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WKRP in Dallas?!?
- Thread starter jhead
- Start date
M
middlega
Guest
jhead said:
I filled in for a couple of weekends there many years ago. I was working for the owner's mother at one of her stations at the time & they couldn't cover all their shifts (due to a combination of being shorthanded & having a couple of employees fall ill at the same time IIRC)
If I'm not mistaken there are several regulars here on the forum who spent time there as well.
I am one of them. I was with the station when it signed on the air. I was 16 at the time and started with the Sunday morning shift.
When the station first signed on, we did not have any gospel music yet, so we played format on Sunday mornings. At the time the station was doing middle-of-the-road.... basically, one song from the pop chart and one from the country chart. It was not a bad format and we had a good local following. Anyway... I got in trouble the first week for play Bad Girls on Sunday morning. One of the preachers called up and said that Dallas was not ready for Sunday morning prostitutes.
The producers of the show WKRP filed and opisition to the calls being assigned. Finally, the FCC ruled that the producers were not broadcasters and had no interest in the assignment of call letters.
I was there for most of college until the station finally was loosing so much money that it was sold and changed formats. It was also the time of my life when I realized that radio was not going to be a life career for me. It would require too much moving all the time.
I have lots of stories from the station... even some of newspaper articles.
Some of the stations claim to fame:
--First couple of years the station did block formating on the weekdays. The sign on guy drove a truck for the post office. He was very talented however the station would sign on whenever he could make it to work. The block programming included 9AM-Ralph Emory, 10AM-50s music with Big Daddy(sign on guy doing Wolf Man voice and he even closed the curtains to the studio so nobody new who he was), 11-11:45 AM format, 11:45-12:00 a female preacher doing the thought of the day... and at 12 a full hour of news!
--The John Burch Society show was run on the station because they gave the station some equipment.
--I cannot remember the guys name, but there was a Hollywood gossip guy who paid to be on the satation. He was well known nationally... the beginning of his show sounded like Morse code.
--For a few years the station broadcast Bluegrass festivals live from around the area.
--You can make it to the bakery and back during the long version of the Eagles Lying Eyes.
--The first song played on the station was Lonesome Looser... started at the WRONG speed.
--The first board in the control room was a used mic board from WXIA-TV.
--I was the only local native to work there... it annoyed the news director to no end that I would scoop her on lots of news just because I heard the gossip at the high school.
--We broadcast a local church live at 11AM on Sunday mornings. Each month we rotated to another church. One month we were broadcasting New Hope Baptist Church. I was responsible for setting up the church broadcast equipment and ordering the phone lines. I forgot to change over to the next church and the phone company did not disconnect the phone line to New Hope. Of course I did not remember my mistate until after I potted up the church. There was New Hope, so I had programming and breathed a sigh of relief. Little did I know that was the week that the pastor of New Hope was airing some dirty laundry about members not giving... committing notorious sin... basically it was a sermon for their ears only. The station got many calls on Monday from New Hope members complaining. I got in trouble with the station manager. I do not remember if at the time if it was Jay Leopard or Jay Braswell.
--The station staff was named one night on Monday Night Football. The game was slow so they started talking about WKRP in Dallas, GA. They wanted a picture of our receptionist.
There is lots more... those tid bits are just the stuff off the top of my head.
When the station first signed on, we did not have any gospel music yet, so we played format on Sunday mornings. At the time the station was doing middle-of-the-road.... basically, one song from the pop chart and one from the country chart. It was not a bad format and we had a good local following. Anyway... I got in trouble the first week for play Bad Girls on Sunday morning. One of the preachers called up and said that Dallas was not ready for Sunday morning prostitutes.
The producers of the show WKRP filed and opisition to the calls being assigned. Finally, the FCC ruled that the producers were not broadcasters and had no interest in the assignment of call letters.
I was there for most of college until the station finally was loosing so much money that it was sold and changed formats. It was also the time of my life when I realized that radio was not going to be a life career for me. It would require too much moving all the time.
I have lots of stories from the station... even some of newspaper articles.
Some of the stations claim to fame:
--First couple of years the station did block formating on the weekdays. The sign on guy drove a truck for the post office. He was very talented however the station would sign on whenever he could make it to work. The block programming included 9AM-Ralph Emory, 10AM-50s music with Big Daddy(sign on guy doing Wolf Man voice and he even closed the curtains to the studio so nobody new who he was), 11-11:45 AM format, 11:45-12:00 a female preacher doing the thought of the day... and at 12 a full hour of news!
