CHAPTER 10 THE HISTORY OF RADIO RANDY: LET'S JUST GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE

 

Me, my brother Dennis and my Folks, Lois and Don

The two owners, William Allan and William Hugh sat in my WWXL office listening as I repeated what I had told them on the phone. This note was on my car this morning.

Wouldn’t it be too bad if something happened to that new baby

  It was a threat on the life of Erin, our newborn.

William Allen stood up and handed me a leather pouch. In it was a .32 Caliber pistol and a clip- on holster.

You might need this he said. I was taken aback for a minute. I mean I was very familiar with guns, having grown up on a farm. Plus, I had carried a side arm everyday at work in the USAF as a cop.

I checked the gun to see if it was loaded and put it in the holster and clipped it onto my belt. My, or rather our, new reality, I guess.

Both owners seemed largely unconcerned. Which pissed me off a little bit. But to be honest violence and shootings were fairly common in Clay County and lots of folks carried guns, including most of the women Vicky socialised with. Even still I wasn’t sure I wanted to join the ranks of gun toting locals just to feel safe and to take care of my family.

 No question, this was a turning point for us in Kentucky and I began to think about an exit strategy if you will.

As I thought about our future, I couldn’t help but reflect positively about what I had learned and accomplished at WWXL as well as quite a few failures.

We had completely revamped the studio complex, fixed numerous technical problems including a new ground system for the AM tower (which finally got the AM to stop bleeding into William Allen’s home intercom system).

We had also purchased and installed a new FM transmitter, AM automation system and hired a new staff to program and run everything.

I also had an amazing experience, thanks to a person from the recent past. Ben Granger, my first boss ay WIVQ, contacted me to say he now worked for the William B Tanner company in Memphis.

They produced and sold jingles and production music libraries to media outlets. Ben was now in their jingle sales department and offered me a great price on a jingle package for our FM station.

After convincing the owners that we needed a cool jingle package for XL 102, I accepted Ben’s invitation to come to Memphis and watch the jingle singers do our jingles. So, my program director BJ Odom and I drove to Memphis to meet with Ben and attend the sessions.

Yes, we had ribs at the Rendezvous, yes we cruised past Graceland and yes we spent some time on Beale street.

The next day we watched as a silver haired veteran producer lead the jingle recording sessions. He pushed the singers hard and made them sing,  XL One oh two, over and over again until each jingle was perfect. Then came the impossible legal ID.

Try singing WWXL-FM, Manchester. Two many syllables for sure. After the session BJ and I got copies of our package on reel to reel tape and headed home to Manchester.

As a 23-year-old General Manager I had gained a wealth of experience about all aspects of operating a radio station.

I had overseen programming on two stations. I had worked with the sales department to create revenue and had learned about the challenges of working with the community and dealing with controversy. All that and this was only my second job in radio.

I also began to learn how to hire and coach talent, which was tough because I was the same age or younger than most of the people who worked at the station.

Some personal highlights with Vicky included, of course,  the birth of Erin. We also made lots of good friends while in Manchester. But we had also had bomb threats on the radio station from a confirmed murderer as well as threats to our new baby.

We had been in Manchester just under a year at this point and I decided it was time to look around. I began updating my resume and putting together air-checks of my on-air work.

While my one year tenure as a GM had been educational, I knew at this point that I wanted to focus on, on air work and programming.

I began sending out packages to job openings listed in various trade magazines, hopeful of hearing some positive news.

We eventually told our families about the threat against Erin and during one phone call my dad said, you should just get out of there. I don’t have a job or anyplace to go at the moment I told him.

Just come home he said, you guys can stay with us until you find something.

So, without any job in sight, I turned in my notice and said goodbye to the WWXL team. Vicky and I began packing up and preparing to move our little family back to Rushford. My dad, my older brother Denny and his wife Pam soon arrived to help us move.

 It was a hot sticky day and night as we moved out of our second-floor apartment above a drug store in downtown Manchester.

After we finished loading our U-haul trailer and vehicles it was quite late in the evening. Rather than start out so late I asked everyone if they wanted to just sack out on the floor in our apartment for a few hours shut eye?

Denny just looked at me. He glanced around the dumpy dirty downtown that was Manchester. No. He said, let’s just get the hell out of here.

And that’s what we did.