CHAPTER 9. THE HISTORY OF RADIO RANDY: CULTURE SHOCK, RENOVATIONS AND A CHILLING MESSAGE.
The
challenges of living in rural, mountain country in Kentucky were many. Manchester
was isolated. And while both Vicky and I grew up in a very small town in
Western NY, Manchester was nothing like that.
The people
were nice, for the most part and some were accepting of us, but most remained suspicious
of the “outsiders”. Of course, the Stevie Sizemore incident didn’t help to
create that warm and fuzzy feeling about Manchester.
Vicky was
also getting quite an education from some of the women she was getting to know.
Often at gatherings over coffee or whatever, the ladies would take their
handguns out of their purses to compare them. Vicky was little dumbfounded as
one of the women asked to see her gun. Vicky said, I don’t have a gun. She was
informed that she needed one, because in Kentucky, it was ok to shoot your
husband if you found out he was cheating.
Happily, I
can say that Vicky never got a gun, nor has she needed one.
In any
event, I forged ahead with the many plans we had for the two radio stations.
First and most importantly we wanted to separate the simulcast and do something
exciting on the FM side of WWXL. The AM and FM stations were sort of separate with
the weirdest simulcast I’ve ever encountered. WWXL AM had live announcers and
played some country music and did lots of community service and news and all
the stuff you expect on small town radio stations. WWXL FM played beautiful music (elevator
music). The FM had no on-air studio so it’s programming originated on a large reel to reel tape machine. There were two of them and each had a 12-hour
reel of music which played until the end and the new tape kicked in on another
machine. The same music played every day, they just changed which machine
started the day every other day. That’s right the same music in the same order
every single day.
Of course,
the previous owners wanted to take advantage of selling airtime on the FM which
had a larger coverage area than the AM. But with no FM studio how would they
play commercials?
The solution? Simple. Play the AM commercials on the FM (in
simulcast mode). So, whenever the AM station broke for commercials, they also
aired on the FM channel, right in the middle of whatever song might be playing.
So, one of
my first projects was to get these stations separated and have live programming
on both. The owners were behind this plan and allowed me to take the lead on
remodeling the facility to allow for an FM studio complex, custom studio
cabinetry, brand new control boards, production room, cart machines, microphones
and so on. We also decided to put in a new FM transmitter. In fact, since
getting the transmitter shipped was going to take time, I rented a truck and
took one of my staff members and drove to Des Moines Iowa to pick it up. Then I
had to hire a local contractor to use his Caterpillar bulldozer the pull the
rental truck to the top of the mountain, where our FM tower was located. What
an experience.
As the FM
plans began to come together, I had to start hiring a staff to run it. I needed
a program director and airstaff and I placed ads in many publications looking for
applicants. Several brave souls responded, including a young man from Indiana,
B.J. Odum, who I hired to be the program director of the FM, now dubbed XL-102.
B.J. put together and airstaff, including me in afternoons and we launched the
station in the Top 40 format. I then turned my attention to the AM, and we made
significant modifications, including a nifty new Automation system with a Country
format. I hired a news director who doubled as a morning drive host and the new
WWXL-AM was born.
Some of
these changes ruffled some feathers. We had moved the daily obituary segment to
a different time, and we were flooded with angry calls from listeners. The
obituaries had been a staple on the station forever and was a lengthy segment.
Each obituary contained every living relative the family could recall, and they
all wanted to hear their name on the radio. In the end we put the segment back
on its original time.
Another
issue arose which caused quite a stir in the community. We carried a local
Baptist Church Sunday morning service live on the AM station. One Monday morning
I received a call from the local Priest of a small Catholic church in
Manchester. He was quite upset and told me that he had monitored the Sunday
morning broadcast and that the preacher had referred to Catholics with several derogatory
names. I told him I would speak with the folks at the Baptist church and get
back with him.
At our
meeting I asked the preacher if he had used those names in his sermon and he
said, yes, of course!
I told him
that this was unacceptable and that should he continue to use these words, we
would have to discontinue his broadcast.
About two
hours after he left my office, our sales manager came into my office and said that
about 15 of our advertisers had called and were going to cancel their
advertising, unless we let the preacher say whatever he wanted to say about the Catholics or anybody else for that matter.
Welcome to
the bible belt.
After
getting the owners involved, we had a meeting with the priest and the preacher,
together. Cooler heads prevailed and both agreed to stay in touch and the
preacher agreed to tone down his rhetoric.
These bumps
in the road were a valuable lesson in small town radio and complicated dynamic
that exists. I began to think that being a program director was more fun than
being the GM
One bright
spot in all this was the birth of our daughter Erin. She was amazing and the
best little baby. We were amid all the construction and modifications at that time,
and I often came home late from work, sometimes after midnight. I couldn’t resist
waking her up to play with her, which I did often. Vicky and I were over the
moon with happiness because of Erin. Vicky had found some friends and was
developing a passion for making and firing pottery. Other than the challenges
with some of the programming changes, I was loving the work of building a new
studio and launching a new station and then, we got the note.
Wouldn’t
it be a shame if something happened to that new baby
I found the
note on my wind shield one morning as I left for work.
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