--The John Burch Society show was run on the station because they gave the station some equipment.
--I cannot remember the guys name, but there was a Hollywood gossip guy who paid to be on the satation. He was well known nationally... the beginning of his show sounded like Morse code.
--For a few years the station broadcast Bluegrass festivals live from around the area.
--You can make it to the bakery and back during the long version of the Eagles Lying Eyes.
--The first song played on the station was Lonesome Looser... started at the WRONG speed.
--The first board in the control room was a used mic board from WXIA-TV.
--I was the only local native to work there... it annoyed the news director to no end that I would scoop her on lots of news just because I heard the gossip at the high school.
--We broadcast a local church live at 11AM on Sunday mornings. Each month we rotated to another church. One month we were broadcasting New Hope Baptist Church. I was responsible for setting up the church broadcast equipment and ordering the phone lines. I forgot to change over to the next church and the phone company did not disconnect the phone line to New Hope. Of course I did not remember my mistate until after I potted up the church. There was New Hope, so I had programming and breathed a sigh of relief. Little did I know that was the week that the pastor of New Hope was airing some dirty laundry about members not giving... committing notorious sin... basically it was a sermon for their ears only. The station got many calls on Monday from New Hope members complaining. I got in trouble with the station manager. I do not remember if at the time if it was Jay Leopard or Jay Braswell.
--The station staff was named one night on Monday Night Football. The game was slow so they started talking about WKRP in Dallas, GA. They wanted a picture of our receptionist.
There is lots more... those tid bits are just the stuff off the top of my head.
I worked there as well.. I will never forget the owner of the station. Bobbie Rucker, I believe was her name.. To any extent, I was doing afternoon to sign off, and then working sat aft, and all day on sunday. I remember coming out of the news, and a sports report was due, so I cracked mike, and read sports, but with a little add of my own saying something to the effect of the local dallas high school football team was just having the worst year they had experienced in years, to which I was called to her office, then given the sermon about the FCC rules, and you cant say anything bad about anyone, because they can sue, then I was sent home, after someone came in to replace me.. I was told to return the following week, after my suspension. I was called in the next day at 1.00 pm when someone was out sick.This woman loved to tell all of her employees about the FCC RULES, and that we had to follow them. Doug Williams, was the midday guy, and is now the voice over talent for all the pike commercials. He did some great voices as well. When I worked at the station, it had been re-equiped, with a Brand new LPB console, 10 channel stereo no less, with new belair, transmitter switching equipement, and new qrk turntables... It was a beatiful on air studio, state of the art for its day. Itc cart machines... The Works. I dont miss the owner, but It was a fun place to work.
M
middlega
Guest
lilburncommunityradio said:
Although I can't recall if there might have been a time when the station was in her name, I know that for much of the station's time it was owned by her son Bill. She was, at various times, quite involved in the operations in Dallas though as he had other business interests that took his time & attention. At that point she owned Jasper and either already owned the combo in Ellijay or was headed toward eventually owning them. Darned if I can remember the exact timeline for that.
I never realized that was him.
Wow. Talk about a flashback.
My family actually bought WKRP back in the late 80's, and initiated the first change of the call letters to WDPC (Dallas, Paulding County). I've got a few pictures of the place around here somewhere.
I can recall the Atlanta PM Magazine folks (I think it was) doing a bit about it back when it was WKRP, trying to show similarities between the characters on the show, and the "characters" at the station.
Interesting couple of years there.
My family actually bought WKRP back in the late 80's, and initiated the first change of the call letters to WDPC (Dallas, Paulding County). I've got a few pictures of the place around here somewhere.
I can recall the Atlanta PM Magazine folks (I think it was) doing a bit about it back when it was WKRP, trying to show similarities between the characters on the show, and the "characters" at the station.
Interesting couple of years there.
A marvelous notion... on paper, at least.jhead said:
We actually kept the original calls for a while, but at the time, the TV show was still fresh in people's minds, and enjoying a healthy second life in syndicated re-runs. A nostalgia movement might have better luck at succeeding now, but 20 years ago, before the population boom reached Paulding the way it has since, overcoming the image of "WKRP" as an outfit of bumbling goofs was a very steep uphill climb. No one much wanted to buy advertising, because of A) the image associated with the calls, and B) the length of time the station had spent wallowing in neglect and malaise under the previous ownership.
