WPFM did sign on in 1964 with studios at Capt Anderson's Restaurant as WMAI-FM. The owners of Capt Anderson's put the station on the air for the sole purpose of distributing Muzak on the SCA channel since they owned the Muzak Franchise for most of the panhandle including Ft. Walton, Panama City and Tallahassee. They programmed "beautiful music" as it was called then on the "main channel". They used an old Schaefer 800 reel to reel type automation using 6 Ampex 450 players. Even the spots were on reel to reel on a machine called a "spotter". Spots were recorded and then spliced into the "spot reel" with clear tape between spots. A mechanical counter kept up with what spots were cued up by counting the number of time the clear tape allow a light to illuminate a photocell.....when it worked, it work very well. There was a tower on top of the restaurant until about 5 years ago that supported a large light which illuminated the parking lot....this was the STL tower for the original WMAI...the original call letters before they were changed to WPFM....I can't remember exactly when they switched to Rock but it was in the very early 70s I believe. Maybe someone else can fill in the holes.
By the way, I had SEVERAL beers with the WPFM Tribute site dude tonight at Schooners. He was in town on family matters.
cceng