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WMBL

T

tothedj

While we are remembering those great "AM" stations from the past, there is no
doubt for those who visited the Central & Southern Coastal areas of North Carolina
back in the 1960's and 1970's that "Famous 740" WMBL was the station to listen
to, with people like Jay Cobb, Duke Roberts, Sunny, and others on during the day,
including News from the "North Carolina News Network" and the music, it was the
station most tuned in to during that era, my favorite part of it was the "reverb".
 
Growing up in Wilmington I use to listen to WMBL a lot. They came in really good on the coast. I worked for 1340 WGNI in those days and had a buddy who worked for WMBL.
 
Does anyone know what piece of equipment (Model number and manufacturer) they used to get the reverb? If I were to do a part 15 AM I'd use something similar to get the same effect. I thought it was cool, but a little too much I thought at times. I had posted these next lines over in another topic similar to this.

I have on cassette a segment from WMBL circa Aug 1977 it is a part of a commercial for a club called "Night Moves" on the circle at Atlantic Beach, a weather jingle and a weather forcast going into The Eagles' One of these Nights. That was a cool station I remember listening to it when we went to Emerald Isle back then. The WMBL calls are used for an FM station in Mitchell Indiana at 88.1 according to radio-locator.com.
 
The Reverb was a Fairchild 3 spring. Cannot remember the model # but given time I can. The processing was a gates Level Devil, and was replaced with a Gates solid statesman AGC and AM limiter. The transmitter was a Gates BC1t. If memory serves me I think the console was a gates gatesway console, 2 Gates CB77 Turntables, and 4 tapecaster tape machines. We picked up the North Carolina News Network on a Yagi antenna mounted on a pole right in front of the station. I was there when Craig Webber, Jay Cobb, Bud Paulsen, Duke Roberts was there. I think Jay was by far the best PD I have ever worked with and for. The Pams jingles were great (untill they added the TM Great American Music Machine Package). It sounded like a million bucks. Too bad it was only a daytimer. There was an allocation for night power after the move to Little Nine Dr. but it was only 14.4 watts. usless.
 
RFGuy said:
The Reverb was a Fairchild 3 spring. Cannot remember the model # but given time I can. The processing was a gates Level Devil, and was replaced with a Gates solid statesman AGC and AM limiter. The transmitter was a Gates BC1t. If memory serves me I think the console was a gates gatesway console, 2 Gates CB77 Turntables, and 4 tapecaster tape machines. We picked up the North Carolina News Network on a Yagi antenna mounted on a pole right in front of the station. I was there when Craig Webber, Jay Cobb, Bud Paulsen, Duke Roberts was there. I think Jay was by far the best PD I have ever worked with and for. The Pams jingles were great (untill they added the TM Great American Music Machine Package). It sounded like a million bucks. Too bad it was only a daytimer. There was an allocation for night power after the move to Little Nine Dr. but it was only 14.4 watts. usless.
Click to expand...

WOW some good memory there! Thanks for the info. What was it's daytime power? I remember Craig Webber(if it's the same one) when he was on WCTI-TV 12 as weatherman and host of the TV POWWW program and for a time he was on The Weather Channel. Last I heard he was in Richmond, but that was quite some time ago.
 
What year did they make the move from Radio Island to Little Nine Rd? Last time I was by Little Nine, there was still a tower there, a wide-faced one with lots of cell antennae on it.
 
Craig Webber is living in Morehead, He ran for some political office and lost. If you are ever down east, his signs are still up. As far as when the station moved to Little Nine, I am not sure but i will find out and post. The New tower belongs to AGF leasing and is used for cellular as well as some RCC freqs. There was an attempt to hang a folded unipole from that tower, but I think it was met with disasterous results. 1400 was there for a short time and I think CC took the Harris SX1 transmitter on 740 somewhere else. The EZWAY tower came down in a hurricane and the Stainless G7 tower was put up. That big tower was once at WTVD ch11 in Durham. It sat in Jacksonville for years and WXQR 105.5 was going to use it for thier signal before it was sold to Cumulus, and sold again to Next media. WMBL was 740 am and 95.9fm. The power upgrade forced the shift to 96.3 at 50kw in the mid 80's and we still brodcasted out of the triple wide trailer. There was some good times! I want to say about 94 is when 96.3 got the 100kw power increase. WMBL was 1kw. The reason the station got out so well was the ground system was partialy in the sound, in salt water and conducted very well. when we were on radio island, we would get reception reports from NY to Fla on a daily basis. When it moved to Little Nine, The soil conductivity was not as good and the signal dissapeared.
 
WMBL was an amazing micro market station. They did get into Wilmington, especially along the coastline. In the pre-FM days, they were the defacto Top 40 station for places like Hampstead, Topsail Beach, even Carollina Beach where WHSL AM and WGNI AM didn't reach. WMBL was also the only Top 40 available in Jacksonville NC before late 1968 when WBBS signed on.

Supposedly the signal was strong from the Outer Banks to Savannah. I know it was inaudible in Charleston because of WPAL on 730 and not heard in Tidewater VA becasue of a station in Williamsburg on 740.

What I rembember and recall as MBL's heyday was from sometime in the 60's up until about 1972. By the mid 70's they sounded a little dated with the long jinlges, and so on. Though the 60's WMBL aired almost all of the WABC PAMS packages. They also aired the famous TM Phase 2 package in the early 1970's.
 
I often wondered what would have happened if WMBL went FM with 100,000 watts?, it would have been a good competitor, but as times and music began
to change, i'm not sure if what it eventually became would have took place,
i'm sure it would have.
 
RFGuy said:
... the Stainless G7 tower was put up. That big tower was once at WTVD ch11 in Durham. It sat in Jacksonville for years and WXQR 105.5 was going to use it for thier signal before it was sold to Cumulus, and sold again to Next media.
Click to expand...

