually going along ok... or so we
> thought. Sales were up... we sounded good... we were
> staying on the air and all was great with the world. Then
> one afternoon after having a bad experience with a potential
> client I came back to the station in a rather bad mood. I
> was sitting in my office (which as in many small buildings
> was right off the lobby) and I heard someone come in the
> front door and ask to see the manager. Being young and
> stupid I just yelled out "Tell him I'm not available".
> After several moments of silence my receptionist/traffic
> dept/bookeeper person came in looking white as a sheet...
> she said "I think you need to see him" and gave me his card.
> Turns out the guy, whose name was Mr. Savage (yes really!)
> and he was from the IRS! He came walking in my door and I
> swear he had a big chain and padlock in his hands! He asked
> if I was the GM... and told me that he had a cease and
> dissist order to close down the radio station! I needed to
> get everyone out of the building as soon as we signed off
> that day! Turns out our good buddy the owner had not payed
> any payroll taxes for over a year! He had made many
> promises... but no checks! I begged him to let me call the
> owner and find out what was going on. You can imagine the
> owner's reaction when I told him he was about to lose his
> precious radio station. He worked out a ONE DAY reprieve
> and swore to deposit a payment of over $21,000 into the IRS
> account the next morning and to keep doing so until he was
> caught up. Told his son that he just never got around to
> making the tax payments! And I stopped wondering why he
> would name a radio station WSSA... ASS backwards radio. I
> think that was just about when I started sending out resumes
> and ending up going to work for Susquehanna in Atlanta!
>
> BTW... the son and myself went out that night and got very
> drunk!
> Damn I miss those days!
> Joe
>
> ps... btw.. did I ever tell you about the time I helped take
> WCNN RADIO and put the audio from CNN Headlines on it as the
> format? First story on the air after the change started
> with..."As you can SEE behind me" But it was Ok.. Ted
> Turner loved it!



>
>

Damn Joe.....I never really thought about that....but WSSA used to be a really "ass backwards" radio station.
I worked there, long after your days there, and it was a real, honest to God, hell hole. Technically, it was just horrible. The tower was located in the middle of a small lake and you had to put on waders to get to the middle of the lake to read the antenna current meter. Did the waders leak?? Why, of course they did, as did everything else that could leak!
I remember back in the mid 80's, when Atlanta had some of the coldest temps on record, one day around Christmas. Temps that morning were -5 to -10F and there was a 10-15 MPH breeze. And I get that dreaded call......
We are off the air!! So here I go, it's 6 something in the morning, the car finally starts, and off I go. When I get to the station, the transmitter room door is FROZEN shut. That leads to chipping ice off the door for some 10 minutes. I try to start the transmitter and it says "UHHHHHH.....POP! After some head scratching, I head down to the lake......and there, flopping in the breeze, is the "wire" between the doghouse and the tower. The transmitter signal was not getting to the tower to be radiated.....and the repair involved leaky waders, sub zero temperatures, and a very reluctant, young engineer.
It was strange....the water was much warmer than the air....the bottom part of my body was at 32 degrees....it was wet, but felt toasty compared to the top half of my body, which was above water. At least I didn't have to worry about the snakes that day! The repair was very quick and very temporary, but we got back on the air. And I didn't get sick for Christmas, either!!
I really enjoy the old war stories....you guys in the naked city are boss!

Tom

P.S. And Joe, you are right....the business is not ANYTHING like the old days. WE did have much fun.....the stories are great!! We are fortunate that we didn't have to drive a truck or be a bean counter in a cubicle(although we would still have jobs and 401Ks.) Radio was/is an interesting career choice....only a few are man enough!




