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Worst owners

Scout said:
firepoint525 said:
The station owed money to ASCAP, so we were not allowed to (knowingly!) play anything published, or even co-published, by ASCAP.

I ran into the same thing at a little daytime AM in Bellville, Texas -- at 1090 KACO; this was in 1988, the "on air" light was a yellow bulb and we played records! That's where I learned the phrase "Cue burn." ;D
Guess who owned that 1090 at one time? None other than Roy Henderson! Speaking of Henderson, WLDR (101.9 Traverse City, MI) is never off the air for long periods of time and is active in the community. Maybe he has someone else running that station.
 
Scout said:
Yep, the owner sold to Henderson after KACO went under. I would've preferred she burn it to the ground.
A couple of years ago, according to Wikipedia, Henderson sold it to JHT Ventures, who turned it into a Spanish station.
 
Levi Willis is deceased, but yes, Willis Broadcasting had several station licenses deleted. WSVE in Jacksonville Fla. was one of them. He had to surrender the licenses just to settle some of the NALs.
I think he started out with good intentions but got way over his head.

What doesn't make sense to me is why the FCC approved the sales of some of these stations to entities that had already shown that they didn't know or care about running radio stations.

Interesting stories in tnese threads.
 
Scout said:
Yep, the owner sold to Henderson after KACO went under. I would've preferred she burn it to the ground.

KULF 1090 is now Arabic, FWIW. The Spanish language "Radio Luz" format didn't last long at all.
 
Radio is filled with cheapskates at the helm, that's to be expected. But I haven't heard anyone talk about how abusive the owner and/or GM was to the staff. Tom Whitehead still holds that distinction.
 
Nearly every radio station owner/GM that I have ever worked for has been abusive to his/her staff. It's just that some of them are still alive, and still managing (or destroying!) the station(s) at which I worked for them.

Richard "Dick" Bennett, ex of WHDM, is deceased, so no worries there. The problem with him is that he was 90 years old at the time that I worked for him (or so it seemed) and had basically no use for anyone under, say, 50. I was 27 at the time. Worse yet is that all the office staff chain-smoked, so an oxygen mask would have come in handy! (His wife sold the station a few years later, so I took that as proof that he had died.)

"Big Daddy Bobbaloo," ex of the old WDXN, once called a "mandatory" meeting in which he basically bitched at his entire staff for what seemed like two solid hours! And every sentence went something like this: "If you don't like this, GET OUT! If you don't like that, GET OUT!" And on and on it went for about two hours! (Supposedly his own daughter did not let him walk her down the aisle at her wedding.)

Alice Jackson, ex of WIZO, and "Corky" Albright of WQSV never even filed paperwork on me, so it was like I never worked at either place. ::) Jackson was just simply incompetent, but (not so) Albright bitched at me up one side and down the other, so I quit!

But the worst by far is Paul Tinkle of Thunderbolt. He is every bit as bad as they said in that thread that I linked above, and then some. I knew people who would not work there because of him! I managed to last slightly over a year before I, too, had had enough of him. During the time that I was there, the entire airstaff (with one exception) turned over. He is an nth degree perfectionist and would go ballistic if the least little thing went wrong! He would be on the phone within nanoseconds if the automation on the FM station screwed up and he heard it. He could hear "pops" and "clicks" on carts, turntables, whatever, that no one else could hear! ::)
 
He is an nth degree perfectionist and would go ballistic if the least little thing went wrong! He would be on the phone within nanoseconds if the automation on the FM station screwed up and he heard it. He could hear "pops" and "clicks" on carts, turntables, whatever, that no one else could hear! Roll Eyes
You've just described a whole bunch of people I worked for(owner/gm's, gm's, pd's, whatever). Most of these people saw their careers go down in flames(though one such person did quite well). I really believe these people truly have some kind of OCD-like psychological disorder. I wonder if modern psych meds had been available in the olden days AND these people could have swallowed their pride and started taking these modern meds, if radio for a lot of us couldn't have been a lot better experience.
 
Trav said:
Willis Broadcasting (Levi Willis) owns stations in Virginia and the Carolinas, he makes frequent appearances in those "worst stations" threads. His stations generally run religious formats, but its the lack of technical upkeep that makes him famous. I remember reading one of his FM stations had its transmitter on a front porch, when it rained it jumped frequencies. His other properties are apparently run with that much care too ....

Willis Broadcasting used to own WWCA Gary, IN, an AM station on 1270, with coverage mostly in Lake County Indiana. Willis let this station go under in 1994, & the FCC & FAA was on this station's case for years, until Starboard Media of Green Bay, WI bought the silent station in 2003. Willis never maintained the towers when the station was off the air. The reason the FAA was involved too, is because the 4 tower array is close enough to Griffith Airport, that without the lights on, the towers were invisible at night. Starboard Media spent a lot of money to get the tower location in compliance, since Willis neglected it. The only thing I hate now, is that since this station went back on the air in December 2003, I no longer get WXYT Detroit anymore at night. Had Starboard bought AM 1230 WJOB Hammond, IN instead, 1270 would not be back on the air, & the WWCA call letters would have been deleted. Willis would have still been responsible for dismantling the towers.
 
Dave,

The FCC let the station stay silent for nine years?
 
cee said:
I really believe these people truly have some kind of OCD-like psychological disorder. I wonder if modern psych meds had been available in the olden days AND these people could have swallowed their pride and started taking these modern meds, if radio for a lot of us couldn't have been a lot better experience.

It certainly couldn't have hurt.

I worked in a small town where everyone knew everyone. My doctor said the owner I worked for was a functioning sociopath.

Are there meds for that?
 
"I worked in a small town where everyone knew everyone. My doctor said the owner I worked for was a functioning sociopath."

Wow...totally unprofessional for your doctor to reveal that to you, even though he was your boss. One has to wonder what he's saying about YOU.
 
Alan McCall said:
Dave,

The FCC let the station stay silent for nine years?

They used to allow that. One TV station was able to keep an idle license for **FORTY-TWO YEARS**. (they blew the record in 1995 by actually signing the thing back on, and it's still operating today)
 
Greg Goodfellow said:
Wow...totally unprofessional for your doctor to reveal that to you, even though he was your boss. One has to wonder what he's saying about YOU.
Well, he told me that, I think, because it was related to the high blood pressure and clinical depression caused by me working for a high-functioning sociopath. I had expressed these thoughts to him, he then met my boss in a social situation and he simply confirmed what I already knew. That's all.
 
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