Wow! I didn't realize they used an old WTVD tower. Do you know if this was the 1954 tower that originally stood atop Signal Hill in North Durham or the one built in Garner ~1958-9 that was replaced by their current 2,000-foot tower there? Also, where is this tower now?
 
I think the WTVD tower was the one at Auburn before the 2k Kline was erected. Art Gill Bought it from the Popkins (at that time owners of WXQR) and parts of it are all over eastern NC. Part of it is in Stacey, down east, Part of it is at Little Nine, ect. It is a substantial tower and could, if guyed correctly withstand high winds. The EZWay tower that blew down during the Hurricane was scrapped.
 
Best Reverb we ever had back in the 60's in Cocoa Beach, Fla at WKKO was from a Hammond Organ spring and a Leslie... Just a side note.Back in the 60's There was no "North Carolina News Network" It was orginally the "Tobacco Radio Network" then "TN News" and later "North Carolina News Network" Believe me when it was Tobacco Radio News, it was pitiful... BIG APE!
 
RFGuy said:
The Reverb was a Fairchild 3 spring. Cannot remember the model # but given time I can. The processing was a gates Level Devil, and was replaced with a Gates solid statesman AGC and AM limiter. The transmitter was a Gates BC1t. If memory serves me I think the console was a gates gatesway console, 2 Gates CB77 Turntables, and 4 tapecaster tape machines. We picked up the North Carolina News Network on a Yagi antenna mounted on a pole right in front of the station. I was there when Craig Webber, Jay Cobb, Bud Paulsen, Duke Roberts was there. I think Jay was by far the best PD I have ever worked with and for. The Pams jingles were great (untill they added the TM Great American Music Machine Package). It sounded like a million bucks. Too bad it was only a daytimer. There was an allocation for night power after the move to Little Nine Dr. but it was only 14.4 watts. usless.
Click to expand...

Curious question on the reverb, was it used just on the mics or was it on all program sources? I went back and listened to the tape and it sounds like it was on all sources, but most pronounced on any vocal parts it's kinda hard to tell if it was on all sources becuse the little transistor radio and tape recorder were not the best quality.

I was able to hear the jock's name as Don or John Michaels after the Eagles' One Of These Nights. He was a main jock there as he was on a couple of the commercials (or pieces of commercials) that are on the tape.
 
RFGuy said:
I think the WTVD tower was the one at Auburn before the 2k Kline was erected. Art Gill Bought it from the Popkins (at that time owners of WXQR) and parts of it are all over eastern NC. Part of it is in Stacey, down east, Part of it is at Little Nine, ect. It is a substantial tower and could, if guyed correctly withstand high winds. The EZWay tower that blew down during the Hurricane was scrapped.
Click to expand...

The part that is in Stacy, does this comprise them WFXI-TV/ WTKF-FM tower?
 
On the reverb question, It was in the air chain. It went Console, reverb, Level Devil, Transmitter. Later it was Console, reverb, Gates AGC, Gates Limiter, Transmitter. On the Tower question, No. That tower is used for RCC and some public safety, and I think there is a Ham repeater on it. WFXI/WTKF is in Open Grounds Farm. I think Spectrasite owns that tower. I know there was a new tower erected at the same site, The old tower would not hold the load that was asked of it. I remember the old "TN" the Tobacco Network, and the conversion to NCNN some years ago, I still rember the intro to the TN News! Now, I have a question for all you old timers out there. In Wilson, NC there was WVOT that stood for Wilsons Voice Of Tobacco. There was a network that came out of the old WVOT FM studios, Anyone rember the name of the network?
 
I can't recall the network that was based there, but here is a Wilson radio outlet
that was on before WRDU came on at 106.1, does anyone remember WXYY?, also
known as "Y-106"?
 
Man, That goes way back..I cannot recall any network.. I recall the station burning..Did this have something to do with >>BIG AL in Hawaii when he owned VOT in absenteeship???

At WKKO Cocoa Beach, the Reverb was on the program line all the time but ya had a button on the console you could press and go WAyyyyyyyyy Deeepppppp on the Spring.. Sounded great, but Hell, like everything else back then, us idiots overdid it! BIG APE!
 
BIG APE said:
Man, That goes way back..I cannot recall any network.. I recall the station burning..Did this have something to do with >>BIG AL in Hawaii when he owned VOT in absenteeship???
Click to expand...

WVOT/WXYY used TN/NCNN over the course of the 70's - 80's. Voyager bought the combo in 84 and slapped a WRDU chevron logo on the front of the building. Before that, there was "Coronet" logo on the front of the building, which I always assumed was for some sort of network, but no one at the station had been around long enough to remember.

The original building burned around 1992. Career Communications owned it at the time. This was several years before the "Big Al" era and VOT's slide into the abyss.
 
;D Somehow I knew "Big Al" would bring a rise from someone...Is he still kicking in Aloha Land? Someone needs to tell the "Big Al Story". I don't know all the details except he was a real "Shyster" APE!
 
Double J said:
WOW some good memory there! Thanks for the info. What was it's daytime power? I remember Craig Webber(if it's the same one) when he was on WCTI-TV 12 as weatherman and host of the TV POWWW program and for a time he was on The Weather Channel. Last I heard he was in Richmond, but that was quite some time ago.
Click to expand...
Excuse me for going off topic, but I remember TV POWWWW on WGHP in High Point.

For those who don't remember it, it was an early and very primitive video game. Kids would call in during the cartoons after school and one would be selected to play. If the kid said, "Pow" at the right time he or she would score a point. I think the objective was to make some dot or something disappear with a "bullet". I remember one poor kid missed them all and the host felt so sorry for him.
 
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