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WLET/WNGC

M

more kilowatts

I posted the following on the Georgia board. The station involved is a Georgia station and in the 1970's had very stong coverage into Anderson, Oconee, and Pickens County SC so I thought someone on the SC board may remember this station as it was then:

I was wondering if anyone on here remembers anything about the former WLET-FM 106.1 Toccoa (now WNGC) as it was in the 1970's? I live in Pickens County, SC and back in the early 1970's I listened to the Wayne Martin Show on WLET-FM at nights playing Top-40 hits. Nearly every teenager I knew in Pickens County listened to that show. I remember one of the sponsors of the show was Reeves Hardware/Reeves Honda. The spots usually referred to Kenny, "the one man in Northeast Georgia that knows a Honda upside-down". The station was 100 KW even back then and had a great signal into SC. My question: was the WLET-FM transmitter co-located with WLET-AM at that time? I remember the station being on Prather Bridge Road right there in Toccoa. I believe the current WLET-AM, now owned by Toccoa Falls College, still uses the site on Prather Bridge Road. WNGC's transmitter is now located near Lula, GA and doesn't seem to have as strong a signal into SC now. Thanks for your help!!
 
The only thing I remember about WLET... or WNEG is Billy Dillworth. He was legendary in that area and tried to expand his reach through television and other radio stations like 660am in Greenville, SC. I don't remember the station when it was Top 40.
 
I remember! I'm Jim “Grum” Graham and I started working at WLET AM/FM on Prather Bridge Road in Toccoa November 15, 1969. The station was in the process of transferring ownership to Otto McDonald (hope I spelled his last name correctly... long time ago). Otto was an engineer and they were upgrading a Class C FM from 700 watts or so to 100 KW ERP on a new 300 foot tower on Prather Bridge. When the 100 KW came on, they separated programming and I was the first night guy. It was "The Grum Get-Together" from 6 PM to 11 PM sign-off. I left there November 15, 1971. That’s when Wayne Martin took the shift. As years past, I learned that I had a lot of listeners to that show!! It was fun. Get this: Mono FM, the only “processing” was an old tube-type GE limiter with slow release. NOT an HF limiter. The station sounded GREAT in mono, not the cram-it-down-your-throat loud FM of today, and people LISTENED! -JG
 
Jim Graham said:
The station sounded GREAT in mono, not the cram-it-down-your-throat loud FM of today, and people LISTENED! -JG
Click to expand...

WLET at the time had a wonderful, crisp clean sound. I agree-most FM stations today are over-processed. Sometimes I think we need to get back to the basics when it comes to processing.

By the way, I dug out an old reel-to-reel recording of about 45 minutes of a Wayne Martin show from 1973. It contains some WLET jingles and several vintage commercials including the famous Reeve's Honda spot. Wayne Martin is playing dedications, mostly from and to Jr. High and High School kids in Franklin County, Stephens County, and Oconee County, SC. I listened to every minute of it and enjoyed it to the full!
 
Feel free to bring this over to the Atlanta board. WNGC rimshots Atlanta very well (see http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WNGC&service=FM&status=L&hours=U ), so it's a fair topic.

We had a lot of discussion about WNGC a couple months ago...most of it related to Moby In The Morning and the recent purchase of Southern Broadcasting's Athens cluster by Cox (which also includes Active Rock WPUP Bulldog 103.7 out of Royston--soon to be Arcade, another FM, and a couple of AMs). We've been wondering if MITM will survive the Cox purchase and if any flips are in the offing.
 
More Kilowatts, you should check out www.FunRadio.us. I, too, did dedications and contests and just had some good, sometimes silly, fun. They were the nicest people I've ever worked for. My wife frequently came to work with me. I left WLET FM in November, 1971 to take my first "Chief Engineer" job right out of tech school. Dang I've been doing this for such a long time...... :-\ -JG
 
I pick up WNGC when I go to the N.C. mountains.

I must have picked up WLET years ago. I was hearing the Backstreet Boys or 'N Sync or something, even east of Charlotte. I don't think it was WYNN in Florence, which is very much an R & B/hip hop station, not rhythmic. I know it wasn't WRDU, which was rock. I was listening to Mix 106 at the time. Now that I think of it, the station that is now Charlie could have been what I was hearing.
 
It could have easily been WLET. I know that they were doing some Lite Rock for aawhile before WNGC took over that frequency and I could pick them up around Rosman, NC.
 
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