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WJQS is back!

T

the golden boy

No, I'm not kidding. It's for real. WJQS really is back--well, the call letters are. WKXI-AM has flipped to business talk and now picked up the legendary WJQS calls.
 
the golden boy said:
No, I'm not kidding. It's for real. WJQS really is back--well, the call letters are. WKXI-AM has flipped to business talk and now picked up the legendary WJQS calls.
Click to expand...
Ah yes, the legendary WJQS. The... ,uh,well sorry,guess the memory's not what it used to be. Want to fill us in on the legend? Don't think Fun14 was business talk,was it? Guess WRBC, WCCL,and WWUN weren't available.
 
tzbarber said:
[Want to fill us in on the legend?
Click to expand...

Perhaps I can offer a brief history of WJQS, for those who just now stepped onto the Jackson radio scene.

Needless to say, most everyone knows about the legendary WJQS, In 1947, when Harry S. Truman was the President and Fielding L. Wright was Mississippi’s governor, the prominent King Edward Hotel (where we all remember those succulent porterhouse steaks) opened its door to the home of Jackson’s newest radio station WJQS.

WJQS became an integral part of Jackson and the Mid-Mississippi listening area. Originally broadcasting with 250 watts, 1400 AM WJQS was always the leader in informing, educating and entertaining mid-Mississippian listeners. Those were the days, when radio was really radio.

My first memory of WJQS goes back to yesterday, when I found all that info on the WJQS web site (a web site that probably did not exist in 1947). . . .
 
I remember when WJQS was in the King Edward...I also remember Tom Rohne
( Great Voice) John Friskello (Great Person and knew a lot about music)
and Lee Hodges, manager when they moved to Terry Road location. They also staged a lot of the 70's "travelling shows" of country, where several headliners
would appear at the Coliseum for the amazing price of $10, open seating.
Stars? Try Sonny James, Charlie Pride, Ray Price. Great Fun at a great time!
I guess those were the days! (And, not to forget...the night George Jones told the sound man to go get a bag of popcorn and leave the board set where he told him to set it!) JBI
 
I remember seeing Fun 14 broadcast live from the fair back in the seventies. They had little serious competition until WCCL 1590 went country. The final straw was when Miss 103 came along around 1981. WJQS was one of the last hold-outs playing country on AM until they finally threw in the towel and went black gospel.
I would have loved to see 1400 go back to a classic or alternative country format, but considering where the station is located it would never work considering the demographics. The signal just can't get into the suburbs that well, especially with all the irritating power-line static that seems to have gotten worse in recent years. BTW, I can barely pick up WJNT at my house in rankin county because of the static. And WJNT is 50000 watts and only a 15 minute drive away!
 
Interference and directional antennas...two prime reasons that AM is where it is today...AND, Digital transmission on AM makes it even worse...Sad. JBI
 
I remember WJQS from (I think) 1965. They played Big Band music and the on-air personalities wore red blazers with WJQS on them. And I remember John Freskillo (this i greatly mispelled I think). I just popped into their studios at the King Edward one night just to visit. (When I was young I had the habit of just popping in to radio stations and making myself at home.)

Shortly after WJXN went country, WJQS was bought out by (name I cannot remember), a popular announcer at WSM in Nashville, and they too went country. They had Pepper jingles and called themselves Big Top Radio. (It was meant to imitate a circus. They were awful jungles.) When they went country was when they moved out of the King Edward to their new bulding on Terry Road (I think it was Terry Road).
 
I've alway's been curious. What exactly was on WJXN and WJQS way back? The farest back I remember was the early-mid 70's when WJXN was southern gospel (the colonel) and WJQS was country (fun 14) I didn't know WJXN was ever country. What were the stations playing back in the 40's 50's and 60's?
 
wccl is a station in Pensylvania, wwun is a staion in the delta, WRBC is a college station in Maine,

Now if AM 930 would get rid of those horrible WSFZ call letters and bring back WSLI. AM 930 has alway's been WSLI and it just doesn't seem right changing them. Doesn't anyone appreciate the history or heritage of one of the oldest stations in town anymore? BTW, WSLI is now the call letters of an FM station in Michigan.
 
The radio stations way back then, you ask? Well, I grew up in Jackson and remember quite a lot. Around 1960, when I was 14, we had 6 AM's on the air (and no one in Miss. had yet ever heard of AM.)

WJDX 620, WSLI 930, WRBC 1300, WJQS 1400, WJXN 1450 and WOKJ 1590. WJDX, WSLI and and WJQS were still programming like radio was in the 1940s: various shows, an hour of this and an hour an that. WRBC (Rebel Radio) and WJXN (The Colonel) were rock'n and rollin'.