We managed to get some interest and audience back under the new calls, with a coutry music format, a then-obscure NASCAR radio network (well ahead of the current craze), and an emphasis on local news and high school sports coverage. The latter was particularly interesting, since the phone patch was repeatedly disconnected by a PCHS coach who wanted to make calls now and then during the games. :
It was a big, lumbering ship to turn around, though. After a couple of years, the shoestring just got too tight to keep going for the fun of it. :-\
Just found this board today...
I did afternoons and Sunday mornings at WKRP from about its second week on the air (Sept or Oct 1979) until Dec 1980, when I was hired to run a college radio station in Illinois (which I did for the next 26 years).
Mitch Leopard was the manager and sign-on guy. We carried Atlanta Falcons football, but had to sign off at sundown, which made for some pretty angry listeners when we left the air before the game had ended. We carried the NASCAR network; driver Benny Parsons came to the station to record some commercials for one of his sponsors, an eye doctor.
Mitch wanted out of the morning show, and he asked me if I had any thoughts on a morning guy. I was doing a weekly show at WRFG-Atlanta at the time, and I recommended another WRFG jock, Don Cobbs. Mitch hired him, and he was absolutely great. Don now teaches the Dale Carnegie course in Atlanta.
We carried Jimmy Fidler, an 80-year-old Hollywood gossip columnist who had been a contemporary of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons back in the 1940s, still going strong (well, not THAT strong) in 1980. His show was horrible. It ran five minutes a night, Monday through Friday, and a week's worth of programs arrived every week on a 5-inch reel of tape. The reason we carried the show was because he cut us a deal on two Ampex reel recorders, and running the show was part of the deal.
I carried one of those Ampex machines (about the size of a large microwave oven) to Paulding County High School basketball games. I'd do Friday night play-by-play into the tape recorder, then we'd air the tape on Saturday morning (remember, we were a daytime-only station). My color man was John Ragsdale, husband of our first station secretary and cousin of singer Ray Stevens (whose real name was Raymond Ragsdale). (Our second secretary was Gary Kinsey's wife. He was on WKRP for a short while after he left WSB and before he joined a big Atlanta country station (don't recall the calls).
The owners when I were there were three different people. One ran the local lumberyard, I don't remember what the other two did but I don't believe they were related. They knew nothing about radio except that they wanted to own a station in their home town.
Mitch now reads books on CD, and runs his own audio production company. He's also currently in the process of doing some work for the Jimmy Kimmel (I think that's his name) TV show.
More if you want it....
---Dan Hughes, http://danhughes.net
I did afternoons and Sunday mornings at WKRP from about its second week on the air (Sept or Oct 1979) until Dec 1980, when I was hired to run a college radio station in Illinois (which I did for the next 26 years).
Mitch Leopard was the manager and sign-on guy. We carried Atlanta Falcons football, but had to sign off at sundown, which made for some pretty angry listeners when we left the air before the game had ended. We carried the NASCAR network; driver Benny Parsons came to the station to record some commercials for one of his sponsors, an eye doctor.
Mitch wanted out of the morning show, and he asked me if I had any thoughts on a morning guy. I was doing a weekly show at WRFG-Atlanta at the time, and I recommended another WRFG jock, Don Cobbs. Mitch hired him, and he was absolutely great. Don now teaches the Dale Carnegie course in Atlanta.
We carried Jimmy Fidler, an 80-year-old Hollywood gossip columnist who had been a contemporary of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons back in the 1940s, still going strong (well, not THAT strong) in 1980. His show was horrible. It ran five minutes a night, Monday through Friday, and a week's worth of programs arrived every week on a 5-inch reel of tape. The reason we carried the show was because he cut us a deal on two Ampex reel recorders, and running the show was part of the deal.
I carried one of those Ampex machines (about the size of a large microwave oven) to Paulding County High School basketball games. I'd do Friday night play-by-play into the tape recorder, then we'd air the tape on Saturday morning (remember, we were a daytime-only station). My color man was John Ragsdale, husband of our first station secretary and cousin of singer Ray Stevens (whose real name was Raymond Ragsdale). (Our second secretary was Gary Kinsey's wife. He was on WKRP for a short while after he left WSB and before he joined a big Atlanta country station (don't recall the calls).
The owners when I were there were three different people. One ran the local lumberyard, I don't remember what the other two did but I don't believe they were related. They knew nothing about radio except that they wanted to own a station in their home town.
Mitch now reads books on CD, and runs his own audio production company. He's also currently in the process of doing some work for the Jimmy Kimmel (I think that's his name) TV show.
More if you want it....
---Dan Hughes, http://danhughes.net
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