>
>
>
> > Here in the naked city, there are many stories to tell.
> This
> > is but one of them:
> >
> > It's a humorous story, but first the background.
> >
> > For a short while in 1975 (As I recall, all my gigs were
> for
> > a "short while"), I worked for WJEM/Valdosta. In those
> days,
> > Big Jem was the only non-fulltime station in the market,
> but
> > had significantly higher ratings than any of the others.
> >
> > There were several reasons, all coming from the mind of
> > Vernon Arnold, the legendary Uncle Vern. Vernon was the
> > manager and 25% owner of WJEM. J.C. Johnson was the
> majority
> > owner.
> >
> > WJEM was country formatted, and had been since it's first
> > day on the air, way back in '55. J.C. was a local
> celebrity,
> > having worked for a number of years at WGOV, playing
> country
> > music. He had been the host of the "Bonnie-Lou and Buster
>
> > Show" (a well known, regional country act) on television,
> > which had been extremely popular. J.C. bought WJEM from
> Jim
> > Massey (JEM=James E. Massey) in 1960. Vernon came along in
>
> > '63, and stayed.
> >
> > Here's the way Vernon had it structured. Everyone (on-air)
>
> > that worked at the station was announcer, newsperson and
> > salesperson. The first day on the job, they took your car
> to
> > the radio shop, and had a two-way radio installed. My
> shift
> > was on-air from 8:00A-10:00A, news 10:00A-12:00N, and
> sales
> > in the afternoon. I was paid $100.00 a week, plus 10%
> > commission. The news and air work was a breeze, but I
> hated
> > sales. It was especially difficult there, because there
> were
> > SO many folks selling...a total of six. As the new guy,
> > there wasn't much left for me. It was easy to give up, but
> I
> > was starving. Ah hah...an idea!
> >
> > 37 miles "up the road" was Nashville, Georgia...home of
> > WNGA, a kilowatt daytimer on 1600. After a few weeks of
> > struggle, I buzzed up to 'NGA. As luck would have it,
> > manager Duane Tucker needed an afternoon guy. Perfect, I
> > thought. Ain't nobody from Valdosta listening to WNGA,
> but,
> > to be safe, I decided to use one of my old air-names...Bob
>
> > Walker.
> >
> > I swear to God, it happened just this way. Second day on
> the
> > air at 'NGA (I worked 1:00 'till sign-off), 20 minutes
> into
> > the shift, and the phone rings. I answered to hear this,
> > "HELLLLLOOOOOO, Bob Walker. This is your Uncle Vern
> calling.
> > Are you taking requests?". I stammered, "yes", and he
> said,
> > "First, how do you like workin' up there?". "Okay", I
> > replied. "Good", he said, "here's my request. Bring your
> car
> > in tomorrow morning, so we can take the radio out. Be
> good,
> > and have fun, now. Bye bye".
> >
> > And there it was. Vernon and I later reconnected and
> > reconciled, and I'm happy to call him an old friend. We've
>
> > laughed about that, 'till our sides hurt.
> >
> > Life is SO strange. For several years, I've been doing
> some
> > consultation for Bennie Hewett. In the late 80's, he
> somehow
> > ended up owning WNGA. When I started working with him, he
> > had WNGA "leased out" (but not legally LMA'd). The guy had
>
> > been paying him regularly for a few years, but all of a
> > sudden stopped, and Bennie couldn't get his phone calls
> > returned.
> >
> > In December '92, he asked me to go down, and see if I
> could
> > find the guy. It was a Saturday when I went down, and
> > surprisingly, I was picking the thing up about 30 miles
> out.
> > Not bad for a kilowatt on 1600, in sandy south Georgia. As
> I
> > listened, it was obvious that whoever was there, was just
> > tracking CD's. There were no commercials, no liners and no
>
> > legal I.D's.
> >
> > When I got there, there were no cars at the station, but I
>
> > didn't think much about it. I went to the front door, and
> > found it locked. As I knocked on the door, it opened. I
> > walked inside, but found the place empty. I walked around
> > for a few minutes, and finally decided to try to find the
> > guy. I had been given some places to inquire, but nobody
> had
> > seen him in "quite a while". I went by his house, but it
> > appeared to be empty.
> >
> > Finally, I called Hewett, and he asked what I thought we
> > should do. After I explained to him that the station was
> > operating in a highly illegal fashion (no I.D,'s, no
> remote
> > control and no EAS), he agreed that I just needed to shut
> it
> > down, change the locks and secure everything, before I
> left.
> > At my insistence, we filled for an STA to be legally
> silent,
> > while an attempt to sell was made. After 6 months, we
> > renewed the STA, but had no able buyers. I tried to
> > encourage him to spend the 10 to 12 grand to put it back
> on
> > (automation, satellite, remote control, EAS), but he
> > wouldn't go for it. When the second STA expired, the
> > station's license was officially cancelled, and that was
> > that.
> >
> > Six weeks later, the FCC opened an AM "Major Change"
> window.
> > If we had hung on, and kept it operating, we, like so many
>
> > others did, could've filed to move that thing, on a
> > different frequency (but still as a daytimer) to the
> > outskirts of some big city, and could've sold the permit
> for
> > big bucks.
> >
> > That's the only station I've ever permanently shut down,
> and
> > I don't like the way it feels. I hope to never have to do
> > that again.
> >
>

