WHBQ in Memphis seems to be a popular station here. I just searched and found almost 200 mentions of WHBQ. So, I thought this interesting story on the station and the hiring of Rick Dees from competitor WMPS in 1976 was worth posting. It involves not only Rick being hired by WHBQ GM Dick French, but probably one of the most bizarre stories about Arbitron diary tampering ever done by a radio station employee seeking to keep his job as Program Director. You can find it on YouTube under "Radio Memories Dick French". Here is a link to the video.
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WHBQ Memphis Radio History and Rick Dees
- Thread starter westendmed@aol.
- Start date
Rick Dees time in Los Angeles with KHJ and KIIS overshadowed the time he was with WMPS and WHBQ.
Or the time he was in Birmingham at WSGN...
Also Disco Duck was Rick Dees rise to fame worldwide and in Memphis around the time the video is describing in an interview.
To KIIS fans in Los Angeles he would be known for making that station number one in the Southland from the 1980's to 2004 when Ryan Seacrest of American Idol took over the morning slot on that station.
Rick did not have his contract renewed at KHJ, when the station went Country. Actually, KHJ made a major error in not putting Terry McKeever in the morning show with Rick. Terry was his sidekick at WHBQ and together they were amazing. Rick was on the beach for about a year after leaving KHJ. I was then GM at KPLX and KLIF in Dallas, and since I was GM at WHBQ after Dick French, knew Rick very well. I tried to hire him at KPLX and Susquehanna refused to pay him his asking price. That was a BIG MISTAKE since I had both Rick and Julie, his wife, ready to come to Dallas and had McKeever coming too. That morning show would have rocked the Dallas market and shot KPLX up from #17 to #1 in a relatively short time. Rick eventually got hired on at KIIS and the rest is history. He was finally on an FM station for the first time and his rating success in LA there is well known. I left KPLX and started my own Dallas-based ad agency mainly due to the weird financial decisions being made by Susquehanna, the owners of KPLX and KLIF. The KPLX morning man I ended up hiring instead of Dees, was Terry Dorsey. He and I later teamed up to syndicate the HINEY WINE comedy feature that Dorsey was airing on KPLX. I ended up syndicating that to over 700 radio stations in the US and Canada.
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