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Z98

O

OMFLA9

Looking for airchecks and production from KMPZ....Z98!

Mainly looking for their legal Id that sounded like a jet taking off.

Anyone?
 
Mike Ortego was production whiz there for a while. If someone knows how to get hold of him, maybe he kept some production around in the files.
 
Loved that station! From everything I heard, it routinely beat FM 100 in the ratings but never made a dime because they couldn't sell it.
 
The station that has had a dozen different nicknames over the years. Let's see how many I can remember:

O-98
Rock 98
The Lion, Rock 98 (probably to compete with Rock 103, "the Eagle" at the time)
Z98
Target 98 (sued by Target stores over that one?)
Star 98 (you mean Big Star did not also sue?)
The Max

I'm sure that there are others, but I have not lived in west Tennessee in over 20 years, although I used to occasionally visit before moving here to the midstate in the early '90s.
 
The Lion preceded The Eagle. It came about in an attempt to fill the void Rock 103 left when they went CHR as Z-103 circa 1984.

The Eagle was 103's name when they resumed AOR-ing in 1986. They blew off the WZXR calls and took on WEGR under the tutelage of Craig Scott as GM, utilizing WREC's PD Art Wander's talents in retooling the station. They had to rebuild from the ground up, as 103 placed their LP collection in the hallway when they went CHR and invited folks to help themselves. The prevailing rumor was that The Eagle name was chosen because country was under heavy consideration, but Mr. Scott has since refuted that claim.
 
Well, with my reply, and the first couple of replies that followed mine, we officially have at least a dozen different nicknames for the station at 98.1. ;D
robgrayson said:
The Lion preceded The Eagle. It came about in an attempt to fill the void Rock 103 left when they went CHR as Z-103 circa 1984.
The Eagle was 103's name when they resumed AOR-ing in 1986. They blew off the WZXR calls and took on WEGR under the tutelage of Craig Scott as GM, utilizing WREC's PD Art Wander's talents in retooling the station. They had to rebuild from the ground up, as 103 placed their LP collection in the hallway when they went CHR and invited folks to help themselves. The prevailing rumor was that The Eagle name was chosen because country was under heavy consideration, but Mr. Scott has since refuted that claim.
Click to expand...
I seem to recall that the "Eagle" and "Lion" names were BOTH born in 1986. Shame about losing the 'ZXR calls, but I suppose the "Z-103" debacle of 1985-1986 ruined those calls in the bluff city. But at least Z-103 played "Germantown Blues." Still have it on an old cassette, and still trying to find a better copy of it. (There is about a minute and a half snippet of it on youtube.) I also still have "Rock 98" and "Eagle" bumper stickers.

As for the LP collection, wouldn't they have eventually had to replace those with CDs anyway?
 
Eventually was the key word. When 103 took up the album mantle again, it's hard to believe, but vinyl was still the coin of the realm. Mr. Wander, myself as interim PD, and Howie Castle all made treks up to Pop Tunes and bought records with money to fill in vital gaps which were spirited away. CD was in its infancy, and I don't even know if we had a player in the control room when I came back. The players we had were notoriously unreliable. And remember, it was years before groups like the Beatles and Stones were even available on CD.

The tragedy was that there were records which were irreplaceable. Years of Source concerts and King Biscuit disks were gone. I think one of Zeke's first duties back when was creating a cross-reference card catalog of all those old live records.

A whole wall of studio recorded artist ID's was rendered useless by the call letter change. No more could we hear Dan Akroyd as Richard Nixon ID-ing the station. No more "Hi, this is Jerry the King Lawler, and when I'm on the throne, I listen to Rock103, WZXR, Memphis." There was a custom recording of "Dirty Water" by The Inmates (I love that dirty water.... Memphis, you're my home)" which was gone forever. And we went through a period where the station was referred to as The Eagle 102 Point 9, with no mention of Rock103 at all. There were voicers from John Rivers (not Mississippi Jon Rivers, or Gary Smith Jon Rivers, but the LA VO guy with the voice of a diety, who did the KFOG voice work), then voicers from Joe Kelly the concert spot guy out of Chicago.

Art Wander was easily in his 60's when he piloted the return of the Eagle. He had in his files a letter from Brian Epstein which had accompanied an advance copy of "A Day In The Life," received while he programmed WOR-FM back in '67. Z103 was making progress, and actually passed 100 in their final ratings (Birch probably), but the die was cast to send it back to album rock by the time those came in, as I recall. Art would write the music list out hour by hour. When I took his place, we went back to hourly music sheets with an old-fasioned card rotation system like the early 80's Rock103. By the time of Tim Spencer, we actually had computers and such.
 
Kudos to you, Rob, for your work there at the Eagle. I was listening quite a lot back then, as I still lived in the weststate at the time. I still occasionally see King Biscuit and other such radio programs in the used record stores here, but I live just outside of Nashville these days, so I doubt that it was anything pilfered from the old Rock 103.