 

[radioboy]

> This board has been too quiet. Surely there is something
> going on.
>
> How about some stories. Surely you can remember some bizarre
> characters or great stories.
>
> Rick
>
There are some GREAT stories in this thread..also over on the Alabama board,
the thread about Birdman also is some interesting reading. Birdman did a short stint in North Florida at now-defunct KIX cOUNTRY 99.9 where "THE DOT MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE." Birdman and John Bohannon were hilarious together.

Okay..my first radio job was at WTAL AM-1450 in Tallahassee. How I got there, and my first night on the air, is a story in itself..

I tried to get my start at WTNT AM 1270, which was then the country station. WTNT-AM's sister station, WOMA, had been country, then beautiful music..then country..(The old WOMA is now CC's 94.9 WTNT-FM Country)
I had done an audition tape, and the PD kind of liked it, but I was young and green..probably awful. I have a visual disability in that I can see things, but when I have to read something (log, book, whatever) I have to look closely at it. The PD was kind of afraid I'd mess up on the air..punch the wrong button or something, but he couldn't SAY that out loud. So he'd just stall and say "Well,
maybe when we have an opening...."

By this time I'd made friends with everyone at WTNT/WOMA. When the PD left promptly at 5 every afternoon, sometimes one of them would call and say "Hey, there's a ball game starting at 7:15 tonight on WOMA. Come in and we'll show you how to run the board." I showed up, ran the ball game..and learned everything I could from those wonderful guys. The PD never know how many of those WOMA ball games were board-op'd by the kid he was afraid to hire.

One of the WTNT jocks told me to try at WTAL because "everybody in Tallahassee
in radio gets their start at 'TAL. I applied at WTAL six times and eventually was hired by Tom Derzypolski (Tommy Dee)to run Friday night/Saturday morning from midninght to 6 AM. Most of the time was filled with the Larry King Show on Mutual Network.

First night: young student is running the board and has been told to train me on the board. He explained all the buttons and dials on an old McMartin console about the size of a small sofa. At 2:30 AM he said "I'm gonna run down to the store for a second and I'll be back in a jiffy." He said just "run the ID at 3
right after the 'bee-doop' tone on Mutual."

At 3:00 he wasn't back so I ran the ID, hit the news..no problem, then I see at
3:05-3:06 on the log: WEATHER REPORT-LIVE. Aaahhrrgghh you mean..if that fellow isn't back in 2 minutes I haveta TALK?

Well, nervous as all get-out I did the weather break and got back into the network right on time as if I'd been doing it for ages. The guy got back around 3:30..and says "nice job..you handled it well." I went on to work at WTAL for a year. moving up to a music show within a month and a short stint as music director until the station was sold exactly one year to the day from my first
time on the air there..

That was only the beginning of the roller coaster ride they call radio..<P ID="signature">______________
WJJD The Country Giant Revisited streams at
http://www.live365.com/stations/alanmccall</P>

 

[ricksegers]

The stories have been better than I had hoped. Joe, you and Braswell ought to write a book. Well, here's my story...

