CHAPTER 7 THE HISTORY OF RADIO RANDY : YOU AIN'T FROM AROUND HERE, ARE YOU BOY?

 

Our temporary studio in the Cornfield.

As I write this, during the worldwide pandemic, approaching Christmas 2020, I have been reflecting on this next chapter a great deal.

My time at WIVQ had been extremely rewarding and I learned a lot. Almost everything by trial and error and I had a boss who let me do that which I have always been grateful for.

That was Ben Granger, who was only a couple of years older than me but had already accumulated quite of bit of radio experience. We became partners really, with a goal of making the station better. Ben let me take the lead and backed me up often when it came to making changes and I have always appreciated that. It gave me confidence. Even though I was just a first time PD Ben treated me like I was an expert in programming which of course I was not.

He was the first of many GM’s I worked for over the next 40 years and he was certainly one of the best.  As it turned out, he would be the first of many radio people who I would encounter again, further on the down the road.

After nearly two years at IVQ I as beginning to get antsy to move on to a new challenge. I started looking around and spent time making air check tapes and updating my resume. I of course wanted to “move up” as they say. Bigger market. More money. New challenge.

We did not have a full-time engineer at the station, so we used a couple of contract engineers to handle our needs. Gary and Jim. Sadly, in my advanced age I cannot for the life of me recall their last names. In any event Jim was at the station one weekend working and he told me that he had just landed a new client station in Manchester Kentucky and that they were looking for a manger to run the station. He told me that the new owners knew nothing about radio but had money and wanted to make the station better and wanted someone young to take the reins. He said he thought I could handle it and would recommend me to them if I wanted him to. I thought, why not?

They invited me to Manchester for an interview and so I drove down to spend some time.

The two new owners were William Alan and William Hugh, I remember their last names, but I think I will just leave it at that for now. These guys had no idea what to do with a radio station. They were both successful businessmen and had money and thought the station was doing a terrible job and wanted to fix it, and of course make some money. I quizzed them about what really pushed them to buy the station and William Allan told me that his new home was just across the way from the station, probably within 200 yards. It was a really nice place, that he had recently completed, and it included a whole house intercom system that allowed room to room conversations. Once they moved into the house, he noticed that whenever you pressed the talk button on the intercom, the radio station bled into the speaker, making the intercom useless. So, he decided to buy the radio station and fix that problem.

So here I was, only 2 years into my career and these guys seemed ready to turn over their brand-new station to me if I got the damn station off his intercom.

They offered me the job as GM and wanted me to start right away. I drove home to Illinois and talked it over with Vicky and then accepted their offer.

First job PD, second job GM, wow this was really taking off I thought.  I gave my notice at WIVQ and said goodbye to my first radio family and then headed home to see family in western NY for a couple of weeks before starting in Kentucky. By this time Vicky has pregnant with our first child and we had not seen our folks much, so we spent some time at home and then set off for Manchester.

WWXL AM and FM was our destination. Located in the south east corner of Kentucky, Manchester is an isolated location and the commerce center for Clay county. It is in the mountains, and at the time it was a dry county as well. 

I had always assumed, that when I left the Air Force and opted for radio rather than Law enforcement that I would not have to worry about putting my life at risk. Turns out, that was not case.