As for the old exclusively Memphis tunes, I would like to get my hands on a bunch of them. The previously mentioned "Germantown Blues," the "FM 100 theme song" aka "Memphis, I'm Coming Home to You," and some other exclusively Memphis stuff which is hard to find anywhere anymore. I actually have "Memphis, I'm Coming Home..." on 45, which I found on Ebay, but most other stuff I only have on a 30-year-old Memorex cassette, and while it is holding up well, I don't know how much longer it will. Wife is a native Nashvillian and a huge Elvis fan, but by way of that cassette (and from my having lived in Mempho as a child), I am able to show her that there is a whole 'nother side to the bluff city, aside from the King. That makes it cool! 8)

I love it here in my own home in my little rural bedroom community here just outside of Nashville, but reminiscing actually makes me a litte homesick. It's cool to listen to that "Memphorex" cassette again every once in a while. And I finally "got it" when I heard "Memphis I'm Coming Home" over FM 100 while passing through Memphis on a visit many years ago, after I had moved here to the midstate! :'(
 
It's always great to read Rob Grayson's unique insight into all the changes which comprise Memphis Radio history. While I was part of many key events there during that era, Rob was on the ground or in the hallways of many if not most of what went on during the late 70's and 80's. I doubt any one observer could have more knowledge of those days than Rob. What a treat when and Kenny share their views. My memories of the WZXR to WEGR flip center mostly on what had happened to the revenue during the "Z" days. While ZXR might have made some ratings moves (mostly teen and 18-24 Female) against FM 100, the billing had literally disappeared. My job as the incoming MM was to restore lost ratings and revenue shares. Whether we had to buy records, CDs or whatever, job one was to get the long time profit machine back from red to green ink....
 
i dont know the station in question or the area, but i'm curious. what were all of the formats of the 98.1 name?
Oldies is obveous a and cat maybe country?
was it all live jocks?
 
I wasn't aware of them until "The Lion" of the mid-80's. They were a small-town FM in Osceola, Arkansas, and stepped up to grab the AOR audience vacated by Rock103's switch to CHR. So they did Album Rock, CHR, Oldies, Classic Hits, back to Classic Rock. KOSE-FM, KHFO, KPYR, WPYR, WYKL (Kool ?), WSRR, WXMX.
 
I wasn't even aware of them when they had the KOSE call letters, so that must have been even before "O-98" (KHFO). If their going to AOR was an attempt at going after Rock 103's old audience, they were a day late and a dollar short. Because by the time they had "The Lion" roaring, Rock 103 already had "The Eagle" flying again.
 
Before O-98, they were Southern Gospel, mainly automated, but the 6 pm AM country dj would come on after AM sign off and do a live gospel show until the FM signed off at 10 pm.
 
briancraig said:
Before O-98, they were Southern Gospel, mainly automated, but the 6 pm AM country dj would come on after AM sign off and do a live gospel show until the FM signed off at 10 pm. 
Click to expand...

As I remember it from college days at ASU in Jonesboro (mid '80s):

I discovered "O-98" in 1985.  Fringe signal in Jone-burr, automated top-40.  One guy (VERY deep voice) seemed to dominate all production.    Otherwise, I never gave it much thought.  Then I discovered by accident they'd changed to ROCK 98.  Automated AOR, same guy doing the spots and what-not.  This would be late January of 1986.  They picked up King Biscuit, but overall the station sounded very canned; I didn't complain, as at the time I was a big rock fan, and was thrilled to have that music again.  I was on the 8th floor of my dorm, so that gave me good reception. 

Somewhere I have a couple of airchecks of Rock 98 from the spring of '86.  If anyone's interested I can dig out and post a couple of for-instances. 

Then in May '86, "The Eagle" debuted.    But as I recall it, the name tweak to "The Lion" didn't occur until that Fall.  I do remember some teasers and such.  98's presentation changed somewhat to include some voice tracking, and soon some actual live shifts.  They boosted wattage at some point, and - I think - relocated their antenna to a taller stick.  It put a great signal into J'boro, so that gave us two album rockers to pick from.  But I had to laugh at that name .... "The Lion."    While the lunchtime hour ("Feeding Time") was clever, it sounded like a lame imitation of "The Eagle."   

By 1987, 98 was sounding great.  They'd moved to Memphis and again it was just "Rock 98." 

Both 98 and 103 were holding their own, but the latter was beginning to reclaim its mantle.  (Although, IMO, my loyalties leaned 98.1, as to my 21/22-year-old self, they gave me back rock, while 103 'betrayed' me in 1985!)

On a side note, in May of 1987, 94.9 out of Pine Bluff moved to Little Rock and fired up as "KZ-95", and central Arkansas had an AOR war going with "Magic 105."    At that point, rock fans in east Arkansas had quite the buffet: easy reception of no fewer than FOUR stations doing AOR.  Driving back and forth between North Little Rock and Jonesboro was fun. 

Anyway, those are my recollections, subject to correction.  I've slept since then.  :)

--Russell
 
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