My mother loved WJXN and kept it on all the time. They had jingles and time and temp between just about every record and a 5-minute UPI rip and read newscast each hour. So did WRBC but I can't remember them having jingles back then. And their DJ's were a little blander than WJXN. (Bob Rall, who posts on this website, was, to me and my mother, the
best DJ in Jackson on WJXN (in the mid 1960's I think).

WJXN was founded by James Ownby in the very late 1940s and had studios in the Deposit Guaranty State Bank building on Capitol Street. He also started WDOB in Canton (the O is for Ownby) and about 4 other 250-watt AMs in central Mississippi in the 1950's. All of them were affiliated with Liberty Broadcasting, a made-up network that got in trouble for broadcasting Major League baseball games as though they were really at the games but were
simply reading the Western Union sports ticker and adding sound effects.

I think WJQS was started in 1945 and went "big band" before T. Tommy bought them and turned them country about 1965. 1965 was also the year I got a job as DJ at what I thought was a rock n roll WJXN but it switched to country the day I started.

WOKJ was of course the black station and out-rated all of the white stations.
 
I had typos in my above post (imagine that). In first para I meant that no one had yet heard of "FM" radio in Mississippi. WJDX-FM was the first in Jackson. When WKXI came around on FM, that was the small opening of the flood gates. (I also worked at WKXI when they started as newscaster John Parker. We ran the statewide Mississippi Radio News network from the WKXI studios.)

In the first ARB out after WKXI hit the air, the were #1. Secret: They aimed for both black and white listeners and got enough of each to whup butt in the market.

I believe that after that ARB, every AM in Jackson started thinking, "We need to get us an FM."
 
Ok, I remember FM in the 70's WKXI 94.7-Urban, WLIN 95.5-elevator, WJFR 96.3-religon, WJMI-Urban, WZZQ 102.9 Album Rock, But what did the FM band in Jackson look like in the 50's and 60's? Simulcasting? More elevator music etc?

And what happened to WDOD in Canton? is it now WMGO?

BTW. I only remember WJXN broadcasting from the little Jim Walter house next to the Colliseum. Which was bought by Edward St. Pe several years back and is now NWN weather. The JXN tower is still standing but has been dark for a number of years. I remember the whole thing went under water back in 1979. If I'm not mistaken wasn't their a frequency swap? WJXN originally 1490 and WSLI on 1450 or have I mixed that up?
 
Something is fishy here. The call letter change from WKXI-AM to WJQS does not show up in the FCC database. Yet they have a web site and from all reports are using WJQS as their call letters. The FCC database shows that the transfer to Pollock Broadcasting Co. was dismissed.

Wonder what's going on?
 
richllewis said:
Something is fishy here. The call letter change from WKXI-AM to WJQS does not show up in the FCC database. Yet they have a web site and from all reports are using WJQS as their call letters. The FCC database shows that the transfer to Pollock Broadcasting Co. was dismissed.

Wonder what's going on?
Click to expand...

The webstream even works...

i wonder if this was all set up before the sale was dismissed.

it's also possible Pollock is simply LMAing the station.
 
WJQS was owned by Ann Zimmerman. I think that she inherited it from her husband. She ran the station and lived in Jackson before selling it (and it became WOAD-AM) and moving to her hometown of Hazlehurst.

The station was the building that is now Porter's Insurance Agency. It is located between Buck Sullivan's and William's Fried Chicken on Highway 51 - near Jackson State University and where the JATRAN keeps the buses.

I never listed to the station, but they sponsed a lot of "County Shindigs" that were advertised on television. Also, I believe that the station had local news 20 before the hour and 20 after the hour. My daddy liked the station because he said that the news was always about to be aired.
 
WJXN was Jackson's first Top40 station and had number one HoopeRatings in the late fifties.
Trivia? Their first "Pick Hit Of The Week" was Tequila by the Champs.
WJQS was block programed. Excellent announcing staff. Nights were "Land Of Dreams" 10P to Mid...soft music...poetry. Jacksonian Dumas Milner owned WJQS, the King Edward Hotel, Milner Chevrolet, White Rain Shampoo, Pine Sol and National Car Rental.
WJXN was finally done in by WRBC in the early 60s...62 or 63, I think. WRBC and WJXN went head to head for three years or so
from 1959 until JXN gave up and went country.
Country never amounted to much on the AMs. They were REALLY country. Format never had numbers until
MISS103 came on July 3rd 1981.
 
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