I was working in Albany at WALG/WKAK when they were out in the country. About twice a year, a squirrel would get around one of the transformers on a pole and gt zapped and it would knock us off the air for about a half an hour till Ga Power could come out. We had a new GM who had come riding in on his white horse to save us and knew everything since he had worked in New mexico and in Florida. It happened and he did not believe us. He goes back to the power panel and is going to re-set the master (that has not been touched since it was installed in the sixties). He pulls the 18" switch down and tries to push it up only it would not go. You should have heard the back peddaling from the GM. The transmitters were on another circuit this was just the main studio building. We end up running the phone system and the two control rooms off the generator from the remote vehicle. There is no replacement switch in Albany. It has to be flown in at a cost of several thousand dollars plus electrician and engineering costs. We had to pour diesel fule in the running generator to stay on the air. In the middle of all this the owner calls in and I answer the phone. When he asks what is going on I tell him. He's in Texas. He thought it was a hoot and asked to speak to the GM and I pass him off. The GM blows a gasket. He can't fire me because of my friendship with the owner but he certainly made my life a living hell after that.

 

[radionut987]

Re: Which one to tell...which one to tell???

> WE LOVED THOSE OLD SMALL TOWN RADIO STATIONS!

Same here. It's too bad that most of those "hometown" radio stations are running either on a computer and/or satellite dish these days. Otherwise, there would be more aspiring radio personalities breaking into the business by cracking open a "mic" instead of starting out as board operators.




<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by radionut987 on 02/17/06 05:18 AM.</FONT></P>

 

[Braswell]

Still MIA

> (btw Braswell, did you ever find out what happened to the
> guy that just went out for a pack of smokes and left the
> radio station switch on?... I swear I heard the Twilight
> Zone theme playing as I got to the end of that story!)

Nope, as far as I know, Bennie never heard a peep from him. You know, I never gave it much thought 'till I started writing the story, but I wonder just how long that thing had been sitting there running. There had been no payments made for over 6 months. Yeah...I know. It's hard to believe that it may have kept going that long, but...

Oh, the utilities? Everything was still in Hewett's name, and it all got paid like clockwork. Of course, it means that the power didn't go off, 'cause the transmitter did not have auto restart.

Anybody wanna buy an EXTREMELY dependable Collins 20V-3 transmitter, presently tuned to 1600?????<P ID="signature">______________
Jay Braswell - Moderator
Atlanta/North Florida/South Carolina/Georgia Boards</P>

 

[jsradio]

Re: Which one to tell...which one to tell???

> > WE LOVED THOSE OLD SMALL TOWN RADIO STATIONS!
>
> Same here. It's too bad that most of those "hometown" radio
> stations are running either on a computer and/or satellite
> dish these days. Otherwise, there would be more aspiring
> radio personalities breaking into the business by cracking
> open a "mic" instead of starting out as board operators.
>

Maybe that way aspiring jocks can maybe, oh, gain some experience here or there.

 

[talent]

I love how most of these start out "My very first gig...".

So...my very first gig was at our hometown AM radio station in rural NW Pennsylvania. Yes it was the coveted midnight Saturday to 6am Sunday slot. I was all of 15 at the time. My voice has always been deep and even at 15 sounded much older. Apparently one night a man that was out walking his dog went by the building. You could see into the studio from the street. Well he looked in and saw this "kid" in the studio and must have thought that I broke in and was vandalizing the place. He runs home and calls the cops. Well the owner thought that it would be a great idea to keep a police scanner in the studio. That thing starts going off and I'm listen to dispatch sending patrol cars to the station address. I'm freaking out because I think that there has to be somebody else in the building besides me. Four cop cars pull up, I put on Eric Clapton's "Layla" and run out the front door screaming like a little school girl.
It took a few minutes to get everything figured out but the cops got a pretty good laugh out of it because they never thought that the weekend overnight guy that they all listened to was just a 15 year old punk kid.
<P ID="signature">______________
Talent
"I just work here for the free t-shirts."</P>